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Jun. 22nd, 2006 02:48 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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neutral_omensDate: June 22, 2000
Setting: Manor Attic
Status: Private (John and Loki, Complete)
Summary: John has a relapse; Loki learns about Post-Possession Stress Syndrome.
It had been a very bad day.
John kept telling himself that things were getting better, and by and large, they really were. The lingering effects of the possession had grown gradually less severe, the amnesia-induced panic attacks less frequent and the headaches fewer and farther between. The trips to London, minor glitches notwithstanding, had done a lot to restore his self-confidence; and what day-to-day problems the gaps in his memory caused, he was learning to work around almost seamlessly. (Practice, he thought sardonically, for the day when his memory would start to fail him for much more mundane reasons.) Lately he'd been able to go days at a stretch without any incidents to speak of, and could almost convince himself it was over and done with; one more unpleasant chapter in a seemingly never-ending string of the same, but one he could safely declare closed.
And then again, there were days like this, when he woke with a shout from a murky nightmare, with throbbing temples that would plague him for the rest of the day, and remembering his own name seemed almost more effort than it was worth. When he had to force himself to get up and leave the soothing solitude of his own room, kept his hands in his pockets as much as possible so no one would see them tremble, and startled violently at every unexpected brush of an infernal presence passing by, however brief or unthreatening.
Days like this one plain wore him out, and the final straw had been the stunning (and stunningly belated) realization that, while he recalled very clearly the moment that Crowley had given him back the gem that represented a one-third claim to his soul, he had no idea what had become of the thing after that.
He couldn't believe at first that the matter had escaped his notice this long. He had to have been repressing it subconsciously, he told himself, trying to stave off full-blown panic as he tore his room apart in a futile search for the gem itself or any clue where he might have put it. It was no good; if there had been any sort of clue here, it had long since been cleared out of the Manor, and knowing the way his own mind worked, he doubted he would have left any sort of evidence.
He knew he'd carried it with him for a while, but it hadn't been in the bedraggled remains of his old trench coat before he'd ceremoniously burned it out behind the Manor, nor did he recall seeing any signs of its forcible removal. He had found a few items in the pockets, receipts and such, that told him he'd made a detour to America before going to Belfast; it was possible he might have stashed the gem over there somewhere, but he couldn't believe he would have put it so far from home.
Nonetheless, he put a call through to Zatanna to confirm that she had seen him during his absence from the Manor, and that he hadn't left anything with her. The way he stumbled hurriedly and rather disjointedly through the conversation worried her, John could tell, but he didn't feel up to filling her in at that moment, and ended the conversation with a promise to call her back later and explain everything. There was nobody else on that side of the Atlantic he would ever come close to trusting enough. Well, the bog god maybe, but he knew Holland wouldn't take custody of such a thing on a bet.
He didn't bother calling Belfast. Never in a hundred million lifetimes would he contemplate leaving something that potentially dangerous with Kit, even if she would have agreed to take it--which she wouldn't, even (and perhaps especially) if he told her what it was. Whatever lunacy had driven him to Ireland and her neighborhood, he was certain it wasn't that.
There was the truly terrifying thought that it might have got left in that blasted graveyard, or somewhere on the streets of Belfast, but somehow he doubted it. He wouldn't have carried something so personally, vitally important on his person any longer than was absolutely necessary.
Leaving his room with no clear destination in mind, driven by the need to go and find the damn thing though he had no idea where to start looking, John wandered the third-floor hallways for a while, trying to extract the information that was no longer there from his not-quite-healed mind by brute force. He should know better, he did know better--this never worked, he hadn't managed to recover a single fact that way yet, and suspected he might have done himself some additional damage when he'd tried it early on. It was the equivalent of trying to cure a headache by slamming his head against a brick wall, but he couldn't help it. Everything else he was missing he could live without, at least everything that he knew was gone. But not this. This, he needed to remember.
God help him, how could he ever look Crowley in the eye and tell him he'd lost it?
Think, Constantine, he told himself savagely, yanking open the door to the attic almost without realizing he was doing it and stumbling inside to collapse in a corner, his fiercely throbbing head cradled in both hands. Better to sit here awhile and try to remember. He didn't want to run into anybody and have to explain what had him in such a state. You wouldn't hand it over to just anyone. You wouldn't really want to give it to anyone at all, but you couldn't leave it unguarded, and someone would have to know where it was in case something happened to you...who would you trust that much, come on, damn it all to Hell, it's there somewhere...
Finding still nothing but a yawning abyss of pain and disorientation, he drew himself up in the corner and cussed softly but vehemently under his breath, heedless of his senselessly dripping eyes or the fact that he'd left the door standing open.
Setting: Manor Attic
Status: Private (John and Loki, Complete)
Summary: John has a relapse; Loki learns about Post-Possession Stress Syndrome.
It had been a very bad day.
