9097/Chains of the Fae

Chains of the Fae
Date of Scene:	15 December 2021
Location:	Back Room - The Laughing Magician
Synopsis:	Meggan comes bearing gifts for a bound Chas in the hopes of cheering his mood. The recovery process is interupted by the appearance of a raging Constantine who beats his friend into submission before trading jabs (of words) with the angel within his oldest friend.
Cast of Characters:	Chas Chandler, Meggan Puceanu, John Constantine
Tinyplot:	Path of Glory

---

Chas Chandler has posed:
    Not much has changed for Chas since last night's discovery that--while trapped in the chains--the angel residing within him is not fully contained. It still has the ability to come out and converse if it deems the partner of sufficient merit. He's still on the cot. He still looks ragged and haunted. And he still has not had much chance to eat, sleep, or use of his bodily functions besides breathe and even that has become something he has to think to do.

    His head is resting against the pale brickwork of the far wall, his hair fully disheveled from the cord that usually holds it back away from his face. The chains of Nothing are stillr resting against his clothes their weight only measured by the emptiness that they take up. There are small burns against his skin where the negative energy touches direct flesh but they look at least a few hours old in origin. Still, he sits and waits for the next interogator to arrive. He knows it's only a matter of time.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
If anyone needs further proof angels do not personify goodness and light, exhibit A. Those made in God's likeness suffer from His chosen servants. What then to make of the torment, through the lens of Danu's long memory?

Chas knows the Laughing Magician better than anyone. The building, though, can whisper secrets to an elemental that no human or mystic bothers to listen to. Worn boards and humming air tell their own tales that Meggan listens to, gaining a sense for any immediate risk to the human vessel or herself before stepping into the bar proper. Shoes that she generally disdains adorn her feet in glittering crystals, the hoarfrost around her waist giving way to a slick black-ice corset and supple pants; a look so far and away from the t-shirt and jeans she's almost always in. What wounds the weaving of unreality inflicted on her, they're internal or another type entirely.

But more importantly, she brings a box of treats fit for the English soul. A proper cup of coffee, too, with sugar and cream tucked away in the pastry box just in case. "I come bringing treats, Chas!" The sunnyish voice is the same, all else told.

Chas Chandler has posed:
    Chas sucks in a breath at the emergence of Meggan to the room that has become his cell. "Meg..." he says, his voice cracking a bit. "You look... much better than you did last we faced each other..." He had visions of that when he closed his eyes once before. The creature that had been Meggan, turned into his daughter, and he still brought the sword of flame down on her heedless of the screams that Chas gave in protest within. And then with as the portals between this universe and the Negative Energy beyond opened, the form of his daughter melted into something else. Something he didn't want to dwell on too much or else the gibberinig would start again.

    Meggan or Geraldine, both were off limits to his own desires. But the being within him had too much control... control he himself gave to it. He regards the woman and smiles a wan smile. There is little mirth left in him. "You'll forgive me if I can't very well partake of treats, Meg" he says, and his hands twitch under the chains. "Not much room to move when you have pure entropy containing you. Good work, by the way." Was that a hint of spite in his voice? Maybe. He can still be spiteful even while understanding the necessity of his predicament.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Silver frost wisps around Meggan's eyes, painted in artistic swirls that look crystallized and chilly. Her human form remains a static shell, though they all saw the myriad aspects of deep winter she manifested: the howling wolf, the shadow-hunter, antler-crowned, a maiden of nightmares, a wraith in naked moonlight. Could well be a risk bone-deep or an illusion to hide the roaring tide. "Bit more whole, you mean," she answers Chas directly. The box at her side has a mildly dented corner, the stamp of Satterthwaite's Bakehouse and there's not a Scouser born before 1910 who doesn't know how good they are. "Popped close to Baltic Market, thought you might be ravenous for a proper snack. If not now, maybe later." The box is set down within reach of him, black coffee purloined from a proper kitchen and not a fancy cafe held back a trice. "You prefer something else?"

