(no subject)

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

Date: October 11, 2000
Status: Private - Zatanna and Crowley
Setting: Zee's apartment in NYC
Summary: Early-morning conversation and unexpected revelations.



John was sleeping, finally. Zatanna had no idea how the man functioned on so little sleep, especially plagued by nightmares as he seemed to be. Not that that was anything new--it had been the same in the old days. Maybe worse; it was tough to say after all this time. It didn't seem to faze him, but it didn't make him a particularly restful bedmate, either.

It just figured, she thought with a sigh, that her own occasional insomnia would kick in about the time he finally settled down. Occupational hazard in the biz, she supposed. Dad had had the same problem.

Wrapped in a slinky nightgown resurrected from the back of her closet this past week or so and a much more pragmatic, fluffy blue robe and slippers, she made herself some hot cocoa and sat down at the dining room table, glancing at the clock across the room. Nearly 4 am. If he kept to the pattern he'd been following so far, Crowley would be back soon. She wondered what exactly John's slick, sharp-witted friend got up to on his nightly jaunts in the big city, and she knew much better than to ask. He behaved himself when he was around the apartment, and that was enough.

Although she thought she'd have forgiven him quite a bit more demonic behavior than what he'd exhibited, now that she'd had a chance to watch them together. John and Crowley. A weirder, more unlikely friendship she couldn't imagine. But then again, most everything about John was weird and unlikely, and God knew he was rough on his human acquaintances. It didn't have to make sense, as long as it worked. And it did, that much was obvious.

Trust was not a thing that came easily to John Constantine. Zatanna couldn't help but envy the demon the easy camaraderie he shared with the man. She wondered if he had any idea what it meant. She wasn't entirely certain she did, but it had given her an idea.

The boys would be leaving soon, so if she meant to go through with it, it was probably just as well she was awake right now. It'd be easier to catch Crowley alone at this hour.

Dad would have said she was insane. He might be right, too. But crazy was already sleeping in her bed, and coming in from a hard night's mischief any minute; no sense worrying about it now.

---

Correction: The unexplained events mentioned in this comment occurred in Newcastle, not Liverpool.

Comments

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

Crowley let himself in silently around 4:30 in the morning, tired, and smelling of cigarettes and alcohol, pot and perfume, but feeling pretty pleased with what he'd managed to accomplish in so short a time.

He'd planned on doing what he'd been doing every morning, which was taking a long, hot shower and putting on some coffee to wait in quiet contemplation until John and Zatanna woke up. He wasn't expecting to find Zee already at the table nursing a hot drink.

"Morning," he said quietly. "Couldn't sleep?"

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

Zee blew her nose and cleared her throat, carrying on only a little bit huskily, "Well, so that was one of the big reasons. Another thing was the whole Constantine curse business. Dad used to talk about it like the family literally had bad blood, and John would sometimes say things that made it sound like he believed it, too. I figured it was a load of bunk, just an excuse for not getting too close. But later I did some serious looking into it and found out there might be something to it after all."

She flipped past several pages of relatively unimportant material until she came to a page with a hand-drawn family tree spanning more than five hundred years, filled out in various shades of ink, but with certain names scattered throughout the page highlighted in red. Excepting a few of the oldest, for whom tracking down the relevant information had proved impossible, all of them (including John's, near the bottom of the page) shared one other distinction: either a second name or a blank space next to the one emphasized, with the same birthdate and an identical date of decease.

"These are what I call the infamous Constantines," she said with a slight, wry twist of her mouth. "The whole family seems to have a penchant for trouble, as far back as I could find records, but every generation or two there's one of these guys--and gals, a few of 'em--" her fingers brushed the name Johanna, "--who really made names for themselves. All practitioners, or at least major weirdness magnets." Her lips compressed into a thin line. "If my sources are correct, by the way, an awful lot of Constantines have wound up in your old neighborhood...it took me a while and a lot of graveyard tromping to be sure, but they've got one other thing in common, too: they all had stillborn twins. Just like John. I don't know what it means, but it's definitely real."

She stopped for a moment, wondering whether a demon would judge her the way a human might, and whether she should care if he did. "Anyway, the reason I've told you all of this is because there was one other thing John and I always disagreed about. It didn't really factor into the breakup, but..."

Turning past a number of pages filled with photographs, all following the same subject over many years, she stopped at a recent 8" x 10" portrait of a young man with dark hair, canny brown eyes and a very familiar, sardonic smirk. "He has always been adamant, I mean absolutely vehement, that he didn't want kids."