#that's my fucking constantine right there

[foolishaetherguardian]

“… and be sure to report any further unusual tectonic activity. Dismissed.” Bats finally finished the report. Why was he here? Right the first five minutes had been about the possibility of magic having been used. This really should have been an email he just ignored or left Zatanna to deal with. Bunny girl was better at feigning interest than he was after all. “John, Zatanna if you would both remain.”

Damn the brat. Why did the inter dimensional brat decide today to bug him? John knew he could pop up at literally any point in time like it was normal. It was revenge. For what offense he didn’t know. Or maybe he hadn’t even done it yet. Stupid fifth dimensional traveling.

“… stantine. CONSTANTINE.” “Bugger off.”

“John.”

Shit. Okay first names were bad with the cape. Like find a new existence and disappear off the face of the planet bad.

“Right sorry mate just, distracted.”

“The fact that an eldritch horror from who knows where was hanging off you like a scarf actually had some effect on you? You must be getting sentimental in your old age.”

“Love we both know that if it was weighing on me I wouldn’t be around to talk. You wouldn’t be either.” John had some respect for Zatanna. She was a good mage. Understood the proper importance of a cigarette and a blokes need to keep up appearances. Usually at least. “Got a cig?”

“Those will kill you someday.” The disapproval and sarcasm rolled off her tongue as smooth as the honeyed lies the lass would use with magic. John wanted to quip back but settled for a death glare as the big bad bat threatened to perfect his own death glare on him. Why did the bat have to be such a stickler? Rules rules rules. Rules don’t save lives when they shackle you from good. Damnit. Why were all the big dogs so damn… good?

“Hrm.”

Right the bat. The bat that right now probably wanted to string him up by his ankles and let the archdemons sort out how to cut him into nice even thirds if his damned rules didn’t stop him. Why did he have a cigarette?

“Uh bats?”

“Hrm.”

Just as loquacious as always that cape. Keep that thought inside. Definitely keep the thought inside. Especially as you take that stupidly expensive cigarette.

“Thanks. I could really…” The cig was hard. It was candy. The bat almost had an actual expression under the cowl, there was the slightest tightness of the lips. A smirk. He was smirking. ”You know what? Fuck you.” The fake cig crunched in his mouth. It actually tasted pretty good. Not that he was going to ever let anyone know that. “I’m going home. Hopefully to eat my leftovers. The brat isn’t a threat. If you want to know just ask the lass about the between or the Infinite. Or better yet go ask Grundy about The Protector.”

God he needed a drink. And a smoke. And maybe another drink. John was pretty sure that his food was gone too.

“How old is he?”

Dammit lass. Why did you always know just what to say? “14…. I think.” John replied stopping at the door to the stupid tech magic tubes that Supes had insisted on. “He’s some other world’s hero.”

The lass had to think on that one. Not every day you meet an alternate. “Is he… okay?”

“He’s doing alright. Insists his parents couldn’t understand though, so he always carries it alone. Protects people that way, or so he says.” John finally let himself laugh. It was a fitting description of most of the capes who worked with the league. And himself. If he was generous. Pity he couldn’t afford to be generous with himself anymore. “I’m just his fallback. And debit card.”

“It would do him some good to meet others. If you can invite him to the next picnic.”

John blinked slowly. Then turned. The Bat had a smile. A proper smile. Soft and understanding. How? The man was almost certainly just a mass inhuman muscle and brains with the bare minimum speech capability bundled into a bat suit. “I’ll make sure to offer it. But he’s still weird about his… abilities.”

“I’ll get him added to the budget.”

“Budget?” Now this was sounding promising. While the league did pay it wasn’t much more than rent for the closet he used to access the house.

“For young heroes or metas under league guidance. One of the points Bruce Wayne insisted on when he decided to find us officially. So they have a safe place.”

“I’m a safe place?” John’s incredulity was finally outweighing his paranoia. A hefty feat considering even he considered himself to be 90% paranoia by volume.

“Sure sounds like it mate.” Only the lass could say something so damning like it was a good thing.

“{Guess so}” Why did he understand the grunt? Are the grunts some secret dad cape speak? Why was he suddenly qualified for…. Nope. Nope. He’s going home. Sleep liquor and maybe a bit of tele. No he wasn’t tearing up. And no one could see his face to tell you otherwise.

Danny has met Constantine.

Constantine has a coat.

Danny regularly pops out of it to say hi or when Constantine calls him for something.

Nobody in the JL knew this, so when Danny popped right on out in the middle of a meeting.

Well.

[talentforlying]

everyone gather round and look at how fucking stupid my guy is.

[vwoop-prince]

YJ S3 Dick, still in the midst of his fever dream, hides underneath the 'souvenir' instead of behind some boxes, and accidentally opens the airlock trying to take care of the Parademons. The others get it to close... but not before Nightwing is thrown into space.

There, he stares at the ship holding his friends and mentors. There, he wishes more than anything that he can, somehow, survive. There, he tries to live, if only so his family don't have to bury him like Jason.

There, Nightwing dies, wanting to save everyone, even with the cold seeping into his bones far too quickly for a regular section of space.

Then, Dick opens his eyes to... Earth? There's a little house, and grass, and trees, but there's a bubble of green over it all. Outside of that green was an entire castle, one that looked like it should have far more support beams than it does for even a hope that it stays standing.

And the sky was swirling shades of that same green. It makes him think of Lazarus.

"Well, that's something you don't see every day." He whips his head behind him, a bit too fast for Earth's atmosphere, but it doesn't hurt him. Past the bubble of green was a blue-skinned adult in purple robes, the insides of a grandfather-clock fitted inside their torso, and a black staff with a stopwatch on its top. Beside them was a man with snow white hair, glowing green eyes, a crown of frozen fire dancing above his head, and the most galaxy-like cloak Dick's ever seen clasped to his shoulders. He's wearing... a hazmat suit? Maybe? The twinkling stars and odd lighting of wherever he is were giving him a bit of a headache.

But in front of those two, within this bubble, was...

"DICK!" Wally shouted with unrestrained glee, a blur overtaking his spot for barely a heartbeat before Dick's stuck in a crushing hug that he reciprocates once his brain stops feeling like its melting.

He doesn't know how long it took for them to calm down, but the man with the crown spoke up after a time, as Wally was still wiping their faces free of tears. "Welcome to the Infinite Realms, Nightwing." Dick barely even registered that he was still wearing his suit, but now it felt suffocating. "I suppose you're the one Clockwork was holding out for; There shouldn't've been enough Ectoplasm around you to form a Ghost, and your physical body's still in space. I can see why you like this one, though, Clockie," he states flippantly, turning to his companion. Almost like he didn't expect Dick to pay too close attention to what he was saying.

"Either way, there's two options for you." The man didn't let Dick swallow his tears and question anything. Dick's not sure if he's grateful or not. "First: Stay in the Realms permanently. You'll see Kid Flash whenever you want and learn to be a Ghost with the denizens of the Realms. Maybe find your parents."

"But..." Dick pulls away from Wally, keeping him at arms length, eyes flitting between them. The two outside the bubble were distinctly... ghost-like, so the mentions of 'Ghosts' make sense. But Wally looked... alive. A bit pale, a bit thin... but alive. Dick can't see any of his own skin to see if it was blue or tinted that way, but the Nightwing symbol on his chest kept flickering between its own blue and this 'Realms' green. "But--What about the others? What about you? Why can't you come home?" The last two, he focuses on Wally, because now he can feel a heartbeat beneath his gloves. Wally's alive. He's alive.

His friend just shrugs. "Something about their portals not fit for the living? I'm meant to wait for someone to figure out a permanent portal, but they won't tell me how long that'll take." Wally glares at the... 'Ghosts'? There was a heat to it, but it also seemed like this was a well-worn argument.

"The permanent portal was always an 'if', Wallace West. And that is entirely dependent on if Richard Grayson takes the second option," the clock Ghost--Clockwork?--speaks up. But instead of the adult Dick was expecting, there was an elderly Ghost in their place. Still with the time motif. Was that... more literal than Dick took it?

"Yes, the second option..." The crowned man glares daggers at Clockwork. The temperature dips below comfortable. Dick tries to blink the spaceship and stars out of his sight, withdrawing his arms from Wally to try and warm himself. Tries to remember he's not in space. "The second option is that you return to your body... changed. You'll be able to protect Earth better, stay with your alive family, save the Lost Ones... for a price."

Dick doesn't know if he should ignore the plural in 'Lost Ones'. He doesn't know if he's reading too much into how, in this Realm, apparently only his parents were able to be found. Where's Jason? He doesn't dare hope, but...

"What's the price?"

The man smiles and a ring of blue forms around his waist. It splits in two and travels up and down his body, replacing the cloak and whatever clothes he was actually wearing with a NASA shirt, worn jeans, and red sneakers actually duct taped together. The blue tint to his otherwise tan skin fades completely. His hair turns black. His eyes turn blue.

He was like a taller, slightly slimmer, way hotter version of Bruce.

The man walks through the bubble, but doesn't disturb the grass beneath his feet. "You become the Ghost King's vassal." Dick flinches away and almost hides behind Wally. "Not my idea! But, well... it is either this, or your permanent death."

"What does becoming a vassal do to him?" Wally asks, gently trying to stop Dick from breaking his ribs with how tightly he was hugging himself. Does he even have ribs?

"He gains my powers. Ice, electricity, invisibility, intangibility, flight... He becomes a Halfa. He becomes what I was, in life. Just... needing to make offerings to me, now and then. Something like that, at least. I give him powers, he gives me a chunk of, I don't know, chocolate once a week. Like a warlock."

Wally keeps talking to the man, keeps getting information that he knows he should pay attention to, but something in his chest screams to accept this deal, and he can't focus on anything else.

Nightwing can protect. He can return to life and go back to Blüdhaven, be the Vigilante they need. He can visit Gotham every now and then, help with cases and stop criminals from harming others. He can see his brother. He can see his friends. He can eat Alfred's cookies, and have little get-togethers with Babs and the Team--hell, he can argue with Bruce.

And all he has to do is... give an offering to this guy? The Ghost King? Every once in a while?

"There's no other price?" The King turns his attention to Dick. His eyes had shifted to a blue-green that almost hypnotize him. The green swirls, the blue forms and melts like snowflakes, and he can't look away.

He takes another step forward and Wally steps to the side. There was familiarity between them. Wally deferred to him. Dick can't quite tell why. Though, with how Wally hasn't once looked at Clockwork, maybe it's because he's... grounded? Are all speedsters in trouble with, what, the Ghost of Time? That... actually makes perfect sense.

"I'll be honest, Nightwing: You've impressed me." The weight behind the King's words lifts the ones that've been on his shoulders since he was nine. "You remind me of myself. Maybe, if I wasn't a Halfa... If I had a mentor... I could've been like you.

"Despite Clockwork's insistence over the years that I get back in touch with the living, I've held off. When he eventually suggested that I help create another Halfa, I locked him in his tower for twenty years. I didn't want anyone to go through what I had. But, now... I see that you won't. You can't. Even if you hide this deal--our shared powers... You'll still have people by your side. Strong people. Smart people. You can already handle yourself. And I'd love to see what you can do--who you can save--with my help."

There was maybe two inches between their faces when the King finishes speaking. Dick roves his eyes across the other's face, trying to find the common and familiar ticks that show lies and deceit and manipulation. All he finds is sincerity and genuine care.

Wally plays with his fingers from the corner of his eye, gaze hopeful as he looks between the two of them. Wally, who was alive and breathing and able to leave if he accepts. Eventually. Somehow.

Dick Grayson sends a quiet apology to his parents and hopes they will forgive him for being a little bit selfish.

"I accept."

He flings his eyes open. Above him, domino mask too wobbly to be properly secured anymore, was Robin crying and begging him to wake up. His hands were sloppily placed over his heart. Batman was trying to drag him away, the firm set of his jaw screaming grief.

Nightwing gasps once he registers his lungs burning.

There's a large cacophony of noise, multiple bright suits and people hounding over him, and the distinct artificial taste of slightly-too-much oxygen that the ship with the Parademons had. That he flew out of and died. He was still too cold.

Someone moves their arm beneath his knees and shoulder and Dick passes out.

(Dick 'Nightwing' Grayson dies in space. Ghost King Danny Phantom likes this too-human Hero. They split their souls in half, take one piece of the others, and all they know is that Phantom is now Nightwing's Patron Deity. Danny uses ice, for electricity killed him. Dick uses electricity, for ice killed him. They are opposites, and yet so incredibly similar. Clockwork was looking forward to when Danny starts putting off his paperwork to hang out with his new 'friend'.)

[rollforjackass]

i could KILL him for this. motherfucker's every interaction with children has him being, if not nice, then at minimum kind and forgiving and genuinely invested in their wellbeing.

he asks crying kids what's the matter, he's afraid to hold a baby because he's worried he'll drop it, he goes after people who are mean to kids without a second thought. his whole mentorship with timothy hunter is him trying to do right by that kid no matter how he feels about it at the time. man would be the most loving dad in the world but because of his own awful goddamn father and the ways he thinks he takes after thomas, he doesn't think that's true. i hate.

[mbirnsings-71]

I know way too many things but not enough to where it feels like I can just randomly infodump on Tumblr unless it's something very specific like Fandom Stuff and even then I'm not infodumping fandom stuff unless it's to my friends who have never consumed the media before because there's pure Joy that comes with me getting to be the one that shares a new thing with them it's so fun!!

[re-re-redline]

-What it Means to Protect You-

>Major Spoilers For Traum<

Though it’s more of small mentions as opposed to being an INTEGRAL part of the fic.

>>Warnings<< Drinking something under the assumption that it’s something else, betrayal (in a sense), mentions of death and severe injuries, mentions of blood, a mention of being suicidal (someone else’s evaluation of another person), intrusive thoughts, implication of a rather cartoony instance of self-harm, Constantine having an unhealthy perception of how his friendship with you works, and playing a normal game of checkers.

>>Characters, in Order of Appearance<< Constantine XI, You, Qin Shi Huang (mentioned), Murasaki Shikibu, Nero Claudius, George Sphrantzes (mentioned).

>>Word Count<< ≈ 21,431 words.

>>Foreword<< Welcome, welcome! Welcome to what is essentially my essay it’s a fic, Redline on why Constantine XI would force you to drink the Elixir of Immortality (EoI) if he knew that you had it and why that’s a plausible action for him to take in my eyes. I knew the kinda chunky singular paragraph in the General Headcanons I did of him on the subject did not do the concept justice. So. I’ve decided to put this out into the world so that everyone can see my vision and no longer be left imagining what it could look like. I also am, uh, kinda hoping this’ll prompt other people to ask the question and think about it for their favorite servant. I’d be super interested in reading those ‘cause this is a really interesting thing to think about. That in mind, I hope you enjoy!

>>Summary<< You’ve received dozens of strange things on Saint Valentine’s Day, but one thing in your inventory stands above the rest. Deciding after a painful amount of deliberation on your part, you tell your closest friend next to Mash, the good and honest Constantine XI about it. You think that it couldn’t hurt to tell him since you know him to be loyal, rational, and understanding. What you don’t know is…that this knowledge has hurt him more than you could possibly imagine.

“Master, that sounds patently absurd. There’s no way someone gave that to you on Valentine’s day. It’s ridiculous.”

“Oh, and the perfectly usable ornate chocolate knife makes more sense?”

You’re not quite sure how you got to talking about the wacky gifts you’ve received on one of the busiest days of the year, but here you both are sitting on the floor with your backs to the bed frame in your room, eating popcorn and watching the end credits roll on a Monty Python movie. You’d think after all the things Constantine had seen, both in and out Chaldea, that his suspension of disbelief would be stronger than ever…

“Yes, actually. It makes sense within the context of the holiday because it’s actually edible. Nine iron marshmallows weighing the same as nine shot put balls makes zero sense as a return gift. Who gave you this?”

But it seems that it’s still just as weak as it was when you two met. While it certainly is nice to have one more person to add to the tiny ‘Mentally Stable and Normal’ group of servants, you just wish that he’d realize sooner that there are far too many serial murderers, actual gods, and crazy people here to have any rudiments of normalcy. If Constantine’s in disbelief over this, then you’re curious how he’ll react to Baby Caren or Csejte Pyramid Castle Himeji. Or The Columbus Egg. Or Nobu’s Nobus. Or the bizarro alternate universe version of you that’s obsessed with ‘the gacha’ and constantly refers to reality as an ‘old spaghetti code game that sucks compared to its current contemporaries.’ …Whatever that means. Shaking that off for another day, you respond to his question.

“Leonidas, and it was a huge pain to lug it all half across Chaldea. Apparently if I train hard enough I’ll be able to throw one someday. But that’s not the point, Micheal, this isn’t the weirdest thing I got on Valentine’s. Not even close.”

You rise up from your spot on the floor, making your way to the bookshelf by the door. You pull it to the side to reveal a panel in the wall, it’s your Second Archive. A nice ever expanding hole greets you when the panel moves to the side. After a recent incident involving a very hungry Salter and Lalter, the Second Archive had to be moved from the Storage Room to your room. Currently only Sion, Mash, Da Vinci, Holmes and you know where it is. Er, plus Constantine. Oops. Eh, it’ll be fine. Constantine isn’t the type to start incidents, so him knowing where the Second Archive is doesn’t change much. Besides there’s more important things to worry about, like navigating this clusterfuck of a storage unit for example. You mentally curse your past self for thinking it was a good idea to just throw everything in there since you could get your CEs using magecraft anyways. Just thinking about pulling out and organizing all 337 hellfires, 47 fous, and 93 craft essences is making your head hurt. After blindly feeling around in the dimly lit black, you feel it. It’s kinda cold, smooth, and it’s in the shape of a square with the corners cut off. Jackpot.