See, there's a fine point to dealing with a duotone individual separate and entangled alike by those finely-wrought chains. Souls aligned are her stock in trade and she would know, literally bound to the thinnest sliver by Vishanti spellcraft and something older. The oldest of compacts: a vow. "Might be good to try something new and change up your perspective." Who she speaks to in that clear tone, addressing man or immortal, any guess. The girl sinks back, happy to float, legs crossed at the knee. "The use of Geraldine was regrettable." It's as close as apology will come under the circumstances, words chosen carefully and twisted to fit. "Sure to be safe and secure in her bed." She pauses, watching him, keen to any emotional shift below the surface or above it. "No harm's done that could not be undone. Let that ease your thoughts if it can. I don't pretend to know all of what you think right now, but pretty sure plenty smarter than me take care of those big concerns."

Chas Chandler has posed:
    Chas nods. "Of course... I... understand the reasoning behind it and appreciate what you were trying to do" he says, the spite leaving him. She didn't deserve it. Not now. Not then. Not ever in his book. "It's just been... well, you saw." He says. "I... I guess I should apologize for it trying to kill you. Or destroy. You being what you are..."

    Chas wasn't entirely certain of what the angel felt when it saw Meggan. There was fondness, but there was also a sense of... familiarity to her. Meggan, a Fae, a creature that the world created as an expression of its own consciousness. And the angel felt that she was family? It still perplexed him. He shakes his head slightly. "I suspect you have questions? Zatanna and Lydia both did. Why I did it? What I did? How I did? I can answer them for you just as I did for them. Or..." he swallowed. "Or it can if it sees fit to speak with you. I can feel it lurking just behind my own eyes."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
If the tables were turned, he might be surprised at her understanding. But the sunny, golden-haired sylph laughing late into the night with the best barman in Manhattan can forgive nigh anything except what broken promises twist back. He's Chas, a given, and her head shakes. "No, you cannot go down that road tonight, or any night soon." Meggan tucks her thumbs into the pockets cut into her pants for show, since there's no human way to actually use them to hold anything other than a thought.

"What else is new?" she asks when he starts to apologize, head tilted and posture incredibly lax by any standards. Casual, but not in John's rounded way of shrugging through life. At ease here, in an odd way. "It's got a job to do, right? Opposition is drawn pretty clear, black and white?" What makes Chas human is the faintest strand in her DNA, and even trying to decipher it at a distance is a lost cause. The X-gene exists only when it needs to, morphing into manatees, little girls, elder elementals of air and earth. Danu -- Gaea's name among the gods of dream and fae -- may be a step or two removed from the angel. Meggan tries to feel the edges where it begins, know of its moods or malevolence, if aught at all.

"I want to know how you are, Chas. What am I to do knowing about a great big spirit in you, or whatever's upset it? Doubt it has two words to spit my way," she replies. "We can sit here and talk Liverpool fixtures, and if you think they'll give Newcastle a great thumping. I'm not holding my breath over Leicester, they've got aces up their sleeves and pull out tricks right late in the second. Or whatever you like and need. Mightn't be the same thing, I know that."

Chas Chandler has posed:
    Chas chuckles, probably the first true laugh he's had since the incident. "Nothing phases you at all does it?" he asks. "Not a divine being bent of ridding the world of all life, not a mind controlled friend holding a shotgun on you, not the possibility of Apocalypse on the horizon..." He relaxes a bit and leans back against the wall, the chains moving with him but making no true sound of their own.

    "If you truly want to know how I am?" he says. "I'm terrible, Meg. I've made mistakes before in life. But nothing this big. These things... I believed they were better than this... I believed that it would help me fix the world. Help people like Superman or Wonder Woman..." he sighs. "But I was wrong. Black and white... the world doesn't work like that. And forcing everything into that particular box only causes pain. Pain for humanity, pain for me, pain for..." he swallows. "My friends."

