7665/One Down, Three to Go.

One Down, Three to Go.
Date of Scene:	02 September 2021
Location:	The Laughing Magician
Synopsis:	Meggan finds John after waking up, their confrontation has John picking up the mantle again, but perhaps not in the way she'd hoped. He's determined to walk his path alone and protect those that would be crazy enough to walk it with him from it.
Cast of Characters:	John Constantine, Meggan Puceanu

---

John Constantine has posed:
Chas texts Meggan: He's home, Meg. But he's disappeared. Nettie's looking for him.
Chas texts Meggan: He's in the hospital, he'll be fine physically now, but it was close.
Chas texts Meggan: It's really bad, Meg. Dark. Brace yourself for it.
Chas texts Meggan: I haven't seen him this bad since Newcastle, Meg.
Chas texts Meggan: Meggan, he's in the bar wearing A SWEATSHIRT AND JEANS.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Hours pass before the first text comes back, accounting for a timezone and state of matter of difference. Funny how phones don't work when interlaced with the very magic of Britannia.

[01:23 AM] Meggan texts Chas: Coming home.
[01:23 AM] Meggan texts Chas: Where is he?

John Constantine has posed:
Chas texts Meggan: At the bar. Very much in get the fuck out and leave me alone mode. Just threw a whiskey bottle at my head to punctuate the point.

John Constantine has posed:
    It's early, not even past dinner time yet, but there's usually at least a table or two of customers about this time of day. Not now. Word's spread pretty quickly and the word is - Stay. Away. - from the angry mage.

    John's sitting in his usual space with all his usual things around him, lit Silk Cut in the ashtray, pack near by, full glass and a bottle of whiskey... times two. Easier if he doesn't have to get up and get another later or ask Chas for one. What is that he's wearing? Jeans? And that Sex Pistols sweatshirt? It has to be at least a decade old. It's also at least a size too big. It should not be. He's lost weight recently.

    The jukebox has been repeating Rotten's version of My Way for DAYS, seriously, over and over again; non-stop Johnny and the Pistols all day long. Chas is behind the bar, opposite end from John. The glasses in the place have never been cleaner. The cabbie keeps side-eyeing his best mate as if John might either vanish from sight in a blink or strike like a snake over some perceived slight. The air is thick with tension and emotion; the blackest of black depressions from John and the anxiety, worry and helplessness from Chas. It's a heavy, suffocating combination.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Word spreads to members of a tight-knit community in New York. Tight enough knit, anyway, for anyone who might consider dropping in on a known warlock's bar to hear through the grapevine there are few worse places to be. Papa Midnite's shuttered club might rank slightly lower unless someone enjoys spending eternity as a smear on the floor.

The girl has no such advantage to call on.

Crossing hemispheres without a shred of identification excludes conventional transportation. She cannot afford the extortionate price for last-minute plane tickets, and the carbon footprint flies in the face of her values. But Meggan Puceanu is nothing if not resourceful in a different fashion. Her phone won't survive the trip or the reaction to the messenger, so she hands it over to someone who can bring it home safely.

Then she steps into the sea. A matter of minutes Chas shall have to wait. Six minutes to cross the Atlantic, naval spy equipment no doubt troubled by a signature that breaks the sound barrier and hits hypersonic southwest of Ireland.

Six minutes. Eight more to account for nicking some gear in the Rockaways.

And then the wards clamour to know their own: his soul, riding in a sea of dreams.

John Constantine has posed:
    John doesn't even look toward the door. He just picks up that full glass, tosses it back and refills it again. For the longest bit of time, or at least it feels long, he doesn't say a word. Finally, well, it's probably exactly what's expected. "Go away, Meggan." It's followed by him downing the *second* glass and pouring a third.

    Tentative, as if he's truly afraid of setting off an explosion of epic proportions, "John... you should slow down a little, mate." Poor man, Chas even flinches slightly after the words are out like he's waiting on the destruction that might result from them. Normally he'd shake the shit out of his friend, maybe a fist to the face even, but this is different, it's scary and he doesn't know *what* to do.

    "Shuddup, Chas." How many times has John said that today? Chances are a lot.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
"Go away" deflects off wood, worn tile, and stone about as effectively as Meggan's skin. It passes straight through her or, like so many complicated things in a foreign world, goes right over her head. She says nothing to argue with him.