“…There! If you thought those were weird then check this out!”

You pull yourself away from the hole in the wall and proudly hold up in the air…a hot pink pistol! You could see the recognition flash in Constantine’s eyes as his expression moves from confusion to the kind of face you make when you unexpectedly taste something sour. He knows exactly who gave this to you and the fact that he’s not hiding how displeased he is means that you’re getting a long list of words after this conversation.

Due to her ‘exceptional’ reputation among her coworkers and her ‘stellar’ job history, your favorite arms dealer of light had added another enemy to her already miles long list before they even saw each other in person. So…maybe pulling this one out first wasn’t a good idea. You curse yourself yet again for being swept up by your excitement and, in an effort to prevent an incoming lecture, you hastily cut him off before he could get a word in.

“It’s pretty neat, right? I don’t get to have many weapons of my own, so it’s nice to have another gun on me. And before you ask, it’s made of chocolate but it works! Plus it has this cool effect where if you hit someone right in the heart, it has a 500% chance to apply charm! It’s pretty easy to use compared to the Calico M950, but I need to work on my accuracy.”

Speaking of the Calico, you mentally remind yourself to rayshift to stock up on some ammo for your monthly range practice next week. After what happened during your most recent expedition, Salter and Billy are even more adamant about teaching you how to handle a gun effectively. While you don’t exactly blame either of them, a gun wouldn’t have exactly aided the situation. Looking at Constantine, you can just see the gears turning in his head, so maybe you have a shot at escaping the lecture. After blinking for a few seconds, most likely because you just casually admitted that you have a submachine gun lying around somewhere, Constantine sighs and shakes his head.

“I’m not against you having a firearm for self-defense, in fact I’m quite happy that you do, I admittedly do wish that recent circumstances would permit that you rely on us more… Where my main concern lies is her motive for gifting you a rather handy gun for free essentially. Just what price did you pay, Master?”

The sounds of chips falling, cards being shuffled and dulcet giggles fill your ears as you recall the night that you—at the time—felt would never end. The scent of cigars and tobacco feel as present as they did then and you can feel the oxygen in the room getting thicker. You involuntarily shudder and quietly mumble the most succinct summary you could give.

“Hell.”

“Wha—”

“ANYWAYS. Take a look at this UFO Helena gave me! It’s broken but it was super cool when it was functional. We actually had to chase it down and shoot it out of the sky because… Because… Crap, I forgot.”

You went on to describe the circumstances with a degree of unsureness. The event did after all take place years ago thus your memory is a bit hazy regarding the circumstances of it breaking. But that didn’t stop you from spinning several exciting stories to explain why. Such as the UFO gaining sentience and trying to build a particle collider to change the trajectory of the timeline or it being your arch-nemesis from one of your past lives. The sour taste left from discussing your pink bunny friend seemed to have disappeared for Constantine as he ‘reminded you’ of how the UFO was actually from a rival family and it had attempted to steal your land in a desperate attempt to reclaim the prestige that its family lost after the war. Silly you. How could you forget your arch-nemesis’ backstory? It may have been over a thousand years and you may have lived several lives since then, but that’s no excuse to forget— and that, my friends, is how you use a tangent to distract your friend from lecturing you about accepting gifts from malevolent beings.

To keep the distraction on track, you pulled out other gifts from over the years. The ultra-hyper useful pen that Chen-Gong gave you (and the wood tablets, don’t forget those), the entirely inedible but very cute chocolate mini golems from Avicebron, a picture of you and Protea on the beach standing next to the over 100ft tall chocolate heart she made, and who could possibly forget the sword Zerkerlot stole won from Gilgamesh during Fate/Ze— I-I mean, from a previous summoning. Who could forget that? While the mini golems caught his attention due mostly in part to their absolutely adorable appearance, the emperor was more interested in that last thing you presented. Constantine held the blade in his hands for a moment, carefully examining it before handing it back to you with a smile.

“Not only does your friend have good taste, but it’s apparent he took a good amount of time thinking about what kind of sword he should give to you specifically.”

“Eh?”

“Master, take a look at this sword and tell me about it. Don’t think too hard, just say whatever comes to mind.”

“It… uh… It looks pretty normal, sinister aura and red cracks aside.”

“Indeed it does.”

“And… It’s not that heavy.”

“Very light compared to most, but go on.”

“And it’s not that long…?”

“A little less than standard length, but no one’s really counting. Is that all?”

“Yeah. I think it’s easier to hold than Caesar’s sword. But it’s a pretty normal sword all things considering.”

Constantine snaps his fingers, his smile growing.

“And that’s exactly why this is a great gift for you specifically.”

“Huh?”

“Sir Lancelot took your lack of experience and your subpar strength—“

“Hey!”

You gave Constantine a love tap to the shoulder for dissing your lack of gains, to which he chuckled and patted your head in response before continuing his explanation.

“He took both of those factors into account for what he was going to give you. He could have given you anything from his armory. An incredibly heavy great sword he didn’t feel like using or perhaps a blade with slots on one side to allow for the advanced move of breaking your opponents blade mid-battle. Instead, he chose a normal, light, straight sword that had nothing special about it as it would be most useful for you at this stage in your training. In a pinch, you could figure out how to deliver a considerable blow on instinct alone with its simplicity and its light weight allows for you to move more quickly. The only downside is that a heavier sword could snap it in half should you lock blades with it. All in all, however, it’s a good choice. Not for Valentine’s Day per se, but a good choice for a gift nonetheless.”

You sat there and blinked for a few seconds. You didn’t actually think that much of it when Zerkerlot handed it to you, other than how heart-warmed you were when you heard him say ‘thank you’, but now you just want to give the big guy a hug. If he put that much thought into giving you this sword…then what else is he thinking about? Before you could properly consider the ramifications of going insane to communicate more effectively with your armored pal, Constantine shoots you a stern look.

“Don’t even think about it.”

A smaller and more petulant part of you wishes that your bond with him wasn’t so strong just so he could stop basically reading your mind. Seriously, it’s almost disturbing how accurately he pings your dumb ideas before they even come out of your mouth. But you’d be lying if you didn’t say that it came in clutch more times than you care to admit. You give a nose exhale in place of a fake laugh and respond very seriously.

“Think about what, Micheal? I’m not thinking about anything. In fact, I am so not thinking about anything that I have completely lost my perception of time-space. It’s literally gone. I have nothing to think about. That’s how nothing my brain is.”

“Master, I know for a fact that you’re thinking of doing something stupid. The corners of your lips are twitching and you’re avoiding eye contact with me.”

“So you ARE looking at my lips when we talk!”

You just know that the grin on your face is of the shit-eating variety and honestly, who could blame you? The flush painted on Constantine’s shocked face is far too cute to not tease for. If you look closely, you might even see steam from his ears. He looks away in embarrassment and sputters a response.

“Th-That’s not the point! That face is the one you make when you’re going down a dangerous line of thinking. I’ve seen it enough times to know it. So please, Master, don’t entertain going mad. It really isn’t worth it.”

“Fine, fine. I’ll stop thinking about it. But we’ve gotten off topic. What I just showed you was pretty awesome and weird, right? Well… it’s still not the weirdest thing I got.”

Ever since you had received it, you knew you couldn’t tell anybody that you knew at the time. It was far too powerful of a thing to have and while it’d certainly solve the most prevalent issue concerning you, it’d take away something that you prided yourself on. You’d give up a lot of things to save the world you love, but that? You can’t give that up. You just can’t. So you purposefully left it unregistered in the Spirit Origin List and hid it in your Second Archive after making the one who gave this to you swear that they’d never tell a soul about what they gave you that day. You even lied to everyone who inquired, telling them that you only received one gift from that person on Valentine’s Day. Which left you sitting on this massive secret for ages all by your lonesome.

“…Hey, Constantine?”

“Yes, Master?”

It’s hard, you know. Holding onto a thing like this. Every single time you come back bloody and bruised, you’re forced to look at the worried faces of your friends and tell yourself “Just because I have it doesn’t mean I should use it” and move on. No time to scream into your pillow, no time to punch a wall; just move on. And while you’ve been doing a great job of doing just that, the rising stakes and progressively worse conditions of your adventures in the Lostbelts are making it harder and harder to just sit on the damn thing. You COULD negate any and all future worries, dry those tears before they even have the chance to fall and lift that weight off of everyone’s shoulders …but you’re not going to. And you’re certainly not going to let anyone peer pressure you into it either. Which is why only one other person is in the know. You love your servants and Chaldea to death, you really do, but…

Love and trust are two different things.

Your recent expedition was a bitter reminder that even the people closest to you can and should be scrutinized with the same lens you use for your enemies. No disrespect of any kind to Holmes as he was and always will be your friend, but The aftermath of the newest recent singularity made you sit down at your cold desk, rest your head on the backs of your hands and ask yourself the hard questions.

“Who can I really trust here?”

“Who is aligned with me solely to save the world?”

“Who’s loyalties lie more with Chaldea than with me?”

“Who cares about me and not The Last Master of Humanity?”

You had narrowed the pool of over 300 servants in your roster down to where you can count on your two hands who’s REALLY in your corner here. The revelation bringing you to tears right after, and the bitter rain wouldn’t stop until the morning lark sang the next day. It’s sad, it really is. But that’s just another part of what you were conscripted into. That’s your job, and you know what? That’s fine. You’re here to do a service for all of mankind; past, present, and future. Not every person—servant or otherwise—has to be here for you and as much as you’d hate to admit it, that cut deeper than most of the shit you’ve gone through this past year. No surprise since you’ve toughened up to every kind wound, every kind of pain except the emotional kind. Getting your magical circuits moved around by Shuten hurt less than this. Nevertheless, you proceed with your question.

“How good are you at keeping secrets?”

“Keeping confidential information to one’s chest is one the most basic tenets of running an empire. So I’d consider myself above average in that regard… Why do you ask?”

Constantine was one of the few you counted on your two hands. He always prioritized your wellbeing, not because of the fact that the mission is bust without you, but because he genuinely cared about you specifically. He was always the person you could run to if you wanted to hide away from running errands for Paisen or mediating petty squabbles between servants. He always offered to do your reports for you when you were just about to collapse from exhaustion. He always bailed you out of running more laps during physical training when he could and if he couldn’t then he’d run with you so that at least you weren’t suffering alone. The amount of impromptu sleepovers you’ve had with Constantine in the middle of the night just to get away from the Serenity under your bed is much more than you can count and it can’t be a coincidence that those were the nights that you slept best.

“What I’m about to show you next stays here. Right in this room. No one can know about this. Not Da Vinci. Not Gordy. Not Sion. Not even Mash can know. …Do you think you can handle that?”

“Of course I can, Master. Like I said, keeping confidential information is a basic thing for me. If I can hold state secrets to my chest even while horribly drunk, then I can certainly keep your secret with me.”

You got up from your spot and looked around for any signs of an unwanted audience. Under the bed, in the closet, in the ventilation—you found nothing. You then moved to the Second Archive and dug around in the mess once again to find that special something. Your fingers touch something cold. You blindly feel around to find that the shape was rather complex, more specifically a shape made from many different shapes to achieve the desired look. You grasp it in your palm and pull it out from the hole in the wall. It’s a small container with a simple geometrical design, possessing few curves and mostly straight lines. Yep, this is exactly what you were looking for. You get up with the desired item in tow and sit down next to Constantine, who was gazing at the box curiously. You hold it in your lap and begin explaining the mysterious thingamajig in your hand.

“You know Qin Shi Huang, right?”

“I know of them and I have seen them in passing a few times, but we’ve never been formally introduced. Why do you ask?”

“Right, so… At the end of his life, Qin Shi Huang tried finding a way to live forever. He tried finding the Elixir of Immortality and he apparently drank a bunch of mercury while he was on that and he died, right? But that’s what happened to our history’s Qin Shi Huang. The Qin we have in Chaldea, the one who ruled over the third Lostbelt, actually did find the elixir and achieved immortality.”

You take a deep breath, you know your next words can’t be taken back, but you’ve thought about it long enough to be mostly okay with it. You can’t sit on this alone. Not when things are getting worse and worse. So, in an act of selfishness, you pull Constantine to sit with you on the box containing the solution to Chaldea’s biggest problem.

“What I’m holding in my hand… is the very same elixir Qin used to achieve immortality in the third Lostbelt.”

Constantine’s eyes widened, his mouth falling open just a tiny bit. He blinks once, twice, three times and then raises his hand to his mouth as he averts his gaze from you. After a few seconds of uninterrupted stillness, his eyes close and he takes a breath in from his nose and out through his lips. Constantine straightens his posture and puts his hand down, looking you dead in the eye as he responds.

“I assume that you have not drank it?”

“No. No, I haven’t.”

“…May I ask why?”

Ah yes, the million dollar question. Why is that thing still in the box? What reason could you possibly have to justify being so selfish as to keep this miracle hidden away behind your dusty bookshelf in a hole in the wall?

“Because… I still want to be me.”

“…?”

“Let’s say I drank this right now and let’s say that you time travelled about a hundred years into the future. That me that you’ll see… will you recognize them? Will that me still look like me? Or will they have dyed their hair and dressed in wacky new clothes, maybe even wore a cool new pair of moon boots? Will that me still act like me? Telling stupid jokes and never getting the punchline right? I don’t think so. That ‘me’ will eventually turn into someone else and I… ……And that scares me. I’m scared of the things that ‘me’ will say and do and I’m scared that people will look at them and say ‘Man, I wish the old Master was here, I really miss them!’you know?”

“……”

“Not to mention the fact that me being immortal means that I’ll never really get to go home and relax. I’ll save the world and constantly be on stand by waiting for the next world-ending threat to come, never being able to get any r&r because the world seems to be in jeopardy right after I fix the first problem. It would be like me joining the Counterforce except I’m not dead and I don’t have cool swords to throw at people. And if that doesn’t seem so bad then you can talk to Emiya about all the awful shit he’s been through. …All in all, I don’t want to drink this. I don’t want to be immortal. I want to go home and go to bed after all this is over. I want to be me, plain old normal human me. Right until the end.”

“……”

“Any questions?”

“Just two. The first being why you haven’t thrown it away yet and the second being your reasoning as to why not even the highest people in Chaldea’s chain of command can know of this.”

“Well… I just, I dunno. It’s a gift. You don’t just throw away gifts, especially not one like this. Qin Shi Huang must’ve worked pretty hard to make this and they just gave it to me for the chocolate I made them and everyone else the day before. Generous doesn’t even begin to describe it considering that the stuff I make isn’t exactly anything to write home about. And I haven’t told them because me drinking the elixir and not being able to die would immediately solve the problem of having to worry about keeping me alive all the time. I feel like they’d pressure me into drinking it for sake of saving the world and I’d never hear the end of it until I did. I just… I just don’t want to deal with that, you know?”

You see the gentleman before you nod; his expression is one of gentle understanding. A glint of an unknown emotion flickers in those brown eyes of his and you can’t quite put a finger to what it could be. Knowing him, it must be the gravity of the situation weighing on his shoulders. His voice is soft as he addresses you, it’s the kind of voice one would use to console a grieving friend and yet…it feels much more sincere than that.

“…It’s not easy holding the world on your shoulders, and while my personal experiences pale in comparison to yours, I can say that I found my duties as an emperor much easier to stomach when I took the time to air out my concerns to someone close to me.”

He sighs and removes his red velvet gloves, placing them on his knee and Constantine slowly takes your one of your hands in both of his. He feels cold. A bit colder than usual, actually. The man leans in close to you, but not so close as to invade your personal space too much. Rather, it’s more like he’s making sure that you’re fully present and paying attention to what he’s going to say next.

“Master. Thank you for sharing this with me. I am both flattered and honored that you have such strong faith in me, not only as your servant but as your friend and confidant. I swear that I will never speak of this to anyone, even under the threat of death. Your secret is safe with me, forever and always.”

“Heh, I know. You’re way too cautious to just up and spill the beans on accident, plus you’re just too much of a good person to go behind my back. So…”

You use your free hand to pull him into an awkward sidearm hug, it’s you leaning into his side with him still holding your other hand. He looks a bit shocked at first but you can feel him rest some of his weight onto you.

“Thank you, Constantine. For listening and agreeing to keep this between us. And I’m sorry if this gets a bit heavy to hold on to, but I don’t think I can do this alone anymore.”

“You have nothing to apologize for, Master. I’ll gladly take as many of your burdens unto my shoulders as you’ll allow. It’s what I’m here for, both as you friend and as your servant. The only thing I ask of you, Master, is that you double your efforts in keeping yourself safe. For my peace of mind and your sake, please… be careful out there, okay?”

You force a smile as it’s the only acceptable response to a plea of that nature and you puff out your chest to quote with a false bravado a line from your favorite Shinsengumi ramenado.

“You know me, Micheal. I’m always doing my best to stay alive! ‘Cause death means losing, and I never lose!”

You see Constantine roll his eyes and he chuckles. It wasn’t something he did very often, but when it did happen it was usually for comedic reasons. Despite appearing so serious and solemn, the emperor did have a sense of humor. He just needs the right people.

“As if! Your performance in checkers leaves much to be desired, Master. And that’s with my eyes closed, mind you.”

“I’m not that bad. And besides, you totally cheated! There’s no way you could’ve set up capturing five of my pieces in one turn with your eyes closed! That’s impossible.”

“It wasn’t that difficult, actually. You did most of the work for me by slamming your pieces hard enough to where I could accurately picture their positions on the board. In less words, you played yourself, Master.”