    "You know I actually begged Zatanna to end me? Forty times." He looks off into the middle distance, unfocused, reliving the moment in his mind's eye. "Just... kill me and maybe the angel would move on, no host. No life. Even it doesn't know if it can continue with my body in a state of unlife. She didn't. Obviously... but I begged her and she fled. Terrified." He shakes his head. "Zatanna Zatara... was afraid of *me.* One of the homo magi, scared off by a lowly unpowered human like me."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Those chains hold the echoed energy she reached for, staining her skin and psyche. She can hear the entropy ringing around Chas, the absence of silence and sound clamouring in a troubling fashion. Anti-building blocks of the early cosmos call and Meggan gives her head a faint shake when Chas claims or accuses her of being not fazed at all. "You know that is not true at all. Cried my fair share over the hateful things that bastard told and did to us." Her hands curl to one another, and she glances down, but clear-eyed all the same. "You were not trying to hurt me, were you? Being mind-controlled is absolutely awful. Losing your volition and power to make decisions becomes a kind of... of... spiritual rape. Whatever does it is corrupted. Polluted. Demogorge devours the things that do that."

The horrifying entity arisen from slumber scant months ago at summer's end comes as a pause to her lips, but she names it anyhow.

His pain is another thing. The despair. Awareness of deeds done hit hard to empathy, curling around the icicle in a woman's form facing the fires of creation in a man's. "Funny thing, innit? Sometimes doing our best makes it all wrong. You don't need to be telling me sorry. Friends muck up. People are not perfect. What is the word they always bang on about? Fallible? Others can speak for themselves but I care about you and how to help you. Like listening or bringing you a newspaper, whatever. Your bloody rider in there wants what it wants, and quite frankly I do not give a toss about it right now much as I do you."

She finger-wiggles. "Besides, it cares about the big fishies and I'm a bit of kelp."

Chas Chandler has posed:
    Chas opens his mouth to answer her but golden light floods his eyes entirely masking the whites. "Kelp? Child of Gaea" it's Chas's voice that comes from the form but the cadence and tone is all wrong. "Your modesty is endearing. But I know of you and your brothers and sisters. Capable of opening the doors to realms that should not be touched. Capable of altering the very fabric of reality at will. The only way that you resemble kelp is in your persistence and your inexorable flow with the tides of the world. You are one of the larger threats to me because what you come from was made when I was made. Your Mother and I are, in our own way, siblings." He chuckles and the gold winks out from Chas' eyes, returning them to the blue of before.

    The man gasps, sucking in air in an attempt to rememnber what it is to breathe. "I... It does that. It knows what you are better than I do. Maybe not *who* but *what*... it understands a lot more." He manages to get his breathing under control and lets out a slow shuddering exhale. "And it's... it's trying to figure out whether or not to erase you or keep you around for when it petitons God to the world." He chuckles, again that mirthless laugh. "That's how I am Meg. I have *that* for a roomate in my head. I though the 48 from the bar were bad. This is far, far worse."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
"A lot like Merlin, that." Meg doesn't namedrop out of false modesty or direct warning. He's as much a part of her life as the occasional tendency to blurt out what someone is actually thinking or feeling, for all that does little good. Does it do any credit to meet the golden-eyed monstrosity in likeness of mortal man. "A larger threat? Bit of nonsense there but try a roll or a cookie. Might find it agrees with you and unfortunately my friend here needs to eat to survive."

Chas gasps. She doesn't breathe. Hasn't since she walked in, only taking air to make sound. His cadences of words and enunciation tell her something, the rhythm to follow while he figures himself out.

"Like I said, lot like that. Gets his jollies riling up everyone much the same way. It knows something." She scrunches her nose, an endearing little trait hiding the fact it is wholly a conscious gesture to supplant the missing unconscious ones. "Bit two-dimensional, like rich tossers sayin' they know what the world is like when they see the tippy-top of it. John can argue that point with it. Not trying to be rude to your flatmate. Pity it refuses to ease up and give you a bit of a pass, try seeing what the other ninety-nine percent live like. Its loss. You ever want to see how I see life, just ask. Though you know. In your daughter's smile and the warm feeling waking up under the covers on a winter morning."