Happenstance has her looking like a surfer, bikini bottoms and a light, 500 SPF shirt still cool in places. Tracking footsteps is a lost cause for feet that never touch ground. Pale silver lines trace up her left arm, curled around her fingers, a barely cuff with its filigree tracery. They don't look like scars, but they do mark nearly unmarkable skin.

Chas has been in the firing line for how long? A dreamy look in his direction takes a moment to register as she skims close to the bar, just within the measured arm's reach of the bad-tempered Liverpudlian drinking himself to death. Past death. Tipping her head in greeting, she alights on a stool. Literally so. She's floating half a centimeter above it, give or take.

So begins the vigil.

John Constantine has posed:
    John still doesn't even look at her. He downs that third glass in short enough span of time that someone not... John, might be puking. He pours another before he plucks his lit cigarette from the ashtray and tucks it between his lips. "Get. The. Fuck. Out. Of. My. Bar, Meggan." Each word is punctuated as if he's trying to turn them to some sort of physical blow.

    "JOHN!" Chas snaps. It's the kind of guy he is, he'll take the abuse himself but will only allow for John to take it so far with others. And John just crossed that line.

    "Don't like it, mate? Then LEAVE WITH HER!" John bellows back.

    Depression mixes with anger, anxiety and worry with the same. It's all sorts of negative up in this place, innit?

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
The memory of speaking comes like a distant melody plied beyond the silver-shod far reaches of consciousness. She tastes the air, listening to angered, liquor-sotted vibrations rolling away to crash against her. Again, they pass through; that utter transparency lends some protection. But then, wearing her heart on her sleeve makes a fatal flaw for telepaths to exploit and sometimes the only clear route to tread.

"Chas," she nearly whispers. "Time to have a rest?"

A fuzzy blanket or a battered trenchcoat might be all she needs to curl up in a booth, shaken from deep slumber, but the double meaning remains. Surface and deeper suggestions are offered without a demanding tone, just a genuine question. Between the poles, a wordless appeal: <<It'll be okay.>>

An elbow to the bar, she rests her chin in the palm of her head. He doesn't have to look at her, avoiding her if he wishes to. John's haggard appearance in the mirrored shelves illustrates all she needs to know, and the subtler intuition rooted in the boundless empathy filling in other shades. Whatever causes her to shackle herself to a floundering ship in a gargantuan tempest was already long ago settled.

A spark burns unchallenged within, small and brilliant, an impervious little kernel of hope shielded by dreams. Maybe the other way around. Someone has to drain the despair and with a slender little mental jab to the furthest corner, so it begins.

She doesn't project compassion or care at John. It's enough to exist. The wards know her, they know him. The stilled presence of every living thing around him with its own distinctive signature says enough.

John Constantine has posed:
    Chas looks like he wants to protest. He looks like he wants to cross the space between him and John and finally shake his best mate like a ragdoll until something rattles out of that darkness in his head. Finally it's just, "She doesn't deserve it, mate," before he sets the glass in his hand down and heads for the back.

    "You should go, Meg, before my shag from last night comes down, she's in the shower upstairs." Lying through his fucking teeth, that, but he's aiming to hurt and hoping by, in doing so, send Meggan running for the hills.

    The third glass goes down after he plucks the Silk from his lips, he pours a fourth. At this rate he'll land right back in the hospital with all the doctors and nurses wondering how he's still alive and how he recovered so quickly. He'll be pissing straight scotch before it's over.

    He takes a deep breath and finally turns to face Meggan directly. Those eyes, those faded denim blues, they've never been so haunted and sunken as they are now, not since Meggan's know him. "Go away, Meggan. It was all bullshite. The sex was good, seein' how far ye'd take it was fun. I didn't think ye'd be so quick to fall for it, agree to marry me?" He lets out a snort of a sound, condescending that. He's the master of manipulation, the King of the Poker Face and he sounds sooooo sincere. Even if every word is causing him to die just a little more inside than he already has.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Things learned since the last time they fought may help, they may not. Meggan doesn't complain to Chas or seek an ally when the man has already gone so many rounds. They're both veterans of the psychic wars, and the bestie tapping out to let the lover in may be an exchange suited as much to dealing with drunk, belligerent adults as newborns.

She waits until the first salvo has fired from John's lips, cigarette stained and demon-smeared. No dice, not a hit. She still floats. He might have to wait through the smoke settling for any response, but the most he gets is "Oh?"

Water drips a little. Golden hair warm as the summer sun floods over her shoulder, and slim clever fingers wrapped in those faint silver markings braid a few plaits. Look close enough, the fine links become apparent stamped on her skin while third glass turns to the fourth, and the doctors just might be left wondering.

