7042/Well, Well, Well.

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Well, Well, Well.
Date of Scene: 22 July 2021
Location: The Laughing Magician
Synopsis: She may have lost the battle, but she's not lost the war.
Cast of Characters: John Constantine, Meggan Puceanu




John Constantine has posed:
    The place has only been open a day. Was the space even available yesterday? Was there a 'space' even here? If not, no one that's not 'in the know' seems to really notice. It's only just before noon, so it's not as if the Laughing Magician is overly crowded. In fact, there's a crowd of exactly ... one.

    John Constantine.

    He's sitting at the lone stool at one corner of the bar, it's positioned right where the bar wraps around that tiniest bit to form a 'room for one stool' side, it happens to be the only stool present with a really good view of the front door.

    Since the place is, technically, not open for business for another hour or two and there's currently no one tending the bar, he's opted to just pull a bottle off the shelf; the top shelf. It's been a shite few weeks and there's no room for the rotgut amid the shite.

    Smoke from a lit Silk Cut wafts lazily from the ashtray beside him. Did anyone really think this place would be obeying any city mandated 'no smoking indoors' rules? Pishposh. Rules, as far as John Constantine was concerned, were meant to be broken.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Lowlives gathering in bars is nothing new in New York. Meggan wouldn't normally be that concerned to spend her rare quid in a drinking hole crusted in the grime that most outsiders associate with Hell's Kitchen. Never mind that gentrification has taken a bite out of dirty, dangerous gang-riddled neighbourhoods the past couple decades, it's still a place that uni students tend to avoid. Cheaper drinks can be found without so much peril.

Peril doesn't bring her in. News does.

Getting the supernatural rumours is kind of a kunny thing about socially connected young things, even those who spent time in the Otherworld and locked in Hell. Older generations of sorcerers, witches, and warlocks probably don't realize how much news spreads wirelessly. Couple posts forwarded a few times notify scads of practitioners.

Thus, a daytime visit.

Long blonde hair that practically shines in the dark naturally gives her away to the wise, that and a happy mint-green t-shirt displaying the dragon of Wales stamping all over a demonic figure from a manuscript. Look closely and it's Etrigan, tiny music notes paired in rhyme under fierce claws stained gloriously scarlet. The beacon of considerable magical energy bound up in her, through her, also announces pretty loudly who this particular chit is. Or isn't.

No contraindications of a Tuathan mutant metamorph wandering by, anyway. She taps her fingers against the door to suggest it open, testing for a lock. If one isn't found, then so do two worlds collide. She brings the light with her into the dark place; it can't be helped.

John Constantine has posed:
    A sigh, audible, but not really so much put-upon as it is resigned. John knew this day was coming, but like everything else he knows is barreling down in his direction - he ignored it hoping it would go away.

    He picks up his glass of scotch and makes quick work of making the thing 'not full' only to make it full again from the bottle near his elbow on the bar. "Afternoon, luv," he greets through a hazy cloud of smoke. Yes, he downed his drink and took a long drag from that Silk before addressing Meggan's presence.

    "Could ya turn it down a notch, I was enjoyin' the dark." Metaphorical though that 'light' may be for the moment.

    ...and therein lies one of the many, MANY foils of entangling oneself with John Constantine? Sometimes, the man just enjoys his darkness - metaphorical or not.

    "It's been a bugger," he adds along with a sip from his newly filled glass. He looks, if possible, even more worn, battered and exhausted than he normally does. He's not been sleeping it seems.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
The Laughing Magician doesn't have to be written on a sign or stamped on a bent, cheap business card. As if anyone even uses business cards. Practically every residual stain on the Liverpudlian bar rescued from the dingy waterfront docks stripped of their World Heritage status, maybe, speaks of a certain someone. Reconstruction from memory or real, it won't matter. The place is basically a trenchcoat masquerading as a building, replete with subtleties that take a moment to really capture.

