A/N: Oddly enough, ownership of the canons hasn't passed over to me since I wrote the last chapter, and they still belong to Stephen King and Vertigo Comics.
Alternative to 'sheer bloody-minded stupidity' in the last section of this chapter, by the way, is 'duct tape'. I firmly believe in the second one.
Currently unbeta'd. I swear to God, I will get around to editing this stuff some day. (Actually, I already have, so if the timescales don't quite seem to add up, it's because I mucked around with the timing of the last chapter before I wrote this one)
Enjoy!
1
It didn't seem quite such a miracle any more.
No, not at all.
His leg hurt like all fuck, just enough feeling had come back into his thickly blistered hand that it was agony to push against Susannah's wheelchair, and his throat felt as though something had died in it. Considering how he gulped at the air, lungs burning, that wasn't such a distant possibility.
And he was tired. No, more than tired, he was fucking knackered. The going was tough, and the tough didn't have much of a chance to get going. Susannah helped as best she could, but the way up into the hills was steep and rocky, and John suspected that he would have had trouble with it even if he wasn't a crocked-out old cripple with smoker's cough. Eddie certainly seemed to be finding it nearly as difficult, although that couldn't be helped by the fact that he was mostly carrying Roland, who was in much the same state as John, plus chronic hunger and a fading fever.
Sweat plastered John's shirt to his chest, sticking his blonde hair into lank, filthy clumps and soaking into his straggly two-week beard. He was aching for a cigarette, but after Eddie had pointed out to him that they had no way of knowing when they might get more, he was limiting himself to five smokes a day. Saving it. Savouring it. The ragged dogend left over from their last stop was still shoved behind his ear. He must look, he thought with a choking little laugh, more like a tramp than most tramps he knew.
"What's funny?" Eddie asked breathlessly, glancing over his shoulder at John, who shrugged.
"Fuck all, mate. Hey, you're up top there – how far till we can stop?"
"Further than you'd like," Eddie gasped back, smiling bitterly.
"Oh, bloody brilliant." Setting his feet against the largest rock he could see, John pushed as hard as he could. It took Susannah's wheelchair over the scree-covered little ridge he had been having trouble with; it also threw him completely off balance, and, because he was still hanging onto one of the chair's handles for dear life, overturned the chair as well.
John swore. That was the third time something like that had happened that day, and it wasn't yet noon.
Loose stones clattered under his feet as he struggled, one-handed, to right both of them. The chair weighed about as much as Susannah did, and he was exhausted.
The chair got halfway upright, wobbled crazily on one wheel for a moment as Susannah shifted her weight to try and take it the rest of the way, then abruptly righted itself, landing upright with a jolt. John, however, didn't follow it.
"We're never going to fucking make it at this rate…" he muttered, collapsing back against a rock. Those, at least, abounded here, if nothing else did. "Fuck it. Oi! Eddie! It's time for a break, with tea and biscuits all round!" Pulling the dogend out from behind his ear, he stuck it into his mouth, lit it, and took a deep, rattling breath of smoke. "This place makes Ravenscar look like a holiday camp," he grumbled. "Burtons for the masochists."
"Patience is a virtue," Susannah reminded him, rubbing her arm where it had struck the hard rock.
"Patience is waiting half an hour for the bus," John grumbled. "This isn't patience. This is bloody stupidity."
"Well, you can always go back to the beach," Eddie said, his voice unnaturally bright, stumbling back and helping Roland down before he collapsed back next to John.
"Not bloody likely. I may be stupid, but I'm not fucking suicidal, mate." Flexing his hand, which felt worse than ever, John took another long drag of his cigarette. "Nah, I'll tell you what's really stupid. Coming here. Now that's bloody stupid. Fucking demon. Fucking man in my fucking head," he added, glaring at Roland, who only shrugged calmly. "What the fuck's your deal, anyway?"
"I seek the Tower," Roland replied, when the pause had gone on long enough for it to be obvious that John had meant it as an actual question, and hadn't just been ranting. "That much, I told you, set my watch and warrant on it."
