IV.
Ophelia watched as Constantine stared at the array of weaponry that she had placed on the dining room table at his request. She knew that her ability to hide so many weapons on her body probably surprised the exorcist, who examined each blade and gun with an air of expertise. His apprentice, Chas, was in the kitchen making coffee for everyone and Ophelia sat at the opposite end of the table, clutching her ribs and trying not to gasp with pain. She knew she had to have broken at least four ribs when the demon threw her into the bowling lane. The pain was bearable, but pain nonetheless.
"How do you, uh, take your coffee?" asked Chas, leaning out of the tiny cove that was the kitchen.
"Lots and lots of sugar," she replied. Ophelia was the kind of person who wasn't satisfied until her spoon stood straight up in the coffee cup. Constantine broke his gaze from the weapons on the table finally and looked at her appraisingly. Ophelia had a feeling that this man meant trouble, no matter how defenseless her client made him seem.
"How are your ribs?" Constantine asked her. Ophelia carefully made her face devoid of any emotion. She didn't want these people to know whether or not she felt pain. It made her feel weak, and that was the last thing she wanted. She did, however, want to wrap her ribs so they would heal correctly.
"They'll be fine. Do you have any medical tape or something I can use?" she asked. For a moment, Ophelia had a feeling that Constantine would deny her, but instead he grabbed a first aid kit from on top of the refrigerator and dug through it. He pulled out a roll of tape and tossed it to her.
"The bathroom's over there. There aren't any windows so don't even think about escaping," Constantine warned her, and Ophelia nodded. He helped her into the bathroom, closing the door behind her and Ophelia removed her shirt, examining her ribs in the mirror.
Bruises lined her sides and back, and there was another forming on her cheek where it hit the hard floor of the bowling alley. Other than the bruising and broken ribs, however, Ophelia was undamaged. She leaned against the porcelain sink heavily, feeling as if she were going to fall over. The damaged ribs made it painful to stand straight up, but Ophelia attempted to hide her discomfort. She carefully wrapped her ribs, limped to the doorway (alas her beloved boots had made her hurt her ankle), and Constantine carefully helped her back into the chair at the dining room table.
It was starting to become painfully clear to Ophelia that she was going to have a problem when it came to getting out of this place. The apartment wasn't very wide, but it was long and that was her supreme disadvantage. Constantine would see her going to the doorway from any room in the place. Feeling trapped, she sipped the coffee the teen handed her and stared at Constantine, who glared right back at her.
"Who hired you?" he asked, and Ophelia began to wonder if maybe they had spiked her coffee or something. The two couldn't be so stupid as to think that she would tell them anything freely? It was her job to keep secrets.
"I dunno," she replied with a shrug. Constantine looked supremely annoyed and Ophelia surpressed a smile. It would do her some good to see the man squirm.
"I think you do," he replied confidently, settling back in his chair. He had removed his trench coat and rolled up the sleeves of his Oxford, revealing strange tattoos on his lower arms.
"Well you think wrong, now don't you?" Ophelia replied, speaking as if she were explaining something to an exceptionally slow kindergarten student. "Do you really think my clients would tell me who they are? If I get caught I could rat them out easily, and they don't want that."
Constantine looked as if he hadn't considered that before, and Ophelia tried not to laugh at him. The man had no idea what he was doing. There was a moment of silence, and Ophelia looked over to Chas, whose hands were shaking as he lifted his coffee cup. He eyed her nervously and she gave him a wicked half smile. The teen turned away slightly, his eyes still wide.
"So what are you two? Lovers?" she asked, looking between Chas and Constantine. Chas spat out his coffee all over the table. Constantine looked like he might stab her.
"No," he hissed angrily.
"Well, I didn't think so. Chas is a little too young for you. Is he a Robin to your Batman or something?" she questioned. Once, Ophelia had been captured by members of the Russian mafia and set free the next day. This was because she asked so many questions and got so annoying that they let her free, afraid that she might find out too much about them.
"In a way..." Chas replied this time.
"You know, I always thought it was kind of sketchy that a creepy guy like Bruce Wayne would live all alone in a big mansion with a little kid like Robin, don't you?"
