Neglected Reader x John Constantine
Solitude can be a sickness, loss damnation, and faith salvation.
Trigger warning: sacrifice, murder, possession, and unwanted touch. Loosely based on Nosferatu (2024)
She was not a wanted child; she knew that much at eight years old. Her father wasn’t mean, but he wasn’t warm either. Her whole life had been the mansion, Alfred, and Father. At first, she didn’t understand the absence of love he gave her.
That changed when twelve-year-old Richard Grayson came into their lives. It didn’t matter how angry Richard got; Father was there for him. And so, her chest ached at the sight, her heart beating fast and painfully against her ribcage.
She didn’t know how to ask to be seen, and she was afraid Father would never learn how to look at her.
She couldn’t count how many times she had sat alone in the little chapel behind the mansion, praying, finding comfort in the chirping birds and the breeze blowing through the leaves.
Since childhood, she had prayed for the city, never feeling close enough to Alfred or Father to pray for them. But solitude was devouring her, and it had never felt as big as it did in the twilight when a heavy storm hit while she was in the chapel. There was no light, so night fell while she surrounded herself with dozens of candles. It was a horrible night: the stained glass trembled under the heavy wind, and the thunder was so powerful that she was afraid one of the big trees outside the chapel could crush the structure.
No one came for her, not Alfred, not Father. She had begged someone, anyone, to love her. She cried, she pleaded, while the storm drowned her voice.
She walked alone the next morning to the mansion.
"It’s quite early to go pray, don’t you think?"
While Richard’s words were not unkind, it still made her feel ashamed, to be so unimportant that no one noticed her missing all night.
She was fourteen when Father and Richard fought, and Jason came into their lives. Richard had never been her brother. But Jason? Jason was. He was her little brother, the one who would seek her out, who whispered in a small voice that he loved her.
Jason was her whole heart, her true first family. His night activity sometimes made it impossible to keep in touch daily, but they put letters in each other’s rooms; reminders of how much the other meant, wishes of good luck, or even simple good mornings or good nights.
About a month before her eighteenth birthday, Jason died while she was away visiting colleges. Bruce said he was in the wrong place at the wrong time; still, she knew it was his fault.
"He chose this," it was barely a whisper from Bruce, but she heard it. "He didn’t hear me."
"He was a kid," maybe it was the venomous voice that surprised him; maybe it was that she didn’t keep her usual silence. "He wanted to make you proud, and you pushed him over and over to be better, to do better." Bruce looked at her like he was seeing her for the first time. "He wanted your love, and all you gave him was your disappointment."
That was the last time they saw each other for a long time. She walked away the next morning and never looked back.
Jason was gone, her family was gone. And once again, she was all by herself.
The grief was so overwhelming that she couldn’t even bear to be in the States, where the Justice League were news at least once a day, where Bruce Wayne or Batman was mentioned without fail. She moved to England, started college in English literature, and used her free time to help in a nearby church.
She graduated with few friends by her side, so the loneliness that had feasted on her since youth came back with full revenge; deeper than before, scratching over the scar Jason’s absence left in her heart.
It was only while she kneeled before God that she felt she could breathe. She asked the reverend mother to join, to let her pledge her life to God.
She didn’t say yes, but she let her stay and help the other novices.
At first, John Constantine was just another congregant, who didn’t stay for long but kept coming back for holy water. One unlucky day, he came just when she was cleaning the stoup. He looked aggravated at her sight and demanded she make him more holy water.
"Just pray!" He demanded, putting a bottle of water in her hands. "Come on, sister. I don’t have all day."
She wanted to say she wasn’t a sister but decided it couldn’t hurt to bear with him just this time. She made a quick prayer, enough to see the man mutter a short thanks and run out.
"You are not a sister," he said a week later.
"Never said I was," she replied.
His statement confused her.
"Because I gave you back the water you told me to pray at?"
"No, because I need real holy water to do my job," he said. "And somehow your fake water was better than my usual holy water."
She looked bewildered at him. He didn’t wait for her reply before putting his palm over her forehead.
"A priestess," he confirmed in seconds. "Who do you pray to?"
"What?" This man had only confused her with each interaction.
"You must be a favorite if they marked you without your knowledge."
"Sir, if you are drunk, we have coffee next to the confessional."
"I’m tipsy, love. Not drunk." The deep smell of cheap perfume and whiskey hit her nose. "You’re American; it’s more common to find priestesses in Asia," he replied like that meant something to her. "Don’t go around praying for anyone. You’re lucky I’m not that greedy." He warned her before he left.