"Really?" John rolled his eyes. "Well, 'scuse me. I reckon that must've got lost in all your blathering about Eddie-boy and the wonders of a biro – well, that and that you were rifling through my head. Slightly distracting, you know, trying to whisk thoughts out of the way and hold up an illusion at the same time."
That was enough to bring Roland up with a start. "You were…"
"Yeah," John cut in, "and trust me, you're lucky I did. Some stuff in there… well, you really don't want to see it, okay?" Newcastle, for example – that much, he did remember clearly of the events which already seemed almost like a dream; the gunslinger had been perilously close to unearthing Newcastle in his memories. "So, you're looking for a tower. And a tower requires you to invade people's personal space and go rooting through their heads?"
"Not a tower," Roland said, "the Tower. The Dark Tower."
John snorted. "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came, huh?"
It took him a moment to realise that all three of them were staring at him like they'd just seen a ghost. Sadly enough, the experience of being stared at like that wasn't really new to him, but hey, c'est la vie.
"Yeah? It's Browning. Robert Browning. O-level English Lit, all of six months before I dropped out. I only remember it 'cause, at the end, the whole bloody class – including me, by the way – started sniggering when… oh, what was the line?" He smirked. "Oh, yeah… Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set/And blew, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came. Not really all that funny, but you know kids. Dirty-minded little buggers. Oi, Roland, you okay?"
Roland stared at him, those ice-blue eyes wide. "Tell it, sai Constantine," he commanded. "All of it you can recall, every word. Tell it."
John blinked. "I just did. Jesus Christ, Roland, I don't know the rest of it – it's been forty-odd years since I even glanced at it! Um… something about an old guy who lied a lot, and a horse that looked dead. And then he's remembering people… um, Giles was one of the names, I think, and the other was… erm… Christ, I can't fucking remember, all right? Charles or Carl or…"
"Cuthbert?" Roland suggested, his expression earnest, somehow more focused than usual. His ice-blue eyes were fixed on John's sea-coloured ones.
"Maybe… yeah, maybe." Taking one last drag of his cigarette, John flicked it aside, grinding it out with the heel of his good foot. "Is it that hard to accept that I just can't fucking remember some poem I studied for two weeks when I was a kid? Lot of water under the bridge since then, Roland, mate. Most of it filthy." Coughing into his hand, he struggled upright, face set, and took hold of Susannah's wheelchair again. "Okay, kids. Breaktime's over. Just chuck your milk cartons in the bin on the way over, won't you? I don't want to have to tell you again."
"Milk cartons?" Eddie grimaced. "Hell, what I wouldn't give for a milk carton!"
"Even an empty one?" John laughed, doing his best to ignore the throbbing, red-hot pain in his leg. "Get yerself up and over that ridge, you buggers, before I decide it's not worth it and leave the whole damn lot of you behind."
Diplomatically avoiding the fact that John Constantine probably couldn't leave a drunken snail behind at the rate he was going, Eddie and Roland stood up.
"I'll take Suze," Eddie said, putting his hand on John's shoulder. "The next bit looks harder."
"Yeah, that's what she said," John responded, automatically, and shook the young man's hand away. "Joking aside, mate… why the fuck should you? I'm not a bloody cripple just yet, ta very much."
"Soon will be, if you keep this up," Eddie muttered.
"Hey, I heard that!" Eyes narrowed, John took firm hold of the wheelchair again. "I'm fine, all right? I've had worse. Let me tell you about Calibraxis some time."
"I don't give a flying fuck how bad you've had before!" Eddie yelled suddenly in his face, snapping at last. "I don't give a shit about Calibraxis, whatever the fuck Calibraxis is! You said we were being stupid coming up here, well, you ever fucking think you might be being stupid?" His face was twisted up with frustration and rage, his eyes blazing like twin suns. "Give it up, Constantine! You're not o-fucking-kay, all right? Stop fucking yourself around like this! Move over, I'm taking Suze!"
"Like fuck you are," John said bluntly, putting his hand flat on the young man's forehead and shoving him to one side. "Stop acting like I'm going to fall over any minute, okay, Eddie? I'm fine. Fucking knackered, that's all. And so are you, don't fucking deny it. So are all of us. So you look after yourself, and I'll look after myself, and the Lone Ranger can look after himself, and we'll be out of this shithole before you can say Bob's your uncle."