Meggan exudes her usual cheerfully-tilted manner; anything short of wading through a burial pit cannot smother that for long. Fingers curl to her palm and the slight uplift of her smile for John is purely unchanged. "Afternoon," she replies, the strange blend of Welsh, Cumbrian, and various regional dialects thoroughly being sifted through. Proximity does that. Speak like a native in no time at all.

His request doesn't dent much, not even warranting a frown. Hangovers and injuries aplenty in the past have led to similar requests. Half-closing vivid leaf-green eyes, she sinks into an in-between place far from the bar, him, anything else. Putting a bushel over the sun isn't exactly easy. Or fast, when lacking innate skill. He might enjoy darkness, for good reason. But what separates the Seelie from the Unseelie, the light elves from the dark? Metaphorically, preference, and not much else. A psychic ripple follows the tug on that rivulet of energy, tucked tightly away, and the atmosphere once more becomes appealingly dark, musty, and whatever else.

"Gathered that. Went to ground, then back at work, mm?" No judgment; that's one of the maddening things, isn't it? Maybe, maybe not. "How long do you plan on burning at both ends until all that's left is ash?"

John Constantine has posed:
    "What's ta say I haven't just been enjoyin' me time with a bevy o'slappers, huh?" John retorts, trying, and probably failing, to go in for the kill? Whatever happened, for the moment he seems pretty unwilling to elaborate with anything other than snark and deflection.

    ... one more sip from the glass, a little bigger, a little swirl around his mouth before swallowing. Funny, he has yet to actually look *at* Meggan. Telling, that little fact.

    He drags from the Silk again, a little too deeply. It starts that familiar nagging in his chest, but he stifles the coughing fit before it begins.

    "Me candle's long enough t'burn awhile." Lordy, how he make just about anything sound lewd. It might work better though, if he didn't just sound exhausted.

    "Might as well sit a spell, I bloody well know you aren't leavin'."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
John's deflection tactics would work, ninety-nine percent of the time. Give him point five for luck; Laughing Magicians have the knack. But he's dealt a raw hand in life. Empathy is a bitch, after all. The Englishwoman drifts up to the very periphery of personal space. Arm's reach plus one, where a lunge might catch his hand on her jeans or the hem of that t-shirt. Etrigan's glowering face and the angry quarter-note bleat twinkles thanks to an application of subtle glitter, probably making the image worse. A respectful distance separates them, but in some ways, space is nothing at all.

The smoke twines through the room, well on its way to adding another stain the ceiling. Shadows clotted in tarry brushstrokes on his lungs must be laid down in another microscopic layer. She doesn't cough. He'd know well enough putting her in the middle of Chernobyl wouldn't even get a cough after the first.

Nature cheats, same as Luck.

"'Tis," she agrees. "What burns in between's the part I'm asking about." He has the curse of damnation by an infernal nightmare, after all. End games don't come out the same in the equation.

A relaxing circular motion traced by her wrist leads her fingers to touch the nearest surface, feeling whatever might rise out of it. As if this, too, isn't quite real. Is any of it?

She leans against it, not quite rising onto a stool, partly because that kind of shift invariably means sliding onto it anyway. Funny way how bars work. Shift and bam, seated.

John Constantine has posed:
    John tenses, barely perceptibly, at the closeness that's respectful... is it because the closeness makes him uncomfortable or is it the respectfulness of it that does that? Both? The conflicting nature of what he *wants* and what he deems necessary is maddening really.

    Just a touch, one simple touch, right now may very well break his defenses - that might be something he actually longs to have happen. But his need, misplaced as it may be, to keep Meggan safe? That overpowers any *want* he could ever have.

    So, he stands from his stool and climbs OVER the bar. Well, it's an attempt at a 'vault' that pretty much ends in awkwardness and a little stumble when he makes it over, but it gets the job done. It puts a solid, immovable object between himself and what he desires, a brick wall do defend what he needs.

    "Care for a drink, luv?" he asks, casually enough.

    He clears his throat from another tickle, or is that to swallow down the lump rising in it?

