So many things are unraveling all at once. So many different begins of the butterfly effect, and all of them begin with the same root.

You, or something close to you.

At this very moment, Damian is walking into the Bookstore. Red ring in his black wool jacket pocket  with the black leather stripe along his shoulders across his chest. Narrowed yet relaxed eyes while they scan the warm room. The bell above his head ringing, signalling your attention. His right arm against the glass, holding the door open while he looks all the way across the room covered in book cases and those cases are stacked and filled to the top with books.

His eyes landing on your figure all the way across, talking to a customer. A classmate he recognizes, Jaime Reyes. He's smiling, and he looks to your face and sees that you're smiling back at him. You don't have an apron on, and there's no line at the glass counter. which lets him know your shift is probably on a break right now. He's seen you around school with Jaime, usually the two of you just pass each other in halls/ He had no idea that the two of you were really friends. Damian obviously doesn't know you too much on a personal level, but he knows who you hang out with seeing as you've invited him to hang out with them on multiple occasions. He's only agreed twice. Maps was someone he considered someone he could tolerate, sometimes. Translation? She's his friend too. Olive is calm to be around, but Damian's aware that her mother is an inmate at Arkham Asylum. If Olive even knew that Damian was Robin, or or someone who worked even relatively close to Batman? She'd drop him in a second flat, and make an enemy out of him no doubt.

He doesn't know you on a personal level very much. Only knows that you may be getting a brother or sister sometime soon, that the Bookstore is a family business, other things that friends should know about each other, favorite colors, animals, stuff like that. He knows you have a stepfather, but doesn't know much about your real father. Hell, Damian doesn't even know if he's alive or not. He isn't aware that your father walked out on you and your mother when you were five, and definitely doesn't know that you're a Constantine.

Since he doesn't know you on a personal level all that well, it's confusing him why it bothers him to see you laugh at someone else's jokes like that. Smile so genuinely and close your eyes while doing so because whatever Jaime must have said really made your day just a bit brighter. Doesn't know why it bothers him when you go to cover your mouth straight after you noticed you've been laughing, and this action is out of embarrassment. He doesn't know why this bothers him, why he wants to just go over there and move your hand back down onto the table and away from your lips. All with an annoyed expression, no doubt. As if asking why you even bothered? Isn't the point of smiling and laughing at something someone says just to let them know that what they said had a positive impact on another person?

While Damian stands there with the Bookstore door open, eyes relaxing and loosening on you. That solemn look on his face isn't going anywhere anytime soon, he doesn't look upset or distraught. His face is just relaxed and he seems serious. But part of it is loosened to a point where it's showing his confusion for himself, not even knowing what he's feeling or understanding it right now.

While Damian stands there, contemplating what you are to him, someone is digging their body out of their grave.

With a grudge for John Constantine.

A grudge to fill an entire ocean of blood. Constantine blood. This rage and anger of nothing but revenge is seething through their entire body whlie their fingers push and spread the dirt away, broken nails and fingertips after getting through the wood on their coffin. The makeshift coffin that was never even purchased legally, and was made out of something John came up with in a matter of ten minutes.

His arms are out now, and he should be dead by this. the dirt should have crushed his chest and suffocated him. He should have died as soon as he got through the wood in the coffin. Should have instantly been suffocated, inhaling dirt and whatnot. The weight would crush his ribs, and collapse his lungs. He should have died the second that wood cracked and it all started to fall. Better yet, he should have stayed dead.

His name was Nicholas, Nicholas Nolan. Known as an occultist that resided in New York. In a place called the "Oblivion Bar." He was New York's greatest mage, nobody could have beat him in anything. He was king, essentially. He gained an obsession, with something called the 'Books of Magic'. What are those books? They hold the knowledge of every bit of magic in existence, and then some. Some call it the creation of magic, some say it's the original origin. Where are they? Locked up, in storage with some of the other religious based books that the Bookstore use to sell. And your mother never knew she carried one of the six books in that store. That book could be considered the very beginning, seeing as it's what your father was looking for the day he met your mother.

But his name was Nicholas, formally known as Nick the Necro. He was the guy to go to in New York if you wanted to learn more than party tricks, or how to pull a rabbit out of a hat. Only so one can get rejected by him if he feels like they don't even look good enough.

