tampered | Log: Complete

John remained there, blood trickling from the stinging kiss of a wound, as he watched his phantom intervene once again. He sighed, tasting the bittersweet tang, thinking he had quelled the cyclops woman's rage but fuck, this was Elle Driver. Sure he very much could bring her under his forced hypnosis again, but something let the nightmare continue fighting on his behalf.

His muscles tensed with the wolf's natural sense of evasion. His senses heightened, the animal alertness combining with his own. Large prey, fellow pack members out to oust him, his virally implanted instincts would serve him well. Never was one for sword fights or punch ups anyway.

He didn't respond to the blonde lady as he pushed forward, using his clamp on the katana for leverage. If she didn't get out of the way Elle was going to find her shoulder stabbed with the balisong's near six inches. It was an intimidation tactic in any case, something to distract her from the heel Cori kicked out for her knee.

Constantine was right about one thing; Elle Driver was less threatening on the ground.

Those six mean inches sliced rather than stabbed, she wouldn't be wearing this outfit again. Of balance a moment from the blow to the knee offered an opportunity to wrestle the katana and balisong apart. Elle would fret over scratches later as she moved away from the nightmare, opting to move in the opposite direction of the knee to avoid falling.

Warm trickle of blood down her arm beneath her jacket pooled at her bent elbow, spreading into the fabric. She looked from Cori to John. John to Cori. Fuck.

John's gaze was firm. Those eyes were muddled by the hair-trigger reflexes of the beast under his skin at the ready but they still spoke to her silently, in that sad tone:

You brought this on yourself, luv.

She was at the Corinthian's mercy, and he doubted this was something the nightmare could not handle, but still, he huffed:

"Go home, Elle." No fingers of forced hypnosis prying into her. "Before you fuck yourself up."

The katana came loose from his knife, but Cori was quick enough and well-versed in his own weaponry to simply flip the blade forward then back again, little finger knocking the latch shut. Now the knife was ready as a parring weapon. It paled in comparison to the Hanzo, but the nightmare felt he had an edge, having handled both before. Elle Driver was a snake but she had no venom at her disposal currently, or did she?

Cori placed himself between both blondes. He had confidence in their ability, certainly, but tempers flaring was bound to lead to a dog fight and he wasn't prepared to separate them then.

"Take his advice and leave," said the Corinthian, his tone as cool as the steel in his fingertips, though now the blade had been warmed by her blood. "The next time you two 'talk', it'll be with a keyboard or somewhere public where I can watch you."

Once, or so the story came to be after various retellings, Elle fought off twenty Spanish swordsmen. She cringed inside to believe that two men alone had her in a stalemate. Strike that, a nightmare and a werewolf magician, that would equal to how many? This was just fucking perfect.

"You're watching right now, Cori. Besides, John," for emphasis she pointed at the cocky English bastard with the katana, one handed and certainly not the hand that belonged to the injured shoulder, "didn't tell you about how he said I could kill him? Sure that he didn't plan on right now, fact of the matter is that this was provoked."

Constantine scowled, having removed a silkie from his pack to light up, puffing in her direction. "Elle, you have a bloody piss poor temper. No control either considering I put you down with hardly any effort. My point is I can be a bloody cruel bastard and make you do things like take a stroll out our lovely three story window here, or maybe you can take your sharp one down, an' accept the fact that I only recently controlled me own infection. You understand that, luv: Control."

The cigarette bobbed on his lips, embers glowing. "I am not going to hold Cori back from you being fucking stubborn and really fucking daft."

Whatever John said, no matter how civil, Cori had heard Elle's words loud and clear. Regardless of the magician's permission, the Corinthian had not granted his. His temper remained dangerously claim, almost lethally so. He raised his knife, the tip leveled with her one remaining eye. Forget the lecture on control, to the nightmare Elle Driver couldn't even acknowledge one basic rule.

"Over my dead body," he said to the woman as teeth eyes gnashed a low hrrsch.

She could hear John and get what he was saying, but the vibes that Cori were giving off (vibes, hell, she could smell something wicked) told her not to keep her eye from him. "Things always go so ugly in good company," she thought to herself. The balisong he held steadily at her eye level wasn't going to be ignored.

"The plan was his," she answered softly. Elle should be afraid, slight worry sparks that she isn't as she smiles. "He'll come back. Won't you John?"