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Empathy isn't telepathy. Clear thoughts written on the mindscape belong to the province of psionic greats, especially blonde CEOs and redheads of no particular profession that attract great horrible flaming birds. Only the barometer of wellness, a spiritual and mental impression bound to the physical tells, guides Meggan. Her intuition can be startlingly impressive, but John's thoughts always remain his own. The sacred boundary she may not cross without assistance stands intact. Doesn't mean a plethora of underhanded methods and simple observation cannot give valuable insight, though.

Those green eyes never leave him as he moves. She stretches out her arm to catch him when he lands, caught in the reflection of motion in the mirrored shelves. Like she would stabilize him, done without even thinking. An act so unconscious, it couldn't possibly be an underhanded trick.

So the game is played, one with the loaded dice and deceit fit to make Belial blush. The other about as gifted at lying as Lucifer (hint: not), and unafraid of falling on a sword for a friend. What's it to fling a few chips on the pile and raise the stakes.

"Always do," she offers with that rise of her lips withholding the scintillating brilliance, but absolutely none of the warmth.

Some things change. Some do not.

They never tell you how warm the darkness can be, how embracing. The cloak of night drawn close on a July evening landing like velvet, a warmth permeating the bones, can be just like finding the perfect spot in bed on a wet, grey pre-dawn. So basically Britain every month of the year except those fiddly mid-week spots in August when no one visited their holiday let. Darkness is so often pasted as a terrible lonely thing, cruel and cold, but that's hardly the only truth.

"Surprise me," she offers.

John Constantine has posed:
    John closes his eyes as he turns toward the wall of liquor resting against its mirrored backdrop. It's a good thing she can't see his thoughts, into is mind's eye. Meggan burning in a fiery pit of hell and brimstone, Meggan run trough by the talons of a demon, Meggan getting hit by a bus trying to cross the street to save him, Meggan dropping dead after choking on a peanut... Okay, John, taking it a little too far there.

    ...but still, he's focusing on all the ways any attempt at continuing any sort of relationship with her could end in her untimely demise by his own hand, no matter how indirectly.

    When is tired blue eyes open, he studies the bottles and settles on an unconventional choice - Goldschlager. The flecks of gold remind him, subconsciously of the bright gold of her hair. He's no bartender, but he knows his way around a bar for certain. He pours a shot, two fingers, into a high-ball glass and slides it expertly across the bar in Meggan's direction.

    It keeps him safely out of actual, physical, touching distance.

    He leans against the back of the bar, that mirrored wall behind him now. "So, luv, why'd ya come?" As if he didn't know the answer.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
He really ought to chitchat with Batman. Ask Batman about how the bubbly golden-haired waif stood between the Lady of the Lake and an Eclipso-fuelled Etrigan. Surely the Grumpy Knight could go "Grr, magic" about something.

Or review the footage of some horrible globby monster that surfaced near Hawai'i. Or.

Or.

Two fingers catch the glass when he thrusts it across the bar, that momentary potential contact to steady him on his feet left behind. John's person is sacrosanct, short of mortal-ish peril. Meggan acts far more on impulse than he might, and she would have a hard time promising not to grab him and hit the floor should any one of the apocalyptic-level threats show their crooked noses overhead.

She lifts the glass, spilling two drops in sacrifice to the spirits of the place. Old habit, but so's being fae. Something more than fae, at least. "Thank you. Cheers." Slainte. Pick a language, toast is a toast. The first sip blossoms in gilded fire, the heat coiling around her palate the way the smoke undulates in a seductive dance. Vices always shine best in the lowlight conditions that bars steep in.

"Love, you're betimes hellbent on tearing yourself to bits. You've not that look you get when something is about to be jinxed halfway to Tonga, or the peaky energy when things hit the fan." Observations come colloquially, though she looks at him over the glass, far more concerned than the 'ha ha, you're fucked' attitude so many of her apparently tender age take as a matter of habit. "What hurt you?"