"Bob's your uncle," Eddie said, and laughed. It wasn't a happy laugh. "We out yet, John?"
"Doesn't fucking look like it, does it?" John glared at him, closing his hand into a fist around the handle of Susannah's wheelchair, and stumbled on up the steep slope. "Well? You coming?"
"Constantine." Roland was on his feet now, his step unsteady as he pushed himself over to the Englishman's side on legs stiff from misuse. "Let Eddie take the chair. What is it you fear?"
"Hell, the Devil," John replied sharply, "and sod all else." With that, he turned his back on the gunslinger, and forced himself a few more steps, forcing down the pulsing, screaming pain in his legs.
Roland watched him for a moment, cool blue eyes expressionless. "I had not taken you for a fool, Constantine," he said eventually, starting up the rocky hillside himself.
"Really? Well, that makes me feel a whole fucking load better." John half-smiled, snorting. "Most people don't take me for anything but. Tell me what you take me for, then, oh wise one."
"A brave man," Roland replied smartly, ignoring the sarcasm which dripped from the other man's voice, "sly, quick-witted, less sure of himself than he lets on. I take you for a good man to have on your side, a bad man to make an enemy of. I took you, from the start, for a man who has made some poor choices in his life, lost more than he thought possible, given up on several occasions, but stubborn enough to rise up and keep on fighting. I take you…" He paused briefly, catching his breath and leaning for a moment on a protruding rock, and then set his jaw and went on walking. His missing fingers throbbed. "I take you for a gunslinger, John Constantine, that's what I take you for."
John was silent for a long moment, toiling on with his blonde head bowed and his makeshift bag, filled with cigarettes, bullets, and everything else that had been in his coat pockets, striking against his hip with every step he took. Then he laughed, a short, barking laugh that had nothing to do with humour.
"Nice speech, mate. Really. You should join a debating society or something." Snorting, he exhaled slowly, then, still holding Susannah's wheelchair in his blistered hand, turned to face Roland, who was by now maybe a foot or so behind him. "But you take it completely wrong, mate. I'm not a gunslinger. You don't fucking know me. Don't think otherwise, just because you poked around in my head for a few hours. Believe me, if I'd wanted to, I could have made you believe I was a fucking three-legged donkey. I learnt a hell of a lot more from you than you did from me, you self-absorbed, pompous son of a bitch, and I have one word for you; Jake."
The gunslinger froze midstep.
Eddie blinked.
John just smirked, satisfied that he had made an impression, and went on pushing Susannah up the hillside. Or at least, he tried to.
"I don't think so, John," she said, looking up at him. Her hands were squeezing the brakes until the knuckles went white, and there was a great deal of Detta Walker in her smile. "Give Eddie the chair."
2
So it was that, when they crested that hill, it was Eddie who was pushing the wheelchair; Eddie who carried Susannah on his back when the going was too tough to ride; Eddie who lagged behind, forcing the unwieldy metal over loose scree and slippery stone.
He never complained, of course. Eddie Dean wasn't really the complaining sort. Nor was John, who continued to stumble onwards, a few paces ahead of the others, his leg screaming bloody murder at him with every step he took. Nor was Susannah, whose entire left side was a mass of bruises from her fall earlier.
Nor, indeed, was Roland Deschain. Still, though he might not have been complaining, every tense line of his body told that what John had said, that one word, had struck him deep. Guilt and anger and sadness swirled in him like a maelstrom, though his face remained as stony as ever.
Part of him still held out hope that Constantine had plucked the name from something he had said while he was delerious, but the greater part of him, which had seen magic before and could read the man better than either of them realised, knew that was not the case. And after all, what did it matter? However the man knew that name, it was what it meant that was important. And what it meant was betrayal. Treachery.
What it meant was that, once again, he had let somebody fall into the abyss.
He was so focused on these thoughts, and on navigating the difficult paths into the hills, that he didn't even notice Constantine come up beside him until he heard the other man's voice in his ear.
"Look, mate, I'm sorry."
Roland said nothing. What, after all, was there to say?
Constantine sighed. "I was pissed off, okay? And when I looked… well, you know, you were rummaging through my head, I think it's perfectly fair if I rummaged through yours."