You stick your tongue out at the smugly grinning emperor. He was always such an ass when you two played, giving you hope in the first half and then snatching it away in the second. He even had the audacity to gently encourage you as he picks off your pieces one by one, practically cooing at you with that stupidly soothing voice of his. And he knows damn well that he’s throwing you off! Fuckin’ lovable jackass. You huff and, in mock anger, spit out a response with the same level of disdain and boiling hatred he leveled at you.

“The only thing that’s getting played is you after I get done—!”

*Beep beep* *Beep beep*

Huh? The hell is… oh shit. Chef time.

“Wait… Crap! I’m late!”

You’re not just late, dingus, you’re really late! Why? Because you forgot to get dressed and pack your tools for a certain event that you were supposed to be there for already, that’s why! You bolt up from your spot on the floor and start picking up the mess of all the things you pulled from that disorganized clusterfuck. Constantine rushes to help you, despite not knowing why you’re flipping out at the moment, and you get the floor decently cleaned up in a jiffy. You hastily throw on your apron and put your shoes on. You throw open the door toss the spare key at Constantine before quickly saying…

“Got cooking classes with Emiya and Boudica. Lock up for me. Bye!”

And you run down the hall without looking back. For that, Constantine is quite glad. Now he doesn’t have to hold this expression for any longer than he has to. Constantine examines the key that he assumes is your spare and proceeds to lock the door to your room. A shadow falls over his expression as he ruminates on the information you had imparted upon him. Things aren’t quite lining up. He’ll need to deliberate on this further.

“………”

But for now, he shakes the darkness from his mind and expression. He looks at the key you gave to him one last time and gingerly puts it into the pocket inside his blazer, next to his own keys. He takes a deep breath of the clean filtered air and lets the need for a further inquiry part from himself like the carbon dioxide from his lips.

He takes one step from the door, his foot feeling heavy. He takes another, his other foot dragging. The dissonance between what he needs to do versus what he wants to do added a weight, not unto his shoulders as it usually did, but to his ankles this time.

Those pesky thoughts have gotten smarter it seems.

“Now’s not the time, Constantine. You can think about it later.”

He moves the lead blocks in his shoes and forces them to carry him to his desired destination. The weight eases up with the more steps he takes, from manageable to barely noticeable. Now that’s something he can ignore.

…For now, at least.

A library is traditionally a building—sometimes a room—that houses books, newspapers, magazines, audio tapes and even films. It is a place where one goes to not only get information but to find leisure in the worlds contained within the various materials to be found there. Be it a temple of wisdom from all eras and countries or a safe haven for those looking for an escape, everyone can find at least something they can enjoy in a library. And the Chaldea’s library is no different, many find solace and answers within and it is generally teeming with servants and humans alike. With the release of a new volume of a certain popular manga series, one would think that the library would be even more busy than usual today. …Yet, the contrary is true. Indeed, the once bustling library is almost empty today save for two people. The librarian and a gentleman.

The librarian, Murasaki Shikibu, sits at the reception desk. Her soft and well manicured hands gently stamp the leftovers of yesterday’s returns, her movements are slow. Much slower than usual, to the point where one would think that the young lady had been stamping for hours and is wasting time until her break. But that is not the case. Murasaki isn’t moving slowly out of tiredness, no, she’s moving slowly to savor the feeling of having work to do, if that makes any sense. Work in the library happens when people come in, check out materials, return materials or misplace materials and there usually is enough work to comfortably spill over to the next day. Yet, seemingly out of the blue, only a single person has set foot in the library since her shift started at 6:00am and no one else. Worse yet, after an hour or so, a thick shadow seemed to have swallowed the library whole. In a figurative sense, of course. The air felt as though it had been chilled in a freezer, the lights seemed to have gotten dimmer than a candle and the overall feeling the place gave was suffocating. A 35,787 feet below sea level kind of suffocating, if you know what I mean. In less words, the library felt akin to a cave. An inhospitable cave for one to reside in and one only.

Murasaki checked the thermostat to find it at the same temperature it usually is and the fuses for the breaker were replaced three days ago, so what gives exactly? Is it a ghost? No. Ghosts aren’t enough to stop even 2% of the library’s regulars and the supposed ghost would’ve been sent packing in seconds. Is it Douman? No. This is way too subtle for his taste and it lacks the drama. This reasoning also rules out James Moriarty and that goes for his younger self, too. So what could be causing this unnerving—to put it lightly—ambience?

Murasaki puts the stamp away and gently pats her face, a mock attempt at self-encouragement. She rises up from her chair shakily, her knees practically clacking against each other. Someone has to do something about this and the only person who can and should is the librarian. It’s a part of her job after all. Murasaki slowly creeps out from the reception area and begins skulking through the various sections in the library. Nothing by the magazine racks or the periodicals, the film room is empty too which leaves the Restricted Section and the rest of the library.

If one were to ask Lady Murasaki how long she felt it took to find the source of the pressing issue, she’d respond with a tinge of uncertainty that it took her 5 hours to comb the library. In reality, it actually took half the time. Murasaki’s nerves were mostly to blame for the distortion in temporal perception on her end, but it should also be noted that the source wasn’t that well hidden as the source was located in the far end of the first floor. Meaning that poor Murasaki had passed by the answer about 30 times during her search. The area in question is where the comfy bean bag chairs are for those who wanted less back pain from sitting in those hard wooden ones.

Murasaki, shaking from her nervousness, slowly peeked from behind a bookshelf to discover not only the cause, but the identity of the culprit behind all this. It was the gentleman, the one singular person who came into the library when she first started her shift at 6:00am, who was the source of the terrifying atmospheric shift in the library.

Seated stiffly in a bean bag chair was a finely dressed black haired gentleman with a pair of red gemstone earrings. In his vicinity are at least two dozen half open books from wildly different sections of the library. To give an idea as to the variety on display here, allow me to list a few titles in succession. “The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch” by Phillip K. Dick, “A Devil and Her Love Song” by Miyoshi Tomori, “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” by John le Carré, “Fox in Socks” by Dr.Seuss and to name off the one in his hands right now: “Look Back” by Tatsuki Fujimoto. Absolutely no through line existed in this large selection whatsoever which made the situation much more jarring to Murasaki considering that she knew this specific regular to favor Historical Fiction and Mystery novels more than any other genre.

She always found him to be a polite and genial man from the little she conversations she had with him, so really, when she found the answer from peeking behind the bookshelf; it was wholly unsatisfactory. In an effort to rectify this disparity, Murasaki stepped out from behind the bookshelf and slowly crept forward to address him.

“Er…excuse me, s—?”

The gentleman shuts the paperback in his hands causing Murasaki to flinch, the disturbance reverberating in the air for a good 20 seconds after the fact. The oppressive ambience seemed to grow tenfold as he reached for another book: “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by Frank L. Baum. His expression told the librarian everything she needed to know in terms of what to do next. Obviously, this man can’t be reached at the moment—or so Murasaki would later claim—thus she quickly absconded from the situation—or lack there of, if you ask me—and went to go find some assistance.

She had seen him around the emperors of Rome quite often and could swear that she heard someone in passing say that he’s in their meetings, so who better to ask than one of them to resolve this?

While we wait for Lady Murasaki to return, let’s drop the charade and look at Constantine. The time is currently 2:02 in the afternoon and Constantine arrived at the library at 6:30 in the morning. Meaning that our troubled friend here has been in this room for 8 hours and 32 minutes. A good portion of that time was spent looking for whatever cover looked interesting enough. It was a style of search that didn’t fit him at all as he was the type to read the back and the author’s note before even considering the title. If he were to take the same amount of time to find some good reads, then he would have significantly less books in his vicinity.

While this is an explanation as to how the small mountain of books came to be, it doesn’t come anywhere close as to the why. The answer to that question can be found by taking a look at what he’s reading right now: “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.” He is currently on the second page. By now he should have made it to page seven. But something was holding him back, forcing him to reread the same page over and over again.

“When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but gray sand on every side. Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat nothingness that reached to the edge of the world in all directions.”

Wrong.

“When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side. Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached to the edge of the sky in all directions. The sun had baked the plowed land into a gray mass, with little cracks running through it. Even the grass was not green, for the Foreign God had taken that too after they had descended. The people disappeared until they were the same gray color to be seen everywhere. After the Chaldeans failed to escape, a flash of light blistered their flesh as the winds blew them away, and now they were as dull and gray as everything else.”

Wrong.

“When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side. Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached to the edge of the sky in all directions. The sun had baked the plowed land into a gray mass, with little cracks running through it. Even the grass was not green, for the sun had burned the tops of the long blades until they were the same gray color to be seen everywhere. Once the house had been painted, but the sun blistered the paint and the rains washed it away, and now the house was as dull and gray as everything else.

When Master came, they were a young, pretty fellow. The journey had changed them, too. It had taken the sparkle from their eyes and left them a dull gray; it had taken the red from their cheeks and lips, and those were gray also. They were thin and gaunt, just barely being held tog—”

Wrong.

“When Aunt Em came there to live she was a young, pretty wife. The sun and wind had changed her, too. They had taken the sparkle from her eyes and left them a sober gray; they had taken the red from her cheeks and lips, and they were gray also. She was thin and gaunt, and never smiled now. When Master, who is now an orphan, first came to her, Aunt Em had been so startled by the child's laughter that she would scream and press her hand upon her heart whenever Master's soft pleas reached her ears; and she still looked at the human with wonder that they were still clinging onto life at all despite the blood gushing from the side of their skull—”

Wrong.

Wrong.

Wrong.

It’s all wrong. This isn’t the Wizard of Oz, this is the mind’s intrusion into yet another perfectly good book. Over and over, time and time again, Constantine had been wrestling with those pesky thoughts bubbling up to the surface in his mind ever since you told him about the elixir. Corrosive ‘what-ifs’ had stained and eaten away at not only his methods of escape, but his mood too. Being mentally present became an almost herculean task as they just wouldn’t stop talking, leaving Constantine to have to start avoiding his colleagues and acquaintances to avoid embarrassing himself, or worse, people asking the most dreadful question. Are you okay? Obviously not, but saying that aloud only invites more issues and that’s the last thing Constantine needs right now.

So, where did all that put him, exactly? It put him here. Right here in this bean bag chair in this dead silent and freezing cold library. The final bastion of absolute focus. If this didn’t work, then nothing else will.

The idea was to banish the wretched things back into the dustiest, moldiest, and darkest corner of his mind where they belonged by putting 100% of his willpower and attention into reading. If he could read enough books for long enough, the thoughts would be buried by the oncoming tidal wave of information and he’ll forget all about what was troubling him in the first place. Obviously, it’s a band-aid solution. The very second he sees something that reminds him of you know what then all his work will go straight down the drain and he’ll have to start over. But really, what other options are there? To Constantine, this is the only path he has left. All others have been exhausted or corroded, coming up with anything new at this stage is nigh impossible and he’d sooner snap his own wrist off than come clean to you about it. You already have your own laundry list of issues, the thought of adding yet another item to that list makes his stomach turn every which way. You’ve got it a million times worse than he does, so really, it’d be best to keep this whole mess to himself, right? After all, confiding in someone doesn’t necessarily have to go both ways, and you know what? He’ll happily let you have the next turn. And the next. And the next. And the next. And the

That’s the way things are, and the way they should be. You needing him and him helping you. For Constantine it’s a perfectly straight line, a flat plane where you roll a ball to him and Constantine takes it and places it on his side. You always tell him that he can roll a ball back to you and he always nods with a smile in response. You roll a ball and he takes it. Time passes; you roll a ball and he takes it. More time passes; you roll a ball and he takes it. So on and so forth, ideally until the end of time. He imagines the line curving downwards and wonders if that would perhaps encourage you to toss some more his way. He knows that this isn’t the only line you have and he thinks that that’s a good thing, but… well, he wouldn’t mind if you paid more attention to his. But this… this is fine too. At least he has a line with you at all. That’s enough to be thankful for.

To any outsider looking in, this plan was destined to fail the moment Constantine ruled out confiding in you. Which, mind you, was set in stone by default. Poor Constantine on the other hand, his soft heart savagely beating his rational mind, believed that this could work if just tried hard enough. Dedication is all it takes, after all. But as the end of his life proved, dedication alone does not solve all problems. The words are only getting more personal and soon the whole book will be infested with the corrosive worms only he can see. There’s more books in the pile to read through but…

Constantine sighs.

He closes the book in his hands and sets it aside next to the rest of the failed attempts at escapism. He wipes the sweat from his brow and leans back into the plush bean bag chair, several bones popping in succession as he does. His eyes rest on the simple textures of the ceiling, noting that the distance from there to the floor is much larger than he thought it was. Sighing again and closing his eyes, Constantine lets the intrusive thoughts take the floor.

Time is a strange thing in Chaldea, but he doesn’t need exact dates to know that you have had the elixir for a very long time. Judging by the way you were speaking, Constantine believes that the Valentine’s Day in which you received the elixir was not the most recent one, nor the one before that, or you would have specified. Not to mention you stated wearily that you just couldn’t keep this to yourself any longer, also implying that you’ve had the elixir for a long time. All of that leaves leaves a sizable gap in time from then until now, along with a disturbing implication.

Chaldea has been through three more Lostbelts, 3 large scale singularities, and dozens upon dozens of minute singularities since the third Lostbelt. While you could remove as many events as you wished to suit the hypothetical point when that specific Valentine’s occurred, the point remains the same. You have suffered so much since this journey started and you have nearly perished more times than he can count. You were nearly wiped out of existence in the fourth Lostbelt, you were nearly vaporized by an orbital strike in Atlantis, you nearly had your skull cracked open in Olympus, Fairy Britain does not need a reintroduction, and you were captured and nearly tortured in The Revenge Realm during the events of the most recent singularity. Just to name a few. All of those awful things happened to you and not once did you think to even drink the elixir. Not for the sake of completing your duty but to just survive. You have been sitting on the Elixir of Immortality since the third Lostbelt and the definitive conclusion is that you will continue to sit on it for the foreseeable future.

In all honesty, the only reason that you’re even alive today is through sheer luck. His fellow servants must be—no, ARE incredibly incompetent to have let you almost die this many times. It’s not easy, but it can’t be this hard to keep Master safe, right? It’s a little bit more understandable with servants like Robin Hood or Paul Bunyan, but Ishtar? Ibuki-Douji? Quetzalcoatl? Gilgamesh? How is this even a problem with actual gods on your side? How are even they unable to protect you? It doesn’t make any sense to Constantine. There’s also the matter of what happens after you are saved from almost dying for the nth time. A quick apology and maybe a promise to ‘do better next’ time is all you get for your troubles, as if that could come anywhere close to being enough after what you’ve been through. What’s even worse is that you simply take it and proceed to brush the event off like it was nothing.

You’ve nearly died countless times. You nearly die every time you set foot on this godforsaken bleached earth and you take that with the same nonchalance as you do unwanted toppings on your pizza, and you know what? That’s disturbing. Constantine, who had already died once and rather brutally at that, is more afraid of dying than you are. A servant is more afraid of dying again than you are. Master… What the fuck is wrong with you? Genuinely, from the bottom of his heart, genuinely just what is wrong with you? How can you take this so lightly? You almost died! There is no other way it can be put, no clarification should be needed to explain the gravitas of it. Constantine finds himself disturbed and the more he thinks about it, the more he has to hold back a shudder. Your self-preservation instincts must be well beyond shot at this point, they must be. But that’s no excuse.

So, how does one solve a problem like this?

“K—s—n—în-s?”

Things are only getting more dangerous as time goes on and Chaldea is only coasting by on the seat of their pants each and every time.

“H—, -ōn—a-tîn—.”

If he can’t depend on his fellow servants to keep you safe, then maybe he should be more aggressive in his appeals to go with you.

“Kōns—ntî-os!”

But he can only do so much to keep you safe, what if he fails? What if you die anyways? What will he do then? …Maybe he sh—

“KŌNSTANTÎNOS!!”

A swift strike was dealt onto the poor man’s head with a copy of “Three Act Tragedy” by Agatha Christie, causing Constantine to leap to his feet and draw his sword. The attacker shook her head and clicked her tongue in disappointment, a sour look on her face. It was only after a second that Constantine recognized who she was and he straightened up, putting his blade in its sheath. His face burned a bright crimson as he barely manages to squeak out a response.

“Emperor Nero, please forgive my insolence. I was…deep in thought.”

“Hmph! You looked like a dead man lying in that chair, I had half a mind to call for nurse Nightingale. But that isn’t why I’ve come here.”

Nero surveys the corner that Constantine had been occupying for 9 hours and 7 minutes before shaking her head again. She lightly gestures to the messy pile of books surrounding the bean bag chair.

“Kōnstantînos, what is the meaning of this mess? And more importantly, what on earth is going on with you? The librarian interrupted me in the middle of recording one of my next hit singles, quaking in her heels because of that ghastly air about you! Why, it’s practically engulfed the library in its entirety!”

Ghastly air? As far as Constantine knew, the only thing he had done was sit here and try to read. So what was this ghastly air Nero was talking about?

“Don’t give me that look. You’re radiating a strong miserable aura and I, for one, am already sick of it! I demand an answer as to why you’re like this today, and it better be good.”

“I’m afraid I can’t say.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

Technically, both answers are correct. Constantine can’t tell Nero about what’s on his mind since he was sworn to secrecy by you and he won’t tell Nero because he would never betray the level of trust you have placed in him of all people. As much as the rational side of him laments the fact, he has grown quite close to you and you, in turn, have grown quite close to him despite his best efforts to keep you at arm’s length. There was just something about you that just pulled him in, something akin to gravity. Barely noticeable, yet all consuming and felt all the same. And who was he to deny gravity?

“Won’t. I won’t say, Emperor Nero.”