He had a partner, well he had two of them. One of them was actually an apprentice, the other was someone almost as much as an equal to him. she wasn't as good as him, but god she was real close. His girlfriend, at the time she was his girlfriend at least. She had a very backwards way of speaking, in a literal way. Her name is Zatanna Zatara. And she's apart of this too, this'll be understood eventually as well.

Now for his apprentice, he had no actual interest in speaking with John Constantine at first. Leaving without listening to john ask to be taught even more magic than he already knows by the best, by the king. Almost out the door, and someone with a knife had plans to attack nick. Of course, saving your future mentor's life is always a great impression. And it was just that, john saving Nick's life. It's what gave him his place by Nick as his apprentice.

John and Zatanna were both young idiots, and inexperienced. John was only Seventeen through Nineteen when this all happened, his life with Nick and Zatanna. Three years with the two, scouring the underworld for evil and occult groups like the 'Cold Flame' to take out. Like the three of them were a trinity not to be messed with, just Nick, Zatanna, and John. The two would probably follow Nick to hell and back. They'd probably follow him to hell not knowing if they'd ever come back.

But that was then. To an extent, Nick obviously needed John and Zatanna to watch his back. Just as the two relied on Nick to save them and rescue them from whatever the two got themselves involved with. Young and inexperienced. But it was the price for what they received from Nick. Magic beyond what they even thought they'd get out of him. Not only did Zatanna have her backwards magic, but now she had her learnings from Nick.

And as a type of graduation ceremony, the three all got matching rune type tattoos that Nick did on everybody himself. Even gave him his own tattoo. And it wasn't any stick an' poke tattoo. No, this was the real deal. These tattoos meant something, and it meant that Nick was their mentor that taught them all they know. Obviously not all they know, considering Zatanna knew some magic from beforehand due to her father. And John knew magic beforehand due to his living in Newcastle. It was more petty dabbling back then, but now it was serious. This made the three of them a coven. In every sense of the word.

But Nick began to go crazy, and became not only obsessed, but infatuated with the idea of ultimate knowledge on the topic of Magic. As he threw himself into studying and trying to find the whereabouts of each book, both of his partners and apprentices got closer to each other while their mentor drove himself mad for the quest of knowledge.

Nick didn't like that. And his final lesson to john was that you get what you want, by taking it when you want. In this case, it was Zatanna. And with nothing but a warning and the smallest form of a grudge? He told Zatanna to be careful, that someday she'll just be replaced like he was. Warning her that John Constantine is to be stayed away from, because he has learned his final lesson.

Take what you want.

Driving himself in even deeper than before, with his motivation being the betrayal of his apprentice, he found the cold flame and one of the six books of Magic.

The cold flame had it, and he'd do anything for that book.

He got into trouble with them, though. The group of occultists know as the cold flame wanted the daughter of their greatest enemy. They wanted Zatanna Zatara. And they were aware of how the two were, so using Nick against them? It was an idea they used profoundly. They made him call John and Zatanna, begging and pleading for their help.

And when the two came? His former apprentice and partners just standing there in front of him?

He was on his knees with his back to the leader of the occult, a blade to his throat and a sick smile twisted on his face while he slowly got up, the dagger was now being aimed to be thrown at Zatanna.

It was a set up, because John's betrayal was his fuel for this entire meeting. the beginning of the stream of gasoline to fill a fire of nothing but a hatred and a grudge. Because Nick didn't care for what happened to Zatanna, though he knew she could probably handle her own with no miracle to place the gratitude on.

It's John he wanted dead. It was his blood he wanted spilled.

But what Nick didn't know was that he would be the one to take the fall. All those years ago when he died, he didn't know that he was going to be the one who doesn't walk out of that abandoned warehouse. Didn't know that he's going to be the one who suffers the immense amounts of pain and torture for what was what he considered John's fault.

He was unaware of the runic circle and sigils inside it that would tether any soul that died in it to hell. Subjecting them to hell for all eternity, to be tortured in nothing but hellfire and misery itself. Nick didn't know until it was too late. Too late to take it all back, too late to save his own life.

Too late to save his soul, even.

