#itsssss

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.・゜-: ✧ :-

"Okay, who the heck is that?"

Danny storms out of the elevator, positively pissed at the appearance of another old house in his territory.

"Frederich Isak Showenhower, aka Freakshow, current heir of a long line of thiefs." John lets out a suffering groan, not even daring to take out a cigarette under Alfred's sharp gaze.

"Shoot, freakshow?"

"You know him?"

"Ancients, he mind controlled me at some point."

(He isn't gonna knowledge the narrowed eyes of the bat. Nu-uh.)

Constantine whistles at that, giving a wince. "Yeah, we all had go through that at one point."

"Didn't know he was a descendant of an old house, but I don't recognise the name Showenhower?"

John clicks his tongue, shrugging. "They branched out from the original house of Chatterton." He points at the screen, showing their current annoyance for all to see.

"What strange is, is that the house of Chatterton had many names in its line, so why is Showenhower of all the current heir? I'm calling tomfoolery."

"Oh no, I'm fully agreeing."

"Care to share with the class?" Jason, Red hood, asks, eyebrow raised and leaning against the table.

"Houses of the dark, old ones at that, are powerful." Danny explains. "The original house is always the most powerful, each branch can, depending of how far the connection is to the original, be very weak or very strong."

"But this here?" John gestures to the screen. "This smells like betrayal."

"The house of Chatterton was one of the youngest of oldest houses, new compared to the Nightingales and Constantines." The younger took over again, frowning.

"And yet Showenhower is the heir, which shouldn't happen since the family is rather estranged from the original. It should've only happen when no other house, those closer, are unable to take the title."

"It means they disappeared, and one cannot simply disappear once connected to a house of dark." The Hellblazer looks grim, eyening the golden pocket watch.

"Midnight soon," he glances at the Nightingale. "Should we?"

"Where are you going?" Bruce steps forward, cowl laying like a hood behind him.

Danny peers up at the man, apologetic. "B? Can you let me and Connie handle this?"

The man is looking at Constantine with sharp eye, conveying his message and intent clearly.

("Let him get hurt and we will hunt you down.")

"Alright, chum. Be careful."

He receives a bright smile, making it almost, only almost, worth it.

"Alright, chum. Be careful."

He receives a bright smile, making it almost, only almost, worth it.

Nightingale looks at Constantine.

These are no normal circumstances.

"The house of Nightingale offers a temporary truce until the suspected betrayal of a house of dark is fully investigated."

"The house of Constantine accepts the temporary truce offer and gladly accepts the request of help for the betrayal of a house of dark."

They shook hands, whispering "so mote it be." to legalise the spell and then are off to go.

Danny waves at his family as John teleports them both away.

"I'm betting 50 bucks that Constantine fails in protecting danny."

"I bet 60 for danny finishing the job!"

"70 for–"

The engine purring outside the window shouldn’t exist. Jude knows that sound, she lived with that sound for eighteen years, before the ship it belongs to fell into a star. 

But.

It’s insistent in it’s high pitched hum, and she can almost feel laughter bubbling up in her chest, because she’s going insane, finally, trapped alone on this morbid rock for - not years, she has no way to count years here - but a long time, so long her hair has started to turn a shining silver, and she has to cut it and cake it in mud to avoid alerting her prey. She has to hunt, here.

When before she had chased her crewmates, had introduced a cleaning bot to swordplay just to dodge it in a bloody game of tag, here she has to kill and skin and track the scrawny animals just to get some meat.

Jude then remembers the engine, and it’s high-pitched hum. It’s still there, she thinks. I’m still crazy.

But when she goes to the hole in the mud wall of her hut (she calls it a window, and it is, really, just not the vacuum-tight windows of her ship) and looks out and up, there is the silver hull, shining in the sky along with a million stars. If nothing else, this planet at least has a beautiful view of everything Jude has lost, all of the galaxies and suns and restaurants she’ll never see again. 

And she knows that it’s a delusion, it must be, I saw that ship fall into a star, for Cliht’s sake, this can’t be real, yet she runs outside anyway, uncaring of the biting cold of the night air. But the ship, her long-lost resting place drifts down as if it senses her baffled amazement, and hovers only a few hands from the treetops, which sway gently in the breeze the ship creates, and it’s only when one of the needle-thin leaves pokes her cheek that she starts to believe, in a way she hasn’t in years, that she’s going to get off of this fucking rock and finally see another sentient being for the first time since she was young, younger than she is now by so many cycles.

And the ship drifts lower still, and lands on the rocky, uneven ground, lopsided but still standing, and she stumbles forward and only barely unlocks the airlock before the other side swings open and she’s tripping over herself to get in. 

And there are people there, people whose faces she last saw in dreams, and before that through the vacuum-tight windows as they jumped to their own planets, and they surround her and

And when she’s inside, finally, with the entire universe ahead of her, she thinks about her ship, about the life she’s missed here, about the life she’s lived on that planet, so unknown it doesn’t even have a name, and