“Well something must be done about this mood. So, I present an alternative, Kōnstantînos. Tell me what’s on your mind in the most vague words possible. Do away with context, definition, and names. Just say something to me. Perhaps that will lower the gloom, even if a little.”

Nero’s stance, her expression, and the tone of her voice strongly conveyed a unified message: that she wasn’t leaving any time soon until Constantine gave her something to work with. And the Rose of Venus is nothing if not persistent, a quality that many simultaneously admire and loathe. Constantine takes a few seconds to rotate the idea in his mind before coming up with the most watered down explanation for his recent behavior.

“I am… afraid of the consequences of committing an action that will most certainly change the way Master thinks of me.”

Nero’s eyes widened for a moment before she shakes her head and crosses her arms, a knowing smirk curling onto her lips. Constantine, on the other hand, could feel the color drain from his face. How did she know? “Because she’s Nero, moron.” is what a small part of him answered before being rebuked with: “That’s not possible because only Master and Qin Shi Huang know about the elixir. Or have I been lied to?” Constantine, his composure being held by a thread, decides to retrieve the answer to his internal inquiry by starting with a simple question.

“May I ask as to why you’re smiling that way?”

“Umu! I have figured out what the issue is! Honestly, you had me thinking it was something far more grave judging by the expression you had on your face. And I am quite glad you have finally realized it. We’ve all gotten sick of waiting.”

Nero clears her throat and begins walking away from Constantine. She waves one of her hands around to needlessly accentuate sections of her response. Typical Nero.

“Very well. I, the fifth Roman emperor, Nero Claudius, shall impart my wisdom unto you, Kōnstantînos! Pay close attention and cherish my words so, for I know best the solution to what plagues that heart of yours!”

Constantine watches in both dread and confusion as Nero steps onto one of the tables in the library. From the ether—or wherever these kinds of things come from—a spotlight shines down onto the fair lady and fresh rose petals blow in from…wherever they came from. Her green eyes glitter with self-assurance, seemingly outshining the gold that adorns her clothes. Nero puffs out her chest and begins imparting her sage wisdom.

“There’s no time like the present to act! After all there is nothing that squanders the beauty of life more than abstaining from what makes the heart joyously sing! How could you even think to do something so criminal, let alone to yourself? It is unthinkable to me. Not only that, but it is also unbefitting of an emperor of Rome to be this indecisive. If there is something we desire, then it is already be ours. We take it swiftly and decisively, regardless of how perilous the path to it maybe be. That is the way of our glorious empire. Now! It is time for you to be off. Master is waiting and you would do well to act with haste. Now go, go!”

In no time at all, Nero hopped off the table with the theatrics disappearing the moment her foot touched the floor. Constantine was both surprised as he had believed that Nero would’ve gone on for at least an hour which is the average length of her few uninterrupted speeches. Nevertheless, she grabbed him by the arm and began dragging him all the way to the entrance in spite of his protests of needing to clean up before he left. She laughed and simply responded.

“Umu! That is a librarian’s job, not an emperor’s. Now shoo! Do as I told you to do and all will be right. Of that, I can assure you.”

With one last push, Nero had taken Constantine to the end of the hall in the direction one would need to take to get to your room. After that she left without saying a word, that knowing smirk still firmly affixed to her face with a prideful glow that tacked itself on after her speech. Constantine sighs and decides to just start walking. Standing in a hallway staring off into space is never not suspicious, after all. As his feet drag on, he digests what Nero had told him.

There is a large gap in understanding between the two of them, and Constantine finds himself grateful for it. Nero was nowhere near figuring out what was on his mind and thus, Constantine had kept his promise in not telling anyone. So that’s good, he supposes. But just what was Nero talking about?

Her speech could simply be boiled down to ‘just do it’ and ‘if you want it then take it,’ which aren’t necessarily bad pieces of advice when taken with the correct amount of morality and wisdom, but they’re not specific enough to be a clue into what Nero’s mistaking his problem for. Her words before the speech only serve to confuse him more with the mention that she and some other people have ‘gotten sick of waiting’ for him. …Whatever that means. Really, the only thing Constantine truly got out of it was one specific line.

“…it is also unbefitting of an emperor of Rome to be this indecisive.”

She’s certainly right. The emperors of Rome do not hesitate. Nero herself never hesitated in showing her love to the people, Caligula never hesitated in showing his love to…himself and Nero, Caesar never hesitated to break the mold and take matters into his own hands when it mattered, and the Holy Progenitor certainly didn’t hesitate in building their beloved motherland from the ground up either.

As for Constantine, well, he can safely say that he never thought twice about protecting what he loved. If unifying the Latin and Greek churches were the means to seize survival, then of course Constantine would make it so. And he did just that with no hesitation at all. Sure, it did end up alienating a rather sizable portion of his people and they had mistakenly believed that their emperor had abandoned them which unfortunately ended with them leaving when he needed them most, but Constantine didn’t regret it. Not even for a second because, at the time, it seemed to be one of the few paths left he could take. It was a chance to have at least someone in his corner to help him weather the oncoming storm. It didn’t amount to anything in the end, but even still he had to try.

With all his experiences in trying to stave off the inevitable as much as he could, Constantine truly had to ask… Why is he hesitating now? Because I’m scared of ruining what we have, says one. But—another pipes up—I won’t have anything with Master if they’re dead. Touché, says the first.

You aren’t going to save yourself and Constantine knows it. Your tendency to run headlong into danger and push yourself past your limits is going to get you killed someday. And your blasé attitude towards your own death only further proves that—in Constantine’s eyes—you cannot reliably be trusted with keeping yourself safe. Your servants do a decent job of keeping you out of harm’s way until they don’t, which seems to be happening far too frequently for his liking. If Constantine had things his way, he’d be glued to your side at all times because if you want something done right, then you do it yourself. But the last emperor of Rome is far too much of a realist and not enough of a narcissist to believe that he alone is the solution to this issue. He can’t protect you every second of everyday no matter how much he wants to try and he certainly can’t pick up the slack that even a deity can’t. So, what’s left, then? How does Emperor Constantine Palaiologos XI solve the issue of you being borderline suicidal, his teammates being incompetent, and he himself not being enough to make up for the both of you?

“…………………”

There really was only ever one answer to this question, and honestly, Constantine is tired of trying to pretend like there ever was an alternative.

You must drink the elixir. There is no other way around it. There’s far too many opportunities for things to just go perfectly wrong with this crappily made barricade you and everyone else hastily cobbled together. No, you need something better. Something you can fall back on. Yes, it’ll be a failsafe for when the nightmare scenario eventually comes to pass, when he and the rest of your servants fall in battle. One last wall between you and death. That’s what this is.

“…………………”

It’s not a betrayal, no, it’s a fulfillment of his duty as your servant. That’s why you summoned a disgrace of an emperor from an already half-dead empire, right? It has to be. His sole purpose, in this second life that he is quite lucky to have, is to protect his master. Nothing else matters. Nothing else should matter.

But what does it mean to protect someone? More specifically, what does it mean to protect you?

It means slaying your enemies before they reach you. It means bandaging up your cuts and wiping the blood from your face after the battle ends. It means making sure that you’re well and okay at base. It means making sure that you’re eating and drinking water everyday. It means hiding you from your—frankly rude—predecessor when she gets to be too much to handle. It means filing your papers so you don’t have to stay up a second longer than you have to. It means trying to reduce the number of laps you run so you don’t keel over from exhaustion and it means running with you when he fails. It means letting you into his room in the dead of night, cot already prepared beforehand, and letting you sleep with him because he knows that you can’t sleep peacefully in your room anymore.

Protecting you means a lot of things, but for the most part, it means caring about you. And he does care about you. Perhaps too much in your eyes…

Living relatively peacefully in Chaldea has softened this emperor up considerably, how couldn’t it have? The people here are amazing. From standing side by side with the people he and his family idolized in life to his very predecessors and even the Holy Progenitor himself—in this aspect, he’s living the dream. You, his master, are great too. You’re pretty kind for someone this involved in the world of magecraft, he never had to worry about being told to go against his morals or being worked to death in service of your own selfish ends. You were just a well-rounded and down to earth individual here in these sterile white walls, and he couldn’t appreciate it more if he tried. You were such a breath of fresh air to him. Maybe that’s why you pulled him in like gravity does all things. Ah, but going through all the things he loves likes about you is a dangerous line of thinking. He should stop. Seriously. He should sto

Living in Chaldea has made Constantine soft, but that ends now. He needs to get his head back into the game and be the wall he knows he can and should be. And it all starts with this. It starts with saving you from yourself.

After a bit more aimless wandering, Constantine makes it back to the hall where his room is. After the first attack on Chaldea by Lev Lainur and the rest of the Demon God Pillars, Chaldea’s staff was cut down by a considerable amount, leaving hundreds of dorm rooms open. Those rooms were later repurposed into servant dormitories after the events of Singularity F, and with Novum Chaldea being an almost exact replica of the original Chaldea, things are no different. He places the key into the slot, Room 342, and steps inside.

The interior, while still retaining the blank white walls this base loves, looks much more lively than most rooms. While that isn’t high of a bar to pass, it does show that person living in this room does care about how it looks and feels, not only for himself but for any potential guests. There a few replica paintings on the wall, a fellow with a keen eye will note that most of these painting are of the classicalism variety with a few renaissance paintings in the mix.

The furniture is well ordered and neat, a prime example of uniformity. The furniture is evenly spaced depending on their purpose (eg. the front legs of the chair to his desk are exactly four inches away from the wall) the measurements of which he can recall on a dime. Only one type of wood is used in this room—mahogany—and any deviations are gifts from his friends, an example would be the small carving of Nero that Caligula gave him that is made of rosewood. Their general style all look to be quite similar to one another, to an onlooker they might say that the style looks like something they’d find in their great-grandparent’s house. Actual designs carved into the wood as opposed to simply sanding a stick and lacquering it then calling it a night. On the fabric side of things, many of the same descriptions apply. Even spacing, a rather strict color palette and patterns; this, that and the third.

All in all, the room feels natural in the sense that it is a decorated room with thought put into by human being but… Well, it doesn’t feel like someone lives there. It’s too clean, it’s too evenly spaced, it’s too uniform, it’s too… Museum-like. Yes, that’s the best description for it.

It feels like one of those mock-up historical rooms you’d find in your local museum, showcasing how people long before you lived in their homes. It gives a nice window into that given period of time, but it’s not really accurate, is it? Sure, the furniture is time period accurate and the structure of the room may be as well, but that can only take one so far. It’s put together in a way that imitates human life, but it lacks any humanity in it at all. There’s no scratches on the wood where a pet could have been or indication that a person may have bumped into it with their shoes. The rug doesn’t have have any missing threads or mysterious stains from a drink that was spilled a month ago that never quite came out, no stretch in a single direction; hell, that crimson rug hasn’t even moved from it’s position since it was placed there. Don’t even get me started on the knickknacks and tchotchkes on the shelves. They may be the only indication that a given person would have to discern that this a person’s actual room, but they’re not quite normal either.

Each and every knick and knack is contained in a clear box. If asked the reason why, Constantine would reason that it’s to protect them from weathering or decay. Odd, considering that some of the objects in question aren’t exactly known for decaying at all. Not a single speck of dust on the shelf or containers, inside and out. These tchotchkes barely ever move from their spots, forever constrained to their defined position on that plank of mahogany wood. Movement occurs when: dust is being wiped off, a new knickknack joins the shelves, or a guest moves it themselves. No exceptions.

Room number 342 can be described in a single phrase: “Same as it ever was.” One could come back here after a decade and find that—shelves aside—the room is the same as it ever was. It doesn’t move. Nothing in it moves. Really, this room only ever changes when there’s people in it.

Constantine takes a seat at his desk. He slouches forward and rests his arms on the table, the fingers on his right gloved hand drumming against the wood in an even rhythm. Pencils click against each other in their little steel cylinder over by the stationery set for every beat. It’s a neat little addition to the still ambience of the room. A nice heartbeat other than his own, one sorely missed.

He wishes it could stay.

The man shakes his head and refocuses his bleary eyes. He has a job to do and he’ll do it even if it gets him killed. His thoughts pan from the comfortable void to the place in his head reserved for planning things of import. He knows that you have no reason to believe that he’d ever do something like this, but that’s no reason to be sloppy now.

The first step is acquiring the elixir. That’s easy part. You’ve been running around gathering materials for your servants ‘for when Anniversary comes’ —whatever that means— and today you went on rayshift to go with Billy and Saber Alter to Shinjuku. In less words, you’ve spent quite a bit of time out. In fact, you’re still out right now. Let’s see here…your curfew is 7:30 but the director has been known to give you extensions every time you ask, so you might stay out for longer today. But that’s not something he should count on. The current time is 5:20, so he definitively has 2 hours and 10 minutes to get the elixir today. Getting in isn’t an issue since a. everyone knows him to be quite responsible thus no one would question him going into your room since their first thought would be along the lines of “ah, he must have forgot something” and b. he still has your spare key. You forgetting to get it back from him was a blessing in disguise and Constantine is glad that he hasn’t seen you that much today to warrant a reason to give it back.

The second step is figuring how to get you to drink the elixir. You’ve already made your stance clear, so persuading you is not only not going to work, but is also going to tack suspicion onto him for future more secretive attempts. Let’s see…Knocking you unconscious is bad. Terrible, actually. It’s against his morals as a respectable, distinguished gentleman and more importantly, one of your closest friends. Plus, this plan also runs the risk of you choking or coughing it out reflexively if he botches it. Constantine winces and pinches the bridge of his nose, bile rising in his throat. Was that really the first method he thought of? Really? He has his head in the game just like he wanted, but isn’t that a bit too much? Ah, never mind. There’s no point in trying to pretend that his hands are clean or that he’s more of a just man than everybody else is, nor is there a point in dwelling on it.

The only option left, really, is to give the elixir to you under the pretense that it’s another drink. But to know what kind of drink to present it as, and how to present it to you, he’d need to look at the elixir and smell it first. Constantine turns his body to face the grandfather clock, it’s 5:53. He still has plenty of time.

Thus Constantine got up from his desk to acquire the Elixir of Immortality from the Second Archive in your room. While we wait, allow me to answer a question. Why is Constantine so fixed on getting it today? Can’t he just get it tomorrow? Or a day later? And that is true. He could, in fact, just the elixir tomorrow or a day later if he felt like it, but getting it now makes for a much better play in the long run.

Think about it. What if you were to ask for the spare key when you got back from Shinjuku? Then Constantine wouldn’t have a way to get into your room without you knowing. And don’t even think to ask if he could just ask you for the elixir, it’s an all around terrible idea from the word go. Okay, perhaps he could steal the key from you whilst you slept over in his room? There’s no way of knowing when you’ll be compelled to have another sleepover with him, and the more time spent waiting for the golden opportunity to come means the higher chance of you dying while he waits. And this is all without mentioning the very real possibility of you waking up as he steals the key. What could he possibly say to you when you wake up and see his hand on your waist searching for your keyring? Nothing. Because there is no acceptable explanation for such a thing ever. It has to be when you’re away, and surprise, surprise, you’re away right now. He still has the spare key and you’ll be guaranteed to be none the wiser, it’s the perfect opportunity. And he’s taken it.

Ah, and speak of the devil, Constantine has returned to his room. After rooting around in your Second Archive and rooting around some more in the box past the chocolate pellets, he had in his hand a rather ornate canteen. It depicts what appeared to him to be a phoenix above a field of lilies.

He unscrews the cap and smells the contents of the canteen. It smells like the tea he had with Oda Nobunaga and her retainer the other day just…it has a hint of iron in it. Like an aftertaste from the garlic bread you had a few hours ago. This gives him an idea. What if he were to pose this as some tea for you to drink? You aren’t really a fan of tea, but this wouldn’t be the first time that Constantine made you drink it. It’s good for you, he always said. In this instance, it’d be no different. The tea he will give you next is good for you. That is not a lie. Constantine is not lying to you, he’s just making sure you get your vitamins and whatnot. As he always does.

It shouldn’t be an issue to heat this up, so that’ll be easy enough. But how will he give it to you? What situation would be best to present this faux tea and how will he make sure you drink it? Putting it in a closed and opaque container is a no-go simply because you could save it for later and then the uncommon situation of you sharing your drink to help quench a friend’s thirst could occur, thus killing the plan. It has to be in a cup so you can’t ask to save it for later. It’d be best if he drank something with you to make things less suspicious; tea would work best considering the smell. It’d also help mask that small pinch of iron in it, too.

Sitting on a bench drinking tea with you probably isn’t a good idea since you’ll be more focused on the taste and how much you don’t like it, so Constantine will have to manufacture a situation to distract you himself. Let’s see…It’d probably be wise to cut down on the witnesses because—as unlikely it may be—there is a nonzero chance of someone spilling the elixir by accident. Better to be safe than sorry, after all. The ideal situation would be to do it during your morning checkers game with him, but that’s a day after tomorrow... No, it’s still possible. He could make an impromptu appearance at your door tomorrow morning, all he’d have to say is—if you even ask at all— is that he has something to do the day after in the morning. Easy. He’ll have his checkerboard and a tea set, and you’ll be none the wiser because this isn’t anything new. You’ll just groan and ask him why he must hurt you in this way, as usual.

With the situation out of the way, the only question that’s left is how he’ll differentiate the cups. He can’t just use mugs because he’s never done that before with you. That specific instance will stick out in your mind should you try and figure out how you took the elixir if it ever comes to that. So a tea set must be used. He could try and find a set with a damaged cup, pretend that he didn’t notice it before hand, and politely take that cup from you which leaves you with the undamaged cup containing the elixir. That’s all well and good, but what if he can’t find any damaged ceramics? He could damage a cup himself but… while C Rank strength doesn’t look like much compared to other servants, it’s still a lot compared to a normal human being. The amount of sheer precision required for him to damage a ceramic cup of all things, unfortunately, exceeds his skills as he is more accustomed to just destroying things. This should, at best, be a last resort as there are plenty of other ways to do this. There has to be.

