open

[ashing]

WHO: John Constantine and You
WHAT: Arrival and settling in
WHEN: Drakonis
WHERE: Various
NOTES: A few prompts, open

ARRIVAL
(Just one thread for this one please. Multiple characters welcome but they'd have to be on the same rifter collection team.)

It's a dark and stormy night. Something poetic about that, maybe, but John doesn't have the space to think about it yet. He's just had a nasty wake-up - possibly the worst in his life, which is saying something. He doesn't even remember what he was dreaming about, but he does remember it was at least warm, and dry, and there weren't any demons.

Not this: soaked through to the skin, freezing, running through a goddamn forest, the densely packed tree trunks illuminated only by the sickly green light of the thing he'd fallen out of. Like a hole, or a crack in the air, but flickering and fluctuating like a flame. He hadn't had a chance to look at it further. Not with the claws and teeth that had started climbing out after him.

In normal circumstances he might have some way to deal with this situation. Something tucked in his pockets. But in the immediate of not knowing what the hell was going on, he'd taken the most obvious survival option: run.

Where the fuck he's running to, though, he has no idea.


GALLOWS
It's still raining. John doesn't think it's stopped, and has considered, several times, that God must be here too. No one else has a sense of humour as twisted as this.

For a man that isn't happy about the rain, he's closer to it than he should be. Stood in the doorway leading onward to the dining hall, golden light, the sound of a dozen conversations and the smell of food spilling welcomingly out. But he has his back turned to it, shoulder leant into the stone of the doorframe, eyes on the dark clouds overhead.

His fingers are twitching, a little. Trembling might be a better word for it. Jumpy and restless, more irritated than usual, more trouble sleeping than usual. It hasn't been a good time to be trapped indoors, even if the rain might have prevented him from seeing the wonders of Thedas anyway.

Finally, something about him seems to fold. His hand dips into a pocket of his coat, fishes out a packet, silver foil and green. One mint coloured pellet of gum is peeled out, the packet crumpling empty in his hand. He holds it up to the sky between finger and thumb, almost like he's giving a toast.

"Picked a great time," he says, then pops the gum in his mouth.


KIRKWALL & DOCKS
Only a day out of quarantine and he can already be found getting thrown out of a tavern, landing on his back in the mud. Face bloodied, he attempts to get upright again as fast as he can before realising no one appears to be following him out. Well, that's just fine by him. He can just lay in the rain for a moment.

"Must be something I said," he mutters to himself. It absolutely was, of course. Making friends and influencing people, John Constantine style, usually means pushing buttons until he knows what they all do. And Thedas, so far, seems to be full of buttons.

Eventually, he levers himself up, starts making his way down to the docks. Finds himself a place to stand, right out on the jetty, seemingly uncaring of the salt breeze only blowing the rain sharper. Hair pasted to his face, clothes soaked through, the bruises blossoming on his face are unmistakable against the increasing paleness of cold skin. He doesn't bother to seek shelter back near the buildings or amongst the waiting cargo of the docks. Just watches the slow approach of the ferry across the water.

"You should see the other guy," he says, when he notices he's being looked at. But even just that comment has him wincing, pressing a handkerchief that's as wet with blood as it is rain more firmly against the fresh flow of red from his nose.

Comments

[elegiaque]

The query jogs a similar moment of oh, you on her end — and thats what he looks like; she decides that makes sense — in the same breath as a shrug that would probably be more elegant if she weren't bundled up so much against the elements that it's almost hard to tell it happened.

"I live there," she says, tipping her head toward what Strange has described as Baba Yaga's luxury yacht, a moderately terrifying looking built up house-boat, secured to a slip not far from where the ferry stops on the Gallows side of the harbour, "when I'm not sequestered in my grandfather's place to avoid being put in the position of unavoidably having to call a spade a spade."

Wild that she's not in Diplomacy.