"Why go to such lengths?" Constantine's voice had gone quiet and deliberate, which was worse than the shouting. "Does someone like that deserve a happy ending?"
"Why not?" Jude said. "Do you think you don't deserve one?"
Constantine lit the cigarette and let the silence stretch before he answered.
"I'm asking you what makes you think you're qualified." The words came out measured and precise, each one placed carefully. "To stand up and play the saviour. To walk in and tell people like us that we've been doing it wrong."
He started moving — not at Jude, just moving, the way some people do when they're working themselves up to something.
"I've always hated people like you. The self-righteous ones. You always think the world stops turning without you, don't you? That you were born to it — born to save things, born to fix things, born to stand in the way of other people's suffering like a human shield. Can't bear to watch someone else sacrifice themselves. More eager to die than anyone in the room." His voice was rising. "Like you're the only saint left standing. An angel. Joan of bloody Arc. And everyone else is just selfish cowardly trash who won't step up."
He pointed at Jude, the cigarette trailing smoke.
"Did anyone ask you? Did anyone tell you they needed saving? What gives you the right to walk into someone else's struggle, someone else's sacrifice, and just — cancel it? Make it worthless?" His voice cracked at the edges but held. "Don't you understand that even bastards have their own codes? Even bastards have things that belong to them? What makes you think your sacrifice doesn't make mine meaningless?"
Jude said nothing. He watched Constantine.
"We both know the sealing technique," Constantine said. "We both do — that's the whole point, isn't it? So it's very simple: either I seal Mnemoth into Lester, or you do it. That's the decision. Those are the options."
"The struggle was mine." He was almost yelling now. "The sin was mine. I was the one who was going to look my friend in the face, lie to him, seal that thing into his body with my own hands, and then watch it eat him alive from the inside. That's my decision to carry. I made it. I was going to carry it — and then you just walk in, and there's a third option, and the third option is just you, and you didn't even struggle with it—"
He stopped.
The cigarette had burned almost to his fingers. He dropped it.
"You came in here and told me we don't have to sell our conscience, we don't have to sacrifice anyone, there's a perfect ending — all we have to do is sacrifice you." Each word came out careful and separate. "On what grounds? On what grounds? Does a bastard not deserve to be the one sacrificed?"
The silence lasted long enough to have weight.
"I don't have a complicated answer," Jude said. "It's simpler than that." He looked at Constantine directly. "We both know the technique. So either you do it or I do it, and the target is Lester. He's your oldest friend. He told you he'd put his life in your hands." A pause. "It would be too cruel — for both of you — if you were the one to do it."
"You made this decision to save New York. That tells me something. You're not a bad person, Constantine. You're a good man who has done very bad things, and that's a different category entirely." He kept his voice even. "I didn't want to do this for you either. I want to be clear about that — I'm not built for sacrifice any more than you are. There are two kinds of people in the world: the ones who find it more painful to sacrifice themselves, and the ones who find it more painful to sacrifice others. You and I are the second kind. The pain of letting someone else take the hit — that's what's unbearable for us."
Constantine had gone very still.
"The reason you're angry at me," Jude continued, "is because I gave you a second option. Once I was in the room, you could have chosen to sacrifice yourself — you knew the technique, you weren't the only one who did anymore, you could have taken Lester's place. But you didn't. You let me do it instead." He watched Constantine's face. "And now you're furious, because it turns out you don't want to sacrifice others — but when it came to it, you also didn't want to sacrifice yourself. And you hate hypocrites."
It was accurate. Jude had known it would be. He'd also known what it would cost to say it out loud.
The blood came up into Constantine's face all at once.
He crossed the room in two steps and grabbed Jude by the collar, pulling him forward. His fingers were shaking — whether from rage or from shame wasn't clear, even to him.
"You call me a hypocrite one more time," he said, very quietly, "and I will—"
He stopped.
What, exactly?
He'd been planning to seal Mnemoth inside himself from the moment Jude had given him the opening — the moment he'd realised the third option existed. He'd already decided. The vicious spirit would have eaten him from the inside out, the way it had been eating everyone else, and that would have been the end of it. Clean, in its way. The ledger balanced.
He'd already decided to die.
He could hear his own voice before he knew he was going to say it.
"Give me the potion." He tightened his grip on Jude's collar. "Give it to me right now, you bastard. I'll show you what a coward looks like. I'll show you a hypocrite."
He knew what those words meant. He knew what it felt like to be eaten by something like Mnemoth — had seen it, had felt the edges of it in the church. He must have lost his mind to say it.
But underneath the rage, from somewhere so deep he hadn't known it was there, something loosened.
Like putting down a weight he'd forgotten he was carrying.
Like a door opening somewhere in a room he'd been sealed inside for a very long time.
He stopped shaking.
"Give me the potion," he said again. The fury was still there, but it had changed quality — it was pointing somewhere different now. "You're not qualified to make this decision for me."
Jude looked at him for a long moment.
Then he smiled.
"You're still a good man, Constantine," he said. "That's exactly why I can't let you die."
Constantine's expression curdled.
"You don't know what you're talking about." The words came out rough and automatic. "You think you've read me, you think you understand — you don't know how my father died. You don't know what happened in Newcastle. You don't know anything about me."
"Tell me."
The offer seemed to surprise Constantine. He let go of Jude's collar.
"I killed my father." The words landed flat and factual. "With dark magic. I was fourteen. And then at twenty-five I got a little girl killed — Astra, her name was Astra — and I used dark magic to do that too, and she was dragged into hell, and she's still there, being tormented, and she'll be there forever." He wasn't shouting anymore. The volume had dropped all the way down, which made it harder to listen to. "Anne Maria went to Newcastle with me. Frank. Benjamin. They all went with me. They all died because of me. And Lester was there too — that's where he got the habit, because of what happened in Newcastle. All of them. Every single one."
He wasn't looking at Jude.
"That's who you're saving." His voice was almost steady. "That's what you're walking into — a murderer, an idiot who has spent thirty years leaving bodies wherever he goes. Do you understand that? Do you understand that?"
It wasn't until Jude reached out and put a hand on his shoulder that Constantine noticed his own face was wet.
He wasn't shouting at Jude. Hadn't been, really, for a while.
He was confessing. To someone who had listened without flinching, without looking away, without telling him it wasn't his fault.
Jude left his hand where it was.
"Then I'm absolutely not letting you die," he said. "Not a chance."
A beat.
"There are too many people waiting for you to come back for them, Constantine."
Constantine didn't answer. He stood in the corridor with his face turned away, and the city went on below them, indifferent and enormous, full of all the things that still needed doing.
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