#and he blames himself for every single person who decides they're willing to pay it only to find out later they can't

[talentforlying]

ok legends of tomorrow ended up touching on one of the most Fascinating things about constantine, which is the way he thinks about his magic, so i'm gonna ramble about that for a minute.

first and foremost, magic is a tool for survival in constantine's mind. that's it. it doesn't make him better than people, he just uses it better than most people. of course, he's arrogant about having it, and can be equal parts holier-than-thou and devil-on-your-shoulder about its usage, but it's still just part of the kit for him.

that's one of the reasons that so many other magic users hate his guts; it's why one of his monikers is "the magpie of magic". the artifacts and powers and rituals that are sacred to others, that are ways for people to commune with their faith, to extend the grace of their personal divinities upon the rest of the world - those are all just tools to constantine. divination is a pair of glasses. a binding spell is a wrench. an exorcism is a hammer. he picks up what works and leaves the rest.

the reason he took up magic to begin with was to survive. he started using magic trying to kill his abusive father, and then when he felt too bad to go through with it, to weaken him. he used magic to bolster his grifts when he was living on the streets, and he used it to set his friend chas free of his abusive mother and her familiar. eventually, he got too cocky with it, too full of himself and his talent for magic, and that's how newcastle happened, but after that he tempered himself, started looking at it as the kind of weapon that needs to never be left lying around loaded.

but because magic is what helped him to survive, he does think sometimes that it's the only thing that makes him worth living. he's tied a lot of himself up in his ability to help people after a long, long childhood of being told he ruins everything he touches. even when he fucks things up, or magical entities from his past fuck things up for him, he never blames the magic, he blames himself. magic is the only thing that makes him redeemable, in a way, for the life he's lived. for the people he's hurt.

he needs magic to stay alive these days, but he didn't always. newcastle shot him in the foot in a real big way: he was someone powerful enough to both summon a major demon and send a little girl's soul to hell. he was being yanked out of ravenscar to do magical favors for people as early as two years into his sentencing, he'd accidentally made a name for himself that could not be erased and it launched him into the viper pits of the magical world in a way that could never be undone. every job he did for people, every gun put to his head, meant more deals he had to make, more strings to pull, more people to piss off. he never had a fucking chance to get out of that world once he'd already fallen in it.

(which is why i think a hades-game hellblazer arc where he's constantly escaping hell only to get sucked back in would be thematically appropriate, because he keeps trying to leave and it keeps pulling him back.)

these days, if he were ever to lose his magic, he'd be a dead man walking. demons and angels and warlocks and magicians everywhere coming to take their pound of flesh. he owes his life to his quick and clever thinking, but he keeps his life because of magic, and that's why he'll never be able to give it up. ever.