Sherlock blinked.

It must have been morning. Early morning. He must just be getting up. He felt like he'd just woken up, stiff from staying in one position all night. His mouth had that morning taste.

Yes. Morning.

Sherlock sat up.

Not Baker Street. But... somehow familiar. It must be his place, because all of his things were there. The skull, the desk, stacks of journals and books.

He must have moved.

He wonders why.

Sherlock got out of bed.

His legs felt fragile, like they could break. Or maybe not break, but just... go wrong. They felt old. He felt old.

There was a mirror on the wall.

He looked old too. Sixty at least.

He smiled and it looked strange on a face that wasn't his.

He never expected to see sixty.

He wondered it he woke up every morning and smiled at his old face in the mirror, still surprised that he made it that far. And not only that, but realize every thirty minutes or so that he, Sherlock Holmes, had reached a ripe old age.

Who would have expected it?

Sherlock stood in front of the door.

It was plastered with sticky notes. Important reminders, ones that he had to keep in plain sight, otherwise he would forget that he forgot them and things would go downhill.

Take your vitamin. It's in the cupboard next to the sink.

Cross today off the calendar.

You are 68. (Yes, you're old. No, no one suspected this.)

Lestrade died five years ago.

Call Molly every Saturday. (Make note on calendar.)

Mycroft died last June.

Mrs Hudson died peacefully a long while ago.

You moved here eight months ago. If needed, a floor plan is in the desk.

John died nineteen days ago.

Sherlock blinked back the tears.

It hurt. It hurt, probably like it had hurt every morning and every thirty minutes of every single day since then.

He crumpled it up and wrote a new one to see the next morning.

John died twenty days ago.

He went downstairs to make breakfast.

A bowl of cereal and a cup of tea later, and he stuck a new note on the fridge.

Ate breakfast. 8:30am.

He sat down at his laptop. The password was easy. He hadn't changed it since.

Or if he had, he'd changed it back. There was no way of knowing.

He smiled.

He spent some time rereading his blog posts. John's blog posts. His favourites were bookmarked. He didn't know how many times he'd read them. Dozens, if not hundreds. They were probably imprinted on his eyelids when he closed his eyes at night. If he could remember.

Perhaps he should do an experiment about that. How many times did you have to read something before the words became seared into your eyes, how many times until they became part of you, how many times until you could remember them.

He didn't write it down.

Sherlock pushed his chair back from the computer.

"What was I doing?" he muttered to the skull.

It only grinned cheerily at him.

"Did I eat?"

He wandered out to the kitchen. The note on the fridge told him he ate.

"John?" he called.

The house was too silent.

He wandered down the hall.

A note informed him of the fact.

John is dead.

He bit his lip and tried not to cry. It hurt. It was an old hurt, one that had been felt over and over, but was still new every time.

This was no way to live.

He'd probably tried other ways, of course. He was clever. But it must have been bad. Or worse. Or so heartbreaking that he knew he could never go through it again.

He scrolled through the files on his laptop. One was labelled 'Don't take down the John notes'.

He stared at it for a moment before clicking on it. It would probably hurt.

But even if it did, it would be gone soon, replaced by another, maybe one that was worse, maybe one that was better.

But there would always be more pain.

You're reading this, so you're probably wondering. For me, it was two days ago. I tried it without the notes. I tore the house apart. I called him. I looked for any trace of him.

There was none.

I found the notes where I crumpled them up in the garbage. I sobbed until I forgot. Then I sobbed more. It's funny what growing old can do to you. Emotions come more readily, time seems to pass at a different rate.

Don't take the notes down. At least this way, you're not given any hope.

John made me watch Doctor Who, and there was one quote that I feel fits this situation. It's from before, so I will never forget it. I suppose you won't either.

You gave me hope and then you took it away. That's enough to make anyone dangerous.

So don't do it to yourself. Not again. This probably isn't the first time you've read this, and I'm sure it won't be the last.

Keep the notes. They're the lesser of two evils.

Sherlock pushed away from the computer.

Of course he had. Of course. Of course. It was all so predictable. And yet he remembered none of it. He would remember none of it.

All the memories, all the things that had made up his life, everything since that one day... gone.

A man was supposed to be the sum of his memories.

Except he kept reverting back to his baseline. No more addition. There could only be subtraction.

A depressing thought that he would be forced to think over and over again, each time like it was the first.

Because it was.

He wrote a new sticky note. Bold letters.

He hung it on the fridge. He had to look at the fridge a lot, right?

He'd eaten breakfast. It wasn't really lunchtime. He wasn't hungry. It was odd now, especially that John was gone. There was no one to tell him to eat. He had to actually listen to his body. It was unusual. Maybe. Or perhaps he'd just forgotten.

There were a bunch of sticky notes on the fridge. They all contained what he assumed were quotes. They looked too elegant to be something he'd come up with.

One day this pain will be useful to you.

What are people in the end, if not their memories?

A man is the sum of his memories.

And from John. Don't forget to eat.

And the new one.

How am I supposed to heal if I can't... feel time?

There would be more and more, just like there were before these ones, tiny bits of his life that couldn't possibly add up to the whole that was Sherlock Holmes, could barely even capture a tiny bit, but he would try.

He would try, and he would cry, and he would do it all over again in thirty minute intervals until he died.

And he hoped, prayed, that right before he did die, somehow, despite all he knew about memory and how it worked, that somehow, his life, all those memories gained and lost in thirty minute pieces, would all come back.

Just once.

Because it would hurt, but it would be the good kind of hurt. The best kind.

The hurt that came with remembering things and people you loved and lost.

Because it was right there on the fridge, small and unassuming, but there nonetheless.

It's better to have loved and lost then to never have loved at all.

Of course, Sherlock didn't believe that.

But John had put it there.

And there it stayed.

Till the end of days.