She hoped not to see him again.
And that hope held true for a while, until a chilly evening in November a somber group came upon the church. There was something wrong in the way they walked or spoke, but the reverend mother received them anyway. Just like her, the other sisters felt nervous around the group, but they followed orders and started to serve bowls of soup.
The food fell to the floor before anyone could taste it; in a moment, sweet Bethany laid on the floor in a pool of blood. Before the blink of an eye, three other sisters fell, and for a moment she comforted herself thinking of Jason.
She had never searched for death, but she was not afraid of it. There was little she held dear in this world, so she thought of how she could hold her little brother again if she held on through a glimpse of pain.
The pain came, but it was not her end.
"Tie her up in the middle," a familiar voice said. "I have kept the little lamb pure; this works better when they are free of vows."
Her vision was blurry. They laid her on the cold floor, and with the tips of her fingers she touched the sticky, clotted blood under her. Her voice was barely a whisper, begging them to stop; they ignored her in favor of drawing some runes on her head and arms.
A cacophony of voices started to rise. The words were confusing, like a bastard version of Latin, full of wrongness, and before she could start to decipher them, an overwhelming heat started to burn her. She could barely hear her own scream over the pain that clouded her mind. It didn’t stop; this pain was not over. It lasted so long she believed herself in hell.
She had been good all her life.
But she was not strong as Bruce.
Or smart enough to follow her instinct.
She trusted these people needed help.
She wasn’t deserving of this pain.
The fire was festering inside her, like a sickness, almost near her heart... a whisper was all she heard, and all she needed.
Her scream ceased, and with a hoarse voice she started to pray; not like she had learned in that place, but how she used to pray in the small chapel behind Wayne Manor. The fire inside her persisted, but it was tolerable; it faded with each word out of her mouth.
"She is blessed," a voice rose in panic. "Fuck! Fuck!"
"So that means she has even greater power! Keep the ritual!
"And risk being cursed myself? You know what happens when someone kills a favored priestess?" A bitter laugh left one of the men’s lips. "I’m out."
It must have been desperation; they hit her with something heavy on the head. She lost consciousness, and while her mind was far away in darkness, near the veil of death, an entity that had been lurking around her since childhood entered her body.
Her eyes opened; there was no sclera, only deep blackness. Her face was full of joy, and a wide smile bloomed from her lips as her face turned to her captors.
"Oh, reverend mother, I must thank you for opening the path to my beloved." The voice that sprouted from her mouth was masculine, with a roughness like he had been screaming for a long time; it sounded decayed. "Let me pay you," the voice hissed with a delighted laugh.
The shock of this presence was forgotten when the body of the woman they had tried to sacrifice lifted into the air... the possessed body rose first with her chest, like a broken doll lifted by a hand; the smile never left the creature’s face. They screamed, because the entity that had opened its way to her was rotten, and smiling so sweetly that not even fear was enough to describe their horror.
Those who tried to run were the first to break, their ribs opening like a flower and piercing through flesh in a grotesque painting.
"Ah, I fear I’m quite a jealous creature," it laughed. "This little lamb is mine, mother." Her hands traveled from her ribcage to her breast. "And you dared to touch it, but I thank you for bringing her closer to me," it said, while her hands kept traveling to her neck. "So, I will be merciful."
The smile grew so impossibly big that the skin looked about to rip open. Black fire surrounded the reverend mother, turning her to ash in a few seconds. The rest of the attendants looked in fear; the last thing they saw was the creature’s smile while it kept touching its host body.
"Alright, mate, it’s time to go."
The creature turned to see a blond man in a trench coat, his hand glowing with golden energy before he summoned a ball that impacted its beloved’s chest. It burned their connection; he let out a raw scream before cutting himself out of her body. It didn’t matter; he had marked her. All he had to do was wait, and so he would, patiently.
Her first instinct was to bolt out and scream for help.
"Shhhh, it’s alright, love. You got yourself in quite a mess."
She recognized him as the man who had called her a priestess, and before that night she had called him a crazy drunk.
"A voice," she barely whispered. "A voice told me to pray."
The man studied her in silence.
"Did they hit you when you were praying?" He asked before drinking from the flask hidden in his pocket.
"Then you left a door open to intruders. Untrained priestesses are prone to possession, and one quite powerful like you are even worse. The more power you have, the bigger the risk."
"You didn’t tell me that last time."
"You didn’t believe it, and it’s not my problem."
Her reply surprised him; more people would have used the opportunity to blame him.
