I was inspired by a line from The Girl In The Fireplace. An old Doctor Who episode. I hope you like it.
One may tolerate a world demons for the sake of an angel.
It had been three years. Three lousy, lonely, pitiful, worthless, painful years. Three John Watson would like to forget. Three that would torment him for the rest of his life.
Demon one had come in the form of a rat faced man. Insufferable to listen to and his very voice insulted the air from which they breathed. Without talking he managed to make even the smartest of men dumb and he made John Watson punch him in the face. Multiple times. He had deserved it. For the insults. For the continuous comments and gloating. John learnt to tolerate this first demon by using the same infuriating method that had conquered the beast in the past. Every opportunity he got he used the method and it worked. Anderson soon became a background noise to John. A nobody.
Demon two came dressed in heels. Lines of "I told you so" and "Least the Freak is gone" sung around her lips. Not that John cared. She was too busy swanning about London to care. Too busy enjoying her supposed victory. John often glared at her hair and expected it to be made of snakes ready to turn him to stone. Soon her eyes caused the same effect whenever she would see him around the Yard. Another Freak polluting the world, she would say. John never forgot to ask Sally how well she did on scrubbing the floors the night before.
The third he didn't expect. When he had returned to her he thought it would be like before. Just to "help" him. Soon their sessions just became a web of villainous lies said to him. He often wanted to yell at her. To tell her and prove to her how she was wrong. How naive she was. Just like the rest of them. Sitting in that chair, John would stare at her. Asking himself whilst he kept returning to her. Maybe he was trying to help himself. Trying to believe the lies. She wasn't helping. That was for sure. She was right about one thing though. He did want to say something to him. Something he never got a chance to. In the end though, John decided she was just another one of them. Another demon.
Demon number four had come to him in the shape of one of his "dates". It had been going fine until the subject of him had been brought up. John sat there whilst she went off on a story that she had never been part of. A story that was made up of lies and vicious falsehoods about a man she had never even met. Her face turned bitter and to John she resembled nothing more than a lower simpleton. At the end of the date John bid her goodnight, thanked her and said he would call her. He never did.
That blasted reporter was number five that did what she could to stay alive. She was everywhere. Face of the year. The one who cracked the great mystery. The one who lead the man to his death. The one who planted the first seed that blossomed into a deceitful and vindictive tree in the garden once filled with beauty and truth. She made the garden whither and decay until there was nothing left worth looking out. She poisoned the garden for the world. She wasn't the reason but she was the one who did it. Lead falsely by a jealous gardener. Hell bent on destroying the owner. It never fooled him though. He still returned to the garden in hopes that one day he might see a flower bloom from the undergrowth. That this demon and her blackened tongue of lies would disappear. Till that day, he decided, he would visit this metaphorical garden and make it his home. The garden that nobody visited any more and he would avoid this demon in all it's glory. Why? Because not even a demon could destroy true beauty. No matter it's form.
Demons surrounded him. On every corner of every street. In every building and every place he visited. Too many to count or categorise. There was always a demon believing in the lies. Ready to tell him to stop pretending. To stop hoping. To grow up and look at the reality. They would snare at him. Treat him as the class clown. No one would believe the mortal man who admired the angel. The angel wasn't real to them. He never was. He wasn't no angel at all but another demon. What did they care for this pitiful man who believed? They didn't.
The demons let him go about him daily life. John didn't mind as much. He would watch these demons roam the planet in their glorious human form and he would pity them. Pitied their stupidity. Pitied that they were blinded at the first hurdle and were trapped in the villainous fires that had been burning for three years.
To John, these demons were nothing. These demons were just a trial for him. He tolerated them but he never welcomed them. He brushed them off as they plagued his world. He let them. To him, it didn't matter that they were there. That they poisoned everything. They could never poison his mind. John was surrounded by demons but he only ever saw one angel.
This angel was gone now. No one believed that he had even been there. John did. John would battle the world and all it's evil for this angel. Follow it into hell and back again. The angel was his only light in a world of darkness. His only friend. When John was alone the angel had been there and cared for him. Become his support. Even though they all protested, even the angel had himself at times, that the angel was a demon in disguise, John would protest. He fought for the angel. He believed in him. Every second of every minute of every day.
John would sit in his garden and await the day that the angel gardener would return and bring it to life. That all the demons would be able to see the beauty that John would see every day. John battled the world all for the sake of this angel. He took on the torment and conquered the lies. He tolerated the demons and all for the sake of the angel.
Sherlock Holmes may have not been an angel to himself but to John he was.
To John, he was the reason to live out in a world of demons. In hopes that one day, the angel would return and make the garden bloom again for all to see.