Okiedoke, here's the final chapter!
Characters are not mine. Haven't said that in a while, figured it bore repeating XD
Breathing was difficult. Thinking was difficult. Basically, John was finding it difficult to do practically everything as Jack continued to squeeze him from behind. Thankfully, right before John lost consciousness, the grip was released and he was dropped to the floor. The air felt so good in John's lungs as the blond drew in a deep breath, but he couldn't savor it for long. He could sense Jack coming at him from behind again, so he rolled out of the way as his attacker's fists crashed down where John's head had been milliseconds before.
He could feel the blood loss taking a major toll on his body, but John Constantine never gave up a fight that easily, and he turned around quickly so he could face, and hopefully finish, this particular fight. As he tried to move forward though, an invisible force once again pushed him back, slamming him into the wall. This time, thankfully, his feet were still firmly planted on the ground, but the force holding him in place had a solid grip around his neck. It wasn't tight enough to kill him, but it was enough that the occultist wheezed every time he tried to breathe.
John locked eyes with Jack, still in Thomas' body. The ghost was holding out his hand in a Darth Vader-esque fashion, which is what was keeping John pinned to the wall. Jack held that pose as he walked over to John's bag and began rifling through it.
After a few moments of searching, while John continued to struggle in the background, Jack pulled out a short knife John carried in his bag at all times. "It's not quite like the bullet wound that killed me, but it'll have to do."
"So this is it, then?" John rasped as he watched Jack get closer. "I thought...thought you said you were gonna make me beg."
"As much as I would love that, I don't think you're actually one to beg. You've got too much fight in you, and as long as you're still breathing, you'll fight. There isn't a begging bone in your body."
When Jack reached John, he raised the knife above his head, but the Englishman wasn't done yet. He kicked his foot out, connecting solidly with his attacker's knee. Jack stumbled back, but didn't seem as fazed or as in pain as John hoped. With a growl, Jack made another motion with his hand, and John's legs were pinned to the wall as well.
"The other wounds were for my family members. This one...this one's for me. You'll never be able to hurt anyone again, John Constantine." Jack raised the knife, and John had the briefest urge to call out for Manny's help, but before either of them could actually act, the front door was thrown open, and everyone paused. John looked over to the door, and while he would never admit it, he was glad to see Chas and Zed standing in the doorway.
Chas saw Thomas Constantine holding the knife above his son and immediately went into action. Quicker than a wink, Chas yelled and made a beeline for Thomas and knocked into the older man, and Jack's hold on John was released. John slid down the wall, but it wasn't to rest. He reached out and grabbed the knife that Jack had dropped when Chas jumped him. He heard Zed yell at him as she saw him raise the knife, but he ignored her as he reached up and cut a small slit on the side of his neck, right through the glyph keeping him from casting spells.
As soon as the glyph was interrupted, John could practically feel the spell lifting, and he immediately held out his bound hands towards Chas and Jack, who were still grappling with each other. Chas had several gouges on his arms, but John knew those would disappear soon.
"Jack Grady!" John shouted, almost no trace of the pain he was feeling in his voice at all; he spoke with authority. "As the one who named you, I command you: Leave this worldly plane and depart. Bother mortals no more with your presence, and be at peace!"
Thomas Constantine yelled, and when he did, a dark shadow came out of his mouth. Chas jerked back slightly. He hadn't realized they were dealing with a ghost. When the last of the smoky substance exited Thomas' body, the older man dropped to the ground, his eyes shut.
Once Jack was taken care of, John recited the spell to release his handcuffs. As they popped open, he leaned back against the wall, though this time it was because of his exhaustion.
"John?" Zed asked as she hurried forward, crouching in front of him. She tried grabbing his face to look into his eyes, but the surly Brit knocked her hand away.
"'M fine," he muttered tiredly.
"No, you're not," Zed replied sternly. She tried to berate him more, but John spoke over her.
"How'd you know where to find me?"