"I did not plan for you to stab me in the face," John snorted, "but I fancy a game of 'Chicken' because you can't bloody listen and get a hold of yourself. S'why you couldn't break me neck when I stuck it out for you as long as it would go. Easier to kill an animal than a man, innit? Impaling a cat for a spell's easier on me conscious than an infant."

He took a moment to eye his cigarette, fingering it with a careful curiousity, as if he had been introduced to a smoking fag for the first time in his life.

"Look, Elle, you can kill me, but it's going to be later. Hell, you can kill me, but I won't teach you a soddin' thing or bother any more with your 'problem.' I'll be finished with you. You'll be the Valentine brother's problem."

Those blue eyes flicked to Cori, upnodding to the nightmare. "Cori, back off."

He turned back to Elle. "I know you can hit me, hurt me." He brought a finger to the sticky blood beading along the fresh slit. Already it was hardening into a bulby scab. A trip to the washroom after this. "Like children in a schoolyard, really. But I'll give you a shot: Can you kill me right now?"

Teetheyes narrowed at the magician for a moment. What point could possibly merit a game of chicken with a woman whose temper rivaled John's own? It was his decision though, and the nightmare always had his face as a last ditch effort. He didn't want to have to remove his sunglasses, but the longer they continued to 'duel' the more likely he'd have to use it. Like two combatants on a fucking football field, and the Corinthian felt like he was wearing the referee's whistle. He didn't lower his knife for once second, but his posture relented, backing off as John has requested. His guard wasn't down at all.

Damned if you do. And god damned if you don't. Blood from her shoulder made its way down to her fingertips. With friends like these...

The coil of anticipation, aggression and agitation and for what? Elle Driver could not kill John Constantine for the mere reason that she'd be shit out of luck. She needed release and she needed it now. A possible brain aneurysms was looming. The Hattori Hanzo sword cut over the wall in a steady slash as she turned away from both John and Cori. Steel touched against the fabric of their couch, tearing. She held the sword with both hands, probably not the wisest thing to do with an injury, but considering this was the most rash of her decisions and didn't involve death... Elle cut at it again and again, panting and burying the blade into a cushion as far as it could go.

"This...just saved...your life..." Leaning against the back of the couch, Elle lowered her head.

"Cheers, Elle."

Constantine, despite Elle's very rash personality, had to admire the woman. The magus had wielded ceremonial swords before with little success at actually defending himself with them; like a gun, they felt too heavy, too cumbersome. The Hattori Hanzo might have moved fluidly with the assassin, an extension of her swift, killing grace, but Constantine had adapted well enough over the years without weaponry. The wolf in him was defensive (and offense) enough. At base, as he watched his inanimate friend he had spent the days scratching himself upon bleed dirtied foam, he did not want to hurt her.

He still cared about her. She was just... angry.

The magus had to turn to Cori, cool. They were in need of a new couch anyway, with all the use they were squeezing out of it. It was soaked with the magus' scent, his memories, but out with the old...

"You hid a cigarette in there," said the nightmare to the magus.

Yes ever cool and observant despite his lack of words. The Corinthian was a watcher, a witness to all things, most of which he simply never talked about for one reason or another. He remembered Elle's dream, when she scrambled in filthy water, a rotten trailer home, her clawing across the carpet for something she lost. Did she even remember that incident? Cori intervened only when necessary, and now that John's ass was out of the fire he felt little need to defend their (old and very used) couch. It wouldn't have anyone to sit, eat, sleep, and do other things on it within a month anyway.

He pushed his sunglasses up.

With eye closed, Elle let their talk pass over her senses. Her insides fell from boiling anger quickly sloping downward it nearly made her sick. Lifting her head and pulling hair from her face she stood and examined the slice in her shoulder. From the wound, the California Mountain Snake assessed the damage to the couch, from the couch to the wall. Looks like some need of redecorating was in order.

"I'd like a glass of water."

John had caught her request over their mostly silent lament for the couch. He would be checking for that precious fag within the old cushions, among the other things nestled in there supposedly lost forever.

"You heard her, Cori." John's voice had lost much of its cheeky character; felt more like a funeral march, or the sidelines of a grotesque auto accident. "Fetch the poor bird a drink."