"Fair has nothing to do with it," Roland said bluntly.
"No, well, fair never does, does it? I didn't mean to go that deep, but if you lay yourself wide open like that and pop up in my head, you're fucking asking for it, okay? Don't do that again. I've got enough trouble of my own, without accidentally stealing yours as well." He paused, well aware that he was being a prick, and trying to fool himself and the world that he didn't care. After a moment, he sighed. "But… look, Roland, I know how it feels. When you try and save someone, and you think you have, and they fall…" He closed his eyes for a moment, sighing. "It happened to me, all right? In Newcastle. A long, long time ago, when I was young and stupid and far too fucking self-obsessed. And you're left holding their hand, but there's nobody attached to it."
He went quiet for a moment, then shook his head, as though he was dispelling a particularly nasty thought. "Point is, I lost Astra to Hell, and you can't take that back. But I was thinking about it, and I reckon, if I can remember the spell… well, I reckon I can bring this Jake kid back. In one piece, even, if you're lucky," he added, with a grin which Roland felt was rather out of place. "But we're just as likely to end up with a nine-headed demon-rat from the Inner Circle, or nothing at all, unless there's a place somewhere around the corner that sells ancient tomes of things man was not meant to wot of. Think about it, okay?"
3
Roland thought about it. Deeply, and at length, Roland thought about it.
4
"Stupid," John muttered, tugging himself over a large boulder that filled the path. "Stupid, stupid, stupid. John Constantine, you are one stupid bugger."
His hand – the one not bound up in a sling – was shaking. Despite his earlier resolution, he'd lit up a cigarette to calm his nerves, and had no doubt that he would be unable to resist having another one soon after. In a way, it had worked for a while – the coughing fit engendered by struggling up a rockslide while smoking would have been sufficient to take anyone's mind off all but how to breathe. In another way, though, he was absolutely fucked.
It felt, he decided, altogether too much like waking up after a night on the tiles, complete with splitting headache and the vague taste of vomit. Mostly, though, what made it feel like that was the questions; did I really just tell that son of a bitch about Newcastle? Did I really suggest raising a kid from the dead? Did I really?
Only thing was, in this case, he didn't have the excuse of having been offhis head at the time. He couldn't even blame it on the pills, since Roland had popped the last of those days ago. He didn't have an excuse. Hell, he wasn't sure he even had a reason, except that he'd known exactly how bad saying that name would make Roland feel, and he'd said it anyway.
"Fucking stupid bastard," he muttered again, collapsing on top of the boulder and reaching down his good hand to help Eddie lift the wheelchair over the boulder.
"What? What did I do?" Eddie asked, aggrieved.
"Absolutely nothing." John grimaced, hauling at the bloody chair. He'd seen cars lighter than that thing. "Hey, Suze, can you give that wheel a boost?"
"Sure." She smiled at him, reaching over Eddie's shoulder to push at the wheelchair. "John?"
"Yeah?"
"Who's Jake? And why did it make Roland go so… distant, when you said that name?"
John considered this for a moment. It was better than thinking about the white-hot pain shooting up his arm from the pressure on his burnt hand.
"Not really my story, is it?" he concluded, when the wheelchair had thudded down on the other side of the boulder and Eddie was helping Susannah back into it. "I mean, John Wayne there, he's the strong silent type, isn't he? But I probably shouldn't have gone rooting around in his memories anyway, even if he was trying to do it to me, and I'm definitely not sharing out what I learnt there. It's like the difference between… oh, I don't know. Like the difference between… between seeing somebody naked and taking photos of it. Make sense?"
"I guess so." She shrugged as they started out again. "He'll tell us when he's ready, is that what you mean?"
"Something like that. Sure you don't want me to take over for a bit, Eddie?"
"Don't start, John."
"Fair enough."
5
They had been walking for five days, and John's leg was starting to make ominous clicks with every step, when at last they reached the top of a hill that looked like every other hill, and Eddie whooped.
"Hey! Roland! John! Take a look at this!"
Susannah, who was clinging onto his back again, rested her chin on his shoulder and sighed with relief. "Oh, thank God," she said fervently. "Thank God."