John Constantine has posed:
    John crosses one arm over his chest so he can rest the elbow of the other on it. He presses his thumb into his forehead between his eyes as he looks down at his shoes. Not at Meggan, never that, not yet, not directly. "Sorry, luv, this thing, us, it's just not workin' for me anymore." What a complete ARSE, right?

    Maybe, if not for the fact that he absolutely cannot look her in the eye when he says it. Can't. ...and that's saying something when coming from a man that could look Mother Theresa in the eyes and lie so convincingly that she'd believe he's the second coming of Christ himself.

    Awwww, John, looks like you lose this round.

    "Just been busy, that's all."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Stabbing is an art. Hope to hit something vital on a stroke. When it's desperate, the difference from nicking a rib or slipping past to the soft spot runs down to chance. Dwindles down to getting close, clutching the hilt in sweaty hands, and turning hard.

The results only become clear when he separates himself, and either the target buckles or stands, hand slapped to a stinging red line parting the flesh.

He's better than most. Exceptional, in fact, a man skilled at hitting the bullseye on a blind shot with words. The body count in bed or the streets -- of Hell's various forms, Liverpool, New York, Gotham -- isn't low.

"Ah." Meggan finds her voice. A curious blend of knells. Doubt, though. Doubt hangs there like a small golden seed, enveloped in the churning whirlwind of surprise, a molten crackle of agony, curiosity deflected at oblique angles to pierce the mind. Oh, but that infinite weight of something more, and they both know surely what it has to be.

A gate into Hell wouldn't stop the walk to redemption, if he needed a light in the dark.

They both lose.

Another sip of the drink goes utterly unremarked on, the stellar poison for drowning someone's pains and needs useless when mercurial blonde's quicksilver genetics adapts in rapid, small shifts to render it impotent to sickening her. He has all the success in various small vices to escape the unpleasant costs of living.

Tapping her temple, she puts the highball down. "So love, it's like that, innit? No bleeding wounds, got it." Her eyes narrow slightly, lips wet with the transparent glossy sheen of the Goldschlager. "And the fear?"

John Constantine has posed:
    "Aye, it's like that," John concurs. "There's no fear, what's a thrice damned man t'fear anyway, but the thing itself?"

    Can she sense it? See it? The agony this whole line of conversation is causing that damned - quite literally - soul of his? 'Why do you want do you even want to go back to a world where everything you loves dies'.

    It's on repeat in his head, the sound of that woman's voice. It's played itself over and over again until he hears it buried beneath every other sound. He can't even drown that voice out with the booze. Likely because it's all still too fresh. He eyeballs the ashtray, the pack of Silk Cuts next to it and the one wasted by now, burned out in the tray. Now it's need and need that war inside him. He *needs* that cigarette like the drug - and security blanket - that it is, but he also *needs* to stay far enough away that Meggan can't strike like the little serpent of compassion and brightness she is and actually TOUCH him. Bollucks.

    "Sometimes things just don't work, it's the way of it innit?"

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
That bittersweet smile carries annealed moonlight, her eyes burning and liquid without much of their pupils defined. Black drowns in the phosphorescent radiance. What she sees is a snarl. Whatever emotion he projects, what bleeds off his limbs and paints the world.

The cigarette in the ashtray sputters back to life, a small dancing flame blossoming out of smoldering embers. It plays on spent ashes, filtered paper and bits of cheap tobacco sacrificed to the hungry, licking orange and gold tongues. Sacred offering on the bartop altar sends trailing circles winding around, coy as a feline shimmying past to slide around the damned magician.

"We've been through this," she says softly, the chiming tone wreathed in a heavy dollop of rueful mirth to go with that rotten sundae. Putting it in context takes her time. Meggan's not got the gift of gab like him, as if he swallowed up the whole Blarney Stone after bedding it for a week. Words require care, sneaky ambitions. "How I didn't know what I got myself into and you brought more baggage than the train to Hogwarts. We both went through hell. Both come back flawed. What else? You always have your freedom." Funny how that goes. "Supposing doubt reared its head again, it's not like you to give in like that. Is it, John?"

Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. A man who exploits loopholes might spot an out when he sees it, offered with contemplative grace by the girl resting her elbow on his bar.

Show, goes the old adage, rather than tell.

So easy then to rip out a piece of her heart, finding that one preserved spark to present to him. Outwardly it looks like nothing. Walls that exist for him never have for her, so drawing forth that unfiltered trust in one John Constantine comes as easily as breathing. She casts it out on the sea dividing them, a strobe of a beam and an iridescent presence permeating the eventide behind closed doors.

"I'm still an empath, love." Her fingers part, the faintest sign of effort to sustain the clearer emotional strand without all the rest bleeding in. Though they are there, dancing round the edges. "Bit skilled at telling difference between this and that. My job's the bartender," and in truth it is, the source for financing a few adventures and legitimately what gets her spending money. "Want me to pour you something and let you spill out your thoughts under the bartender's confessional?"

A glance to the bottles comes quick. "Else you can keep spinning out that beautiful tale of yours, and I'll listen." Until the dross gives way or he gives the truth between the lines. "But I've never doubted you. this. So."

John Constantine has posed:
    John ... well, he kind of skitters in the direction of those Silks. Quick like he snags the one from the ashtray and then the pack. "What happens then, luv, the next time when you get pulled into the undertow and I walk out unscathed?"

    ...as if John Constantine ever walks out of *anything* completely unscathed. The unscathed part is just a front he puts on for the rest of the world. The wounds he suffers just aren't generally visible, not for long, a busted lip, a bruised cheek, a cracked rib, it all heals. But what's on the inside? It never does, those wounds seem to weep and bleed forever.

    "It was a rookie mistake..."

    ...and so begins the barroom confessional.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Wind drives a soft patter of rain against the walls surrounding the bar. Not many buildings in the Kitchen possess a single storey. Water hits the roof in a shimmering patina, sacrificial drops strung in a liquid elegy, offering a lacrimosal murmur that washes out the soft conversation. Rivulets trace their path to the gutter, carrying away refuse that never quite ended up binned.

Purifying surrender of the clouds gathering over a few blocks in Hell's Kitchen, trailing eastward, that inevitable beacon of home for two displaced Brits far from Commonwealth territory. Bit of a dispute round about 1781 made that a moot point, far as New York's concerned.

Appropriate to touch on the sorrow bleeding between them, for nature itself responds to Meggan in some quiet way, as she in turn responds to the warlock left scarred and sideswiped by so many close brushes with the wrong.

Can't all turn up snake-eyes, can it?

Silence will reign, but not without a quip before he becomes the consummate showman, the tale-spinner who would leave Eshu in stitches at the crossroads or Iemanja sighing into her waves. "You ought to know the answer, love. I breathe underwater and bear no grudges." Dark humour, that, a hangman's bell. Softer still, "I'll take your place to bide a portion of my eternity if that's what we needed. Might have happened for the Darkhold, mm?"

The small flame dancing on the cigarette in the tray can well be used to light the other, staying steady until he's got the Silk Cut poised on his lips. Steadying the ship, too. Meggan runs her tongue over her mouth in a slow line, prepared to listen as that emotional bleed from her flashes with a wave of concern, settling back to the true north compass-point that leads to him.

So the confessional.

And so, the world weeps.

John Constantine has posed:
    Still wary of the whole 'touching' possibility, John stays on the other side of the bar after he lights that Silk. When he takes that first drag it's like watching a junkie chasing their first high again. He *really* needed that. Sometimes it seems he needs those more than the booze. Of course he does, those'll kill him faster?

    He quietly tells the tale of a basement that definitely wasn't on a sunny shoreline in Hawaii, it never is, right? Chasing down what he thought was just some stupid kids fooling with what shouldn't be fooled with, again - he spends the bulk of his time between Big Bads doing that, doesn't he? The wards, hitting the wall, moving through it... the weeks upon weeks of literal Hell trying to get back home and that voice...

