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The day he met John Constantine was the day everything went to shit. At first it seemed innocent enough.

It was nothing more than a group of punks who thought they were all that, messing around with some dangerous stuff.

Jeremy had never once thought any of that black magic crap was for real. The trip to Newcastle proved him wrong.

The trip was supposed to be for fun. A vacation, time off from all the hard work everyone had been doing lately in their personal lives.

No one really wanted to go, but somehow John had managed to convince everyone to come along. It'd be fun he'd said.

Jeremy should have known better. Nothing was ever fun when John Constantine was around.

A weak before the trip everything changed. Something possessed Jeremy's adopted daughter Astra -- a demon that had clawed its way straight out of hell.

Then, suddenly they were going to Newcastle for a completely different reason.

Jeremy wasn't sure why the demon was so interested in their vacation spot. He supposed the things just had a crude sense of irony. Bastards.

They'd tracked the demon down to one of the beaches in Newcastle. (Not an easy task, considering just how big the place was.)

John had conjured up a demon -- Nergal -- in the hopes of drawing the lesser demon out and destroying it.

After the weaker of the two demons was defeated, Nergal was supposed to disappear right back where he'd come from, never to be seen again.

Apparently demons were worse con-men then John himself. Nergal had failed to mention that John's little deal with him required the soul of a child -- and seeing how they'd been on a short supply of child souls to hand out, there was only one up for grabs. Astra's.

In the blink of an eye she was gone. Not even dead, like the police proclaimed her to be later on. She was just gone. Dragged off to hell right along with Nergal.

They'd all tried to stop it. They really had. But all their efforts had been in vain, and they had no choice but to accept the girl's fate.

At least, accept it as well as they could. The events at Newcastle was enough to tear them apart. Everyone parted ways, though not before exchanging some nasty words with one another.

Jeremy wasn't really sure what had happened to most of the others, least of all John. (He was fairly sure John had been avoiding him all these months.)

He knew Anna Marie had turned to the church, becoming a nun down in Mexico. Ritchie had put the whole mess behind him, taking up teaching classes as a college professor.

(Jeremy knew for certain that he was avoiding him and everyone else, as was made evident by the way he blew up at him the last time he'd attempted to contact him.)

Jeremy wasn't sure what the others had gotten themselves into. Though, if he had to guess he'd say Gary was still hopped up on drugs, if not just to ease the pain and guilty conscious now.

John would have most likely stuck with the demon business. It was the only thing he'd ever known, so it would be hard for him to give up, Jeremy imagined.

Chas would have followed him blindly, much to the annoyance of his ex wife and John himself.

John had had a habit of pushing people away even before the -- for lack of a better word -- accident. And Renee had always loathed John for reasons undisclosed.

Jeremy himself had thrown himself into his work as a private investigator, perfectly intent on forgetting that night had ever happened.

Except no matter how hard he tried, it was impossible to forget. Every time he closed his eyes, he could see her desperately trying to escape.

In the deafening silence whenever he was alone he could still hear her screams, crying out to John and Jeremy, pleading for anyone to help.

He could still see the image of John throwing himself in front of Astra in a feeble attempt to protect her. Screaming, "You can't have her!"

But of course the demon had won anyways. It was the worst night of his life. It would never just go away; the memories were burned into the back of his mind.

Jeremy jumped to his feet immediately once he heard his alarm go off. He'd been awake for hours already, just waiting out the time he had left until he had to head in to the office.

It was often like that. Jeremy would wake up in the middle of the night after having another nightmare about that day at Newcastle; then, he would just stare at the walls blankly, bored out of his mind but unable to move.

Quickly, and with difficulty, Jeremy went about the house to get ready for work. He was in such a groggy state that he fumbled with his tooth brush and nearly dropped his clothes in the toilet. (It was hard to remember the last time he'd gotten a decent night's sleep.)

Jeremy found himself pausing once he got to the living room. He scanned the area, eyes trailing over the leather couch and glass coffee table earnestly.

Her presence still lingered in the house. He could still see her sitting in her favorite spot by the window, reading those mystery novels she enjoyed so much.