John kept telling himself that things were getting better, and by and large, they really were. The lingering effects of the possession had grown gradually less severe, the amnesia-induced panic attacks less frequent and the headaches fewer and farther between. The trips to London, minor glitches notwithstanding, had done a lot to restore his self-confidence; and what day-to-day problems the gaps in his memory caused, he was learning to work around almost seamlessly. (Practice, he thought sardonically, for the day when his memory would start to fail him for much more mundane reasons.) Lately he'd been able to go days at a stretch without any incidents to speak of, and could almost convince himself it was over and done with; one more unpleasant chapter in a seemingly never-ending string of the same, but one he could safely declare closed.
And then again, there were days like this, when he woke with a shout from a murky nightmare, with throbbing temples that would plague him for the rest of the day, and remembering his own name seemed almost more effort than it was worth. When he had to force himself to get up and leave the soothing solitude of his own room, kept his hands in his pockets as much as possible so no one would see them tremble, and startled violently at every unexpected brush of an infernal presence passing by, however brief or unthreatening.
Days like this one plain wore him out, and the final straw had been the stunning (and stunningly belated) realization that, while he recalled very clearly the moment that Crowley had given him back the gem that represented a one-third claim to his soul, he had no idea what had become of the thing after that.
He couldn't believe at first that the matter had escaped his notice this long. He had to have been repressing it subconsciously, he told himself, trying to stave off full-blown panic as he tore his room apart in a futile search for the gem itself or any clue where he might have put it. It was no good; if there had been any sort of clue here, it had long since been cleared out of the Manor, and knowing the way his own mind worked, he doubted he would have left any sort of evidence.
He knew he'd carried it with him for a while, but it hadn't been in the bedraggled remains of his old trench coat before he'd ceremoniously burned it out behind the Manor, nor did he recall seeing any signs of its forcible removal. He had found a few items in the pockets, receipts and such, that told him he'd made a detour to America before going to Belfast; it was possible he might have stashed the gem over there somewhere, but he couldn't believe he would have put it so far from home.
Nonetheless, he put a call through to Zatanna to confirm that she had seen him during his absence from the Manor, and that he hadn't left anything with her. The way he stumbled hurriedly and rather disjointedly through the conversation worried her, John could tell, but he didn't feel up to filling her in at that moment, and ended the conversation with a promise to call her back later and explain everything. There was nobody else on that side of the Atlantic he would ever come close to trusting enough. Well, the bog god maybe, but he knew Holland wouldn't take custody of such a thing on a bet.
He didn't bother calling Belfast. Never in a hundred million lifetimes would he contemplate leaving something that potentially dangerous with Kit, even if she would have agreed to take it--which she wouldn't, even (and perhaps especially) if he told her what it was. Whatever lunacy had driven him to Ireland and her neighborhood, he was certain it wasn't that.
There was the truly terrifying thought that it might have got left in that blasted graveyard, or somewhere on the streets of Belfast, but somehow he doubted it. He wouldn't have carried something so personally, vitally important on his person any longer than was absolutely necessary.
Leaving his room with no clear destination in mind, driven by the need to go and find the damn thing though he had no idea where to start looking, John wandered the third-floor hallways for a while, trying to extract the information that was no longer there from his not-quite-healed mind by brute force. He should know better, he did know better--this never worked, he hadn't managed to recover a single fact that way yet, and suspected he might have done himself some additional damage when he'd tried it early on. It was the equivalent of trying to cure a headache by slamming his head against a brick wall, but he couldn't help it. Everything else he was missing he could live without, at least everything that he knew was gone. But not this. This, he needed to remember.
God help him, how could he ever look Crowley in the eye and tell him he'd lost it?
Think, Constantine, he told himself savagely, yanking open the door to the attic almost without realizing he was doing it and stumbling inside to collapse in a corner, his fiercely throbbing head cradled in both hands. Better to sit here awhile and try to remember. He didn't want to run into anybody and have to explain what had him in such a state. You wouldn't hand it over to just anyone. You wouldn't really want to give it to anyone at all, but you couldn't leave it unguarded, and someone would have to know where it was in case something happened to you...who would you trust that much, come on, damn it all to Hell, it's there somewhere...
Finding still nothing but a yawning abyss of pain and disorientation, he drew himself up in the corner and cussed softly but vehemently under his breath, heedless of his senselessly dripping eyes or the fact that he'd left the door standing open.
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no subject
Date: 2006-06-22 03:22 pm (UTC)Today he was only suffering from nausea, a sore throat and what he considered a middle size headache. It wasn't bad enough that he would risk rousing Odin's suspicion by sleeping away most of the day, but he also didn't feel like being up and about.
So he decided to grab another book from the library and spend the day 'researching Christianity'* in his cozy hammock up in the attic. One had to know ones enemy after all.
Satanic bible in hand he walked up the stairs and ... found the attic door open! Had somebody found his hideout?
He raced up the last few steps and through the door.