    "I know that voice, just dunno from where, hasn't jogged loose yet. But me lighter's gone." That's the important bit, to him at least, who took it? Why? It was his favorite, a gift from Chas. It *meant* something to him and now someone else has it. "... and I can't find it, luv." ...as in his scrying for it to try hasn't worked. "Somethin's comin' and I feel like ya need t'be out of the way of it."

    ...and that's that.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
When the cigarette is lit, the flame surrenders to itself, collapsed into nothing to the wordless thanks conveyed from Meggan. Her eyes flash with balefire and settle back into the incandescent shade they normally do, when a human mask need be only skin-deep.

Her glass is empty and she ignores it. The city could be besieged by aliens, and they can wait. Ocean levels rising is nothing new for the climate activist, and water up to their knees would change little with the way he spins the words in silver strands, turning cobwebs to wood and stone, dust into infernal flames, and the despair of a soul separated from a body. From a rot of hope, stretching through that darkness.

Such is life with John Constantine. Such is what she signed up for, all the twists and switchback turns, avalanche threats and sudden stops at the end. Fly or fall.

"I'm sorry you went through that. Sorry's not near enough." It has to be enough for the moment when he laments on the small gift surviving through every other loss. "All right. For how long, you reckon? And is it verboten to help or... just..."

Old trick, not saying it. Not the only one who can walk around the elephant. "I meant what I said. By vow, if needs must, that I would assume your place or descend to find you if this happened. Happens. Will happen."

John Constantine has posed:
    The flash of his eyes may not be a real, tangible, magically born thing, but it's every bit as intense as the balefire in hers when he finally looks up, directly at Meggan.

    "...and that is why ya need t'just GO, MEGGAN!" He's angry, that much is clear, but it's not her he's angry with. As per the usual, he's bloody well pissed off at himself. For ever letting her in, for getting close, for feeling unable to protect her, for all of it.

    "Go on! Go! Get out!"

    Because her risking the brightness of herself for the battered, damned, torn, darkness of him? No, nah, that is never going to happen so long as he has breath in his body. ...and, even after the last is gone if he has any say in it.

    ...and everyone knows that John Constantine is likely to never be silenced, even in death. He's just too damned stubborn.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
She rises, practically jolted off the stool. The thing shudders like kindling in a winter breeze because the girl stands there, floating in space. The bang echoes, vibrating through the bar behind John as she faces him. Being tethered to the floor always requires a conscious effort on her part. There is no conscious effort to spare as the storm of him bears down upon her unguarded soul.

"Stop! I am not one of your demons, John. Don't banish me when that leaves *you* sodding vulnerable. I'm going because you asked. I wouldn't hurt you but damn well look inside you. Why are you letting one of *them* get the better of you?" Her voice doesn't rise, never does when upset.

Tears spill down her cheeks, unbidden as the instinctive reaction to his rage and the underlying source clicks together in an unbreakable chain. Iphigenia pleading for her father at Aulis probably looked a good deal like Meggan now, but this isn't a matter of the Trojan War. The stakes are so much different.

That first inkling of grief and faith is flash-shot into the atmosphere and the ground. "They isolate you to torture you best. So you use your lost loves -- this fear and doubt -- to do the work yourself. She's trying to fuck with your head. The Hellblazer tricked by a demon, tell me she isn't. You're letting them, even with your fingers bleeding and your heart screaming at you."

The space he is desperate for, she offers as a gift by moving back. Her arm spans her midsection, a force against going to pieces when doubled over in the rain-filled misery of another exile from the bright lands. Instead, she forces herself to face him, drink him in slowly to see and know all she can. "Hurting me to drive me away gives the First or Nergal, Triskele, any of them more to work with." The words are heavy and thick, still sparkling with an unbroken trust in him and faith burning hot and clear.

"You're not bloody doomed, and neither am I. You inflict wounds on yourself to believe it's true." Maybe they cannot begin again without ending on a tormented high point, the slate washed clean to rebuild.

"The greatest lie you ever pulled is on yourself, my darling." She has to nearly force in a breath, not choke on it.

"And I don't buy it."

