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Date: January 9, 2001
Setting: Tadfield Manor, chapel
Status: Private - John and Kit (complete)
Summary: We need to talk...



It'd had been one of the last stops on their tour, and perhaps it had been a coincidence, but she suspected John had realized just how much the place would appeal to her.

It'd been a while since she'd been in a church, but the solemn faces of saints and angels etched in bright stained glass took her right back to mass when she was young: crowded into a pew, she and her sisters in dresses with far too much lace for her taste, while her mother reprimanded Peter for tugging at his tie. Maybe it was the rarity of such occasions - the stark memories of not knowing when to sit or stand, of not understanding the sermons delivered with such certainty - that made them stand out, but Kit couldn't deny the unique sense of peace she'd always found within these walls, looking up at these faces.

It helped that, to an artist's eye, every shade, every angle of this place was laid out perfectly, with such startling stillness that entering the chapel felt like walking into a photograph. She'd had every intention of trying to capture some of the surreal feeling of the place, and had even brought her sketch pad. But instead, she found herself simply sitting there, near the front, contemplating the elaborate adornments of the altar in this gorgeous place.

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The bite in those words brought her gaze back to the man sitting down the bench from her, though John was already looking away. Several sharp responses danced on her tongue, but there was something about the sight of him sitting there, eyes on the floor, that stilled them all. "No," she said softly. "Can't think of a reason in the world." And it was true enough; or rather, it wasn't, but anything she could have said would seem to be effectively negated by seven years. Kit slumped back against the pew, starting intently at nothing.

"The wee quiet life for John Constantine, eh? That hardly sounds familiar."

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Somehow, that quiet acknowledgement hit him harder than a sharp retort would have. Seven years might have given Kit time to calm down and gain some perspective, but it hadn't been time enough for him. Not by a long shot.

Slouching in the pew, John stared moodily at the ceiling beams, not really even hearing Kit's second remark. They'd been working up to some sort of reckoning since she'd arrived, like it or not; but what abruptly came out of his mouth surprised even him. "You know what really burns? I should have seen it coming." He scowled. "Nah, scratch that; I did. I knew it was too good to last. But I never expected it to go down the way it did."

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While Kit couldn't say she wasn't surprised by the comment - even John seemed to be - it didn't come entirely unexpectedly. These issues had been hanging between them for the past few days, clouds of dust stirred up from years past, as perhaps they rightly should be; she didn't know how either of them would move on without dragging some of these questions back into the light.

Maybe that's why she'd come, in the end. Maybe that's all that was left for them to do.

Her voice was relatively steady as she asked, "And what does that mean?"

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He glanced her way briefly, eyes narrowing slightly. "I never could've imagined, of all the things could've gone wrong, it'd wind up being two stupid thugs with a switchblade. Or that we'd ever say the sort of things we did." He chewed over the next bit for a moment, but there was no point holding it back now. Christ knew whether he'd ever get another chance. "Or that you'd try putting all the blame on me."

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"We had a deal, John." And somewhere in the back of her mind, Kit could hear herself saying these same things, in the same weary tone; like some horrid broken record. "You leave me out of your shite. I don't care how bloody stupid they were, there were two of them, in my home, threatening to use me to get at you. That's not leaving me out of it. And you weren't even there for all this, were you? I ended up on Chas's friggin' couch. Who do you suggest I blame for that?"

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"Yeah, we had a deal," John said, and he heard the same echoes Kit did. Only this time, it was different, because this time he had a better answer than 'I'm not perfect.' Seven years had given him that much, at least. "And I broke my promise, and you were right to leave. Just like I told you from the very beginning you should. Remember?"

He straightened up and turned back to her, face set in hard lines. "You remember the day Matt died, Kit? You remember what you told me when I said you should leave me there, go stay safe? 'I'm a big girl, John, I'll take my chances,' you said, but then you didn't. Wasn't til later you started adding conditions, and by that time it was too late. I'd already gone and--"

The words stuck in his throat; it wasn't the sort of thing he said, ever. He hadn't said it then, when it might have made a difference, and it was probably the biggest mistake he'd ever made in his life, which was really saying something. Fuck this, he thought savagely, sick of his own stupid mouth betraying him, and overrode his obstinate insecurities by sheer angry force of will. "I'd already fallen in love with you," he rasped, "and I would have promised you anything, and meant it, whether I stood a chance in Hell of actually delivering or not. I wanted you that badly. And you knew it. So hand me my fair share of the blame, sure, but don't go making like it was all me."

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"Aw, Jesus. Maybe if I'd known at the time that all your dirty tricks were going to become life-threatening... " But Kit was, for once, finding it hard to go on like this. Figures John wouldn't make it easy.

She'd suspected, of course, that John had felt that way about her; but somehow, discussing it with Claire had never given it the same gut-wrenching truth as hearing him say to her, and in that painfully earnest tone. Her eyes fell shut. It made it her heart race to listen to him, made her feel dizzy even when it all came in the past tense. And it made it very, very hard to argue...

"God above, John," she whispered, slumping wearily against the pew. It sounded like a genuine prayer in that quiet space. "Is that really all it was? Both of us too stubborn for our own good?"

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"Life-threatening?" John snorted. "Aw, c'mon, Kit, you were more dangerous to those two fuckwits than they were to you. You'd a bigger knife and twice the brains and balls of both of them put together, and you bloody well proved it." He almost smiled at the memory--one thug castrated where he stood, the other with his face half clawed off. His first reaction when he'd heard, before he'd realized how badly the incident had shaken Kit, was to be proud. "Hell, you were always going on at me not to get into fights without you to back me up. Damsel in distress is not a role that suits you."