It should have been a cathartic display, but the slashing and cutting almost appeared like consumption. Cori wasn't sure if John was right about Elle, he'd seen her dreams, her fears. Perhaps the magician was right but with the wrong reasons. Still, their war of words, ego, and pomp wasn't his fight. The Corinthian played his role as self-appointed bodyguard for Constantine to a 'T' sharper than the edge of the Hanzo. Anything beyond that differed circumstantially.

Without a word he flipped the blood stained balisong shut and tucked it into his back pocket, then ventured into the kitchen. Cori returned with a glass of water filled under the faucet. He offered it to Elle.

"Thanks." The water was downed in moments nice and cold in her stomach. The katana was still buried in the couch. Elle was fine with it for now. She had left the sheath at home in haste. Looks like today was made of rash quick decisions.

"Looks like you get to go shopping." The comment wasn't to a specific person, something benign she set out there. John has the look that was the beginnings of telling a child someone had run over the family pet.

"It was long overdue," sighed John, his cigarette smouldering away in an ashtray. They were not going to eke anymore use out of that poor couch, not after the number she had done to it.

He lit two cigarettes, again, then offered to the assassin.

"Go home, Elle."

"Sure," said the Corinthian when she accepted the glass. He said nothing else as she drank, nor did he toss in a quip regarding shopping. Cori wasn't completely sure of just what John had told her regarding his necessary disappearance, but because of it really the couch was minor minor loss.

Elle set the glass down on the unscathed coffee table. She accepted the offered cigarette. "It's okay, I forgive you," she said to an apology she didn't give or get. "It's okay. I'll be showing myself out anyway."

She didn't let the change in the air bother the calm that settled over her, but it was noticeable. Was this goodbye already? Maybe she had over done it a little.

John's expression did not change. The laughing magician was a solemn, cold magus with a sharp, alert eye. The cigarette delivered, his arm returned to his side. "You can pick out the new couch."

A pause for a drag, the smoke puff clouding his visage with its craggy masculine features.

"I meant that kiss, by the way," he added.

The nightmare raised his chin, throat bare and unscathed. He didn't have a speck of blood on his person despite hitting and cutting Elle Driver. Apologies were only a courtesy at this point, the very words meaningless because they had no explanation behind them. Constantine had told him to back off, they weren't Cori's mysteries to share. He understood that, just as it was his right to not apologize for cutting her when she held the point of her sword to the old man's throat. John's were his own to give, and he rarely delivered them.

Neither did the Corinthian pay much mind to the way the magus emphasized that kiss. It brought up memories from only a few months prior, but that was one night with her under their several hundred together. Of the three, Cori could not afford to be irrational now.

The assassin didn't want a new couch. She hadn't expected any apologies for physical damage. Whatever unsaid amends Elle wanted could have been for the spell, for the impromptu lecture that hadn't allowed her to be a willing participant. Possibly an apology for leaving the City, but she did not go as far as to hope for something as ridiculous as that.

"You care about me. Is that what it was suppose to mean?" No accusation, no venom.

Elle caught a flicker of tension from Cori. Boy, John could be pretty stupid.

The gaze did not shift or shake. John's expression did not change.

"Yes."

It was all he had said. How hard was that to understand, despite his constant shit? He was not going to change. The magic man had no problem shafting the world for the greater good, but there was a small care about it. He was a cold bastard to most eyes, but as Alec Holland might have felt that one time, controlling his body for his bloody elemental conception bollocks, he was very capable of warmth.

It was rare.

Cori reclaimed his seat on the sofa arm, close to the embedded Hanzo for a reason. It wasn't so much a trust issue; he trusted them both... to have itchy trigger fingers. Elle more so than John.

Her ideals of care and love were rather tainted. The love was applied to a man who put a bullet whole into his best girl's head. Love was something she put in a bag with millions of dollars waiting to spring out of the darkness and bite.

Care? If love was so deadly and illusive what the fuck would John Constantine, conman and flea bitten magician offer up with care. The funny thing was, she found herself realizing was that she cared for these men. Elle had friends before. She trusted them, that was a whole different set of skewed points of view. Some were dead, a few living, several enemies.

Would she feel like this if they just up and left?

"I didn't ask you to kiss me. Glad you think I need to learn a lesson or two...there are better ways to get to me." Nicotine was delicious.

"You have a lot to learn."

The City was different. The enigmatic charismatic magic man that drifted in and out of whatever and whoever he felt like was not necessary here. Survival. Constantine could be something he could be be back in London:

A normal human being.

