tampered | Log: Complete

Log: Complete

When; Jul. 18 (night)
Rating; PG-13 (language, violence)
Characters; Elle Driver

venomouselle, John Constantine

silkcutremix, the Corinthian

bitingnightmare
Summary; A Saga continues.
Log;

Considering his silence for the past minute one can only guess what the Corinthian had been up to, making sure to stay on Elle's blind side.

The second she drew blood for the second time, he was ready. The nightmare pulled his sidearm, the balisong's handles flipping outward to reveal its blade. However, rather than lock the latch, he lunged forward and expertly whipped one handle to clamp over the Hanzo, his fist squeezing it tight to keep her blade in place. His other fist came sailing around, knuckles poised to crack against her cheek. It didn't matter to the nightmare that she was a woman, it probably mattered little to Elle as well.

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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.

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