Zed huffed in frustration, but she finally answered, "Chas and I...convinced Frankie to tell us where you were."
John chuckled at the thought of that, though it soon turned into a bout of coughing. "Woulda paid good money to see that."
"Yeah well, we're gonna need to pay good money to get you fixed up," Zed snarked back. John simply ignored her insistence and looked over at his other friend.
"How is he?" he asked Chas, who was still kneeling over John's father.
Chas felt Thomas' neck for a pulse. "Unconscious, but alive."
"Stupid git," John muttered darkly. Zed looked at him in concern.
"John, we need to get you to a hospital," she said as she observed his multiple wounds and his completely bloody shirt.
"I don't need a hospital, love," John argued. "Just get me back to the mill house. We can patch me up there." To prove his point, he tried to get to his feet, but his leg wouldn't take his weight. He started to collapse, but Zed had anticipated such a reaction from both the man and his body, so she was right there to catch him. Chas quickly came over and helped support John's weight, to which the blond let out a noise of indignation.
"Stop it," Chas chided.
"I'm fine," John grouched. "I don't need help."
Chas shook his head in disbelief. "John, if you can walk from here to the door, I'll let you be," Chas compromised, letting go of the man's arm. Zed gave him an incredulous look, but Chas responded with a look of his own, assuring her that he knew what he was doing.
John got a determined look in his eye, and he shrugged Zed's arm off his shoulder, though she resisted momentarily. Once John had removed himself from her grasp, Zed stripped off her shirt, leaving a tank top on underneath, getting ready to press it on John's worst wounds as soon as she could.
The door was about ten steps away from the trio, and John took three of them before his injured leg gave out. He didn't have the chance to hit the floor though, because Chas and Zed were right next to him. Chas looked mildly impressed.
"I honestly didn't think you were going to make it even one step," he confessed. John smirked.
"Well, that's because you and everyone else has a knack for underestimating me," he quipped.
"Says the man who was just tortured by a ghost," Zed muttered. John gave her an exasperated look.
"Don't look at me like that," Zed reprimanded. "You're lucky Chas and I got here in such good time."
"I was thinking of a way out," John defended. Zed nodded patronizingly, but before their argument could continue, they heard a groan. With his friend's help, John turned around and watched as Thomas Constantine began to stir. John jerked his head towards his father, and the three of them made their way over right as Thomas opened his eyes.
"Wha—what happened?" Thomas asked as he looked around. When he spotted John, his eyes widened. "Wha-Where...Mary Anne?"
"Mum was never comin' back that way, Thomas. You're lucky we got the ghost cast out of you when we did, otherwise you would have been seein' her, but not in the way you'd bargained for. Actually, I take that back. You'd be in opposite places."
Thomas glared at his son. "Why save me then? Why not just let me die? I know you hate me, and I have no real fondness for you."
Zed's mouth dropped open slightly as she heard Thomas' harsh words to his son, but John seemed unfazed.
"Don't think I did this for you, mate. The only reason you're not dead right now is because that ghost that possessed you needed to go back to its rightful place, and that meant tradin' places with you." John made a move like he was ready to leave the house, so Chas and Zed helped him turn around. They began moving towards the front door again, but apparently John thought of something else to say. He tried to turn on his own again and his leg gave out, but thankfully his friends had a tight enough grip on him that he didn't even sort of fall. Chas and Zed gave him an exasperated look as they turned again to face Thomas.
"Why don't you say the rest of what you need to say before we start walking again," Chas suggested. "Put aside the dramatic flares for two seconds?"
"Where would the fun in that be, mate?" John replied with a quick wink before moving his attention to his father again.
"Know this, Thomas. If you try to contact me or my friends again, I will make you gone, and this time I will make sure you stay gone. That's a promise, and if there's one thing you should know about me, it's that I always keep my promises."
