A/N: Oddly enough, the first version of 'Careless Love' I found was by Odetta. How's that for a coincidence?
And the title of the video was 'Careless Love / Odetta'. Count the characters in that, now; C-A-R-E-L-E-S-S-L-O-V-E-slash-O-D-E-T-T-A. There, see? Nineteen. That proves it. XD
Anyway, that aside... still based on canons that don't belong to me, still (as yet) unbeta'd, still fail at chapter titles, still encourage concrit like WOAH. I think that's all. Enjoy!
1
"…think he's awake?"
The voice seemed to come from a long way away. Sluggishly, Constantine dragged himself out of a roaring pit of darkness, and forced one eye open. The sunlight was blinding.
"Fucking hell…" he muttered groggily, putting a hand to his head. "I need a fag."
"Well, I'm not volunteering!" The boy who had spoken before, a skinny young man in his early twenties, laughed a little nervously.
Constantine rolled his eyes. "A cigarette, you fuckwit. Come on, I know I had some." He groaned, spitting to his side in a vain attempt to make his mouth taste a little less like something had died in it. "Jesus, what happened last night?"
"Well," said another voice, a woman's, "you were…"
He held up his hand. "No, let me guess. Either I was fighting a demon, or New York drink's even worse than I thought. And I don't think the second one's even possible, so I'll assume the first one. Also explains why I feel like I've been taken to the fucking cleaners, right?"
At last, he managed to focus enough to take stock of his surroundings, just as the young man handed him a packet of cigarettes. Carefully manouevering one out of the packet – an act made significantly more difficult by the fact that one arm was refusing to do as it was told – he stuck it in his mouth and dug in his pocket for his lighter.
Well, he would have done.
Unfortunately, the lighter wasn't there. Come to that, nor was the pocket.
He sat bolt upright, eyes flying wide open.
"Hey, you fucking prick! What did you do with my coat?" A nasty suspicion was creeping over him. Looking down, it was confirmed. What he had at first taken for bandages (which was bloody stupid anyway, because where would you get bandages on a two-hundred-mile stretch of fuck all?) were in fact several strips of torn fabric. Torn, nicotine-stained, tan fabric.
He was on his feet before he even remembered the chunk missing from his leg, and had already opened his mouth to swear when his body caught up with his mind and he pitched forwards gracelessly onto the sand, landing with a solid thud.
"I liked that coat," he said plaintively, when he had spat out his mouthful of sand. "That coat went through a lot with me. You can't get coats like that any more, they cost a fucking fortune."
"Would you rather I'd left you to bleed to death?" the young man – Eddie, Constantine thought, beginning by now to trawl through the memories of the day before – retorted, giving him a nasty look that rather suggested he had considered it.
Constantine considered the state of the once-coat-now-bandages, then looked up at the American with one eyebrow raised. "Quite possibly."
The woman – Odetta, or was it Detta? – stifled a laugh behind her hand. Eddie flushed. Constantine managed to summon up a dry laugh.
"Got a drink?" he asked, when he was done. "I don't know why exactly, but my mouth tastes like I just swallowed a beach. Now, whyever could that be?"
"I wonder," Odetta/Detta said dryly, a smile spreading across her face.
"Less of the lip, more of the drink!" Constantine snapped, the unlit cigarette flopping obscenely between his lips. "And for Christ's sake, can you find my lighter? I'm dying here."
Smirking, Eddie dug in his pocket, and tossed the bright plastic box at Constantine's head. It bounced off the Englishman's forehead, and he yelped.
"Oi! Careful, you fucking bastard!" Fumbling in the sand for the lighter, Constantine finally managed, hand shaking, to light his cigarette. The palm of his hand was numb – which, he thought grimly, remembering how the skin had peeled off it, was either very good or very bad indeed – but as he inhaled deeply, the familiar smell of smoke in his nostrils, he sighed with relief. "Fuck, that's better. I'll have that sandwich, I reckon, since John Wayne seems to be out for the count." He nodded to Roland, who was tossing on the sand, caught in feverishness.