Normally, it would have been opened up, letting the sunshine slide through, allowing the birds' songs to be heard.

Astra had always liked it that way. She thought it made the place seem happier, but Jeremy didn't see much to be happy about these days.

Her room was just the way it had been before the incident -- bed still messy, clothes thrown across the floor in a typical teenage manner.

Jeremy could almost make believe that she was still sleeping in there, that any moment, she would come barreling out the door, struggling to put her shoes on as she rushed to get to the bus stop on time for school. (She had always had such a nasty habit of over sleeping.) He could almost pretend. But not quite.

He moved briefly to examine the fridge. There wasn't much in there. Just a thin carton of milk for the box of cereal sitting on the counter.

Jeremy knew he should have went out and bought some damned groceries, but that had always been something he and Astra had done together. The thought of doing it without her...

Jeremy sighed and shook his head, slamming the fridge door shut.

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The building wasn't very big. It held maybe twenty offices in total, but Jeremy's was the only PI business in the entire building -- most people had gotten into journalism or photography. Both boring professions in Jeremy's opinion.

He had to share the space with another detective, too -- his partner, Ralph Dibny.

Though the circumstances of their partnership were a bit unclear.

Jeremy remembered the events of attaining the office two very different ways.

One) Ralph had never existed, and Jeremy had come into possession of the office after the previous owner had been killed in the Particle Accelerator accident.

Two) Both Ralph and Jeremy had applied for the office at the same time; and they had quite an extended argument about who would get the space (it had lasted over three months) before the land lord had finally threatened to give it to someone else.

(They immediately decided to pull their heads out of their asses and share the space, subsequently beginning their partnership.)

Most days, the clashing memories didn't bother Jeremy. Though sometimes they blurred together, and he wasn't sure which of them was the correct one, which of them had really happened.

Once, when he had been more paranoid about all of it, Jeremy had even tested the office building for demon activity or any evidence that there was some sort of spiritual entity screwing with his head. He didn't find anything suspicious, though.

He'd also checked to make sure Ralph himself wasn't a hellish beast in disguise, but all he had learned from that was that his partner enjoyed drowning his hot dogs in mustard and ate at the most unsanitary places. (Big Belly Burger for instance.)

Eventually, Jeremy had just let it be. Partly because whatever it was didn't seem to be doing any real harm, just a few annoying mind games was all.

But mostly he let the subject drop because he wasn't getting any closer to figuring out what it was, and he had grown frustrated with all the effort.

He'd never been as good as John with all this demonology stuff... Then again people rarely ever were.

In fact, Jeremy had only met one other person who was anywhere near as good as John, if not even better, at the whole magic business -- Zatana Zatara. (Though she tended to focus on the lighter side of magic.)

Jeremy figured whatever was screwing with his head didn't matter much anyway. Whether it was the mystical work of some hellish beast or not, he was stuck with a partner now.

Not that he minded all that much. Ralph was a complete and utter pig, (in more ways than one) but at least he usually got the job done at the end of the day.

When Jeremy came into the office that morning Ralph was staring at a couple of photos of men in hoods.

Ever since the Hood had allegedly been taken down in Starling City after an event known as The Undertaking, Ralph had been obsessed with figuring out who the city's latest vigilante, going by the name of Arrow, was even though they lived in Central City, which was several cities away from Starling.

"Oh, this again," Jeremy sighed, setting his coat down on his chair.

"Yeah," Ralph nodded. "Hey, do you think the Hood trained the Arrow?"

"Nope," Jeremy said coolly. He sat down at his desk, running his hand through his sandy hair as he got started on all the paper work they had to fill out for their cases.

Usually Jeremy did it all by his lonesome. Not that Ralph didn't offer to help, it was just that Jeremy liked it to be done in a precise way and Ralph rarely ever met his standards.

Ralph turned to him, a confused frown on his face. "What?" He gestured at the pictures he'd laid out over the white board at the front of the room.

(They were only suppose to use it for actual cases, but Ralph enjoyed his little hobbies.)