"I could teach you how to close the door, with a lock and everything, but you would have to make lots of holy water, now that my favorite church is a crime scene."
Maybe it was the skeptical tone, but it made her laugh. She wasn’t in the public scene like the rest of the Waynes, but she had a big trust fund.
She found out his name was John Constantine. He was quite rude, a heavy smoker, and kind of a functional drunk, but weeks later she found herself enjoying his snarky remarks, his bratty attitude over “demon assholes” who didn’t know how to stay in hell, and his rogue, handsome face that looked one blink away from sleeping in the streets.
"Well, I would say your soul is heavily guarded," John said. "Congratulations, love."
He expected her to say goodbye; he had never been very good at keeping friends.
"I would like to stay," she replied. "I want to use this power to help, but more than anything, I wish to stay with you, John."
John knew that if she stayed, he would not be capable of letting her go ever again. He had given her a way out, and he was not a saint, just a functional drunk magician who was way too selfish... so he kissed her, tame at first, but when she replied, he let his arms hold all of her while he deepened the kiss.
He had never liked to do good girls; he had been happier with messy relationships, doomed to fail —quick affairs from job to job— and he couldn’t even remember the last lover who had been human.
But it had been such a long time since he’d had a partner; not just a lover, but someone steady with whom he could be vulnerable. Because she had his back, just like he had hers. Maybe this was his sweet tooth, making its way into his taste in partners.
Who would have thought about it? The Hellblazer suddenly was a force of two people. His love not only had a knack for praying and making holy water, she was quite good at sealing and tying... God, she really was quite good at tying, and he got jealous of the few demons who had gotten the pleasure of feeling her binding them.
And his good girl got quite cheeky over time. At her core she was goodness incarnated, but she and he had lots of fun traveling from city to city before returning to their home in the House of Mystery. The house made sure to show who was its favorite, and it was not John, but he could not blame the sentient property. His sweet love was his favorite too.
So, when he told her that Batman had contacted him, the silence that followed made him worried.
"Are you going to accept?"
"It sounds like a drag," he confessed.
"You could do good work."
"Not we?" He asked, confused.
"I have not seen my father in a long time, and I don’t wish to change that." He gasped at her words.
"B-Batman?" He stuttered.
"Yes, but I know him better as Bruce Wayne."
"The dumbest millionaire is a facade? Damn, he is good." He halted for a moment. "Love, are you rich?"
"No, I should have some sort of relation with my father for that," she told him. "I have a trust fund, wealthy enough, but not rich."
"Wealthy is fine for me." He lit a cigarette between his lips. "Then we hate the Waynes? And fuck Batman and his justice dummies?"
She laughed at his way to comfort her. John was loyal, at his core he was a good man, but he was egoistic enough to choose her over duty.
"It’s not that deep. I was not a wanted child," she confessed. "I could have lived with his apathy, but I resented him when my younger brother died. Jason was everything." Her voice was barely a whisper, but the deep emotion in her eyes showed her sadness. "He was a bright boy, my only brother, with a love for books and a need for Father’s approval." She had not talked about Jason since leaving Gotham. "I was searching for colleges in New York, far away from Gotham but near enough to visit him. I planned a whole life where my brother would even stay the weekend with me. I was going to rent an apartment with two bedrooms. We would have hit all the big bookstores so he could choose all the books he wanted, have fun without the pressure of being in Gotham... so for a moment he could be a kid and not Robin."
John studied her for a moment.
"Maybe all that life died with him, but not his older sister," he said. "And I’ve got the feeling you lived like a ghost for a long time. You will always love your brother, sweetheart, but it doesn’t make you a bad person choosing happiness."
"I know." Her eyes were red with unfailing tears. "But I couldn’t accept living while my brother was gone." A whimper broke out of her mouth. "But since I started to help you, I have been thinking how terribly happy he would have been to see all the magic, my power as a priestess."
“A fan of magic, uh?” He blows a smoke cloud “My love, you're a priestess, even if death his soul would cherish your blessing”
“Sure, people underestimated a blessing, but It soak you in good luck. If he was alive, it could help him miss a stray bullet. While it would not avoid death, it can improve the chance to get out from a bad situation” he explains “I imagine your brother must be in heaven, so it would help him feel you near, even get some nice candy”
A shrine got a permanent spot on their home. One day Constantine found himself talking to Jason’s photo.