Reason Chas is such a good bartender; he manages a steady pour and knows when to cut someone off. Her expertise in mixology comes from literally changing the chemical composition, tugging a strand of poison and mellowing the aftertaste. He lies to her with a cardshark's ease and she swindles him like a gold-digger, never losing that ineffable little smile that scarce touches her lips.

"Mm, that so." She doesn't reach for a glass for herself. Drinking his pain is a legendary draught, fucking murderous, and calls for a cast-iron stomach and a heart of gold. John's snort falls to silence and fades away before she pulls another mental thread to herself. Not yet. Not quite yet.

The question waits, though it's so much in her nature to ask. Biting it back is easier. Another step through this godawful waltz over a floor of knives, through a gauntlet of thorns.

<<I have faith in you. I always have.>> The things you can't say, you leave as a quiet offering down there in the deeps. One block after another. Eventually he might realize he's standing on more than thin air or the detritus of loss.

John Constantine has posed:
    Fourth one, down... fifth poured. It's how it happened just a day ago, how Chas didn't notice. Gone for ten minutes, twenty tops and it's all it took really. He doesn't lift the fifth though, not yet. John's gaze shifts back to 'not Meggan', just staring off somewhere at the other side of the bar.

    "That's your problem, Meggan, you shouldn't because I'm nothin' but a cheatin' bastard. Fucked a different bird every night you weren't with me." Now he downs the *fifth*, pours another. He'll be through a bottle in a blink if he keeps it up.

    The pain rolling off of him isn't a tidal wave, it's more damaging than that because it keeps coming, there's no retreat back into the sea after so the devastation can be dealt with; the damage just keeps happening, seems it will until there's nothing left to repair.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Don't need to be a chemist when the traces for a good whiskey or gin reveal themselves to her like an open book. Meggan needs but study the glass or the bottle, and truly the bottle is the better if crueller way to go. Pull out the covalent bonds here or there, shift the balance of the water as Meggan so often changes her own blood to some new genetic expression. She'll ruin the liquor while preserving the taste, knocking down the alcohol content by leaps on the percentile scale.

"Really." Keep throwing daggers and maybe the girl in the act can dodge enough of them for the show to end, and the magician to count himself done for the night. Helps not a whit if John has an endless quiver, but at least she can spare his vice-swaddled liver and sound like Etrigan in the process. Wouldn't it be nice.

Push out the poison. Try to ameliorate the source, dilute it like a bad drink. Those are easy enough terms, but what rests beneath is so much darker. She glances up to her reflection and the ghostly smirk of a harder face, very different and still quintessentially her own, looks back for a moment. //Wait//. It's the worst sentiment in the world with the darker half of her self meters away and enshrined in deepest shadows.

Light in the dark, even in Hell; she promised that. So to sit there with him unflinching is part and parcel. "That why you called?"

John Constantine has posed:
    "I'm done with this," John mutters before he pushes himself up from his stool. He snatches up his Silks and ... a generic Bic lighter, the one he treasured so is nowhere to be seen. He snags the full bottle and starts toward the front door without looking back.

    "It never meant anything, Meggan," he says somewhere along the way. It's all roiling and boiling under the surface, pain and anger and depression, just a tangled mess of negative, nothing light or bright to be found in it anywhere. It's a pressure cooker set to high and ready to blow. It's a recipe for even more pain to follow when he does something... stupid in an attempt to drown it all out. ...or worse, when he forces himself to shut it all off and feel *nothing*.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
"Don't lie to me." Four words carry a spindrift clarity to them, as Meggan pushes her fingertips back to her forehead, her bangs slipping wet and gold through parted fingers. Nothing to be done about that. "John."

His name has been plea, prayer; curse, and casus belli. This time, she only shapes it with the quiet, certain purpose. There must be no Hail Mary here -- and would Mary even answer if she existed? Is there a plea worth making that would break through the shadows? She slips off the stool, moving in those long strides that can scythe through a distance to reach him. What can she say, what words even evoke the right response other than to bleed around the preserved splinter always meant to send her in a true direction?

It's all there is. That compass with a needle he hammered out of himself. The one she poured everything into, now sent on a whirl to find magnetic north through the door. "I felt you through this." The silvery lines shift, dancing faintly. "Us, that promise. Those close brushes, my name in the dark, pain and determination. The bastard -- bastards -- that did this thought they'd no witnesses, but they do."