"John! Why the fuck did you leave the door open? Anyone walking by could ..." He stopped when he noticed the state the human as in. "John?"
Loki walked over to John's corner and crouched down beside the man. He didn't have a lot of experience with this sort of situation, but was usually quite good at handling humans. It couldn't hurt to try his hand at psychology. Looking at John there was very little chance he could make things any worse, he thought.
"Hey John, what's wrong?"
* The fact that all the research texts he'd found so far were satanic didn't bother Loki at all. They might be slightly biased, but so was Loki and he wasn't planning to write a paper about Christianity, thank you very much.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-23 05:31 am (UTC)There he halted, gulping for air like a drowning swimmer, fighting not to be pulled under. He'd given up trying to remember now; it hurt too much, and between that and the vertigo he was close to tossing his lunch already.
"I can't--head hurts," he ground out, dropping it back into his hands and rocking slightly in time to the throbbing in his temples. It was a pathetically inadequate explanation, but it was the best he could manage. Even deciding how much he wanted to tell Loki was beyond him right now, let alone trying to do it.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-24 07:46 am (UTC)He put a hand on John's shoulder experimentally, ready to pull back, if John flinched at the touch.
"I know how you feel. I get terrible headaches myself sometimes. That's part of why I wanted a secret hideout to get away from people. Is there anything I could get you to help?"
He didn't have any headache pills on him. With all the medicines he was on it was too risky to take anything the doctor hadn't prescribed.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-24 06:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-24 07:48 pm (UTC)"What exactly is a fiend and why does it eat when it's dead? Or did your memories go down to Hel or someplace like that?"
Memories had no business walking around without their people in his mythology, but he wasn't quite sure about Judeo-Christian memories. Or whether John should be considered Judeo-Christian for that matter.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-24 07:56 pm (UTC)He had to stop then and turn all his attention to not throwing up.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-25 04:48 am (UTC)He'd figure out Judeo-Christianity someday.
John hadn't objected to being touched so far, so Loki settled comfortably against the wall and put an arm around him.
"You don't seem to be suffering from complete amnesia, though, so it can't have eaten them all."
Poor John looked terribly pale.
"Do you want to have the hammock today?" Loki offered feeling very selfless. "Lying down might help."
no subject
Date: 2006-06-25 05:26 am (UTC)He shook his head slightly at the offer, regretting it instantly as the motion sent another nauseating wave of pain through his skull. "Nah. Prolly get seasick. Just something to put my head down on, maybe?" He didn't want to take Loki's favorite comfortable place away from him, but lying down did sound like a wonderful, brilliant idea.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-25 11:09 am (UTC)"Here. Lie down on the blanket. It'll probably still be uncomfortable, but not as hard as the floor. Anything else? A book maybe?"
He was getting a little worried now. Humans were such fragile things.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-26 05:37 am (UTC)"Ta, Loki. You're a brick," he whispered, shutting his eyes gratefully and throwing his arm across them to block out the remaining dim light. The dilemma that had brought on this entire episode still hovered threateningly at the back of his consciousness, but it was just going to have to wait for now. Though how he was going to deal with it and not wind right back up on the floor again he had no idea. Later...
no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 02:23 pm (UTC)If only he knew more about fiends! Odin was good at healing all sorts of wounds. Fiend-damage might be anything. Loki wasn't sure whether a magic particular to another pantheon would react to rune-casting.
In fact, some sorts of magic reacted as well with each other as sleeping pills and alcohol.
He shuddered at that thought, but resolved to ask Odin anyway. It couldn't hurt to just talk about it.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 04:14 am (UTC)A hazy sense of foreboding coupled with a small spike of pain told him then that he'd better shut up, that he'd already said too much and risked triggering another episode if he dwelt on it. Later on, he'd analyze what Loki might do with that kind of information and panic appropriately, but for now he just wanted desperately to sleep.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 06:49 am (UTC)And what was that soul-thing about? He'd come across it in his attempts to figure out Judeo-Christianity, but couldn't quite picture it.
"Souls are immaterial objects." he pointed out. "How are demons supposed to handle them?"
It was probably wrong to push John for information right now and Loki even felt faintly guilty. The poor human obviously needed to rest. He promised himself to stop after this.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 06:00 pm (UTC)"Theydon't...jus' a claim...gem thingy. Get the real thing...when you kick it. Don' tell anyone, 'k?"
With that, he stopped fighting and let himself sink. Any further answers would have to wait.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-01 06:45 am (UTC)Besides he wasn't sure who he could get. Not Adam or Crowley. He didn't trust either of them, even though John apparently liked them. Newt wasn't competent. He supposed that he could alert Ezra, if John got any worse.
He also wondered where the 'gem thingy' came from and where John might have lost it. Maybe the fiend had taken it?
But if Ezra had killed the fiend, wouldn't Ezra then have the gem? Did you have to carry those things on you? Would Uriel know?
He'd have to research it without giving away John's secret, but then he'd always been good at deceiving people.