What about…placing two differently colored napkins under the two cups? He could have a red napkin and you could have a blue one. Red is the color of Rome and the color Constantine is often seen wearing, so naturally you’d go and pick the blue one on your own. It’s a solid and much more reliable plan than trying to find a damaged cup or making a crack in one himself. But the question is, do they have red and blue…?

……………

Constantine’s eyes widen and he facepalms, groaning exhaustedly to himself. He doesn’t have to do any of this shit, he could literally tell you that one of the cups is his right off the bat. You don’t like tea enough to just grab one of the cups and start drinking, you’d hold out and hope that—by some microscopic margin—he’s just feeling REALLY thirsty that day and needs two separate cups of tea to quench his thirst. Which would never happen in a million years. Hell, he could even put the cup containing the elixir on your side of the table. What are you going to do, reach over to his side of the table and take his? Is that really a plausible thing to consider?

“WhAT If i JuST bROke ThE Cup? oR pLaCEd diFFerEnt ColORed NapKiNs???” God, that sounds so stupid. George always used to tell him that he had a nasty habit of overthinking things. He can already hear his old friend’s voice in his head. “After all, that’s what geniuses like you do, right, my lord? They plan things to the last detail.” A smile tugs at the corner of his lips, a familiar piercing sensation in his chest follows. He mutters under his breath to someone he knows can’t respond.

“…If only you were here. Maybe then I wouldn’t be struggling nearly as much as I am now…”

Constantine sighs and pats his face. He’ll only get sadder if he continues down this train of thought. Gotta get back into the game… The simplest solutions are often the most likely to be true, Occam’s Razor. This way of thinking can be applied to plans. The simplest plans are the most likely to succeed, Occam’s Razor. By disguising this elixir as tea and serving it to you as such is the perfect plan, with the only flaw being his impatience in the matter. He should wait until Saturday morning, right? No, because you could die tomorrow. Death is inherently random. Sure, one could see the signs and guess when death will come, but ultimately…not a single person will know when they die. That is something Constantine knows, perhaps, a bit too well.

The plan is set, now all that’s left is to rest. He has a long morning tomorrow and he has to make sure that everything’s right. A single slip up could clue you in on his plans and that would make the future much more difficult than it has to be for both of you.

The ideal and realistic scenario is that life continues as it is. You, him, and the rest Chaldea flying by the seat of their pants until the end of the journey. Close, parallel even, to death but never touching. The pain you’ll suffer will absolutely be immense, but at least you’ll be alive. That’s all that really matters, right?

The unideal and also realistic scenario is you receiving a fatal blow and finding yourself to be alive still. Maybe you’ll be decapitated. Maybe you’ll have a spear go through the side of your head. Regardless of what that fatal blow would look like, you’d live. You’d live to feel the excruciating pain, but you would live. You’d probably be so confused, scared even. You’d look through your Second Archive and find that canteen empty. You’d turn to him for answers and you know what Constantine would say? “I don’t know, but I’ll help you figure this out.” And you’d believe him. Because he’s your friend and he cares about you and he’d never betray your trust like this. Ever.

As for the nightmare scenario…Let’s not think about that.

Constantine slipped into his night clothes. A red cotton set of pjs that Vlad made him for Christmas last year, they’re as nice and warm as the day he received them. At first, he felt kind of guilty. He wasn’t one to wear much of anything while he slept since, no matter how high the thread count or how thin the fabric was, it always felt so heavy on him. That changed the night you came over to his room to sleep over. The fear of being indecent in front of his master was enough to overpower the new discomfort and he started making it a habit for future occasions.

He pulls up the blanket, climbs into his bed and tucks himself in. Sinking into the plush of the mattress soothes the aches that he, until now, didn’t know he had. Ugh, he needs to stop stressing so much. Servants don’t really change, he knows that, but Constantine still feels like his hairs are going to turn gray if he doesn’t learn how to relax.

He closes his eyes and thinks back to what happened today.

“…it is also unbefitting of an emperor of Rome to be this indecisive.”

Emperor Nero’s words, despite him not understanding what she was on about, really did help him get it together. He’ll have to thank her sometime… But first, a quiet affirmation. To his character and his goals as your servant and as your trusted friend.

“An emperor of Rome should not be indecisive, he should never hesitate protecting that which he cherishes most. That is who I was in life and I shall remain that way after death.”

He sighs, letting the guilt escape with the carbon dioxide from his lungs.

“I may have lost sight of what mattered most and allowed myself to grow soft, but no more. I will firmly take my place as Master’s protector, a wall between them and death. Should I fall…I at least know that Master will not go down with me. That is…the best outcome.”

He reaches over to the lamp on his nightstand and pulls the cord, darkness immediately blanketing his room after the click sounds. He turns over onto his side, and empties his mind, such is the quickest method to fall asleep. Tomorrow is going to be a very very long day.

A kitchen is traditionally a room in a building—most often a home—where food and drink are prepared. It is typically a place where creativity and ingenuity flourishes in a more delicious sense than one would believe based on the two adjectives I just used. The technical prowess required to prepare a meal varies depending on what the meal even is in the first place, but really, one doesn’t need all that much to prepare a passable meal given they have common sense.

The kind of food one would find in a given kitchen depends on the era and country, along with the tools used to create such things. In a place like Chaldea, a wide variety of foods and drinks with their associated cookware can be found in the many cupboards and pantries. Most people—the residents chefs being the most appreciative—enjoy this broad selection and are thankful for it. Constantine himself being one of them. …At least before today. The problem with so much food and so many drinks and so many different kinds of convenient cookware is navigating it and finding what is where. For the emperor who barely ever stepped into a kitchen during his first life, this would—in theory—stand to be an absolute nightmare.

The only people who could possibly know where everything is are Emiya, Boudica, Tamamo Cat, and maybe Barghest? But asking them for assistance isn’t feasible at the moment considering the time, so that’s out. For the most part, everyone’s asleep at this hour and you should be waking up at somewhere around 5:40 since it’s a weekday. That means Constantine has about…an hour to do this plus whatever leniency you provide trying to avoid your alarm. Plenty of time to brew tea and course correct if something goes wrong. It’s not the amount of time he wanted since by some awful misfortune he happened to wake up late today and was forced to rush to be presentable for you. But it’ll do. He’s worked under tighter time constraints before, after all.

The first step is finding the tea that he had with Oda Nobunaga. Her retainer stated that it was from ‘somewhere in Thailand’ so chances are good that the container’s label has words in Thai written on it. He checks a few cupboards on the ceiling and finds one with tea in it, after some digging he finds what he’s looking for and opens the tin to check the smell. It’s exactly as he remembered it, good. He grabs the empty kettle on the burners of one of the ovens, fills it with water, and places the tea bags in whilst the water slowly rises in temperature. He puts the canteen on a different burner to heat up as well.

The second step is to find a tea set. Easy since he’s not trying to look for any damaged sets anymore. He takes his time viewing the beautiful ceramics. Hmm…red is his color, but should he try something new? Blue always looks nice as it reminds him of the sea. But green is good, too… You know what? If it ain’t broke then don’t fix it. Red is always first choice AND first class! The set Constantine chose was mostly white with red peonies painted on. It’s nice, simple and exudes the kind of elegance befitting of the cup a legendary elixir would be drank from.

The third step is to put everything together. The kettle whistled and Constantine poured himself some tea into the cup on the left hand side of the tray. He then grabbed a pair of oven mitts and unscrewed the canteen to pour the elixir in the cup on the right hand side. As he did so, Constantine’s eyes widen in horror, the blood draining from his face. The elixir… is gray. A nice, unnatural, unappetizing, and metallic gray swirls into the tea cup. What. The. Fu

Step four: find food coloring. Constantine bolts from his place near the counter to find brown and yellow food coloring. Absolutely no one can catch him right now. There is no good way to explain giving someone a shiny gray liquid, especially not you. If he’s found out now, he’s toast. Difficult as it was, he did manage to grab a few used bottles in the spice cupboard. He took red, blue and green as well just in case he’d have to start getting creative.

He reaches the counter and haphazardly places down the tiny colored bottles. He drips some brown food coloring and stirs. It looks a glittering beige. He adds some more. It looks darker, but not quite brown. It also still has the glitter. He adds a lot more. It is now, in fact, brown but too dark for it to look like the tea in his cup. Constantine adds food coloring to his cup and the kettle. The shades are close but not exact, however adding more would only further complicate things and he really doesn’t have the time for this anyways. He does, after all, have to find edible glitter to match the shimmer of the dyed elixir and god knows where that is or if it even exists in the first place. For the amount of beatings he gave himself for overthinking this yesterday, things sure have gotten incredibly complex, wouldn’t you say?

If finding food coloring was akin to finding a buried treasure chest, then edible glitter was like finding an ancient tomb. Seriously, who thought to put it behind the condiments in the fucking refrigerator? The label doesn’t even tell you to do that, it’s ridiculous! Constantine rushed once more back to the counter and begins sprinkling glitter into both his cup and the kettle. Just for safe measure he adds some to yours too. It looks…alright. Not good, but not a terrible state of affairs either. It’s leagues better than the odd gray liquid from before. He just hopes you don’t notice the glitter too much.

All this means is that Constantine has to put more of an effort into distracting you during your game with him. In theory it should be easy considering how much you talk during the game and try to stall your way out of defeat. He could also hold his cup in one hand at an angle to keep you from seeing the color of the liquid in the cup, which honestly should be enough on its own. It’s an innocuous enough deviation from his usual behavior that it should go unnoticed by you since you aren’t exactly looking too hard at him at all times. Plus, there is also the fact that you aren’t one to ask for seconds when it comes to tea and you’d only ever do so if Constantine told you to. Luckily for you, he intends to spare you from that fate today. It’s the least he can do for what he’s going to put you through.

Constantine put the food coloring and glitter back in their respective places along with the oven mitts, then he wipes the table down of any stray drops of liquid. Setting up the tray and placing it on top of his checkers set, he takes it into his hands and walks out from the kitchen.

The walk to your room from the kitchen was much more difficult than it should’ve been as Constantine’s conscience had begun to flare up despite in spite of his vow from last night. It’s not really about the morality of the decision this time, though, rather the thing had taken the novel approach of presenting the potential consequences of his actions to him. Not the ones concerning what’s going to happen to you, of course. That already failed. No, this time the consequences being presented are specifically about what’s going to happen to him when you find out. His conscience takes the floor and desperately makes its case to the stubborn last emperor of Rome.

How is he going to live with himself after this? After you wisen up to his betrayal of your implicit and absolute trust—which he, frankly, doesn’t deserve—in him, how is Constantine going to live with the aftermath of you confronting him for it? That is assuming, of course, that you don’t end your contract with him on the spot from anger. Which would be justified considering the crime he just committed. If you spare him that fate, then he’d probably try to go about as normal but now with the added weight of that egregious sin and your disdain on his shoulders. The ends justify the means, right? No matter what happens between you and Constantine, he’ll be content with you simply being alive, right? Wrong. You’ve made yourself a firm spot in his heart, right next to the shades of the people he loved dearly. If you were to get up and walk away now… surely he’d feel hollow. He’d be clutching at your afterimage desperately hoping with each touch that it was the real thing. Is that really something he can stomach from now until the rest of his days?

Constantine felt his resolve being shaken by the argument presented by his conscience. He hadn’t much considered what might happen to him if you found out since he decided to focus more on perfecting the plan to the point where he wouldn’t even need to consider the aftermath. The thought of you essentially killing him on the spot made him shiver. He couldn’t really see you doing something so drastic, but he can’t exactly say that he’s seen you get truly angry either, so maybe his immediate death is in the realm of possibility after all. If that were to happen… then Constantine would at least hope that you call for him again. Servants do not usually retain their memories of previous summonings, so you’d get a clean slate with that version of him instead of… what he is now emotionally.

That does beg the question of how you’d treat that new Constantine. Would you give him the cold shoulder for fear of him betraying you again? Would you actively push him away when he inevitably gravitates towards you as he himself once had? That poor, poor soul would be left wondering why you’ve put this distance between the two of you, not knowing that ‘he’ had brought this on himself. That this is not his first time being here and

Constantine shakes his head free from the grasp of his conscience and begins walking faster to your room. He has to commit. He has to. Over half of the distance has been travelled, he just needs to make it through the final stretch. Constantine has already planned this whole thing through and should this checkers game end well, then he’ll have nothing to worry about. He just has to commit and all will be well. He just has to have faith in himself and in your bond with him.

…You wouldn’t do any of those awful things, would you? You’ve forgiven so many disgusting and wretched people here and you’ve made a good deal of them your friends. Surely, even after he’s committed such a grave sin against you… Surely you’d extend your forgiveness to him too. You care about him, he knows that. He’ll fess up about his worries—he’ll toss that ball to you and you’ll take it and your heart will bleed for him, just as it had for many others. He just needs to have faith.

Your eyelids crack open upon hearing the knock at the door. The sound was odd since you weren’t expecting anyone this morning and most people would’ve barged in already instead of politely knocking and waiting like a normal well adjusted person.

You force a jump out of bed, yell that you’ll be out in a minute, and quickly scramble to put on your gym clothes since they were both comfy and easy to put on. Let’s face it, style isn’t much of a concern when you’re practically wearing the same mystic codes all day everyday so choosing a simple tank-top and sweats isn’t too much of a crime to Chaldea’s fashion scene.

You open the door to find none other than Constantine XI standing in the hall, ornate ceramic set of cups and checkers set in hand. Upon what seemed to be a slight delay registering that you opened the door, Constantine greets you. He was dressed in his first ascension with the minor addition of his glasses. You had gone through a great amount of effort to find Constantine a pair of glasses similar to the ones he wore on White Day when you first met Micheal. It’s not quite the same, just a slightly thicker and completely black pair of Ray-Bans. It did suit him quite nicely, though, as it added an air of perspicaciousness to his distinguished and august air. Not that he needed it since he carries himself that way normally anyways.

Megane aside, another notable thing about Constantine this morning was his expression. You knew him to be a morning person, always enjoying watching the sunrise with a cup of black coffee and whatnot but… something was off. He was smiling. Not that it’s a crime to smile or anything but, well, the smile itself feels strange to look at. It’s like the corners of his lips are being held upwards as opposed to simply resting there naturally. Yet, it looks the same as it ever was. Ah, you’re probably looking too much into it. You did just wake up after all, so the little wheel hamsters haven’t quite finished their stretching yet hence your mental processing power being as subpar as it is.

You step aside and let him in, after he fully steps inside you awkwardly stick your arms out as if to silently ask if he needs help. He slides the checkerboard out from under the tray holding the ceramics and hands it off to you.

“Master, would you mind setting up the board? I haven’t seen you do so before and I’d like to make sure you know where the pieces go in case you find yourself needing to play checkers someday.”

“Ugh, don’t say that, Micheal. It might actually happen. And last thing I want is for it to be some kind of life or death situation—”

Constantine’s hand twitches.

“—and I’d have to somehow finesse a win. That’d be terrible!”

He shakes his head and sets the ceramics set down and you follow suit with the checkers set. Opening it up, you gently set the case down on the floor beside your feet and pull out the board itself along with the pieces. It was nothing special, just your average eight by eight rosewood board with a slight red tint to it. You start the setup by placing the first white piece—also known as your piece—on row 3, column B. As soon as you do, a gloved hand gently taps the back of yours.

“All pieces, black or white, reside and move on the black spaces of the board, Master. So please move that one either to the left or to the right. And remember, four pieces per row, starting from three and down to one.”

“Ah, got it.”

You move that piece to the left and reach to grab another white piece only to see next to the pile… ugh.

“……”

You pause to stare at the thing in the ceramic cup for only a second before moving on and grabbing that white piece to place on the board. If you don’t draw attention to it, then you won’t have to drink it. Stall for the win and act natural. It’ll get cold and you won’t have to drink it.

“Master.”

You place the white piece down and reach to grab a few more to speed up the process, you know, for efficiency’s sake. And with that proactive mindset, you finish setting up the white pieces and swiftly move on to place the black pieces on his side. It starts on row three, right? Four pieces per row.

“Master.”

And wowza, would you look at that? The gameboard’s all set up, so now you can finally—

“Master.”

A velvet glove gently tilts your head to look up from the board to the gentleman addressing you. His expression was it’s own brand of terrifying with the overly sweet smile and the hard glint in his brown eyes. Had your life been an anime, there’d be a shadow over his eyes and a red tick mark on his head to further spell out: “I’m irritated but I’m being polite about it.”

You force a smile that you honestly think came out to be a grimace and respond in a faux singsong tone to match that same amiable and welcoming energy your emperor friend is giving off.

“Yes~?”

Constantine removes his hand from your chin and takes that hand to pick up his… lovely ceramic cup and takes a sip of the—ugh—liquid inside. He then responds.

“I know you hate it—”

“Hate is an understatement, but go on.”

“It really isn’t, but regardless. You need to drink tea, Master. It’s good for your health.”

“But it tastes awful! My taste buds are in the trenches just looking at the damn thing! How can that be healthy?”