John Constantine has posed:
    The sight of her in tears rips at John's heart, tears at it like the claws of the things he battles on the daily. But... it also fortifies his mistaken, misguided belief that he can never cause her, or anyone for that matter, anything but a world of pain.

    Her tears are all he sees, her words are only faint things in the back of his mind to be picked over and only those that suit his current need be kept. The rest is tossed away.

    "Well you should!" Buy it that is. "Because she's bloody well RIGHT, Meggan!" Everyone he loves DOES die... or worse, because there are things in John Constantine's life that can cause so much, so so much worse than death.

    Really, isn't the man himself a study in 'worse than death'?

    In his fit of self-loathing anger, he snags a bottle off the shelf, intent on throwing it, shattering it, so there might be something else broken in the room?

    ...but in the end, he stops himself because... well, making himself feel even a little better isn't worth a waste of good booze.

    He's not even sure what it is when he pops the top and drinks from the bottle.

    Peach Schnapps is not high on his list of favorites, in fact it's pretty much at the bottom of the barrel right next to anything 'and tonic'. He spits the vile stuff on the floor and grumbles, "Bollucks..." Can't even get drinking right these days.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Is he right? Is any of this worth...

The answer hits Meggan so hard she bleeds, nails going into her palm, teeth hard into her lip. It rings so loudly that her body forgets its own assumed shape, spun to the truth.

The mortal guise collapses. One moment she's a tear-stricken girl and the next, the sharply pointed ears breach hair of spun sunlight and the full moon's glow, capturing starlight from the first hours the molten-hot planet turned its magma-crackled face to the sky. The only thing holding back the full lightshow from erupting from the glowing girl in her true form is that she's wearing her aura like a simple gown. Being skyclad, though entirely effective, would be dirty pool against him. Even if John deserves it.

"No, she's not, John."

Galadriel only wishes she sounded that sublime. Merlin and his daughter had to mentor the wayward blonde for a reason. Meggan shakes her head to deny that statement. "You are worth it."

He downs schnapps and there's some reason to tilt a faint smile at his own disgust for the wrong choice. Brief, fleeting, but for an instant there.

"Even with the scrapes. She is wrong and they lie to you. I swear by my soul I speak true to you."

It's said those angels who refused to side with God's cause via Michael or Lucifer's revolt paid for standing somewhere in between. Nephilim they were not, but supposedly become the fae. Maybe it's a myth. No question remains for her. The ringing clarion of truth brands itself to the Sight for those who see it; a high oath invoked with no regard but for its honesty. "She is wrong, and I do not suffer worse for loving or being loved by you."

An offering of peace, even as she would stand on the other side of the demon-cursed magician and whisper softly back into the void. Let whatever lies on the other side answer, or run to more hospitable climes. Be what will, that flame has to be stuffed back in its box. If only she can remember /how/. The dizzying impressions from the wards alone are going to make her tumble head-over-heels, if the emotional whiplash doesn't do it.

John Constantine has posed:
    "Stop it. STOP IT. You don't *get* to do that!" Do what John? Try to banish his self-loathing the way he banishes demons? The way he banished ... Astra? Oh yes, he's in one of those funks. That 'six weeks' and then those words whispered? Oh, whoever was playing with him knew the buttons to press; knew them well. The ones that would send him spiraling into a black pit of despair, one of his own making, one *they* didn't even have to drag him into.

    Is that what she suffers every day? Running, scared, desperately searching for a way out? Or did he damn Astra to an even worse fate? Will he damn Meggan to an even worse fate?

    John wouldn't be John if he didn't have some sort of short-cut, some way to circumvent the rules, even those of his own making. Shutting down wards that took so much power to create should never be as easy as a half dozen words muttered, a few in Hebrew, a few in Sanskrit, one to two in Latin, one final bellowed in Enochian and a gesture of his hands. The backlash'll cost him later, he's sure of it.

    Once he's finished that, "Meggan! Stop it!", is repeated for good measure before, "Y'know that flash isn't me style."