With that final threat, Chas and Zed finally helped John walk out the front door, leaving Thomas Constantine alone in the they reached their rental car, they paused a moment so that Zed could wrap her shirt around John's leg, making a tourniquet to try and stem the bleeding. While she did that, Chas pulled out his phone and began looking something up.
"Closest hospital is a fifteen minute drive," he announced. Zed nodded, but John shook his head vehemently, at least until the dizziness forced him to stop.
"I'm f-"
"Constantine, if you say you're fine, I'm going to have Chas hit you on the head and knock you out," Zed threatened. Chas held up a balled fist in cooperation, and John rolled his eyes. "Did you want to finish that sentence then, John?" Zed asked sweetly.
John grumbled a bit before finally muttering, "No," along with a couple choice words describing his friends, but they let the insults slide right by. As John started to get into the car, Zed reached into his pocket. "Ay," John said, jumping slightly in surprise and bumping his head. "Mind where you're reaching, love," he rebuked, rubbing his head. Zed rolled her eyes at him.
"You wish," she shot back as she held up his phone, pressing the home button. When the screen remained stubbornly black, she looked at John with raised eyebrows.
"It died."
Zed held down the power button and the phone powered to life. "Wanna try that lie again?"
"Fine, maybe I just forgot to turn it back on after I got off the plane," John defended.
"You need to keep your phone on," Zed chastised as the phone's screen suddenly started lighting up with all the texts and missed calls from Zed and Chas.
"Hey, bleeding-out John, here, remember?" Chas asked as he stuck his head out the window. "We can chew him out on the way to the hospital, but there's no point if he's not going to be around to hear it."
"I'm not dying," John grouched, though they all knew that wouldn't be the case for long if they didn't get him taken care of.
"Get in the car," Chas ordered in annoyance. Zed threw John's phone back at him, then got in on the other side. Once they were in, Chas drove off, following the directions for the closest hospital.
Zed watched as John leaned back against the seat, closing his eyes. As much as the man tried to hide it, she could tell he was tired and in pain, but she didn't even need to use her psychic abilities in order to see that at least some of the pain John was feeling went deeper than his physical wounds. She wondered what the whole ordeal had been about, but she knew that now was definitely not the time to ask, and she honestly wondered if he'd ever actually give her a straight answer.
The bumps along the road made John wince in pain as his injuries were jostled. He knew he'd lost a lot of blood; most of the wounds hadn't been that deep, but they'd been left unattended long enough, and he was really starting to feel lightheaded from the blood loss.
"We're just a few minutes away, John," Chas said, looking in the rearview mirror at his uncomfortably pale friend.
"Mmm," John replied, not even bothering to open his eyes or respond. While he was reclining there, he suddenly heard a familiar whoosh of air, and when he cracked his eyes open, he saw that the car had been stopped in time. John rolled his mostly-closed eyes, then forced them the rest of the way open and turned his head to stare at Manny, who'd taken the place of Zed.
"So nice of you to finally show up," John muttered drily. "As usual, you come after all the fun is done."
"I couldn't come help you, John," Manny said. "As much as I wanted to. I knew that you'd get out of there, and it's not like I did nothing." The angel stared pointedly at Chas, and John sighed.
"Let me guess. Good traffic? Nice weather conditions for their flight? Stuff like that? You couldn't just come and maybe unlock my cuffs, or knock down the table that had my bag on it to make things a little easier?" John was angry, and he wasn't afraid to let Manny know it, but he began coughing, and the fit cut off his tirade he had planned. When he finished hacking up a lung, Constantine gave Manny an irritated glare. "Bugger off, mate. You were no help here, and you're not gonna be any more helpful now, am I right?"
"You know, John," Manny said, his voice matching John's irritation. "It wouldn't kill you to ask for a little help in healing you. In fact, it may kill you not to ask. Remember Mexico? You didn't ask. I could have helped you."
"Yeah, but I haven't let a demon in this time, have I?" John asked with a small smirk. The weight of his eyelids was getting heavier and heavier with each passing moment, and he finally gave in and closed them, though he remained conscious.