"Fantastic," John added brightly, staggering up alongside them. "Wonderful. The salad bar is officially open. If they'd install a pub around here, it'd be even better."
Roland said nothing, but as he lurched over, leaning heavily on Eddie, he smiled.
Together, they stood on the rocky cusp of a barren hill, and looked down at salvation. A tangle of weeds, stretched thin over the rocks, fell down in a curtain of grey-green and yellow on the opposite bank of the valley, clinging onto the sheer rock like reluctant climbers. Hardly dinner at the Ritz, John thought, grinning. But, looking over at Eddie's hands, where the sores of malnutrition were cracking at the skin, and considering the growling explosions the Keflex had brought on in his belly, he'd rather have those than a meal for twenty at a steak house.
And he'd much rather have slutgrass and weeds than he would lobster.
Right now, though, he was fairly sure the only way he would get down that hillside would be by falling. Sighing, he sat down heavily, deftly rescued the dogend from behind his ear, and lit up (an operation which remained the only thing he could reliably do left-handed). "Well, end's in sight now, kiddos. Time for a break while the thought's still fresh."
"John!" Eddie protested, but he was too happy at the sight to be really irritated at anything. Lifting Susannah down next to him, he collapsed against a rock, next to the Englishman.
"Want a fag?" was John's only answer. "Come on, it's a celebration. We might not have a fatted calf – if we did, we wouldn't be so fucking buggered up – but we'll make do, right? So, want one?" Grinning, he reached into the sling-bag made from the remains of his coat, pulled out his current half-empty packet of cigarettes, and proffered them to Eddie first, then Susannah.
"I don't smoke," she said, and gave him an almost apologetic smile.
"That kind of thing's fucked me over too many times before," Eddie put in, shaking his head.
"Oh, fair enough. More for me." John grinned wider, took a long drag of the dogend in his mouth, and examined his hand. More than a fortnight from the battle on the beach, it was still blistered and raw, but the skin was starting to grow back, and, although it hurt like hell, he could close a complete fist – which was a significant improvement. The scar tissue was raw and purplish, and threatened to fuck up his hand movement, he realised, if he wasn't very careful. His broken arm was still, well, broken, and it still throbbed with every step he took, but it had turned out to be less badly fractured than he had thought, the bandages Eddie had put around it to hold the bone in place seemed to be holding – although the journey this far hadn't done it much good – and the bone was beginning, slowly but surely, to knit itself together. Even his leg, under the span-wide hole in his jeans, was starting to sort itself out.
He could have felt pretty satisfied with the way things were going, if only his coat had started regenerating along with his body.
"So, once we're out of this shithole, where are you going?" he asked idly after a moment. "I mean, what's this Tower bullshit all about?"
Silence, just long enough to be uncomfortable. Roland, perched on a rock a few feet away, stared at the expressionless sky, and said nothing.
After a moment, Eddie cleared his throat. "Way I understand it," he began hesitantly, glancing at the expressionless gunslinger as though seeking approval, "it's what holds the universe together."
"I thought that was sheer bloody-minded stupidity," John muttered, scratching at his bearded chin, and sighed. "So, it holds the universe together. Let's assume that's right. Still doesn't explain why you feel the need to go and fuck around with it."
"I will climb to the top," Roland said, without turning around. His voice was grating and rough. "The top of the Dark Tower. What do you suppose dwells there, Constantine? I will climb to the top, and I will question the Creator, if there is one, and I will find out the reasons, if there are reasons. That is my quest. That is what I seek."
John considered this. It sounded heroic. It sounded romantic.
It sounded, in short, bloody stupid.
He laughed. "Jesus Christ, you are one hell of an idiot, Deschain. Even if there is a Creator, why the hell would he want to talk to you? Odd thing about gods and demons and suchlike, you know… omnipotent, omniscient beings tend not to have much truck with diplomatic negotiation. Especially not with us human losers." Still flexing his burnt hand, he clicked his neck thoughtfully from side to side. "If you find the Dark Tower, if you get to the top, he'll throw you out on your arse like the bouncer for the celestial nightclub. Then what? Start all over again?"
Roland narrowed his eyes, but didn't turn his head.
"If I must."