“I love your sister, so while I can’t ask you, I think the less I can do is informing you that...” He opened the box in his hand “I’m about to commit myself to her, for ever and ever and all that chit chat” he hides the box once again “Wish me luck, Kid”
She says yes, they have a long night of love making, and John starts his own ritual of asking Jason for “luck” on his way to a job.
The years are good for them; danger comes and goes, but they overcome it together.
Sometimes John lends a hand to Justice Dark, Batman grunts his disapproval every time he rejects to form part of it; and while he can be a prick, he is a loyal husband.
No life is perfect, but together the days feel quite unforgettable.
Then, little towns around New Jersey started to get sick, and all clues pointed to Gotham, the city his wife avoided for the longest time becomes hell in a matter of a few days.
Sickness spreads, fog torrent by the streets, and at night electricity wither leaving people turning their desperation to candles.
They have been there for two days when his wife notices her power is getting weak. All these years they have never searched for the source of them but is not hard to figure out they are tied to Gotham. They go to the first place she has ever prayed, to the mansion that never felt like home.
Bruce Wayne’s affairs are very public; they know of his flock of children but when they arrive is made very clear they ignore he had an older daughter.
Alfred has to take the kids away.
“Constantine, what are you doing here with my daughter?”
“Not surprised to know I know you are Batman?”
“I noticed the second you came here” his sight turned to his daughter “this a dangerous breach of information, I hope you don’t have a tendency of trust everyone you know”
She sent him a dirty look.
“Relax, mate” Constantine pulls himself in front of his women "or would you like if I called father-in-law? She didn’t tell me right away you were Batman, but when you invite me to your super prudes club she had to told me, I’m not down to do business without my wife”
For the first time in his life, he sees Batman gape
“Don’t concern yourself with our presence, we are here for a job, not some unwanted family reunion” she told him trying to hide her rage.
His wife's word appears to do the trick; Wayne looks gutted and guilty. Constantine knows he was never the best father to his wife, but to never told any of his other kids she existed? And let's not forget the little entitled Robin believing himself as the only blood kid and trying to stab his wife while calling her a liar.
Yeah, family reunion sucks.
So, they make themself scarce and go straight to the chapel behind the manor.
They step in an every candle light up in seconds.
In the middle a dark form rise, veil hiding her factions.
“I’m Gotham” she tells them “an entity formed by the hopes and fears of the citizens, while my streets are dangerous there is a pride for those than survive the hardness on it, I held dear my people, even those than hurt others, is my nature to love all of you” she confess “Of course I have those that I like more; like my knights, but is you whose I love the most” she smile serene “you were young, but I heard your prayers for the city, I think you believed you prayed for the people on it, but in a way I’m the people of Gotham”
“So, you made her a priestess” spoke Constantine “untrained, by the way”
“It was my mistake; I have never got one before” she walks to them “in my need to soak you in my love, I fear you gained unwanted attention"
“Unintentionally or not, the city lies on top of an old curse. A being than have been prisoned for centuries; I don’t know if it was insane before or ages of solitude has made them fall in madness, but when you prayed to me, the creature heard you” her voice lower an octave “He couldn’t reach you while you were under my protection, but that night when you were possessed a fracture was created, so tiny that I didn’t feel it waiting there”
“And now he acts” Johns hear his wife speaking “but he spread sickness through towns, why not through me?”
“He fancies himself in love with you” Gotham reveals.
“Oh, fuck no!” curses John “I already put a ring on it, she is taken! Very taken!”
“Please tell me he didn’t fall in love with me when I was a kid, oh my god” his wife made a sound of disgust “It was bad enough I got one possession, but this is way creepier”
“We must act with haste before he regains his full power” Gotham told them “I tried to hold him, but he has acquired help, and something rotten is poisoning me. You must have feel it already, my priestess, our power is fading” she warns “I can’t keep this form for long, call for me if you are in need”
The candles blow out with Gotham leave.
John pulls his wife to him and hugs her desperately.
“We can quit this job” he told her “That horrible family reunion must have been our final warning that this was a bad idea”
“If he breaks free, he will follow me”
He hates that she is right but can’t stop feeling they are at the edge of the cliff.
She takes his face between her hands; they kiss briefly.
“You and me, all that matters”
“You and me” repeat John in a whisper.
All goes to hell in few days.
I have plans for a second part, but I’m a little stuck with my ideas, so any suggestion is welcome. I’m thinking of doing a POV from Jason, but it’s possible this might end like Nosferatu—yeah, not a happy ending. This is the calm before the storm.
And I’m thinking of using Barbatos instead of Nosferatu, or just leaving the monster nameless