John Constantine has posed:
    "I was alone in the dark, Meggan," John murmurs, stopping just shy of hand on the door to head out. "As it should be," he adds. "I'm leaving now, don't follow me." His voice doesn't even sound like his own to his ears, may not even to hers. His head bows for just a moment, Meggan still offered only his back.

    The memories of that trek through the dark, the horrors of it, it's all so very fresh, fresh enough that he can recall every tiny little detail without much effort at all. It's those memories he pulls on now to give him the strength to put his hand on the door and pull it open. It's those memories he pulls on to take the first step through that door.

    Walking away from Meggan is the hardest thing he's ever done in his life. The pain of it nearly splits him apart. A pain deserved, where the joy of her is not. "Go back to school, Meggan, live your life. Without me in it. It's what I want."

...the next step out the door is even harder, letting it shut behind him if she doesn't stop the act, harder still.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
"I felt *you*, John. That first moment when you jumped. Stone went black for an instant." The mercurial nature of terror is that it doesn't burn, but seeps in on contact, sliding deep to the bones. "The vow didn't break. Neither did you, love, so I played one of your cards to be strong. Like you did with the grimoire, I battened down with the hope you gave me in my hands."

She can't throw down the wards or push the door aside, but she can reach out to take him by the shoulder. Crossing a threshold comes like a rush, and outside those walls, beyond those spells, theirs is an equal partnership balanced in the grounding force of the Earth under her feet. Seriously, a sweatshirt? A new sign needs to be hung over the lintel.

"Hope that never faltered, you brought out. So I kept it safe." Her eyes are clear, fear absent, just that mirror of a brighter thing. "You get to put the sword down if you want. Close up shop and tell the wider world shove off, you're due a holiday. Retirement. Get mad, shout, hit me if you need to. Where you go, John Constantine, I go. Because that's what love is, you aren't alone and will never stand alone. I could be at the bottom of the Med, you in the pissant demon-king's back parlour, and it wouldn't matter."

John Constantine has posed:
    Does she hear it? The way his voice cracks just the tiniest of bits, barely there, when he speaks the words, "I. Don't. Love. You. Meggan. Never did." If the world was set to stop revolving on the biggest lie ever told, it would do so in this moment for certain.

    John pulls away and rips a little more of himself raw and bloody on the inside when he does it. Because standing alone? It's the only option, innit? It's the way it's destined to be in the end anyway, so why wait for it? Why watch everyone fall around him to be added to the faces pressed against a bus window? Better for everyone in the long run this way.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Is there a feeling to hold onto? A lodestone no matter how small that yanks the metallic thoughts to it, tugging them askew?

They've done this dance. She knows these steps. Bleeding, vicious, and grinding down as bad as any demon could inflict.

"Infernal words in my beloved's mouth." Her lips sting. Meggan breathes out, circling around to face John, he who is as vibrant and ferocious as a wounded lion, all tawny bronze and antique gold. A bit of faded British sky, but indescribably slouching to a dark space. "/He'd/ say that to hurt. You to save yourself and us." Three times fast, you say the name, they come. Or turn widdershins and think it: Nergalnergalnergal. Plotkaplotkaplotka. Children's games but so deadly serious.

Standing alone is his choice, but she floats, ever has, and breaks that loophole by staring him dead in the eyes. "I went to the Doctor for you, but he was gone. Merlin's daughter said undo myself to keep you whole, and I scattered dreams all over Albion to be sure you got home. Strange came when it was time. Chas waited. I rose." She sighs, for words are not a thing to embrace when the gloves come off, and that faith burns so damn bright it has a life of its own.

A small star, but she inhales the feeling and sends it out in waves. He wants to throw hate, she'll wreath him in that complete certainty wept into England's rivers, murmured to the Irish Sea, whispered in the Welsh hills, and sighed into Scottish lochs. Reliving his darkest moments hasn't left her impervious, fractured moonlight on the sea of her splintered composure sent whirling around. Love flies on white wings, something she has to bleed off as much as his pain engulfs him, but one of those shards might find a chink in the armour. Might survive the descent to find him.

"People you care about come back for you. Always. Ever noticed?"

John Constantine has posed:
    John just stands there, refusing to acknowledge any of if with anything but a set jaw and shoulders and faded denim blues staring past Meggan. He stands there all wrapped up in a blanketed bit of armor made from pain and misery, guilt and shame that he turns into anger out of necessity. It's all he has left, there's no light.

