Fandom: Hellblazer
Characters/Pairings: John Constantine, OCs
Requested by Zanzou-Chan on Fic-on-Demand: "Anything to do with the Lamed Vav Tzadikim (the 36 people who make sure God doesn't wipe everyone out). They're in danger, they're missing, they're showing up, John is one of them, I don't care. I just want it to happen. :D"

Glass World

There were golems in the sewers under John Constantine's street, so around 11 on Wednesday morning he headed out to Finchley to buy a book. He didn't mind the things usually, but they'd been rattling the pipes and somebody had to do something. It wasn't the sort of thing city officials would take seriously until there actually was a gas explosion. It was a bit of a pain, really. Bloke had to do everything himself, these days.

It was the hour of the unemployed slacker, and people and cars were thinner on the ground than usual. John thought of calling Chas for a ride, but even on a Wednesday this was London, and besides, Chas still hadn't forgiven him about the roses for Gemma that he'd never actually delivered. John took the tube instead, sharing a car with a bag lady and a thin young man who sobbed through three stations before getting off at a junction.

He found the bookstore where he'd left it, a little nicer since the last time, with glossy paperbacks in the window with titles like 'The True Kabalah', '25 Questions for a Jewish Mother' and 'Now That Sounds Kosher'. A bell jingled when he entered into smell of paper and detergent. The girl behind the counter glanced up from her novel to greet him with a faint smile.

He browsed for a bit, in case anyone was looking, before taking the stairs down into the cellar where the real books were sold.

They were lined up against the walls on plain Ikea shelves, sometimes packed in cartboard boxes: old books, with leather covers, wood covers, and cloth covers, smelling of dust and decay and acidic paint. There were wooden chests too, and closets, and a cage, all of them filled with books, most of which were worth more than the store upstairs. Some of them were worth more than London itself. John stood well clear of the nearest pile, careful not to let his trenchcoat brush against the volumes. They would be protected against pilferers, but pilferers wouldn't be protected against them.

He looked around for Stroheim, the shopkeeper, but the cellar was empty. He could hear noises faintly from the other end of the cellar, echoing off stone, clatter and a curse. He rang the little bell at the beechwood desk facing the stairs, and waited.

There was a volume open on the desk, smaller and newer than the others and written in modern French. It was full of notes and large parts of the text had been crossed over. John saw the title printed on the top of each page was Le Dernier des Justes. The title sounded faintly familiar. He leaned back at the sound of approaching footsteps.

Old Stroheim hadn't changed much since the last time they'd met. He still didn't like John, but he still sold him the volume he was after, for a bag of bits and bobs John'd picked up from a fire cult a few years back, during that nasty bit of business with Tim Hunter.

'Please note that I'm not asking why you're interested in this particular subject,' said Stroheim, 'and I expect you won't be asking me any questions either.' Stroheim tapped the side of his nose, an ancient gesture. It was a broken nose, in a hatchet face on a small shriveled man, and a magician's finger, singed and steady. 'And I specifically will not be telling you about a certain young putz named Goldman who's been getting big ideas, either.'

'Meddling with the laws of nature, and all that?'

'Right,' said Stroheim. 'That would be the sort of thing I wouldn't mention, the discreet businessman that I am.'

People told him these things thinking he'd put a stop to it, ride in on his white horse and take care of whatever rival magician of theirs was breaking the rules lately. He just wanted to clear out his sewer. He wasn't a bloody hero, and magicians were always breaking the rules anyway. He should know.

John went back up the stairs with his book safely in a brown paper bag with a different shop's logo on it. The girl behind the counter was writing a note in her book (perhaps it wasn't a novel, after all) with a slightly chewed pencil. This done, she pushed the pencil behind her ear, and looked up at the sound of John's footsteps.

She'd seemed a plain sort, with traces of acne on her chin, though she must have been over twenty, and her mousy hair done up in a graceless bundle, but her neck was long and lovely, and her lips like a rosebud waiting to open. John had known girls like her, who just needed one wild night to travel the distance between silence and a scream. Perhaps it was the presence of all the esoterica that made him think poetry, and plain old human yearnings making him wish to lift her veil. God knew she was two decades too young for him, but he put on a grin and approached.

He felt something like an iron vice clutch his arm, and a shrill old man voice shouted 'Out! Out!' John found himself ushered out by Stroheim. 'You stay out and don't look at her again, you nudnik!' John safely outside, Stroheim retreated back into the shop, muttering 'Zol er krenken un gedenken.'

John was getting old. There was a time he would've sneaked in that night to get the girl, taken her out and just plain taken her. He'd have set fire to the old man's shop on his way out, and in a few months she'd be covered in black make-up and occult jewelry, learning the other Cabbala, the Cabbala of Crowley and Abdul Alhazred. One day she might be something. But he was older now, and so he just swore as the curtains were pulled down over the kosher cookbooks and Kabbalistic self-help books, and took his book back to his apartment in Whitechapel. He spent the night memorising by the light of his last lightbulb, filling the ashtray with butt after butt, drinking his way through his store of cheap whiskey.

He crawled into bed red-eyed and slightly drunk. He was half asleep when he remembered where he'd heard about old Stroheim's crossed-out book. An old girlfriend had had it. Some sentimental nonsense about the Nazi regime and Jewish mysticism. It talked about the 36 just men, 36 uncorrupted souls, who are the only reason God will not burn humanity in its sins. Mystics and authors always get these things wrong, he mused, just before sliding into the blackness. They're not men.

Anna Stroheim ate her dinner in the apartment above the bookstore, her grandfather muttering prayers over her all the while. She wasn't sure what had him so spooked, but didn't ask any questions. The words washed over her, small vocal caresses, the love of her grandfather, the love of God. She went to bed a little later and dreamed of the dust dancing in a shaft of sunlight in the bookstore downstairs, a soul perched on each particle.

John Constantine had often stood at the edge of the precipice, ready to pull the whole world down by his weight should he take just one false step. Sometimes, he didn't even realize it.