"Well, actually, if you read the comic books..." Chas started, but Constantine cut him off.
"That's enough," he said, pushing his coffee away discontentedly. He stood and grabbed a glass and a bottle of whiskey from a cupboard, pouring himself a few fingers and gulping it down like it was the elixir of life.
"You know, that stuff isn't good for you," Ophelia chastised him. In all reality, she drank too, but she felt that if she were annoying enough, perhaps Constantine wouldn't want to keep her. Or maybe he would just kill her, she wasn't sure. "It'll ruin your liver."
Constantine slammed his glass down on the table, hard. There was a splitting sound, and a fine line webbed up the glass, cracking it. Ophelia smiled slightly. She had pushed him to the breaking point. Perhaps she had gone a little too far with the child molester jokes, though.
Constantine stood and came towards her. He wasn't holding a weapon, but Ophelia had a feeling that perhaps he didn't need one. If this man was what the file on him said he was, then he could kill a person with a few words. Ophelia pushed her chair away from the table, trying to back away from him, but not quickly enough. Constantine grabbed her left arm that was resting on the arm of the chair and pulled her to her feet, twisting it painfully behind her back.
"So you want to learn about me? You want to see what I see?" he demanded and Ophelia looked him square in the eye. She didn't blink, but she nodded. She wanted to know. "Fine!" he shouted and lifted her off of her feet, swinging her over his shoulder and carrying her into the bathroom.
"What are you doing!" she demanded, trying to hit him. "Let me down! Let go!"
Constantine's shoulder was pressing painfully into one of her ribs and Ophelia gasped in pain. She could hear him turning the knobs on his bath tub and the sound of water spraying out of the faucet filled the room. He set her down none too gently on the floor next to the tub. Chas rushed into the room behind them, trying to stop Constantine from whatever he was doing.
"Come on, John! You just got this tub. Do you really want to ruin it?" he pleaded. Ophelia had no idea what was going on, but she had a feeling that it wasn't going to work to her advantage. Constantine roughly pulled her up by the front of her shirt and Ophelia had a feeling that she was getting more than she bargained for.
"What are you doing?" she asked him, trying not to sound scared, though she had a feeling that she failed in that aspect.
"I'm going to show you what I see. Are you Catholic, Ophelia?" he asked.
"Yeah. Why?"
"Then you know where murderers like you go, right?"
"The River of Phlegethon in the seventh layer of hell," she replied and found herself amused at the surprised look on Constantine's face. It was a part of her job that she read a lot. Sometimes she would have to wait weeks, even months, before she could kill a target, and she would need reading material. The Divine Comedy had always seemed befitting to her job. It was the first time, however, that Ophelia had actually placed herself in a part of hell, but upon reflection she realized that the burning river of blood was exactly where she was going when she died.
"Exactly," he replied, and she watched his face soften slightly as he thought about it. It seemed that he was pitying her in a way. But a moment later, Ophelia realized that he wasn't.
Upon his command, she kneeled on the cold tile floor of the bathroom, wondering what was going on, and a moment later, her entire torso was plunged in the freezing cold water he had filled the bath tub with. Realizing that Constantine was trying to drown her, Ophelia struggled against him, pushing away from the bottom of the bathtub and trying to release his hold on her. However, Ophelia was starting to feel her limbs go heavy. She hadn't had a chance to inhale before he plunged her in the icy water, and she was starting to be affected by it. Ophelia's head began pounding with ever heart beat and her vision was beginning to get dark around the corners.
Suddenly, it felt as if the world was tipping and Ophelia wondered for a moment if she had plunged through the bottom of the bathtub by some miracle. She opened her eyes and realized that she was no longer in John Constantine's bathroom, but zooming along eternity. For a moment, she wondered if she was high on something; but realized that she had in fact died.
There seemed to be another presence with her, one that was warm and glowing, and Ophelia reached out for it, but felt it move away from her as she zoomed along. A strange fear gripped her heart and suddenly she began to see things, though she was only allowed a few moments to see each sight. It seemed as if she were falling down an unending pit and suddenly paused for a moment to see each ledge.
