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The safehouse door slammed shut behind them.
The air inside still pulsed with leftover magic, burnt ozone, and the iron tang of blood. Sigils on the wall were half-erased. Salt lines scattered by something inhuman.
Zatanna paced the floor like she could wear a hole into it.
“You lied to me, John.”
Constantine didn’t even flinch. Just lit a cigarette with the tip of his thumb and stared into the smoke.
“I didn’t lie. I decided. There’s a difference.”
She turned on him. “You said we’d bind it. Trap it. Not unleash it in a residential block!”
He took a long drag. “We bound it. Eventually.”
“Three people are dead.”
“They were going to die anyway.”
“Oh, go to hell!”
He smiled, bitter. “Been there.”
That broke something in her.
“You smug piece of shit!” she screamed, stepping in.
“Careful,” he warned. “Your self-righteous streak’s showing.”
“Fuck you!”
She swung.
It wasn’t a slap. It was a fist, solid and instinctive.
It connected hard — his jaw snapped sideways with a sickening crunch and John hit the ground.
The force of her movement knocked into a dusty glass orb on the nearby shelf — an old, delicate charm left behind by the previous owner.
It tipped—
Fell—
Shattered.
Glass exploded against the tile floor, sharp and sudden.
And then she said it:
“You’re a fucking killer, Constantine!”
She was panting, arms shaking.
John didn’t move.
Then—he twitched.
His breath hitched once. Twice.
And then—
He curled inward, slowly, like someone folding under invisible weight. His fingers trembled. Eyes wide, unfocused.
“I didn’t do it,” he muttered. “I didn’t drop it. I didn’t touch anything—”
Zatanna’s rage evaporated. “John?”
He was somewhere else.
“I didn’t mean to. It just—it just fell—”
His voice shrank, breath rasping. One hand hovered near his face like he expected a blow.
Flashback.
> “My mum died bringing me into this world,” he told her once, drunk, eyes hazy with old grief.
“Dad never forgave me. Said I murdered her the day I was born.
Every time something broke—no matter how small—he’d drag me by the collar and scream it in my face.
Didn’t even call me by name.
He just called me killer.”
Now.
Zatanna knelt down fast, heart thundering in her chest. “John, it’s okay—it was me, I knocked it over, you didn’t break anything—”
His hand went up, palm out.
She froze.
“Don’t,” he rasped. “Don’t touch me.”
She swallowed hard. “You’re having a flashback. Just breathe, okay? I’ll help you ground—”
“I said don’t.”
That one had steel behind it. She obeyed.
He pushed himself to sit up slowly, shoulders tight, jaw clenched. Eyes still distant.
“Get out.”
Her breath caught. “John—”
“Please, Zatanna.”
Quiet.
Flat.
Final.
Not a curse. Not a scream.
Just a man breaking, one crack too deep.
She looked at him for a long time. And for once, the words didn’t come.
There was nothing to undo what she’d just said. Or how she’d hit him.
So she stood.
Turned.
And walked out the door, glass crunching under her boots.
---
The door clicked shut behind her.
Silence came down like a curtain.
John stayed where he was — half-seated, half-slumped, surrounded by glass. One shard had cut the heel of his palm, a slow red blooming across pale skin. He watched it bead, run, drip.
Didn’t move to stop it.
Didn’t move at all.
Smoke still curled from his cigarette, forgotten between two fingers. His eyes weren’t focused anymore — not on the room, not on the blood, not even on the way the charm’s shattered core pulsed faintly like a dying heartbeat.
Instead—
He saw yellow wallpaper.
Cracked. Peeling.
And the edge of a chipped table from too many slammed fists.
“Don’t lie to me, boy.”
The voice wasn’t in the room.
But it was in him.
“Don’t you dare say it was an accident.”
John’s breath hitched.
“You’re just like your bloody mother. Weak. Careless. A killer.”
He grabbed the nearest wall and tried to pull himself up — got halfway before his legs betrayed him and he collapsed again, one knee thudding hard on tile.
He hissed through his teeth.
The world tilted, warped, and somewhere in it he thought he saw his father’s boots step out of the shadows.
He blinked.
Nothing there.
But that didn’t mean the memory stopped.
---
He was eight.
His fingers slippery with dish soap. The old whisky glass slipped, shattered on the floor.
His father’s silence was worse than shouting.
Until it wasn’t.
A belt. A scream. A word that lodged itself in his ribs like broken glass.
Killer.
---
John was back on the floor now, hand to his temple, eyes squeezed shut.
“Not real,” he muttered. “Not real. Just a memory. Just a ghost.”
But ghosts didn’t always wait for summoning.
They lived in you.
He sat back hard against the wall, palms over his face, blood drying between his knuckles.
The word hadn’t even come from his father this time.
It came from her.
And he didn’t even get angry.
Because part of him — some sick, rusted, deep-down part — thought he deserved it.
He didn’t cry. He didn’t scream.
He just sat there.
And let the shame settle like smoke.