    It's that last though, that has Hellfire flashing over the blue of his eyes, drowning blue seas with flame. His hands clench into fists at his sides to keep the same from dancing on them. "And they all DIE FOR IT, MEGGAN! GET OUT OF MY BLOODY WAY! Before I *move* you out of it."

    Never before has he ever, ever even thought about threatening such.

    When the yelling brings Chas out from the back, John doesn't even turn around. He just raises hand, aimed behind him, where he can sense his friend, sense his own magic protecting the man from death. It's not flame he hits the cabbie with, but it's enough force to send him flying backwards to hit the wall with a thud. Chas is a big man, strong, healthy, he won't be down from it for long, but it'll take a moment for him to shake it off and stagger to his feet.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Maybe something would snap. Maybe it wouldn't.

Stubborn little thing, really. Hellfire might be something to absolutely fear, were she already not scarred and burned by a time in Hell. Oh, John scares her. No doubt about that. But walking away and hiding in that last gasp of considering it, against her own wishes /dies/.

He puts a nail through the indecision going after Chas. The forceful blast rippling past her leaves reeling silence after the collision between the man with the wall. A choice made, turning the key, faces her to him.

Her bare toes touch the concrete and she stares at him unblinking. Meggan is just herself. Just that. "They haven't. Phoebe-Chas-Gemma-Geraldine-me-not-dead." The seal isn't one she wants to break, but it crumbles away, twin streaked tears running down her face. Just the two, but not untoward. Air turns hard, the vitality of the earth spilling through their bones. Life, life, life.

"You tricked the Firstborn, you bested Nerry, you always come through. Why this? Why now? Ask who took you off the field. Why you trust that doubt over those who love you."

And in the end, does it matter?

John Constantine has posed:
    "Phoebe was nearly killed comin' after me! I had to pull her out!" Little veins are all sorts of popping in his neck, face red... he's even spitting a little when he screams. John look, and sounds... mad, as insane as he feels at the moment from it all. "How many times has CHAS DIED? He'd be gone too if it weren't for a drunken spell in a fuckin' bar. It's an ACCIDENT that he still lives! How long before they're gone? He's GONE, for good?!"

    When Chas tries stands and tries to move forward, John pins the poor bloke to the wall with that invisible force, arm outstretched palm out. It's about as effective as a 'stay out of it' can get, innit?

    "Love means nothing from the grave, 'luv'." It's a nasty little spin he puts on that word 'luv'. "It's only a matter of time before love turns to death and blame."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Magic to magic isn't fair. Not when he can pull the true stuff, and her arts are wholly the equivalent of dropping nuclear bombs or throwing the flooding Amazon at someone. Meggan grinds her teeth, and nature fractures in empathetic response, the wind spilling in gyres that tear the words outside them to pieces but likewise make it hard for anyone who would come near to even think of it. "Life has risks," she says quietly. Quiet, that refuge of the storm center, otherwise it's a fight. "He could die of a heart attack or get targeted by the next Zod on the planetary block. She could be hit by a car or have terminal breast cancer ten years from now. But we live, and living's what matters. The moments you teach someone, the mad performances with Chas there, the singing or waking up hungover from a daft adventure but tackling the next day. Waking up next to you. Falling asleep when finally finding the answer to a problem you stayed up eighty-one hours to find." She smiles wanly. "Nothing gives life meaning more than love. It perseveres even through death."

Rain, the sullen crackle of paper blown off into the gutter, matches that wall of force. Imbalance keeps accelerating, whirled out of keeping, the summer's denouement burning with the flickering resolutions tied up in flames. She'll be the first on the pyre, everything else attuned to John. Chas if he's alive, but the rest to him. "Every present wrapped up at Christmas or your birthday you pretend not to give a toss about. The first fluttering before you climax. That's life. It's who laughed with you when you pulled off a swap with Ms. Croft. Your delight when Phoebe figured how to heal you without burning you. The moment you were victorious over the spectral things outside the diner, when /we/ were both bone-tired and successful and happy. Fighting for something you're afraid of, and say now you never wanted. The cigarette you can't wait to suck down for the rush. Defeating demons, cultists, imps, why'd you do it if not to protect life? You're doing it even now. No matter how much it's hurting."

John Constantine has posed:
    John lowers his hand, releasing the hold on Chas. The cabbie stumbles forward before catching himself. "*JOHN*, stop this."