Her gaze shimmers, auroral teal, and as lucid and gelid as the rest. Summer sun glancing off winter diamond, maybe. "You hanging in there? What makes it easier for you?"

Chas Chandler has posed:
    Chas shrugs, a slight thing. "I'm... existing" he says. "Not much else to it until John, or Jon, or maybe even Las can get the name of it and get to whatever they plan on doing but...." He closes his mouth tightly. The move almost involuntary in its suddeness. He shakes his head and his mouth loosens its vice closure. "Sorry. There's things I..." he strains. "Things I want to say but... can't articulate properly because..." He heaves out a breath, the exertion of that much an effort of will.

    His eyes give away what he is trying to say to the empath better than words ever will. There are threats that he cannot speak of. A geas has been imposed on him. Something he can't willingly break. Information is still be witheld from them. Information that will take a greater mind than his and a more forceful tongue to parcel out. "I'm sorry..." he adds in addition to his mental state.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
"Singing to the choir." The fae tips her hand and shifts from where she sits midair, as casual as can be, one long leg folded and the other balanced atop it. "No need to stress yourself on my account, Chas. You inflict pain without purpose tying yourself up in knots. For kelp." That raw, swift smile comes and goes as so much smoke would on a windy night, blown away over the horizon. "Regardless of what it thinks and says, none of that matters. I came in to check on you, and letting you turn yourself into a chewed up mess defeats the whole purpose."

Peacemaker crowned in shadows, she ever so gently shakes her head and reasserts that cold, night-brittle composure back into place. His eyes meet hers, wild and unfathomable as they are, bleeding trickles of green and blue in ways that natural hues would never mingle. Colour's fixed at birth and never wanders around. "What do you need to at least be comfortable? Figuring what with the guest up there pondering big thoughts, you at least know what you need to be okay?"

Chas Chandler has posed:
    Chas shakes his head. "I don't know what more I can ask for than this thing to be..." he pauses for the barest of moments and there is a flicker of gold behind his eyes before they go back to blue, "...out of me." He shifts the barest he can. "These chains make comfort pretty impossible."

    He sighs. "I don't need to eat, sleep, or drink anymore. Not as long as it's taking up residence at least." He makes a sour face. "It's gotten rid of the need for any of that." He shudders. "But when I close my eyes... forcible sleep is still possible, just not needed... behind my eyes are... terrible things. Noises and emptiness. I... I don't like it. I don't like it one bit."

John Constantine has posed:
"Spare the fuckin' tale of woe," John's voice cuts across the room, the raggedy figure of Constantine appearing in the doorway, "What the fuck are you playin' at treatin' with bloody angels of all things."

He steps across the rooms, eyes aflame with anger as he plants a foot against a chair and kicks it across the room with a raging clatter. He stands over the chained-up figure of Chas, glaring down at him red-faced and teeth bared.

"Angels! The fuckin' copper-tops of the universe, designed to excise anything that doesn't fit the fuckin' plan! Like cutting out a tumour with a fuckin' steak knife!"

He kicks at Chas' leg angrily, shouting now: "You're a fucking father, you stupid cunt! STUPID!"

Another kick, this one sharper.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
The things Meggan can imagine in television program bars and digital snapshots colour the vaguest trace of emotion staining her mouth. Mulberry lips and frosted eyes could give their own bits of a tale, footnotes to the legendarium already being penned by angel and man. "Have to think you would not. We were never meant for them to play piggyback, much as I know." Shadows and ice tumble into placement, and her vivid regard is merely a byproduct of they who watch the outer gates and stare long into the night. Awful sentry duty when you get right down to it.

She gestures to the box from Satterthwaite's, since the contents will be utterly wasted on a man who cannot eat.

Or be stomped flat by--

Her head turns and the whole assembly of darkness lurking somewhere nearby shudders in reverberations matched to the rotating torque of her body. The seat all but flung threatens to crash into the wall. Priorities; Liverpool's finest sausage rolls and treats.