The wretched concoction swirling in the beautiful red and white ceramic makes for a daunting display. It had the audacity to be the same shade as a delicious bar of dark chocolate with speckles of something shimmering within to give off the vibe of something far more beautiful than it actually is. The appearance of the tea was lovely, but the flavor is—no, MUST be on another level of foul. If it actually was good, then why did Constantine add glitter?! He’s clearly making it look better than it actually is to lure you into some false sense of security so that you’ll think that this time will be different. After all, what is beauty if not that which conceals the ugly truth?! You suppress the visceral shudder threatening to rattle your skeleton like a maraca, then add onto your previous statement with a barely concealed tinge of fear.

“And that shiny glitter you put in is NOT helping!”

The sadist in front of you chuckles and, in a move you just know is to demonstrate how perfectly safe and totally not gross the tea is, takes a long sip from his cup. He sets it down with a small smile on his lips, folding his arms and replies like a father reassuring his child.

“Master, it’s not nearly as bad you’re making it out to be. This is less bitter than the one I shared with you last time, in fact, I’d say it’s actually quite sweet this time around.”

Upon seeing that you’re wholly unconvinced with your raised eyebrows and all, Constantine’s gaze softens and he sighs.

“I had a feeling beforehand that you wouldn’t be swayed, and so I’ve decided to cut to the chase a bit instead of wasting time trying to placate your fears. I hope you’ll forgive me for my next statement.”

“……?”

“Master, if you don’t drink at least that cup of tea… then I’ll gladly tell Sir Percival that you skipped out on dinner last night in favor of gallivanting around Shinjuku.”

You can feel the blood draining from your face upon hearing the blatant blackmail from the mouth of your trusted compatriot. You didn’t even know he could do that, let alone with such a soft look in his eyes! It’s like he’s the one being threatened with having to eat an inordinate amount of food here.

The little hamsters seem to have gotten on their wheels, albeit sluggishly so and your thoughts flicker to your most recent expedition with every click of a rotation. It isn’t actually that crazy to believe that Constantine would pull a move like this, is it? The Constantine from the Reinstatement Realm had one hell of a glare when you came face to face with him for the first time at the battle of Sirmium. That kind of frigid look doesn’t come from just being a good actor and you’d know since you’ve looked evil in the eye so many times before. No, that glare had killing intent in the truest sense. You’re sure that if he had the chance, that Constantine would have cut you in half without even blinking twice. So really…

“Master? Did I… Is something wrong?”

No. That Constantine is different from the one sitting before you. The concerned look in his gaze and the slight pinch in his brows brought you out of that train of thought real quick. This is normal Proper Human History Constantine XI, not one with a botched summoning and a Holy Grail. He’d never look at you, or anyone with that level of cold blooded killing intent. Sure, has he done some terrible things when he was alive? Yeah, probably. But so did everyone else at the time. Being nice didn’t get anyone anywhere back in those days and the world would stay that way for a long time after his death. Even with that, you know that your friend here is a good man at heart. And, despite all the whining you’re doing, you know this isn’t that deep anyways. Which is why you sigh and rest your forehead on the palm of your hand, a small smile on your face.

“Nope, I was just a bit shocked that I heard actual blackmail coming from you. But then I realized that that’s just like you, Micheal.”

You see Constantine’s eyes widen and his smile fades quickly, his shoulders visibly tensing. Ah…that probably wasn’t the best way of phrasing that, huh? You quickly wave your hands around in a panic as you add some much needed clarification.

“Ah! That came out wrong. I don’t mean it like you’re some kind of bad person or anything! It’s just, you’re the type of person who would do anything to achieve your goals, right? Wait, shit that sounds even worse. Let me rephrase that.”

You move your head to rest on the back of your hand, your chin putting a decent amount of pressure on your wrist. You turned your gaze to Constantine. The tension on him hadn’t let up one bit. The best way it can be described is like you finding your dog with something it shouldn’t have in its mouth. Something like that. Which is a bit funny since being blackmailed is on the lower low end of things your servants have done to you in the past.

Ah, he’s too kindhearted feeling guilty over this.

“You do a lot to take care of me even when I push against you and complain and stuff. And… well, I’m pretty glad. Thanks, Constantine.”

You see the man visibly relax in front of you, his shoulders drooping back into a normal position. You’re glad that you managed to clear things up relatively quickly as you know that Constantine is prone to beating himself up about things, and while cute, the resulting look doesn’t suit him at all. He deserves to be happy, like everyone else here does.

Constantine nods and replies.

“It’s nothing. Master. I’m only doing my due diligence for your sake. It’s just what servants do.”

“Whatever you say, buddy.”

You look over to the—ugh—cup of tea. It still has a bit of steam flowing from it, so it’s neither too hot nor too cold looking. You force your hand to move and grasp the thin ceramic handle of the white teacup. It’s only then that you notice the rather lovely red peonies painted on the side of the cup. They look wonderful.

Hoo… The pain is temporary. The. pain. is. temporary! You’ve eaten Fuuma’s manjyu before and nothing has ever come close to being as bad since. You can do this! You can fucking do this! This tea ain’t nothin’ to you, man. Just don’t smell it and don’t focus on the taste, just swallow. It’ll be over in seconds. Come on. Take the cup—yes like that—and now drink. Chug it like those people at sportsball games chug when they’re on the Jumbotron! Come on! You’ve GOT this!!!

After your moment of self hype, you part your lips and let the wretched thing pass into your mouth.

The very second the liquid touched your tongue, you retched and coughed.

…There are no words in any language; past, present, or future that can describe what this tea tasted like in that moment. There isn’t a way to put this so that another human being can picture it in their mind. The only way you could get even a little bit in range of the truth, ironically, is using those vague insults people throw all willy nilly at things they don’t like.

It’s like how you think battery acid tastes. It’s like how you think sewage tastes. It’s like how you think that gross dirty dishwater in the sink tastes after you get done pouring the spoiled milk in the drain. That fugly liquid you poured all the drinks you could in when you were a kid to make some kind of utterly reprehensible elixir just because you could. It’s on that level of revolting.

You’ve never drank any of that stuff before and it’s highly likely you never will, but the idea is there. It’s in the outer orbit of what the tea actually tastes like. Close enough to suffice, but too far to be a satisfactory description for anyone that isn’t you. This is the best approximation that your mind can come up with.

Now, you’re not quite sure when it happened since the flavor of whatever this is struck you harder than one of Muhammed Ali’s Sunday punches, but Constantine was now at your side. He was holding the tea cup in his hands. The way he held it was like how someone would hold an ailing baby bird in their hands. Both hands securely cupping the object to ensure that it will not fall out of his grasp. You’re sure that you must’ve let go of the cup while you were coughing a lung out your esophagus and that Constantine must’ve jumped out of his seat to prevent the tea from spilling onto your legs and scalding your skin.

How kind of him.

When the dreadful flavor had finally taken its leave, you were left with a surprisingly subdued aftertaste. You reason it to be because of the original being so utterly jarring to your palate that the remains pale in comparison. Thanks to that, you can now put actual words instead of vague phrases to describe the aftertaste, though admittedly you’d still need a phrase for it as it’s just that horrendous.

It tastes of iron. Not too much like blood or anything, but kinda like when you hold a brass thing in your hand for a while and you put it down and you’re left with that funny smell after. It’s that kind of metallic vibe that now resides on your tongue. It’s weird but…not that bad? You’d put the aftertaste a ways down from Fuuma’s manjyu but the initial taste is leagues above that—hell, you’d even say that it’s playing a completely different sport than the manjyu. You didn’t even know that was possible.

The only props you could give the ‘tea’ is that it certainly, definitely, and absolutely woke you up. Gone was the morning haze from waking up at five forty-something on a Friday and now the hamsters were running a steady pace on their wheels, allowing you to be more present in the world than you were before.

Looking at your friend in order to address the elephant in the room, you found something about him that you didn’t pick up on earlier.

His hair is messy today. It’s not…bad. Not at all! It looks amazing by bedhead standards, actually. It’s just that you know Constantine to be a stickler when it comes to how he presents himself to others. You theorize it to be because of the pressure he’s under as, not only a Roman emperor, but the last Roman emperor. He needs to look his best as he carries both a prestigious title and a shameful (in his opinion) one. Honestly, it’s probably why he mostly hangs out in his first ascension instead of his second and third ones since it’s probably much easier to meet that self-imposed standard in a suit as opposed to a full set of armor. The point of all this is that his clean up game is immaculate and that’s just his bear minimum standard, so seeing his hair look messy like this is odd. Really, REALLY odd.

Something might be wrong here.

“Hey… Hey, Micheal. Are you okay?”

“…!”

You could’ve sworn that you saw him flinch at the question, but it happened so fast that maybe it was just a breath instead. Regardless, he nods and, with a pensive look, he responds.

“All’s well with me, but I should be asking you that question, Master. You looked like you were going to throw up. I… I thought this one might’ve… been better for you.”

“I’m alright, it’s just… I don’t—haha… I don’t know how to put it into words how bad this is! But that’s fine. If I can eat Fuuma’s and Gawain’s cooking, then I can eat anything! Just…just give me a second...”

Constantine glances away from you for a moment before returning his gaze to you. While it seems he’s looking you in the eye, you feel as though that isn’t quite the case.

“…You don’t have to finish that. I can… I can put that away and get you something else, if that’s alright with you.”

You shake your head. Constantine had been trying for months to find a tea that you actually liked with little success and you begrudgingly did finish at least one cup from each of them. You weren’t about to break that record, especially not with your friend looking like a kicked puppy. He already puts in the work to keep you alive, man! You can’t do this to him now.

Hoooooh… Come on, come on! Self hype! The pain is temporary. The pain is temp-o-rary! Are you gonna let this dinky cup of tea best you, the last master of humanity? Hell no. This shit ain’t nothing to you, man! You’ve faced worse, and you’re probably going to face worse than this in the future. You’re gonna finish this cup and you’re gonna be a bit healthier than before. Like, it’ll add a day to your lifespan or something, maybe a few more vitamins to your blood. That’s reason enough to pursue this venture. Now, drink that tea!

“Whew… cheers!”

With a smile, you preformed your best Giorno impression and down the tea. You chugged that shit like you had a tree replacing your tooth. And you could feel your taste buds screaming in agony as you did so, calling your gag reflex as reinforcement in vain to try and put an end to this madness. But you held on! Like a champion of the people, you held on splendidly!

Honestly, the sudden onset of nausea would’ve ganked you had you not already experienced something similar in the past. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that you drank this awful, awful cup and you lived to tell the tale. That’s the important part here.

You nearly slammed the cup down only to stop yourself as soon as you recalled that this was, in fact, a ceramic tea cup and not a beer mug. You force a smile and look to the side where Constantine is—er, was standing. He seems to have sat back down while you were making your bold play. You slowly turn to look at him with that forced smile and, in an obviously fake cheery voice, break the silence.

“That was…awesome. Now. Let’s play some checkers! Wooo…”

Constantine’s eyes widened for a split second before he shook his head with a tiny smile, a small chuckle leaving his lips.

“Your ability to stay enthused even in dire straits like these amazes me sometimes—“

“Sometimes? Only sometimes?”

“But nevertheless, let’s get to it. I hope you’ve been reading up on some good openings, Master.

“Pssh. I don’t need to study for this. My intuition is more than enough to beat you.”

“Hehe, spoken like a true loser. We’ll see if your ‘intuition’ will carry you to victory this time around.”

You rest your elbows on the table and slouch forward in your chair, this is a serious competitive affair, after all.

“………”

“………”

“Master.”

“Yeah?”

“White always goes first.”

“Oh, oh right. My bad.”

You take a look at the board. There isn’t really that much you can do in a first move, so it doesn’t really matter which piece you move where this turn because, unlike in chess, all the pieces are the same and they move the same. So this one’s just a freebie.

You move your first piece from C3 to B4 and Constantine moves his black piece from D6 to C5, making that piece diagonal from the one you just moved.

You reach to grab your piece on G3 only to have Constantine gently tap the back of your hand. You look to him and he smiles knowingly.

“Master, aren’t you forgetting something?”

You look to the board to see what you could’ve possibly missed this early in the game, and then it hits you. Ugh. You groan and rolled your eyes.

“Do we really have to play with forced capture? It makes things harder than it needs to be.”

Constantine chuckles and takes a sip of his tea, he sets the cup down on the little ceramic plate before responding with amusement very clearly coloring his tone.

“Well, that is the point, isn’t it? Forced captured makes you think, Master. It pushes you to evaluate your current options and plan far ahead into the future. Those are skills anyone should have, not just generals and tacticians. In essence…”

Constantine holds his hand out and waves it in a circular motion. Obviously, he wants you to finish the sentence.

“It’s a teaching moment.”

“Yes. Learning how to properly evaluate your available choices and plan ahead will help you in long run, Master. Simply playing checkers is one step towards that goal.”

“Fine, fine.”

You move your white piece from B4 to D6 and take his piece. Constantine responds by moving his black piece from E7 to C5 and takes your white piece. Just as expected.

Now that you’re no longer in a position to take one of his pieces, you again reach for your piece on G3 and move it to F4. Constantine not a second after moves his piece from F6 to E5.

You begrudgingly move your piece from F4 to D6 and take his piece, which then prompts Constantine to take yours by moving one of his pieces from C7 to E5.

You move a piece and then he moves his which puts his piece in peril of being taken by yours which you have to follow through on thanks to playing with forced capture. This is, essentially, what the early game looks like in checkers. …At least from your perspective as an amateur. Things only really get interesting when most of the pieces on both sides have disappeared from the board. That makes sense since you’ll have more spaces to move with less pieces clogging the board. But that also means having to carefully plan the next turn or you’ll be down five pieces before you can blink.

The game forces you to do more with less and golly gee, who could possibly be better at getting a lot out of what little he has? …Honestly, it’s like this game was made for him.

You move your piece from B2 to C3 and Constantine moves his piece from E5 to F4, this sets his piece up for capture.

You roll your eyes and take his piece: E3 to G5 and he moves in to take that piece: H6 to F4.

On the board right now, there can clearly be seen a grand total of nine pieces for both sides. This is where the latter half of the game begins as enough pieces have been removed from the first two rows to allow for placements to actually matter.

In a move to to keep one of your pieces from being taken this turn, you move your piece from F2 to G3 which keeps it safe thanks to the piece behind it on H2. Pieces can only be taken if there are 3 available diagonal spaces to move, after all.

Constantine raises his eyebrows and takes a moment to think. This usually isn’t a good sign for you as what follows is more likely than not a devastating blow. Looking at the board again, you can’t quite find a set up for him to take more than one piece this turn. But then again, you aren’t exactly good at checkers are you?

He exhales through his nose, smiles and moves his piece from… G7 to F6? What is he planning?

Thanks to his move on the sixth turn, his piece on F4 is open to being captured, which means the only move you can make is moving your piece on G3 to jump over his on F4 and stick the landing on E5. Which is what you begrudgingly do and fold your hands on the table after you put his taken piece on your side of the table with the others. You await the coming devastation cooly like a… like a—an ice cube. Because those are cool. Yeah. You wait like an ice cube. Awesome simile, buddy.

Constantine’s smile widens. In any other context, his smile would be seen as very sweet. It would be the kind of smile that you’d quickly whip your phone out to take a candid to look at later when you’re feeling kinda down. It’s a tender, tender smile born from what you believe to be from actual genuine joy. Yes, in any other context aside from tabletop games. In here, that smile can only mean one thing and one thing only.

You are so dead.

“Master.”

“Y-Yes?”

“You’re forgetting something.”

“…?”

You look to the board. You had already taken his piece on F4, so what else is there to do?

Upon seeing your confused expression, Constantine chuckles and points his finger at his piece on F6.

“Look. You can jump one more time.”

Your eyes widen and you’re pretty sure that your jaw just hit the floor. You hesitantly reach for your piece on E3 and place it on G7 before taking his piece on F6. Until now, you hadn’t ever taken more than one of Constantine’s pieces in a turn and you had been the witness to and victim of getting combo’d many a time. So being able to pull this off was a pretty huge step to being at least okay in checkers.

After glancing up at Constantine to make sure that he wasn’t planning an early April Fools’ joke to which he nodded, you pumped your fists in the air. You made sure to keep your celebratory vocalizations on the down low due it being 6:00am on a Friday which left you whisper yelling like a person who found out that their favorite sportsball team won the world championship. You even threw a few air punches to further punctuate how hype this moment was.

Constantine on the other side of the table was holding back a laugh for similar reasons. Watching you celebrate this hard over something this small was pretty funny in all honesty, especially with what he has planned in a few turns. But you don’t need to know that right now. Your radiant smile is far too priceless to ruin and if he could…

He’d look at it for a long time.

After your small celebration concluded, you sat back down and awaited Constantine’s next move. There’s nothing to be worried about, surely, as you had foiled whatever scheme he had cooked up with your absolutely brilliant play on the field—

Black: F8 to H6.

Fuck.

Ah, but there’s no need to fear! You have eight pieces and Constantine has seven. You’re clearly winning here, so all you need to do is not lose any more of your pieces and you’ll have it in the bag. Easy peasy, right?

…Right?

Oh, if only things were that easy. The game lasts another forty turns ending with your demise at the hands of three of his kings. In typical Constantine fashion, he had baited you into taking more of his pieces without repercussion before turning the game around and making you pay for it dearly. Why were you even surprised? This is literally his modus operandi.

You rested your forehead on the backs of your hands and sulked whilst Constantine was putting the pieces away. Then you groaned and stated the words that burned oh so deeply within your crumbling heart.

“…I hate you so much.”

If you weren’t looking down, then you’d have noticed the man roll his eyes playfully before he patted you on the shoulder.

“I’m not sure what is was you were expecting, but it certainly threw a wrench in your game. Which is why you shouldn’t focus too hard on planning based on hardline expectations. You should consider what lies outside of them and have a backup plan for when things change.”