He rubbed tiredly at his neck. "I'm sorry you were scared. I am. And for what it's worth, I did try to live up to my end, harder than you can imagine." And more successfully than she would ever believe. The darker shit, things he'd known Kit really, truly couldn't handle--none of those had ever come anywhere near her.

He rested his folded arms on his knees, speaking calmly and deliberately now. "But I couldn't wall off half my life from the other half, and I couldn't just turn my back on it all and walk away. If I'd tried, I'd've got stabbed from behind. I was stupid to pretend that wasn't so." And that was exactly what Kit had said, wasn't it? Stupid, selfish bastard. He couldn't deny the charge. Though some other things she'd said about him that day weren't quite so accurate.

He grimaced wryly at the question. "What, you and me, stubborn? Perish the thought. You're obviously thinking of two other cantankerous pub-dwelling mules."

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"Aye, down the pub, John," Kit retorted. "Or on the street, or wherever you get into your friggin' messes. You don't bring the fight back to my bloody flat in the middle of the night, right? 'Course I was bloody scared."

Being angry at him was beginning to wear on her, but it was easier to sound angry than to let herself be upset in front of him. She took a deep breath, and tried to remind herself that this hadn't gotten them anywhere last time, and probably wasn't going to help things now. "I... I asked you to work when you didn't think you'd have to, is that it?" she said, suddenly thoughtful. "When you just wanted to forget about things? Take off the trench and be yourself for a while?"

She snorted, resting her head against the hard back of the pew. "Cantankerous mules, indeed."

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"Something like that," he said, frowning a little confusedly, because that was it exactly if you looked at it one way, but completely the opposite if you looked from the other direction. "Like, I could be John the Bastard out there with everybody else, but not show them the--hell, I don't know, whatever it is you liked, John the Not-So-Much-A-Bastard, I guess...because they'd use that against me, see? ...Well, sure you do. They did, and that was the whole problem." He sighed. "And then with you I could be that, but not the other. And it just didn't work, splitting myself in two like that. Playing Jekyll and Hyde."

He bowed his head, feeling defeated. He really didn't know how he could make Kit understand this. She likely saw it as an addiction, like Brendan's drinking, and in a way it was that, but there was more to it. Addicts could learn to control their own behavior, but how was he supposed to control all the things that the world threw at him whether he went looking for them or not? "They're both real, and I need them both, but there wasn't any place I could be both."

And that, it occurred to him suddenly, might explain more than anything why he'd wound up here. Tadfield Manor was chock full of other people who understood that kind of dilemma, because they shared it. Here, he could let the lines blur a little. Cold comfort that was at the moment.

"It's not like a nine to five job, you know?" he added disconsolately. "Can't just punch out and call it a day. I don't always go looking for the bad shit. Sometimes it's not looking for me either, it just finds me. I'm lucky it doesn't follow me home more often."

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"Oh," she said quietly, and for a moment, there seemed nothing else Kit could say. All of her arguments felt shallow and petty in light of what John was telling her; and she'd known they were, but she wasn't ready to admit that at some point - somewhere around their last fight - she'd realized that he'd needed her to be something for him that she wasn't ready to be.

"So what you're sayin' is..." And she stopped, rubbing her eyes wearily. When she began again, her voice was melancholy in a way that sounded strange to her. "What you're saying is, we each let the other down, somewhere along the way."

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"Maybe," John said softly. "I dunno. I don't mean to make you feel bad. That was the last thing I ever wanted."

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"I know," Kit returned in kind. And she sighed heavily, feeling inexplicably defeated.

After a moment, she drew herself to her feet, and paced down the bench to John's end, seating herself at his side. "But we were friends once, as I recall. Before all this," she said with a faint smile, laying a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Maybe we could work on that bit for a while?"

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John looked around at her in surprise, squelching his predictable reaction to the sudden contact. The way the conversation had been going, he had fully expected her to grab the first plausible excuse and leave. The mean-spirited part of him that he'd been talking about just a few minutes earlier remarked caustically that cutting and running was very much Kit's modus operandi.

He ignored it. "Yeah. We could do that," he said after a moment, summoning up a subdued smile. He wanted to be hopeful, but he didn't think he was quite ready to take that leap of faith yet. Still, wait-and-see beat silent enstrangement and the uncomfortable formality of the past few days, he thought. "What d'you reckon we do next, then?" It wasn't meant as a loaded question. He was in unfamiliar territory, and not not quite sure how these things were supposed to work.

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Kit was no more familiar with the way things now stood between them, but she was pleased that John had agreed, and smiled. "I reckon," she said carefully, "that you could start with buying me a drink at the bar."

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John chuckled. "Isn't that how we got into this mess?" He reached up to take and squeeze her hand, fumbling the unaccustomed gesture a little. They'd never held hands much when they were together, but that was what made it feel like a relatively safe way to bridge the distance between them now. "I hope you're not thinking you can still drink me under the table. I've had loads of practice since I got here."

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"Oh, aye?" she asked, a teasing slant to her smile saying that she'd plainly need proof before she'd believe that John could out-drink her.

The hand holding was something she could never really remember having done before; perhaps something to be attributed to John the Not-So-Much-A-Bastard. But she couldn't help but wonder what it meant for them when the fights came back so easily, while the simpler, platonic moments took some adjustment.

She stood then, crossing the bench once more to retrieve her sketch pad. "You coming?" she asked, shooting John another grin and nodding toward the door. "Or are these new found drinkin' skills more the hypothetical sort?"

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"I don't do hypothetical, woman," John mock-growled, rising and following her out the door. He paused to close it quietly behind him rather than letting it fall shut, so they weren't cut off abruptly from the solemn tranquility of the place as they departed.