Feed the empath, awake the Unseelie from liminal eclipse. "It'll answer."

Chas Chandler has posed:
    Chas jerks, at the first kick. "I..." he goes to answer his best friend in life and receives at harder retort from the man's shoe again. The chains holding him in place do not give any purchase to his ability to roll with the blow and he grunts in pain and groans a bit. "I didn't know... John..." he says pain lacing his words. "I didn't know it would be like..."

    He looks at John wholy, his own pain and anger flaring up. "You're one to talk. You deal with shit that you shouldn't all the time, don't you? What's the fuckin' difference." He lets out a breath. "Angels, demons. Either one wants to destroy the world and turn it into their shitting hole. Forgive me for having to go to the other side. You had the market on demon deals for the month."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Pain stains emotions but the feast on offer isn't exactly a paltry scrap for the starveling crow. One can grow perfectly fat on anger and betrayal as love. After a fairly lengthy period of restrained meals, all excesses stand to be a filling course speckled by a good many smaller entrees to wash down the overpowering feelings swallowed in a gulp.

Meggan doesn't get to nibble at the margins but instead vanishes under the red-bruised waves, tumbled on black currents. "Angels aren't like to bargain," she murmurs, trying to recall which way is up and down in the mad tumble for sanity. "How we fix it -- that's another question."

John Constantine has posed:
"Didn't know is no fucking excuse and you know it," John barks, leaning down to shout unapologetically in the man's face, "I told you about what happens when you fuck with things you don't understand! This could have been so much worse, and believe me it's already pretty fucking bad!"

"What's the difference! What's the fucking difference? Here's the fucking difference, my old I'm not a fuckin' publican taxi driver suburban dad cunt!"

He launches his fist through the air, intent on driving it across Chas' jaw while the mound is all bound up in chains.

Chas Chandler has posed:
    The strike connects. After all what can Chas do? He doesn't reel back from the blow instead staying in his hung position. "Phoebe's almost old enough to be an adult now. Just a few more months... she's already leaving the nest, John. Not much else for it. They always do." His voice is hollow and empty, filled with sadness flooding in to replace the anger spent. Best I can do is protect her and that's what I was trying to do. Make the world better for her. For you. For everyone."

    There is a jerk and the thing that rises up isn't Chas. The eyes are again filled with that golden light. "Which I am doing. The dealmaker. One of my five or six jailors." It smiles at Constantine. "I had hoped to see you. You should feel honored. The stench of brimstone surrounds you and yet, because of my host's wishes, I did not attack you openly. Were he not wise enough to include family and were your marks not on him mystically, I would've struck you down before you dared try to mangle the language of Creation in your pathetic attempt to banish me."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Gold eyes flash and the light dancing on the air from the angel occupying Chas brings her round. Meggan hasn't lifted from her invisible seat yet, though the box of pastries and sausage rolls waits to be lifted and eaten. Smoothing her hand over the slightly dented lid doesn't repair the damage, though the thought counts for something.

She tips her head, pointed ears piercing the sullen raven-wing fall of her hair. Everything taut and furious, restrained and amused, leaves her so curiously languorous by compare. The box she sets aside, uncoiling herself from the position almost regretfully.

"John." Just a name. A casual throwaway line imbued by tempestuous reactions that carry right through. She waves her hand and the air around her shifts a little, enabling her rise.

Things to say are all but painted on her face, but her mouth doesn't move. See, learning.

John Constantine has posed:
"Oh here he is," John answers, not retreating from the angel when it begins to speak through Chas, "The infinity cop. The great celestial bobby twirling his truncheon and askin' 'what's all 'dis 'den' through a mouthful of fuckin' doughnut. Was wonderin' when you'd stop hiding."

When Meggan calls his name, John simply holds up a finger in her direction without turning his eyes from Chas.

"Leave it, Meg. Just leave it."

"You'd fuckin' try," he growls at the Angel-Chas, leaning in close, "You would. But lucks always on my side, Sonny Jim. They don't call me the Laughin' Magician because I tell jokes. It's because I'm laughin' at a fuckin' ponce like you trippin' over his own sandaled feet."