    "They all loved me," John states quietly, from anger to defeated in two point two. "...and now they blame be because they're dead because of *me*." He raises the bottle in his hand to unscrew the top and swig straight from it. "None of it matters, Meggan. The ending is the same every time. It's only a matter of time. It's my fate to meet everyone that's ever been daft enough to love me on the other side and face their blame. It's blame deserved. ... and I refuse. I fucking *refuse* to see that on the face of another person that I ... care about. So please, get out of my way, go back to school, get on with your life and let me walk my path alone, as it should be."

    He looks down at the bottle in his hand, then further down to the clothes he's wearing and back up again. "I need to get my coat before they collect the rubbish in the morning." He *threw it away*? "I'm not retired, Meggan. I'm just firing everyone and doing the job myself."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
What should pass untouched strikes in heart-stopping waves of hurt.

"I can't."

So that's simply it. Two words, an admission of failure, are all but placed between them.

The apology teeters there on her lips and she bites it back. Been through this, again and again, round the same damn cursed Morris pole. "Go back, blame you, or get on with life by myself."

She tilts her head to the sky. A laugh bubbles up almost at the point of silence. "Sounds simple, innit? But I can't. Much, much too late. Gave my heart and all that, remember?"

Drinking the calamitous love, the choice is so simple. He has the key to all the doors. She doesn't, except for a name to bind.

A shape on the lips, before breath gives it life.

John Constantine has posed:
    "Then I give it back, freely. I, John Constantine, do hereby free you of whatever Oath you swore to whoever you swore it. I give you back your heart so that you can get on with your life, save the world's oceans, finish school. All it. Please move, I need my coat."

    So calm on the outside now, too calm for someone that is ripping his own damned heart and soul to bits in his efforts to free hers from him. "I have things to do. Need to get rid of Phoebe's dog problems." Especially considering he's met the one responsible for them. Mighta... done more than met her, night's a blur it is. He's even done the math a few times in his head to be certain the girl isn't possibly *his*. "Move, luv. You're free of it, by my word."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
"I wasn't stopping you from getting your coat, John." She doesn't fight that point. But her eyes widen to drained glass, lost of all colour.

"No. I refuse you, John Constantine. And I love you still, remember that." The Oath's a two-sided thing, being the nature of one to other. The drag on her hurts, gods it hurts. Gold doesn't break easily, especially when literally made from her braid. Slicing the pliable metal with a hardened metal nail takes a fairly hard tug, but it's scarcely mattering at this point. "Tell Doctor Strange I tried."

She tosses the ring at his feet.

Hands curl around the spark still burning softly, so very small and fierce, and she wishes herself apart. Undo yourself, as advised by a sorceress of Avalon.

So she does. Then there is nothing at all.

John Constantine has posed:
    One down, three to go and he'll never have to see the people that mean the most to him blaming him when he gets them killed. John turns to one of the three that's left for him to shove away from their fate should they stay entwined in his life. "Not a word," is snarled in the cabbie's direction.

    ...and Chas just gapes. His mouth hangs open, his eyes are all wide. For a moment or three anyway, but then that mouth closes and his eyes narrow. "That was fuckin' cruel, John." He doesn't heed the warning. "...and you'll regret it and I'll be here when you do."

    It's a bit of a stand off between the two, all narrowed eyes and unspoken challenges tossed back and forth. It's John that turns away first to pick up the ring and then to push through the door and go fetch his coat. Time to take the mantle back up again and do it on his own to protect the ones stupid enough to try and walk his path with him.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Who do you need, who do you love
When you come undone?

Words, playing me deja vu
Like a radio tune, I swear I've heard before
Chills, is it something real
Or the magic I'm feeding off your fingers?
(Cannot forgive from falling apart at the seams)
(Cannot believe you're taking my heart to pieces)

Lost, in a snow filled sky
We'll make it all right...

It's not the first time. Not the last. It hurts, it bloody hurts, a spiral of evanescent light hurled through the Otherworld gate.

Beyond it, with a sliver of darkness and light in a stone she's wrapped around with aching, agonizing intensity.

The hard landing at the end drops into a place almost lush, serene, with a floating palatial structure in the air over a crescent of mountains, and her own failure confronted in the water at her feet.

It's there, that little rock, pressed within her skin, next to whatever tattered souls remained in place? It's there when she falls to her knees upon the soil of her ancestral birthplace. Doubled over with it, arms protectively wrapped around her stomach, she screams with all she has, and that cataclysmic howl radiates with a ferocity that throws snow and rain and fire in aching bursts.

Until the scream turns, lips bloody and throat raw, to what it has been all along.

A single note of utter defiance.

Draw.