"John." Manny's voice was impatient.
"What kind of a guardian angel are you if you can't even heal me without me begging for it?" John asked in exasperation, opening his eyes again to glare at the angel. Neither of them budged for a good solid minute.
"What happened to the John Constantine who said that mine was the kind of faith he could get behind?"
"You're lookin' at him, mate," John replied tiredly. His head lolled to the side as he tried to turn and look at Manny. "He's right here." When Manny didn't say anything, John sighed. "Look, Manny. I'm more than a little knackered, so either do what you can do for me, or let Chas and Zed get me to the hospital, because the longer I wait, I think the longer they're going to make me stay there."
"I'll take that as asking," Manny muttered, glaring at John.
"I didn't ask for anything," John insisted, though his words were mumbled and his eyes started drifting closed again.
Manny rolled his eyes at the stubborn British man, but he reached out his hand and held it over John's chest. There was a sudden, uncomfortable heat coming from all of his wounds. Constantine groaned.
"John?!" Zed's concerned voice was back, and Constantine realized that in the blink of an eye, Manny had vanished. Just like he always did.
"'M all right, love," John muttered.
"Would you stop saying that?" Zed demanded. "People who have just been ripped apart are not fine, John, and-"
"Zed," John interrupted, his voice sounding much stronger than it had since Zed and Chas had found him. "Listen, I really am fine. Or, I will be. Chas, we don't have to go to the hospital."
The driver scoffed and was about to contradict his friend, but then John pulled open his shirt, and Zed's mouth dropped open. Chas turned his head to see what everyone else was staring at, and when he saw what Zed and John were seeing, he had to pull off to the side of the road to avoid crashing their car. Chas threw the car into park and immediately turned around to face them again just as John's last wound sealed itself shut. There were still ugly red scabs where he'd been sliced open, but the bleeding had stopped, and even the scabs seemed to be reducing in their redness and inflamed state.
"What the-how-when-" Chas was floundering for words, but he stopped and looked at John before asking, "Manny?"
John nodded.
"Why didn't he come earlier?" Zed asked, still looking at John's chest in awe.
"The usual," John replied. "He can't get his hands dirty and directly influence the outcome of a situation. Rubbish, if you ask me." Before Zed or Chas could argue, John continued. "So, we can just get back to the mill house now, eh? As we can see, I'm on the mend. Apparently I'm not supposed to die today, so I think we can skip the hospital journey, don't you?"
When Chas and Zed shared a look, John took the opportunity to cut in again. "Great. Let's get going then, shall we?"
"John, don't you think that you should at least get checked out?" Zed asked.
"And tell them what, love? I'm down a pint or two of blood, but there are no bleeding wounds? Face it, we're just as good going home as we would be going to the hospital."
Chas and Zed didn't want to agree with the man, but they both had to admit he had a point. After a few more minutes of debating, John smirked as Chas pulled back onto the road and headed towards the airport, while Zed got online and booked tickets for them back to Atlanta. When John leaned back against the seat again, this time it was because he was simply tired, not because he was possibly bleeding out.
"Thanks," John muttered under his breath, knowing that Manny was listening.
"What was that?" Zed asked distractedly, still working on purchasing their tickets.
"Nothin' love," John replied. "Just tired, that's all." WIth that, John settled even deeper into the seat, intent on resting as much as he could before they got home. He knew as soon as the plane touched down in Atlanta, they'd hit the ground running, and at the moment, he could really use just a few hours of sleep.
Okay, so if you watched the legends of tomorrow episode tonight, we found out that John's father is actually dead, which I was never sure about.
Also, I was really unsure about how to have John handle his father. On the one hand, I could see him just ending his father right then and there, but I also feel like he isn't a cold-blooded killer...in most cases, anyway. *shrugs* I don't know. I could be completely wrong, but the story is over now, so that's that.
I hope you guys enjoyed :)
