Every night, Sherlock Holmes was visited by ghosts.

There were no apparitions in white sheets or transparent figures of those in whom's death he had a hand, but instead figureless memories. The second the sun began to lower itself over the London horizon, he would feel a weight on his chest, emotions descending in a way he would never had allowed them to under any other circumstances. He felt the memories being pushed towards him, shoved into his arms like a pile of clothing, their weight causing him to struggle as he stood from his tea.

They were always small memories, things he hadn't dwelled on when they had happened. There was the time that John had accidentally knocked over some boxes at the market, his face bright red as he scrambled to return them without too many noticing. The time Mrs. Hudson's favorite song had come on the radio and she had dragged Sherlock out of his easy chair, making him dance as she twirled across the room, her apron swishing around her waist.

When the memories became too much, when the weight hardly allowed him to move any longer, he would give in and let them wash over him. The empty flat's silence echoed the gunshots of Moriarty to himself and the snipers to John and Mrs. Hudson. Echoed back his own ragged breath as he had looked over the building's edge, searching for some sort of comfort in the life after death myths. Him trying in vain to steady his own heart as he watched John, so ready to save him.

And finally, lurking just behind the light's reach, he could hear his own foot steps, the scratching sound his shoes made as he slipped on Moriarty's blood, and the echo's in the staircase as he descended from the roof, praying that they weren't ready; that they would give him a moment to convince them to spare his friends.

When the sunlight began to rise, the memories would fade. And Sherlock, resisting the urge to call for his morning tea, would leave his chair and move slowly around the kitchen, ever aware of the ghosts in the shadows, just waiting for night to fall.