He lifts up a hand, leaning closely until his nose is practically brushing against Chas' own. He places a finger on the lower eyelid of his right eye, drawing it down so it practically bulges out of his socket. Deep inside his pupil there swirls something raw, the celestial power of creation. A fragment of the Demiurge. A syllable of the Creator's word. Captured. Pilfered, maybe, in that fraction of a second where the universe ceased to be.

"I have you in my eye, now."

Chas Chandler has posed:
    The angel's steady gaze into the piece of Creation is as casual as one looks in a mirror. "There are those among your number who know what I do to thieves" he says placidly. "You believe you have me... but there is so much more to all of this that you don't fully understand, Jester. A piece of the puzzle that the Child that calls herself 'kelp' has discerned but you have not yet filtered out of the melange of anger and false righteousness that you surround yourself with."

    "Why serve threats that will not be fulfilled?" he shifts slightly. "I am bound by word and by skill. Reducing you to the fundamental atoms of your creation would be a simple matter, but it will not come to such as I am forbidden by my host and by the chains of the infinite energy of the Negative Realm that you and others so handily conjured to hold me."

    "Are you planning on striking my host further" the angel asks. "Or do you have words for me that are of more substance than showing off trifles you believe are yours to hold and cherish? Powers that you *think* you know how to use. But you are as children playing with blocks to an architect creating a monolith."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
He asked.

So he receives. Call it courtesy, being cowed, or kelp there floating on the seafloor and stretching up to the sunlight. The angel had an iota of the real meaning, though a basic building block of the oceanic ecosystem is truer to purpose.

Meggan chews her cuticle lightly, a habit far from self-possessed. Let John and the angel hash it out, then. She's the referee?

John Constantine has posed:
"What would I possibly have to say to you?" John snorts, "A glorified machine without original thought, only capable of getting' its knickers in a knot and being a pompous git."

John stands up straight, suddenly looking a lot older and more worn than normal. His shoulders slump and he glances over at Meggan, his face a flat mask.

"I'm done."

That said, he turns on his heals and walks towards the door.

Chas Chandler has posed:
    "So quick to discard your oldest friend" the angel says with a grin. "I would think that you would at least want to know who you are dealing with. You seemed so keen to attempt to banish me in your foolhardy attempt before. A pity my name did not spring to your lips then." He shrugs. "If it is so simple that you release your anger on him and then stagger from whence you came, I hope others of your lot have a more competent head on their shoulders."

    He is the one that laughs this time; a mirth filled and seemingly triumphant thing that rings with notes of silver bells and sunlight on a perfect morning. "Go Jester and enjoy your trifles while you still hold them. They will not be yours for much longer. Nothing will be yours for much longer, least of all your continued existence."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
"Oh, uncle, we have heard the notion a dozen times before and twice this /year/. Do try to keep up." Meggan seems to accept the monster in likeness of a man with the same aplomb that she bleeds through a dozen different forms in search of one best suited to fitting her. "More's the pity, you walk the exact same path that a demon did before you not three months ago. Creativity and creation do not go hand in hand so much, though." Though it's telling she waits for John to pass.

Then to step between them both, not the first or last time to guard his back.

The chiming of triumphant sunshine is met by the inflection of moonlight, reflected right back through eyes turned bright as molten gold and the sketched outline of plumage juxtaposed through glimpses in the mind's eye. Diaphanous streaks of nebulous feathers sketch their outline, her smile the utterly perfect mirror in mulberry. She curls her fingers. "Ta-ta, Uncle. Next time, I will bring you red berries and white blintzes to savour. You simply /must/ try them while you can have them." A bell-bright laugh soars in sheer delight, fearless, feckless, an act of caprice from the queen of air and sparkles. "You have given me such an idea! Best to Chas, for putting it all together so sweetly for us. I'll keep my king of all and nothing, and you keep on dreaming." A kiss blown and she's to the door.