John was Nick's friend, and it's not a damn lie that John looked up to him like an older brother of sorts. At one point, john really would have followed nick to hell.

But what he did was the complete opposite, and he went too far.

He sent Nick to hell, by being the reason he died in that circle. Using his body as a shield from a dagger that was thrown at him. It was out of self defense, purely and nothing but. He still killed Nick, his older brother, his mentor, his friend.

And then ripped that iconic beige trench coat off of his cold dead body while Zatanna stood in the door way, hand to the knob and her back turned with her eyes shut tight as she fought back tears and nothing but feelings regarding anger. All the while John took Nick's place.

He was king now. Stripping that title away from Nick and using the coat as a symbol, a reminder that he's the one in charge now. As a reminder that he now sits on the throne that nick only warmed up for him.

This man is your father. John Constantine, your father. Someone who could get into a very loud and verbal argument with someone like Talia Al Gh'ul and still have their tongue in their mouth by the end of the day, not having it cut off and on the ground. Someone who could still keep their life after threatening someone like her, too.

Your father was someone she owed favors too, and one big one would settle the two she owed him.

Why did she owe him so much? She can't use the lazarus pit, it's as simple as that. But there's more than one way of coming back from the dead, John showed her one of the other alternatives to do it when she needed it the most. In return? One of the six books of Magic, and a year's worth of protection after the events that took place in Newcastle.

When all that was left of a little girl dragged to hell was her severed arm.

After what happened to a girl named  Astra Logue, John got scared. She's still in hell today, and he's still working on trying to get her out. But it's this main event that drove him to send you to Talia Al Gh'ul. Because he knew what she was like. But he did this out of fear, out of desperation. So he disregarded what she was like. And let it completely fall away to the ends of his mind and all of his other worries and concerns fade away with the one lie he would tell himself before he went to sleep at night on the rare occasion that he did.

That you'd be safe there, surrounded by people who could snap your neck in less than a second. With the assumption that those people would protect you. That entire year you were there, so many things happened and you can't remember a single one.

Even this event was tied to Nick.

And this event also tied into Nick's hatred for Constantine, his revenge that's only filling like the air that fills his lungs as he's now out of his grave, sitting against the wooden makeshift cross.

While John worked and tried so hard to get a little girl out of hell because he failed in binding a demon to someone else's body, he's stuck here in hell after being indirectly murdered by his former apprentice. He's stuck there, in hell, being tortured every day for those years. And time in hell passes differently. Every day up here is like a year down there. He's in hell, while John sends off his own daughter out of fear for her having the same fate as the little girl he damned to hell himself.

Nick was made aware of all of this. He's a powerful mage, all it took was a single thought into tap into the last couple years of john Constantine's life without him even knowing he was in his head.

John has a family he hid away, shoved somewhere in Portland. But it seems recently they've moved to another place. That he wasn't so sure of. But he has a name. A name of John Constantine's flesh and blood.

And while he whispers the name, he has a twisted smirk on his face.

"(Y/n) Constantine."

While he whispers the name of the girl he knows he's going to eventually kill, you're sitting across from a boy just about a year older than you laughing about ridiculous things.

That boy in front of you, Jaime Reyes, is more than you're aware of though. He's got something different about him, that much you already know. But what you don't know is that his arm can turn into a plasma cannon when the scarab on his back thinks it's host is in danger.

What you don't know is that there is alien technology on his back, in his mind telling him that the chemical changes in his body are confusing and if they do not stop he will activate that said cannon and terminate the issue at hand, which is a pretty girl he thinks is flirting with him. In reality, that's obviously not what's going on. You're just a classmate of his and he's just a teenage boy.

Yeah, the scarab on his back takes everything into account.

Even Damian, who's standing at the doorway with his hand shoved into his pocket whlie giving off a look that crosses longing and annoyance. signalling Jaime to turn around, and focus on his surroundings because that could have easily been a predator.

So many things have started to unravel, they unravelled more quickly when Damian took a seat across from you and next to Jaime at the table. Your little group and friendship with Damian has been turned into a group of three. Little do you know, this group is only going to get bigger by more important people with abilities and strengths you can't even begin to fathom.

But right now, this very moment, Nick the Necro is on his way to Gotham.