Funny that. With the wolf in his head and the nightmare next to him, Constantine felt more normal than he ever had in decades. Even the swordswoman was a comforting sight almost. Better than the bloated loads of demons he had threatened on a monthly basis as it were.

She still had a lot to learn, despite embodying the essence of woman: Hot and bloody fickle.

Exhaled cigarette smoke drifted John's way. "The good ones keep on learning. Maybe you could learn a thing or two yourself, you know?"

They had become closer, still Elle felt that John didn't know half as much about her as Cori did. And she didn't even fuck Cori.

Dirty old man. Sex fiend. Horny beast.

Those described some of the other citizens of the City, better than it did him, or so he thought.

Fickle, fickle woman. Fickle, fickle woman with her long, sharp sword.

"Old dog." John's voice hazed with the smoke. "New tricks. That sort of bollocks."

He turned away, towards the bathroom. His gait would have fit in perfectly with a funeral march, this one for the couch.

"I'm off to wash me face. Cori, see her out."

Just going to put her out for the night already? Like hell. "You're not a dog, John. Maybe that is the problem that you and I keep hitting when we try to work out the issue. I'm not a dog and neither are you. We are just people." Most of her anger had been spent but Elle raised her voice.

John was in the doorway, leering at her from it. "No, I'm just a bloke that occasionally plays one. You're not one either but you can bloody well make some use of it."

"And that's a different kind of kiss that says 'I care' to me, that attitude. This is not what I wanted." Her cigarette was dying rapidly.

John growled in his throat. "We'll piss around later, alright? I need a drink and a hot shower."

Elle growled back as an auto response. "Glad to hear it." That was what all of this shit was about. Or maybe John forgot. How long would it be before the reminders of that one mistake stopped coming?

She glanced to Cori who thus far had successfully been mimicking a statue.

Cori can mimic a statue. Constantine wanted to clean his face and deal with her later; Elle was stubborn and the magus was going to have to think of something else to keep her from making any more visits to the flat.

Pity her doing away with him would have been ineffective, curse or none.

He rubbed his temples. "Another time, sweetheart." He disappeared, shutting the door with the click of a lock. Not really effective against the likes of her, but what else could he do?

Teetheyes narrowed again at the magician who had disappeared into the bathroom before his gaze shifted back to the California Mountain Snake. Getting nowhere for no good reason other than pride, two of the same kind of charge repelling each other. It tried the Corinthian's patience.

Previously statuesque and still just as unnoticeable, his pale hand swiftly grabbed the katana by its intricate hilt. He walked briskly towards their window, up on the third floor, it was open to allow fresh air into the apartment. He didn't glance over his shoulder to see if John and Elle were still trading words, kisses, or blows, as he let go of the sword. It was a Hanzo, built to perfection by a legend. A simple three story drop shouldn't even be enough of a test for such a sword. A test of Elle's attachment to it on the other hand...

Elle turned away from the closed bathroom door to the couch. "Cori, gimme--" He was standing close to the window. The gleam of the long, ritualistically shined blade dazzled her vision briefly. There wasn't even time for her register what was going on until it dropped from sight. Her heart fell into her shoes as a scream came rolling from her lips.

That sword in near perfect condition had been sitting in a drunk's trailer waiting for her. That sword was the best of Budd. That sword was going to kill Beatrix Kiddo. That sword fell three stories to the City street. That sword may be in some chump's hands.

"You really shouldn't have come over like that," said the Corinthian. It was all he said.

The sound of his voice touched her ears only slightly above the roar from the rush of blood. The assassin was out of their apartment, running to fetch the sword. The Corinthian and John Constantine could and would leave, she had no power over their fate, the katana on the other hand was within her care. Elle wasn't on ground level searching for long. The two were reunited.

He shut the window and locked it. He shut the door and locked that too, both latch, dead bolt, and chain. The Corinthian wasn't going to risk letting her come back into the apartment, though she could just as easily use her sword on the door. Such a scenario meant she would have to face the nightmare one on one, he didn't want that. He didn't want that more than he didn't want to have to send her on a chase for her own sword, more than he didn't want John locked up in the bathroom. It should have been a night for thought, not conflict.

As a precaution, he pulled over one of those kitchen chairs closer to the front door, removed his knife and cigarettes, then sat. Ever the first line of defense. Cori lit a much needed cigarette, finally one for himself, and it was well earned.

Log: Complete

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