"Sandwich?" Eddie said, with a suspicious level of innocence.
"Yes, sandwich."
"You mean the tuna fish sandwich?"
"Yeah, that's right."
"The twenty-first century sandwich?"
"How did you… oh, best-before. Yeah, that's right."
"The tasty, tasty absolutely non-lobster-ish sandwich that's currently making a home in my stomach?"
"Yeah, that's…" Constantine's brain caught up with his mouth, and for a moment he could only glare daggers at Eddie. "You ate my sandwich?"
To his credit, Eddie barely flinched when faced with the full force of a Constantine-glare. "Hey, buddy. You're not one of those freaks who labels their food, right? Because if you are, you musta used invisible ink."
"That's not the point, you fucking son of a bitch," Constantine retorted, taking a long drag of his cigarette. "I expect no less than a four-course meal in return, comprising at the very least a soup dish, fois gras, three types of posh bread, a joint of pork with crackling, and profiteroles to finish. Of course, there will also be claret and fine wine available, and coffee or tea to follow."
"We've got lobster," Eddie told him bluntly, and shoved a steaming chunk of meat under his nose.
Constantine regarded it with one eyebrow raised. "Hardly lah-di-dah dining at the Ritz, is it? Oh, well. I'm bloody starving." Grabbing the white meat with his burnt hand, he spat his cigarette out onto the sand and crammed the hot food into his mouth. It burnt more than a little, but he hadn't eaten all day, and he was hungry enough not to care.
"The Ritz wouldn't let you past the doorman," Eddie remarked, smirking.
"Fuck off," was Constantine's succint response, between mouthfuls. "Hey, for such violent little buggers, they don't half taste good. Compliments to the chef."
Eddie bowed, laughing. "Always good to meet an admirer."
"I wouldn't go that far. The coat, remember? Also, falling asleep on guard is a really bloody stupid thing to do. What, you never heard of coffee?"
"It's two hundred miles of dry beach," Eddie pointed out, a little defensively. "If you can see any coffee, please do point it out to me. See? Absolutely not my fault."
Constantine laughed hoarsely. "Bollocks."
2
"So… what was that?" Detta/Odetta asked, frowning, and nodded back to the gigantic carcass of the beast on the shore. There wasn't much left; what the seawater hadn't eaten away, the lobstrosities had.
"Demon," Constantine grunted around his third cigarette of the day, giving the bones a cursory glance.
"Demon," she repeated incredulously, raising her eyebrows.
"Demon."
There was an awkward pause.
"Do you… erm, do this a lot?" she asked eventually, to break the silence. Behind her, Eddie was picking up the cigarette packets scattered over the beach, on Constantine's instruction (which had involved a lot of empty threats and a lot of swearing). She was sitting in her wheelchair, one of Roland's guns on her lap, and watching the Englishman intensely.
Constantine shrugged. "It's a damn sight less boring than waiting in the dole queue," he replied with a smirk, and picked at a scab on his cheek, grimacing. "Who wouldn't want this fucking life, huh? Danger, excitement, coming face to face with the most evil fucking creatures the world has to offer, trying to bluff the First fucking Fallen… hell, just call me John Constantine, demon hunter!"
"I found this, John Constantine, demon hunter," Eddie called, holding up something which glittered in the sun. "Yours?"
"Fuck, yes!" Constantine grinned, holding his hand out.
"Nice necklace," Eddie commented with a smirk, jogging over and dropping it into the other man's hand.
"Yeah, and it was a fucking bitch to get." Constantine examined the crucifix carefully, then went to tuck it into his coat, remembered he didn't have a coat, swore, and put in in the pocket of his jeans instead. "Straight from the Vatican, this one. Blessed by fucking Benedict Sixteen himself."
"Is that your pope?" Odetta/Detta/whoever the fuck she was asked, frowning. Constantine nodded, and she managed a smile. "So you're from…"
"Ah, of course – we haven't been introduced properly, have we?" Constantine grinned. "Hi, I'm John, and I've been an alcoholic for… oh, sorry, wrong meeting." He laughed. "John Constantine, from London, 2009. Call me John."