    ...then, somehow, he manages to clear his mind of everything but Meggan. Normal, human looking Meggan, her laugh, her eyes, her golden hair... the way she touches him without repulsion or fear, the way she looks at him like he's not the damaged piece of gutter trash he knows himself to be, the way she looks when she says she believes in him, the truth of it in her features...

    ... the way she, at any other time, can *almost* make him believe it as well.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Some way to cheat the system that should never be cheated is about right. No fair balance stands between them, in the guilt riddled through John's very being and Meggan's unwillingness to have a demon's words apportion a share onto her. Highly different circumstances, all in all. For one, she is no wide-eyed, terrified child and he is no green idiot of a sorcerer playing at things beyond his grasp. Look at himself to gauge that.

Or the girl dazzled by the power, all but a leyline connected to the tidal forces underlying earth. One finger on the pulse of the Green and another to the sky, her elements are not his fire and illusion but their complementary aspects. Reeling her back in when the empathy is tipped to preternatural levels isn't -easy-, and that moment her head turns to find his face under the shadow of growth, the tattoos traced unseen through his shirt, the fabric of his aura scintillating?

The star collapses back on itself, leaving her a blonde girl back in the Etrigan-stomping t-shirt with her lips parted and eyes far too bright. The pointed ears stick for a moment until shifting, rounded out in a momentary correction.

She drops back onto her ass on the floor, bouncing harmlessly and shoving her hands behind her to not travel any further. Not her finest hour, but far from the worst.

His? Hard to say. "No, 'tisn't. Bloody hell you've laid those beautifully. Like seeing sunrise for the first time, and you went and folded them all up." She knuckles her cheeks, giving her head a good shake. "I'm not good at this. Sorry for the fireworks." The smile breaks uninhibited at her own imperfections, effortlessly brilliant, shame convulsed in the pyre. "You've been the only one ever managing to do that well. Merlin just shouts like the crab he is." Ooh, look, fingers. Fascinating, how they work, as her leaf-green eyes move from them to him, emeralds only vaguely traced in light.

How do you tell someone it will be all right?

John Constantine has posed:
    His desire to rush in and help her back to her feet is an aching thing, needing to be acted upon. But... John's *need* to keep his distance is a bleeding, painful thing that keeps his feet planted firmly in place.

    "Aye, well, I'll lay'm again," he mutters under his breath.

    Silence, more than a little heavy, kind of awkward even. He looks up at the ceiling, back to not looking directly at Meggan again it seems.

    "Ya should go. I have things need doin' before this place opens right and proper, don't need anyone in me way." Place looks fine to go, really! "We'll talk later..." It's a... well, it's something other than GET OUT at least. Maybe he'll win this particular battle with Meggan to hold onto the darkness and the loneliness and the comfort he seems to find in both when he gets this way, but that one concession, that 'we'll talk later', those three little words? Well, they pretty much let on that the war hasn't been lost.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
She gets to her feet, that kind of easy and unconscious grace that speaks of a different form of self-awareness. It's the dimming it down to be human that hurts so much, sometimes.

Meggan wiggles her fingers and stands, shaking out her hair. The pain hides no further than the next wave on the shore. Holding it together costs something that will require much more to face down, and a plate of sushi or a bottle of good gin isn't it. Smile. Walk. And hold true to the conviction, the one flame burning in defiance of the darkness, that refuses to be sequestered or snuffed out by harsh words.

"Night, John. Dream well." A brush of her fingers to her lips brings a single spark that hangs over the door after she is gone, for a time at least. Not intrusive, not flashy or brilliant, but a single mote of her energy there if he needs it or wants it for whatever purposes. If used in magic, it feels like an embrace. If dragged along, it's warm.

The war hasn't been lost, and another battle means regathering forces.

That's something, those three little words.

The implications of the other three, too.

Enough to send her plummeting into the Atlantic, not a short time later, to commune with the wisest and ancient spirits of the sea and divine what has been misplaced and stolen.

To plot for hope.

To add her salted tears to the brine, but not without a smile.