The movement caused his bulging belly to giggle the slightest bit. (Ralph had put on quite a few pounds thanks to the excessive amount of booze and junk food he inhaled on a daily basis.)

"It makes total sense. Look, Arrow and the Hood have identical techniques, they use the same type of arrows, they both wear the same color --"

"They're the same person," Jeremy interrupted, not looking up from his work.

"Huh?" Ralph said.

Jeremy sighed. He got up, figuring Ralph wasn't going to let him work in peace until he indulged him the slightest bit.

"They're the same person," he repeated. "That's why there's so many similarities." Jeremy picked up an image of the Hood and the Arrow in each hand. "See? If you look closely, same body frame, same jaw line. Same person."

Ralph tilted his head to the side, making a face like Oh, yeah. That makes sense.

He pointed at the picture of the Arrow as Jeremy pinned the photos back on the board and walked back to his desk.

"Well, looking at it this way, there's no way the Hood died in The Undertaking like SCPD said." He held up a photo of the accused. "Which makes sense since they didn't find a body." He made a face. "Still, why would the Hood need to change his name to Arrow? It doesn't make sense. So either you're wrong --"

"I'm not," Jeremy said.

"-- or I need to start my investigation over again," Ralph finished as if he hadn't been interrupted.

"Please don't," Jeremy sighed. He'd been listening to Ralph's misguided ramblings on the topic for weeks now, desperately searching for answers when there was only a slim chance he'd even come close to figuring it out. It wore thin pretty fast.

Ralph ignored his protests, moving towards the discarded photos of people he had already ruled out, including himself and Jeremy. (He called it being thorough. Jeremy called it wasting time.)

"Well obviously we can keep ourselves and the ladies rules out," Ralph started rambling, shuffling through the photos like they were some kind of playing cards.

He had a stack of photos of random ladies he'd found in his 'research,' but Jeremy didn't even want to know what he really did with them when he wasn't in the room. Knowing Ralph it was something less than classy and very, very dirty.

"And really none of these guys have the right build, except for maybe Oliver Queen, but --"

"You ruled him out for not being a hero type," Jeremy reminded him, his voice filled with melancholy. In actuality, Jeremy figured Oliver was probably the only one fit enough -- mentally and physically -- to wear the hood of both the Hood and the Arrow.

They'd met once when Jeremy's friend John Constantine had dragged him all the way to a Chinese island called Lian Yu for some magical relic.

Oliver had been among a group of guards -- at least he'd been pretending to be -- watching over the island and the slaves that worked there.

Jeremy had seen what he could do, the way that he fought, the way he was quick on his feet, the way he'd planned out his attacks so particularly. Just like the Hood, and subsequently, the Arrow.

But it wasn't all that hard to lead Ralph astray. One reminder about the time he'd been caught on camera punching out a paparazzi (something that had taken place almost six years ago, now) and he was turning the other cheek.

"Yeah," Ralph nodded, slowly putting the picture of Queen down. "Unless..." He held up a finger, spinning around to face Jeremy with a huge grin on his face.

"That's just a cover to throw us off." He frowned again. "But wait. How would Queen know all those fighting techniques?"

"Wasn't he stuck on an island for five years or something? Maybe someone trained him there. Who cares?" Jeremy said, leaning back in his chair, already bored as hell.

Ralph pointed at him excitedly, ignoring the apathy in Jeremy's tone probably just to spite him. "Yes! That makes sense. Okay, so Oliver Queen -- definitely a strong maybe." He placed Queen's photo on the board.

Jeremy rolled his eyes at his partner. "Great. Now, can I get back to our actual job?"

Ralph shrugged and turned back to the board. He had one hand placed over his chin in a thoughtful manner, like that would somehow make the information click together. "I thought you said you were good at multitasking."

"I am," Jeremy insisted. "But you speculate out loud and it's off putting." He heard Ralph scoff at that, but he didn't look up to see the no doubt annoyed look on his face.

"And that's all this is. Speculation. You're never going to actually find out for sure unless the Arrow randomly decides to invite you over for coffee and tell you his identity -- which, needless to say, not very likely. He's not even in the same city, so I doubt you'll catch him on the streets very often either."