On the first, there was basically nothing but several people sitting around and looking bored, but not unhappy. Just as Ophelia was about to call out to them she was pushed by the force to the second level, where people were caught in wind, battered about by each other and debris. They called out to her, but Ophelia realized that they weren't speaking any language that she understood. In fact, it sounded as if they were speaking backwards. Once again, she was pulled down to another level which looked like a garbage dump. Freezing rain pelted naked people who tried to escape and in the distance she heard several dogs bark.
In the fourth, people pushed boulders endlessly, crashing into one another. In the fifth, there was a dank marsh, where people ripped each other apart. The sixth layer greeted her in screams of agony and pain. Birds with human heads flew over her head, and Ophelia realized the screams were coming from the ground, where people were laying in tombs of iron that were heated to white hot. She could feel the heat from the void she was floating in, and for a moment pitied them before she reached a layer that she was the most familiar with.
Through her whole venture, Ophelia had a feeling as to where she was, though she wasn't quite certain. But once she reached the seventh layer of the deep chasm she knew she was in hell. There was the burning river of Phlegethon, the wood of suicides, and the burning sands. More than once, Ophelia recognized someone that shared her profession in the river, screaming in agony as their flesh burnt. Men who she had once believed to be the strongest in the world were shrieking and crying like children.
Suddenly, Ophelia felt as if another presence was with her, and a rather giddy, hissing voice whispered into her ear.
"Welcome home, Ophelia," the voice told her. She turned in mid-air and found herself facing a man in a white suit. He stared at her with wide, emotionless eyes, then offered her a smile. "So good to see you, come on in."
The force that had guided Ophelia to the seventh layer of hell pushed her towards Lucifer, who took her arm like an eager child and led her to the burning river. She could see her agent (the one she had killed for looking at her funny) watching her from the burning hot blood, and she had a feeling that if the blood didn't hurt enough, he would make sure that he could make it worse.
A strange feeling curled in her stomach, as if someone was yanking at her center of gravity, just behind her naval. She touched her stomach, confused. Lucifer turned to look at her, and she saw the look clearly written on his face as well. He obviously had no idea what was going on. Before she could question the Prince of Darkness, the feeling behind her naval gave an even greater yank and Ophelia felt herself fly right out of the chasm she had fallen into.
All around her was rushing water and pieces of bath tub flying everywhere. Ophelia flew through the air, knocking over John Constantine. It had only been a second since she stopped struggling, but she had been in hell for what felt like an eternity. She was soaked in cold water, and steam rose off of her clothes and skin.
"Are you okay?" came Constantine's voice. He looked more than concerned.
"What... what did you do to me?" she demanded, her voice hoarse and pained.
"I... I think I might have done something wrong..." Constantine started, looking at her with furrowed eyebrows. His gaze rested on her arm, where the cloth of her shirt had been burnt away. Ophelia looked down and realized that Lucifer's handprint had been burnt into her flesh. "I think you went a little deeper than I intended."
"A little... a little what?" she sputtered, breathing heavily, trying to rid herself of the stench of burning flesh and sulphur.
"Too deep into hell, I think," Constantine replied, reaching out for her. "Are you sure you're..."
He was cut off by Ophelia's fist flying through the air and catching him right in the face. Constantine fell back and Ophelia somehow managed to stand, feeling as if her legs were made of jelly. She was shaking badly, though she wasn't cold. Chas grabbed her arm as she stalked past him and out of the bathroomm.
"Let me go!" she screamed and pushed him away. She grabbed her knives and gun and raced out of the apartment, fighting the urge to fall to her knees and never get up again. The moment she got out of the bowling alley, she threw up on the side walk, then hailed a cab.
"What the hell did you do to me, Constantine?" she muttered to herself as she watched the bowling alley disappear behind her.
"Are you okay, lady?" asked the cab driver, who looked rather frightened.
"I don't know..." she replied, "but I think I may be out of a job."
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A/N:
Not You- Thanks for pointing that out! I fixed that right after I read your review.
Chances- Thanks for telling me about my little minute mishap lol. I had already seen the whole Chas/ halfbreed thing, but decided not to use it, thanks for caring though :-)
Everyone else- Thanks for your reviews, you guys have been really really great.