"Edward Cantor Dean, at your service," Eddie replied, sweeping a deep bow and laughing. "New York Bronx, 1987. A pleasure, I'm sure."
"Cantor?" Constantine snorted. "And you were born after me, I guess? Heh, don't worry, sonny boy. You're still the spoilt brat around here."
"Fuck you," Eddie retorted, tossing an armful of cigarette packets at the Englishman and sitting down - but he was grinning, and he obviously didn't mean a word of it.
The woman was quiet for a moment, while both of them looked expectantly at her, and then smiled, looking down at her hands, which were twisting in her lap. "I've… been a lot of people," she said slowly, looking up at them. Eddie and Constantine both nodded, almost in unison, hanging on her every word. "I was Odetta Holmes, and I was Detta Walker, and now… now, I don't know. But I am both of them, and neither of them, and…" Biting her lip, she gave them a sudden grin. "Dean. Susannah Dean, New York, 1964. And that's thanks to you." She looked from Eddie to Constantine, looking almost overcome. "To both of you. And to Roland."
Constantine recovered first. "You're welcome," he said with a grin, doffing an imaginary cap. "Nice to meetcha, Mr and Mrs Edward Cantor Dean. A pleasure, despite the bloody stupid name."
Eddie snorted. "Hey, shut up, John. Suze was pouring her heart out there."
"Wasn't Suze I was taking the piss out of, was it?" Constantine retorted, grinning. "So, is the Lone Ranger over there a native?"
Susannah and Eddie exchanged glances. At last, Eddie shrugged.
"I guess," he said doubtfully. "I got here before Suze, and he was already there – was the one who brought me through, actually. After the rather interesting scene of me fighting mother-naked." A shadow of something like sadness crossed his face, although he was smiling.
"That must have been a defining moment in your life, Eddie," Constantine agreed gravely, "and probably the best, you kinky bastard."
"Hey!" Eddie protested, laughing. "Just because you're injured, doesn't mean I won't beat you into a pulp."
Just as Constantine was opening his mouth to make a smart reply, the gunslinger tossed suddenly in his troubled sleep. "Bert!" he shouted, almost plaintively. "Al… Alain!"
"Lone Ranger's gone doolally," Constantine commented, wincing as he dragged himself laboriously to his feet. He managed to make it almost two steps before falling this time. "Eddie, will you please shut the poor bastard up? Give him some aspirin or something."
"So," Susannah said, as Eddie hurried off to try and calm Roland down and Constantine, who was clutching at the bloody bandages around his thigh, worked himself back into a sitting position, "why do you do it?"
"Huh?"
"Hunting… hunting demons. Not sarcasm or anything, that's not what I'm after. I just want to know… why?"
Constantine – no, not Constantine. John, his name was John, should be John, with people like this - frowned. Words swelled in his throat. He wanted to tell her about Newcastle, about Mnemnoth, about how it felt to watch your life get torn apart before your eyes. He wanted to tell her about all the friends he'd lost, all the times he'd seen people dying and not been able to help. He wanted to tell her about the cancer. About the dreams. About demon blood and stillborn twins and year after year spent in Ravenscar Asylum. He wanted to tell her a lot of things he'd never told anyone, a lot of things he still didn't really want to tell himself. There was a closeness between them already, he could feel, that was far stronger than anything he'd felt with anyone before, and it scared the living fuck out of him.
At last, through lips that suddenly felt as numb as his hand, he managed to say lamely, "Somebody has to do it."
3
Time passed.
No matter how much they might wish otherwise – they were hungry, and thirsty, and all of them were wounded – they were alive. And the time passed.
And at last, days or weeks later – although John's watch was working and he swore blind it had only been ten days, it felt far longer – the day came; the day that, whether or not they knew it, they had all been waiting for.
It was the day that John could walk again.