“…”

“The battlefield is not some static series of predetermined moves, but rather a flowing and ever changing thing.”

Constantine sighs, he knows the depth of his next words better than most.

“The help you placed all of your hopes on and sacrificed much to gain… may not ever come. So it’s important to plan for all sorts of misfortunes along the way so that you won’t end up in a hopeless situation like that, alright, Master? I… That’s not something you should ever have to go through.”

He had so much more he wanted to tell you in that moment. He wanted you to stop being so reckless and running headfirst into danger. He wanted you to learn that pacing yourself isn’t a bad thing and that it will benefit you in the long run. He wanted you to know that you’re the luckiest human alive and that someday that luck will run out and that you will be paying a heavy price if you don’t prepare for that day to come. He wanted you to know that you can’t depend on your own servants as much as you think you can and that there will come a time when you are well and truly alone and that there will be no one coming for you. And that only scratches the surface of the mountain of life experiences and advice Constantine has to his name.

But alas, telling you all that is a lecture and he knows how much you hate those. He doesn’t really blame you since he felt the same when he was your age, always creeping towards the exit every time his mom and his brother scolded him for getting into trouble with George. As much as he hated listening to them talk on and on nonstop, he wouldn’t mind sitting through one these days…

Constantine watches you lift your head and rest your cheek on the back of your hand. You were still sulking at your defeat but you weren’t taking it hard enough so as to not listen to him. He knew that you were mainly making a joke but also using that sad look in your eyes to garner pity so that he’ll spare you the next game.

Like he’d do that in a million years.

You nod and respond to his advice.

“I know, I know. But what’s the point in learning all of this when everyone else already has it all planned anyways? Every time something changes, Da Vinci and Hol— Da Vinci already has the solution and if not her, then someone else does. What’s the point in learning to play smart when you’re surrounded by geniuses who have it down more than you ever will?”

Because they’re incompetent and that incompetence will force you to have to step up to save yourself on your own someday when that situation shouldn’t even be possible in the first place.

“That is true, you are surrounded by the smartest people who have ever lived but that is no excuse to let your brain rot. Becoming pliant like this will allow your enemy the opportunity to separate you from your lifeline and simply watch you helplessly flounder to your death without having to do much of anything. It’s a weakness, Master, and it is never a good thing to allow a weakness unto yourself.”

“…Touché. I just feel like I’ll never really get there, y’know? If I’m doing this badly at checkers, then I really don’t want to know how I’ll be doing in that type of situation. I mean, I haven’t improved at all since we started playing!”

“Now now, you’re not that bad at checkers and you have improved quite a bit since then. And this…”

Constantine reaches over to the case that stores the board and pulls out two black pieces and holds them in front of you.

“This is proof of that. You aren’t good at the game, that is the truth but saying that you haven’t improved is false. You have improved; you just need more practice.”

“But practice takes time and I do not have any of that these days. Lostbelts, farming, singularity busting—I’ll never get on your level, not in a kajillion years!”

Constantine tugs a smile onto his lips as he shuts the case.

“Don’t worry, Master. You have all the time in the world, so there’s no need to rush. I certainly don’t mind waiting in between games. Haha… It’ll just give me more time to find ways to educate you.”

Constantine rises from his seat and places the tray with the tea set on top of the wooden case. He looks over to you and adds, cheerfully:

“Now, enough of that. I think it’s time we both ate breakfast. Strategizing takes a lot more out of a person than people think, so it’s important to keep yourself well. The cafeteria will be open by the time we get there so we won’t have to wait too long.”

You follow suit and get up from your chair too, walking with Constantine to the door.

“You said it! I definitely need something to wash that iron-y taste out of my mouth from the tea you gave me.”

Constantine blinked in astonishment a few times and mumbled something you couldn’t quite catch.

“Eh? Did you say something, Micheal?”

“No. I just thought it tasted more… like a pomegranate than anything.”

“What?! Dude, if that’s what a pomegranate tastes like to you then maybe you should cut back on the black coffee to let your tastebuds breathe.”

Constantine laughs and shakes his head.

“The point of coffee is to wake you up. Therefore, the kind of coffee that stays true to that purpose the most is black. Adding any sugar or cream would only put me to sleep.”

“…You can’t be serious.”

“I am. More than I ever have been, actually.”

You close the door behind you and lock it before turning to look at your friend, wholly unconvinced. He looks back with that stupid endearing smile of his. You sigh and let it go, walking side by side with him away from the door and in the direction of the cafeteria.

In your mind, today so far was an interesting experience. You drank tea that tasted far worse than anything you have ever consumed in your life and you managed to pull off one of those cool moves Constantine always pulls on you in checkers. You were getting better at the game and today’s match assuaged your doubts and made you dread less about the next one on Saturday next week. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Constantine, on the other hand felt that today was a resounding success. His plan went through with barely a hitch thanks to his quick thinking and you were left none the wiser in the end. Now you’ll never have to worry about dying. Now it’s a certainty that you’ll live to see not only the end of this long long journey, but the fruits of your labor too and far far beyond that. You’ll be fine and Constantine will stand by you for as long as you’ll have him, even if that means for the rest of eternity.

No matter how much you’ll change, you’ll still be his master. The most you you that exists, existed and will ever exist is the present you. So there’s no need to worry about ‘missing’ the old you when you’re fundamentally yourself at all times in the present. And it’s not a bad thing, losing your current self to that hypothetical future you anyways. Not in this manner. It just means that you’ll grow into a wiser and more mature individual as time goes on and you might even teach him a few things someday. You’ll be able to go more places and do more things without ever having to worry about not having enough time for it. Plus, the world is a big enough place that’ll change with you as time goes on, so he finds it a bit hard to believe that you’ll get bored easily.

And even if you did, then you’d only have to look to him and your long line of companions. Because Chaldea and its people are nothing if not entertaining. The numerous events and festivals you’ve participated in speak for themselves. So really…

Eternity isn’t that bad, at least not as bad everyone portrays it to be literature and movies.

Not when you have friends!

Endnote: By the numerals! I’ve actually done it! Man, this fic came out to be way longer than I expected it to be and it would’ve been even longer if I included the three unfinished deleted scenes. I think I did pretty well for this and I hope you think so too. I really felt like I needed to elaborate more and a list of headcanons honestly wouldn’t have done Constantine’s thoughts and struggles justice quite like a full on fic would. It’d be me explaining and telling you that he’s struggling and that’d be that as opposed to the better option of me cracking his noggin open and showing you what’s inside.

One of Constantine’s biggest flaws as a person is his extreme reluctance to talk to anyone that isn’t George Sphrantzes about his problems. The intrusive thoughts and his guilty conscience will be beating this poor man half to death forever while he desperately tries to hold them both at bay and mire himself in denial to cope with his problems. He doesn’t tell his master because he can’t appear weak to the person he’s protecting lest they see how fragile and soft he really is and they won’t trust him anymore. He can’t tell members of the general populous his problems because he has a reputation as not only an emperor, but a Roman emperor and the pressure of that title makes him feel like he has to conduct himself in a strict manner that befits that very prestigious title. And don’t even think about bringing in his predecessors. The only reason Nero got as far as she did was because a. she had the element of surprise, b. he was worn down mentally by his escapism tactics not working at all this time due to the gravity of what he just learned, and c. that she had him literally cornered. With these self imposed restrictions, it’s a wonder how Constantine can portray himself as a Mentally Okay™ individual to everyone else.

Now, being alone with his thoughts has a potential to—as we have seen here—create what is essentially a feedback loop. Since Constantine does not have and frankly refuses to have a confidant to bounce his ideas off of, he’s stuck unknowingly talking himself into a downward spiral where all of his fears are just right around the corner from becoming a reality. Now. It’s not usually this bad. Micheal’s escapism tactics usually work and he’ll just forget about whatever is bothering and everything’ll be hunky dory until he remembers it in the future. Not healthy at all, but that’s just how our guy rolls here.

On a more meta note, I hope the Wizard of Oz excerpts weren’t too cringe to read. I wanted to demonstrate just how much being told that the Elixir of Immortality exists in Chaldea has affected him. I tried looking for books that had something I could twist into something worse and yet relevant to the topic but I came up short most of the time which is why I finally settled on “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.”

Now, there are about 3 endings—outcomes might be the better word here—I can see for this fic. Ending A is where you find out about it, get rightfully angry and kill off Constantine immediately. Ending B is where you find out about it, you don’t get mad, and you forgive him. And secret Ending C is where you never ever figure it out and nothing happens. Let me know if you guys want a post with all that jazz.

By the way, I didn’t make up that checkers game in my head. I actually went and played a game with an expert difficulty computer and I recorded the game so I’d have something realistic to write at the end there. Man, checkers looks so much easier than it actually is, good grief.

Oh, and just as a little fun thing. Can anyone tell me where the David Byrne reference is in here? I seem to have lost it.

Alright… I think that’s all I have to say right now off the top of my head. I hope everyone enjoyed, don’t hesitate to ask questions or leave comments. Word spaghetti works just fine. And have a great day, everyone.

—Redline, over and out!

[manapeer]

I'll call my dad

The justice league was in disaray. They had failed to stop the summoning, and already the demon was stepping out of the portal. The last standing heros didn't have the manpower to stop a whole thrall army and the magic users certainly hadn't the power to deal with the demon himself. They needed a plan, or a miracle, or the earth was doomed.

Suddenly, Constantine braced himself, and strode right to the beast.

"Don't step further, or I'll have to call my dad."

The heros were baffled. The demon too.

"Your... dad ?"

"That's right," he was sweating bullets but he continued "I'm John Constantine and Phantom is my dad. He cares a lot about Earth. He will not take kindly your little invading stunt."

"Who is Phantom ?" wispered Flash to Zatana.

"I don't know."

The league didn't know if he was bluffing or not. Zatana had recently heard rumors about Constantine's father, but it was all vague, shrouded in secrecy.

The surprised past, the demon laught.

"Alright," he mocked, "Let see what your 'dad' think of that."

Constantine took a deep breath and reluctantly put out a piece of paper form his inner pocket. As he put it in fire with a spell, the cave they were in was breifly plunged in freezing cold and supernatural darkness. A thunderous ice crack resoned, that they could feel in their chest as much as they heard. The shadows sleethed into the form of a titanesque being, and suddenly big, bright, lazarus green eyes opened. And they didn't look happy.

"John."

He gulped.

"Hi dad."

"It's a school night."

"I know," the magician cringed, "I swear I have a good reason."

Now the being looked downright pissed.

"Damn, I would hope so ! Do you have any idea what time it is ?"

"He wants to destroy the Earth !" defended Constantine almost petulantly, waving at the confused demon.

The green eyes looked at the demonic being, then the leaguers in various states of injuries, then the demon again. The demon didn't seem like he wanted to be here anymore. He was proved right when he received a monstruous fist in the face.

The entity grabbed him by an ankle, threw him back to hell, then slammed the portal shut as if it was a door. Constantine visibly relaxed.

"Thanks a lot."

"Don't mention it," grumbled the being. "Anything else you need ?"

"No. And I'm really sorry, I know it's late."

"Just don't make it an habit. See you on sunday."

And just like that, he was gone. Wally had to sit down.

"What the fuck."

---

Hi everyone ! I was reminded of that post a while ago where Danny inherited of Connie's soul and decided it counts as adoption (can't find it now) and this is what came to my brain.

[nightingale-prompts]

God Summoning 101- DCxDP Prompt

"Don't. Touch. Anything." Constantine said firmly looking at the alter.

Recently there had been activity of dark magic users had been reported in this cave system and as expected it was full of cultists. They had discovered the writings of an ancient god or demon and started worshipping it. They had intended to summon it when the Justice League got involved after people started going missing. Currently, the captives who are thankfully all alive are being evacuated from the underground.

Constantine was here to study the alter and find the true name of the creature that the cultists call the "Infinite God."

"Looks deceptively simple. You place an offering and the guy shows up to fulfill your wish." Constantine said reading the sigils "That is if they want to."

"Its can't be that simple. There has to be a catch." Batman said coming back inside after helping the captives into the hands of the officers.

"The only catch I can see is that the god cares a lot about what the offering is and the person giving it. They seem to not respond to just anyone. My concern are the epithets." Constantine said deep in thought.

"The what?" Superman asked glancing over Constantine's shoulder.

"The title. Every god has many. Its specifies what vertion of the god you are appealing to. Even Aphrodite had a warrior counterpart. You must specify whether you are asking Apollo for inspiration, light or health." Wonder Woman chided.

"Yes, same goes here. Getting the right version of this god seems to depend on the offering. But these stupid fucks had no idea what to put on the altar. That's why they tried kidnapping people." Constantine sighed looking around the room.

The cave was decked out in hundreds of different offerings to appeal to the god and but so far the deity hadn't responded. He listed the items and the versions they probably wanted to see.

Next to the altar was a vase of flowers and herbs. Each one was different with different meanings.

Amaranth- Immortality

Anemone- Sickness

Lily-Death

Cowslip- Mischief

Hydrangeas-Wealth

Narcissus-Beauty

Rose-Love

Red poppy- War

There were others but most of these flowers were stuff Constantine had learned from trivia or reading about them in passing.

He didn't get to study anymore because-

"Guys all the capti-" Flash ran in and the wind caused the vase to topple over and a single flower to land on the alter.

The room began to shake as a portal opened.

(You go from here. Chose whatever flower landed.)

[corkinavoid]

DPxDC Danny Is A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

(not in a necessarily bad way and it's by Clockwork's design)

Bats, or Constantine, or the JL, or whoever you want to be close to Danny in this prompt, don't notice it right away. It takes them a while to figure out its not purely coincidence. And even after they do figure it out, they still have their doubts.

The thing is, it doesn't work all the time. It also doesn't seem to have a system or a schedule to it, nor is it any kind of a superpower, as far as they can understand. By God, does Danny have way too many superpowers, but most of them are consistent, and yet this one... is weird. Weirder than anything they've seen before, and they've seen a lot, okay.

It also only works if Danny does it without thinking.

"You know what'd be perfect right now? A cheese sandwich," Danny says over the comms, in the middle of the fight with Dr. Freeze, "A warm, grilled cheese sandwich just out of the toas- Owch, what?" There's a pause. And then, "Guys, you're not gonna believe it, a cheese sandwich just smacked me in the face! I think someone threw it out of the window or something!" Danny sounds bewildered, but excited, and there's a sound of chewing from his comm now. At least he is eating, so that's good.

"I fucking hate robots," he grumbles the other day, punching his way through the Brainiac invasion in Metropolis, with no comm and only for the Supes to overhear, "No, correction, I hate only evil robots. The ones that interrupt my astronomy class. The ones that shoot motherfucking lasers and walk like crabs, and ruin a perfect day, and- I wish- aw, fuck, no, that's bad wording. Don't wish for shit. But if all these robots would just suddenly, miraculously malfunction and stop attacking me and the whole city, that would be, like, real nice of them."

A few minutes later, something goes wrong with the Brainiac's control over the army of robots, and all of them just stop moving and fall down at once. It is deemed as a chance, a lucky shot, a coincidence. Supes keeps quiet over what he heard Danny say.

"Oh, you bitch-ass fruitloop, you know what I want?" Danny yells at Plasmius, as the ghost is laughing like a madman, "I want a fucking brick to fall down right on your head, like, right now! Maybe that can set your brains straight for at least five minutes!" And even before he is finished talking, there's something falling down from the sky and hitting Plasmius's head. It's not a brick, to be exact, it's Miss Martian's shoe, though. She has no idea how it even came undone and fell from her foot. But it did somehow knock Plasmius out cold, so there's that.

It doesn't happen all the time. Red Robin does the math - the improbable accidents only happen in about 26% of the situations, given that Danny says something. It's by no means a reliable power. It also doesn't happen only during the fights: there were numerous times when Danny just said something like 'I wonder if the cafeteria serves garlic bread today' and sure enough, there's garlic bread there. Even if it was not on the menu. Ever.

They try to question Danny himself, but he has no idea. He doesn't even notice the coincidences most of the times - which is not surprising, knowing that they only happen in one out of four situations and Danny is known to have a short attention span. So, after a few unsuccessful investigations and failed attempts at calculating how this even works, they all give up. It has never jinxed anything, as far as they know, so everyone just leaves it be.

Danny is just magically lucky like that.

Meanwhile, Clockwork is having a good laugh about it. Danny's suggestions amuse him, and it's funny to watch the other superheroes having a mental breakdown over it, so he rigs the timeline from time to time. Just a little.

[long-live-astronerd-ghost-king]

DPXDC prompt: Dead on main. No trick only treat.

~~Сhildhood friends and deals~~

The Justice League has to summon a ghost from another dimension to address the threat. They don’t know what price the Ghost King will take but there’s little time to bargain. Another spirit threatening them has already seized all the computers on their base. John doesn’t know what else to offer. A summoned ghost starts to look bored. Gold, jewelry? A favor from a member of the League? Like the Ruler of All Dead needs it. No one dares to make another offer, and the King is in no hurry to set out his demands. Maybe try to pull off a soul sale scam?

Suddenly, Red Hood breaks into the hall, walks up to Phantom and shakes his shoulder vigorously. Red Hood: You, get Technus out of here right now. I need access to the files and fast. Phantom: That’s rude, dude. Where did you grow up? in the cave? No "hello, no how are you, Danny", really? Red Hood: I’ll pay the usual price. Phantom: Deal.

What is the price? John sees Batman and gets in his way. The usual price, his guy said. Means Jay was already out of the deal alive and well. This hyperprotective bat would only piss off the ruler if he interfered.

