He has to be anonymous, in the shadows. In the end, it's the only thing that will keep his… his friends safe. The fame that comes with his name will fade. Why wouldn't it? He's a fraud, after all. He will never be in the history books, and soon, he won't be in the newspapers either. Not now that the story's finished, after all. There's nothing more to be said, at least in the eyes of the public.
He does wonder, at first, why Moriarty's death never showed up in the papers. But there are a few good explanations for that. Any inspection would have revealed that his death was suicide too, and that doesn't fit too well with the story. Or maybe Moriarty's men had done something with the body. It doesn't matter, in the end. Moriarty is dead.
And he is, too, to everyone in the world save Molly Hooper.
But…
Dead people get listened to.
He's out walking the streets of London, disguised as a rebellious teenager. No one looks twice at some teen in the alleyway. He's safe from recognition. He turns a corner, and there it is.
'It' is a giant piece of graffiti on the side of the building in front of him. It's a depiction of him in profile, iconic hat and all. Above it are two lines of large, yellow text:
MORIARTY IS REAL
I BELIEVE IN SHERLOCK HOLMES
'John?' he wonders. But no, it can't have been John, because John wouldn't have put in his hat, and anyways he's not a graffiti artist. It was someone else. And over the next few days, and then weeks, he sees more and more of this graffiti, all over London. And it's not simply one person - it's a movement, in graffiti and tweets and whispers and hashtags. #BELIEVEINSHERLOCK.
He realizes then, that dead as he may be, he is not going to leave the minds of these people anywhere near as quickly as he'd predicted.