4
Dawn came. It was bright, it was early, and it marked the end of the endless did-a-chick? did-a-chum? of the lobstrosities, which remained a profound relief.
John had one of his guns held lightly in his bandaged hand, half-empty after a night of shooting at the damn things, and his head was nodding. Behind him, the gunslinger lay still, eyes open, and stared up at the grey morning sky with unfocused blue eyes - he was usually fairly lucid by now, but weak, and sometimes, he lapsed back into delerium. His lips, dry and cracked, moved slowly in the half-darkness. The song that escaped them in a slow, steady breath was familiar to the Englishman, which surprised him.
Without really noticing, he had started singing along.
"Love, oh love, oh careless love…"
"Hey, John, some of us are trying to sleep," Eddie muttered, rolling over and glaring at the back of the Englishman's head.
"Bugger off and sleep, then, you little gobshite," John snapped back, dragged out of his half-doze himself. Now that he was fully conscious, his leg, his hand, his arm all throbbed with renewed vigour, and he grimaced. "Christ, I hate mornings. What I wouldn't give for a cup of coffee, or…" Sighing, he shoved a cigarette into his mouth, lit it, and took a long drag. Then, with absolutely no drama at all, he stood up and wandered over to the shoreline, picking up a dead lobstrosity in his good hand (which was healing, albeit slowly, and was now a mass of pus-filled scabs rather than a mass of blistered flesh), and was halfway back to where he had been sitting when a sharp twinge in his bad leg made him look down sharply.
His whoop of triumph woke up everybody. Even Roland.
"What the… Fuck, John, you're standing!" Eddie cried, leaping to his own feet. "That's… it's… fuck!"
"It's fuck?" John repeated dryly, laughing. Even the growling irritation in his belly, brought on from days of brackish stream water, Keflex, and aspirin, couldn't dampen his sudden euphoria. "Glad you think so. Certainly hurts like fuck."
And they all laughed. Even Roland, who seemed to have been dragged back to sanity (or as close as he ever got; John had his doubts about that one) for the time being, summoned a wan smile. It wasn't that funny, not really, but they all laughed. They laughed because it was a miracle. They laughed because it was a sign that things could still get better. They laughed because there was one thing left in the Pandora's box Roland had opened for all of them, and it was carried on John's legs, and it was called hope.
Even when those legs finally gave out, and he crumpled onto the sand with a hiss of pain, they all went on laughing.
"We can do this," John said eventually, when he had composed himself, and lay on the sand like he had when he'd visited Blackpool Pier as a kid. The dead lobstrosity lay on his chest, shattered claws resting on his sling, cradled in his broken arm like a massive baby. Sand filtered lazily through the fingers of his burnt hand. He was still smiling, bouyed up by sheer triumph. "We can do this. We can do this." He repeated it over and over again, like a mantra, until at last he sat bolt upright, his grin broader than ever. "Suze, Eddie can push you. Me and Roland, we'll help each other along. I'll carry him if I have to. But we're getting off this fucking beach!"
"Not like that," Roland corrected him, struggling to sit up himself. His voice was hoarse and it hurt to breathe, but at least he was himself again. "No, not like that."
"What do you mean, not like that?" John demanded, struggling to his feet again and limping towards the gunslinger.
"What I say," Roland replied calmly. "Not like that. You'll not get halfway off this beach carrying me, Constantine, and you know it."
"Fuck that!" Constantine shouted suddenly, his hand balling into a fist. "I'm not fucking staying here any longer than I have to, and nor are you, nor are any of us, we're going!"
"That's not what he said," Susannah put in placatingly.
"Fucking well sounded like it!"
She shook her head. "No, just not like that. If you push me, and Eddie helps Roland, then we'll get there quicker." Seeing the look of confusion on his face, she sighed. "I can help you along, and Eddie's in a better state to walk than you."
Still frowning, John nodded.
"All right," he said slowly. "All right." The smile began to spread across his face again, bright and hopeful. "We're fucking going!"