The King quickly deals with his subordinate using a thermos and remains to watch working Hood. Red Hood: What do you want? I’m busy. Danny: You and I have a contract~ Red Hood: All right, all right. Jay throws M&Ms right in the face of the ghost. But king doesn’t look angry. He opens the package and starts sorting the candies by color. Phantom quickly eats up all the green ones and passes the red ones to Hood. Jason takes them without any questions.

Strange. John has never seen a summoned creature share its reward with a human. And the son of a bat looks too comfortable with it. Wait, since when do super-powered beings think that candy is a decent wage?John makes one of the most likely deductions using his experience. Constantine: Batsy, how long has your son been sleeping with the King of Ghosts? Batman: He…what?!

~~~~~~~

Dick *knocking at the door*: Little Wing, you hate ectoplasm and everything what is neon green, so why? He’s dangerous! Jason who turned on the music to not listen to his crazy family: ~He’s poison but tasty~

Dick: NoOOoo

~~~~~~

Jason: And now everyone thinks that I sold my virginity to you for a bargain or something, because interdimensional creatures like you aren’t supposed to help for nothing. Like you’re playing favorites. I’m gonna fucking kill John. Danny: Well, I wouldn’t say no to that. Jason: What? Danny: I mean, to k-kill John, yeah. How dare he.. Jason: Omg, you’re still so terrible liar, Fenton.

Danny: Sorry :(

Jason: No. Say it again.

~~~~Twelve years ago~~~~ Maddie wasn’t thrilled to learn that Danny was trying to make friends with Todd’s son. Their neighbor was terrible. And his son was definitely a street rat and probably a juvenile delinquent. Maddie: Danny, honey, there’s got to be a reason this boy is talking to you. Even kids from the crime alley are always looking for a bargain they can make or a fool they can fool. Danny: But Jason is so cool! He knows so much about books and alleys and.. Maddie: But you don’t want to be a fool, do you? Danny: Okay, Mom, I get it.

So, if Danny wants a cool friend, he’s got to offer a bargain.

He didn’t have a lot of pocket money for every month but Jason needed it more anyway. And his lunch that Jack was picking for him was big enough for two and only bitten on Tuesdays. Nice. Jason: Do I understand correctly? You will pay me and give me food, and I, what? Protect you from bullies? Danny: No! I’m not weak, I don’t need to be protected. Just..maybe we could sit together at lunch and walk each other home sometimes? Jason: Nay Danny: But why? You want something else? Jason: Money’s fine but your homemade food is…strange. Danny: I can bring sweets if you want. Jason: Deal. 3 pop tarts for a joint lunch, a party size bag of M&Ms if you waste my time out of school.

~~~~

Sometimes they share sweets when they hang out but more often Jayson takes them home to save in case his parents have money problems. Sweets have a long shelf life stored and he may not be afraid to poison himself. Over time, candy becomes their currency and a secret language for all occasions. Need help without unnecessary questions? M&Ms. Problems with learning? Skittles. The question is about family? Snickers. There will be a serious conversation? Pop Tarts.

Jason: One snickers and a pack of gum. Danny: Yeah, Jason? What do you want? Jason: My mom wants to meet my friend. Come to lunch on Sunday. Danny: Okay, you managed to pay for my expensive services. Jason:…and you just lost the gum from the deal.

~~~~~~

Jason threw a package at Danny: Three pop tarts. We need to talk. Danny: All right? Jason: Why are you avoiding me all week?! Danny: Well, it’s just..you’re Wayne now. Jason. Still Todd. And what about that? Danny: You can hang out with the cooler guys now, I didn’t want to embarrass you. Jason: Bullshit! I’m still the street rat, and you’re trying to avoid our contract. me. And I don’t even need money from you anymore. What the hell? I thought you are my friend. Danny: And I am!

~~~~~~

Robin: What’s a schoolboy doing in an alley at night? Danny: Um, I…nothing? Don’t tell my parents, Mr. Robin sir. Robin: It will cost you so many Chunky Bars, you have no idea. Danny:...Jason? Jason: N-no. Danny: Damn yes. What are you doing in green shorts on the street at night?! Jason: Cosplay. Danny: Oh yeah? Then I’m just your hallucination. Don’t hesitate to ghost me. I’m going home, Disgrace In Pixie Boots, bye. Jason: fu%&c$#u

[talentforlying]

i've got stuff to do tonight but i am thinking about how it absolutely fucking pains me to see the joy and energy and love of living sapped from constantine's spirit over the initial run of hellblazer. like he goes from this spirited, wisecracking, life-loving, bully-punching, fastidious little guy to a man so disintegrated by decades of grief and being used and never being good enough for anyone that he was willing to be buried alive to serve a cause he didn't even care about. thank god they gave him back some friendly connections and some semblance of hope by the end of "red right hand", because that late-hellblazer constantine was utterly unrecognizable and it broke my heart.

[clockwayswrites]

5 Times the JL Learned Batman was Married and the 1 Time They Met the Spouse.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. + 1

“What is going on?” Batman asked the group as he swept into the room.

John stayed focused on the circle, not wanting to mess up now. It would be a lot of faff for nothing if he did.

“Constantine believes he has a contact to help us with our current issue,” Superman explained. “He is working on the summoning circle now.”

“Is that safe to do on the Watchtower?” Batman asked, as cautious as ever.

“Yeah, mate,” John answered for himself. “This one is a good one. Haven’t met them myself, but real helpful sort of fellow from everything I’ve heard. Or at least real helpful for the things that they can help with.”

Careful not to smudge any lines, John moved backwards out of the circle and gave it a good look over. The rest of the lot were talking about something, but if Batman hadn’t stopped him yet, John figured he was good and intended to keep working. A little slice to his finger, a few drops of blood, the right words, and it was done.

The white markings of the circle seemed to shudder and warp, like the lines on a desert street. Then they snapped a bright green and the inner lines seemed to fall away into an endless void. The void rippled and suddenly a hand reached out of it. The claws made the worst sound as they gripped into the metal floor.

Another hand joined it.

And then the being pulled themselves out of the summoning circle.

John knew better than to try and comprehend what he was seeing. It was all shadow and green flames and fear anyways.

“Who dares to call upon the Ghost King?” the being asked. The voice echoed through the room, through John’s head, through his soul. It sounded like a thousand screaming voices of the dead speaking all at once.

Toxic green eyes in the black mass swept over the group. It was like they were being seen; their souls, their very beings, every aspect of them flayed open and on display for this other worldly entity. John swallowed reflexively when the eyes paused on him for a moment. He wasn’t scared, but there was still a primal part of his brain that said he should run.

Then the gaze landed on Batman and stayed there. Superman stepped forward, slightly, as if to shield Batman from the being’s view.

The being didn’t seem to care and leaned forward up to the edge of the circle. “B?”

Batman inclined his head slightly, “Phantom.”

“Shit. This Justice League approved, huh? Sorry about the dramatics. Usually I only get summoned by cultists who want Pariah Dark, the old king, to give them power or cleanse the world of life or blah blah blah. Best to show up and put the fear of me into them,” the being said, motioning to themselves and all their horror. The reverb of their voice had settled some, now only like a few voices overlapping.

“Understandable,” Batman agreed, seemingly unaffected by it all.

John could only shrug incredulously at Superman’s questioning gaze. Fuck if he knew. Sure, Bats was unflappable, but everyone knew he avoided the supernatural stuff if he could.

The being pulled the last of itself out of the portal which sealed with a sickening squelch. “You could have just called though. Like, I get summoning is a quick way to travel, but it's a little painful."

“Painful?” Batman asked, turning to stare at John, who swallowed nervously at the cold tone.

“Yeah. This was a pretty clean circle though, props to the maker—”

“Thanks, I think?” John mumbled at he watched the being start to shift. It was like watching a black hole collapse in on itself.

“—so it's not that bad, but still it feels like ripping some duct tape off my skin or something,” the being continued. They were much more human shaped now, though they still smiled with an alarming number of very white teeth.

“We'll keep that in mind in the future. I was unaware of who, exactly, they were summoning.”

The rest of the roiling darkness settled on their shoulders like a half cape— one that seemed to hold the infinity of the night sky inside it. The vortex of flames settled into a crown of fire that floated above a head of stark white hair. They flexed their claws and the limbs settled into normal hands that they tucked into pockets of their three piece black suit with its sharp white accents. Then they stepped over the live of what was supposed to be an unbreakable summoning circle.

Like it was just waking through a door.

Like it was nothing.

John took a reflexive step back. This kind of rule breaking shit was exactly why he liked to avoid the Infinite Realms when he could; they were too chaotic to easily manage.

“All good,” they said with a shrug and a fanged smile. “So, what did you need the Ghost King for?”

-

Bruce watched Phantom scan the meeting room as they entered. Their eyes caught, just for a moment, and a million thoughts ran through Bruce’s head. Did he want to do this? Was it time? He trusted the Justice League. They had issues and conflicts, like any group, but they were heroes through and through.

Revealing this also did not mean revealing either of their civilian identities.

The nod was barely any movement at all, but Bruce knew that Phantom had caught it and understood. After so many years together, they hardly needed words, which Bruce often appreciated. Words had never been easy for Bruce. He worked on it for his family. He had to after…

Bruce forced himself not to think about that. Danny had saved Jason, even if the resulting years without Danny there were some of the hardest for the family. They were together again and better for it. Bruce let out a careful breath and took his normal seat.

“Thank you for your assistance, King Phantom,” Wonder Woman started. Phantom held up a hand.

“I didn’t say I could assist. I’ll listen and help if I can and see fit, but there are a great many things that are not mine to aid in,” Phantom said sternly, though his voice was carefully kind. “My influence is only over those closely tied to death and of the Infinite Realms. The living are outside of my jurisdiction.”

“Of course,” Superman said quickly as he could without rushing the words. “Listening is a great start. If you’ll take a seat.”

Phantom nodded and strode right past the indicated seat. With a casual ease that Bruce had always envied, Phantom sat on the arm of Bruce’s chair.

“Um, King Phantom, your majesty?” Flash started nervously. “Batman doesn’t really like to be touched?”

“Really?” Phantom asked innocently. Bruce couldn’t see it, but knew exactly the smirk Phantom had as he leaned back to lounge against Bruce’s shoulder. (Bruce loved that smile.)

Bruce schooled his expression as he watched Flash and Hal exchange looks and frantic hand signs to each other.

J’onn tilted his head curiously as he took his own seat. Bruce could see J’onn come to an understanding as his eyes flickered down the the black metal brand around Phantom’s ring finger in the shape of a flying bat.

“Ah,” J’onn said softly.

“Ah? Ah what?” Flash asked, his words almost a whine. “What do you know?”

Bruce rested his hand lightly on Phantom’s hip, well aware that the motion was in sight of both Superman and Wonder Woman.

“Ah,” Wonder Woman said with a little smile. “J’onn knows something we all know, though not in this context. It is good to meet you, Phantom.”

“Good to meet you also, Wonder Woman. I’ve heard a lot about you,” Phantom said as she sat down next to them.

“I wish I could say the same,” she said with a teasing smile directed Bruce’s way.

“Hn.”

Phantom just laughed, the sound echoing like a ringing bell. “It’s okay, I know what B is like. Trust me, that you know anything at all is a big deal. He’s just bad at doing things the normal way.”

Bruce held back a sigh and just pinched Phantom’s side again, making the other squeak and backhand Bruce in the chest.

“Holy shit!” Hal jutted a finger at Phantom. “You’re Batman’s husband!”

“Guilty as charged,” Phantom said.

“Wait, no, you’re what?” Flash asked and zipped closer to the table. “Huh. You are so not what I expected. I mean, I guess ghost plus Spooky works but you’re so… lively! Wait— is that like, offensive to call the dead lively?”

Phantom laughed again and shook his head. “No, but not everyone in the realms will take it as a compliment. I don’t mind and besides, I’m only half-dead.”

“Half-dead?” Superman asked with his brow furrowed worriedly.

Phantom just waved the concern away. “It’s complicated. Mostly it just means that I still get to live out my human life as simply a human. Ghosts move slower, having eternity and all, so there’s not too much for me to do as the king other than attend to summons and make slow changes.”

“So,” Hal started, ignoring Bruce’s glare and sliding into a seat finally. “You’re married to Batman in your civilian form as well?”

“Of course, it would be silly otherwise,” Phantom said and then added, “and no, I won’t tell you who B is. That’s for him to choose.”

“Okay, but like, we can talk to you, right?” Flash asked, eager as ever.

“Well, I’m here, aren’t I? But work first. What do you think I can help you all with?”

Bruce moved his hand to rest on the small of Phantom’s back and watched his husband command the room like the king he was.

--- AN: and here's the last part! The JL finally meet Batman's husband, or at least once side of him!

[flamingpudding]

*hisssss* My comfort human!

Nightwing stared, he turned his head staring at Zatanna in a way that clearly spelled the question: Are you seeing what I am seeing?

Zatanna only gave him a shrug with a smile before focusing back on the meeting, leaving Nightwing to turn back and stare. He wasn't the only hero in the room with that reaction. There were a couple others too that reacted similarly. Only Batman appeared to be able to hold his pokerface.

Right before them was Constantine trying to explain to them all how their goverment basically fucked them over, while a 'ghost' teen was clinging to the man's shoulders glaring and hissing at them all. Worst of all Constantine was acting like the kid wasn't even there. Like there was no a white haired, black and white dressed teen hugging the man around his shoulders while glaring at them with glowing Lazarus green eyes.

"Uhm John? What's with the kid?" Green Lantern finally asked interrupting another one of the magicans rants about how screwed they were to which the Brite only glared at the hero.

"Ignore him."

"But..."

"IGNORE him."

"Maybe we should remove the child from this meeting before we continue?" Superman offered good naturally and Constantine looked pretty much done with them all, Nightwing noted. The blond waved with his hand as if telling them to 'go on try it'.

The heroes exchanged glances. Before Superman moved forward reaching out to remove the teen....

...and promptly got bitten. Nightwings eyes widened as he noticed the teen actually broke kryptonian skin!

The teen then proceeded to hiss at them while clutching onto Constantine protectively. The magican only let out a suffering sigh and muttered something about never touching a core again.

"My comfort human! Get your own!"

[rollforjackass]

they call him john hot cockstantine

[kizzer55555]

My only audition is that I DO wish the nail polish colors inverted just to see the sheer amount of color combinations and research the Phantom gang will put in to make sure Danny looks good in BOTH forms.

Also, I want Danny to be like, summoned help. Constantine accidentally messed up a summoning and ended up getting Danny instead. He realized that this is a super-powered being who actually offers to help with no strings attached, so now he’s got this guy on summoning speed dial. Whenever a particularly big threat happens, he summons him (which automatically converts Danny to Phantom form) and while most of the time it’s fine, sometimes it’s…inconvenient. (Like when Danny was sleeping) Most of JLD are familiar with him at this point. It’s really funny for them when Danny interacts with Deadman in front of the Justice League because it looks like Danny is talking to himself. (Sometimes Danny WILL just have a conversation with air just to mess with them. It takes everything the magic users have not to laugh.)

The nail polish really need to dry faster, it annoyed danny to no end.

"Phantom!" Zatanna calls, her voice strained.

"Yeah?" He calls back and suddenly Constantine gets punched into the wall next to him.

The man groans. "Fucking help us at least—"

"My nail polish isn't dry yet."

"PHANTOM."

[evilminji]

The more I learn about John Constantine? The more I am certain you COULD just... dump Danny on him.

Like... literally.

Full on, sack of unconscious potatoes, "here ya go, deal with it, here's an unconscious royal teenager!", Dumped in his arms/lap at some shitty hole in the wall bar, by Suspicious Supernatural Forces, DUMPED on him. Like? Yep. It's a Tuesday. Guess he's NOT getting to finish this beer.

And you know what?

Knowing the crowd Danny runs with? They'd at least... SORTA try and explain what's happening? Instead of play the fun ol "HOT POTATO! Think fast, Constantine! Figure it out!" And run shpeal that he normally deals with. Thoughtful, really.

Don't get him wrong. It's still BULLSHIT. But at least he has a vague idea of WHY he's holding an unconscious, heavily bleeding, half-divine-but-not-really half human, teenager.

Fuckers left a few sticky notes.

THANKS.

He just LOVES patching up actively radioactive wounds while trying to translate... what is this? Mesopotamian? Who writes out their emojis in Mesopotamian?! "Smiling face emotional picture" my ASS. Still...

Kid in way over their head, hunted by damn never everyone for trying to do the right thing, AND grappling with their recent lose of a decent chunk of their own humanity? Oh and now he's KING of a whole spankin new Realm!

Fuck "Realms". Nothing ever good comes out of "Realms".

And APPARENTLY? His VIP returning customers spot under the Bus has been reserved! Because he's the kid's "Gaurdian". Why? So the nice Goverment stooges in suits will come knocking on HIS door first, of course.

......he'd be more pissed about that one if he wasn't REAL interested in what those bastards had to say for themselves. Meddling with forces they shouldn't be touching. Provoking God only knows what. He fucking KNEW those storms weren't natural.

Just? John getting handed a Suspect Youth. Press X for doubt and Sus. Okay... then give him back. No! Fuck you, says local Laughing Magician, I don't trust you EITHER.

Danny wakes up to the... VERY? Ngl? Intense(tm) stare down of... holy shit, are you an Actual Angel? (Yes. He is. Better hope you're not secretly evil or he's gonna bring The Smiting) Then the world's ACTUAL greatest Detective, who is a chimpanzee, offers him expertly made tea and the cheap take-out John brought with him.

He is in Space.

It's still not the weirdest morning he's ever had. But it's getting there.

@the-witchhunter @hdgnj @hypewinter @nerdpoe @lolottes @babbling-babull