Clothed in our grief

Chapter Forty Seven

"I had twins." Your mother mumbles to herself, staring at her daughter Laura. The curtains in the room hide away just one single beam of moonlight, and it's reflecting off of her child's eyes.

"I was going to name him Manny." She adds, feeling her eyes water as she cradles Laura in her arms. her youngest daughter sound asleep in her arms as she keeps it that way by swaying her back and forth.

There's a sad smile on her face as she looks away from Laura and to the closed window. Just a stray beam of light showing the particles in the air that would be normally invisible in the dark.

"Your father had this friend, his name is Manny. He was kind to me when all he did was give John a hard time. I was going to name him after Manny." she pauses, using her free hand to wipe her eye with the back of it. Knowing how much she's screwed up by all of this. Laura is just proof of that. Because she's not her husband's child. That isn't going to stop her from loving her daughter. She's a good mother, but what she did only adds onto the list of things that she's been keeping from you.

She didn't meet your father in a bookstore, she met your father in Newcastle. She knows what happened to you during the one year you were away, and she knows just how much you changed. She knows why you changed, but she may not know the extent. She knows the name Talia Al Ghul, and she's heard the name Leviathan only once or twice.

She knows that you would have grown up with questionabl morals with or without the help of whatever they did to you on that island. John Constantine is your father. You're the daughter of the Hellblazer for crying out loud, of course your life wasn't going to be normal. Especially when she knows exactly why it is that you being his daughter is so important.

And oh god, she hated him so much. She hated John for what he did to you. He knew that one day you'd have to pick it up. If he'd somehow died before you were even ready, you'd be the next Hellblazer. Doing what he does, getting people hurt. She hated him, she hated him. Doing all of this to you, and shoving that burden inside of your chest.

When John constantine dies, there is going to have to be another Hellblazer. John's already died once, and come real close to dying on multiple occasions. John came back by making a deal he shouldn't have even considered. John's been to hell more times than he has fingers to count. And when he dies, all the things that he's locked in there? They'll get out. Their key to the lock would be shattered and undone.

So he made you the key. The gates that keep what he's put away, are essentially tethered to you. As long as you're fine, John can die knowing that what he's dealt with stays dealt with. He can die knowing that all the terrible things he's put away get to stay there. No escape from hell, or purgatory. He made you the key to all of that.

He did this when you were little. Two years old. The younger the person is when this is done, the better of a chance it has of working. The more time there is for the tether to become more potent and stronger. Say it's done to an eighty year old man, and he dies the next day. It wouldn't have done anything. It all revolves around time and the willpower of the person it's locked on.

But there's always a price, right?

You'd be fine. Tethering something like that didn't have any physical effect on you. It wouldn't and it shouldn't. But in order to even be able to let the magic work, it needed a sample of what it was suppose to keep locked away. A sample of something that's been in and out of those gates enough times for it to be recognized to a strong and efficient amount.