"Okay I see your point," Ralph mumbled. Then, a moment later he perked up. He held a finger up as he excitedly said, "I shouldn't be trying to find out who the Arrow is, I should be trying to figure out who the Streak is! He's local."

Jeremy grunted. "Is that what we're calling him?"

"Yeah, I guess. Some people also call him the Blur."

"That's even worse," Jeremy said. "Look, Ralph, I'd love to investigate the nerd's dream with you more but --"

"I feel like not true," Ralph said.

"I have a lot of work to do," Jeremy finished.

"Well who's fault is that? You won't let me help."

"You always fill out the files incorrectly."

"I was a detective for CCPD. I know how to properly fill out the paper work," Ralph protested.

"Clearly not if you got fired," Jeremy pointed out, turning back to the papers once more.

"I didn't get fired because of that," Ralph huffed indignantly. "I told you, it was Allen's fault."

Jeremy rolled his eyes. Barry Allen was the CSI down at CCPD. He'd been hired on by Captain Singh a while back, and according to Ralph the kid had conspired against him and gotten him fired -- though Jeremy had never gotten the full details of the story, so he couldn't say how truthful that was.

He'd met the guy a handful of times on those rare occasions when they actually got to work a murder case with the detective's of CCPD. (Ralph absolutely refused to show up out of spite, so Jeremy always ended up doing those cases on his own, and Allen usually did his best to help out.)

The guy seemed pretty decent. A bit awkward but decent. Jeremy had a hard time believing the kid was capable of aiming malice towards anyone.

The more likely thing was that Ralph had been acting like his usual douche of a self, too prideful to own up to his own mistakes. (Not that Jeremy would ever tell him that.)

Before the ever so enthralling conversation could continue, the office door slid open, and an unexpectedly familiar face stepped into the room.

He wasn't someone most people would have looked twice at, his appearance was so normal. His scruff was a bit longer than Jeremy remembered, albeit well trimmed.

His hair was a lot shorter too, like maybe he was just trying to look ordinary -- or as ordinary as they came these days -- to blend into the background.

He wasn't wearing anything too flashy either -- just a boring old dark blue t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. The only thing that could have passed as remotely off putting was that stoic expression on his face.

However, Jeremy was frantically jumping up out of his seat at the sight of him anyway. "What the hell are you doing here?"

The man -- Chas Chandler -- didn't move, but his face contorted for a moment in confusion, almost like he was expecting something much worse. (Though, Jeremy couldn't blame him for expecting something rash. They'd all parted ways on pretty bad terms.)

The duo eyed each other for a long drawn out moment, Jeremy narrowing his eyes at the other man. Something was wrong. He could tell by the way he stood so stiffly and wouldn't quite speak up.

Chas had always been the quiet type, but at least he'd always spoken to those in their little group -- that is until they'd departed. Yet, somehow Jeremy thought his behavior was the result of something more than a bad parting.

What's more, due to how they'd left things, Chas would not have come there if things weren't seriously wrong.

Ralph looked between the pair of them, smirking slightly in amusement. "Whoa, what's with all the tension? He sleep with your girlfriend or something?"

Jeremy tried not to be too annoyed by his ignorant remark. He had purposely kept him in the dark about his past with Chas and the others, so he had no idea how bad things really were between the old -- for lack of a better word -- friends.

Chas' gaze flickered over to Jeremy's partner briefly, but besides that he blatantly ignored him. Looking Jeremy dead in the eyes, he said, "John checked into an asylum."

"Oh," Jeremy said. Was that all he'd come here to say? That didn't seem quite right. There was more to the story...

Chas nodded slowly. Jeremy was very aware that Ralph was still there, watching them with growing confusion, but Jeremy kept his gaze firmly locked with Chas'.

"He checked out a few weeks ago," Chas told him. He paused. "We found Jasper's daughter."

"Oh," Jeremy said again. That was interesting -- closer, but still not quite the point.

"Took her to her father's place," Chas said.

Jeremy let that sink in. From what he remembered about Jasper, the guy had many 'places.' Though the one that Chas was most likely referring to was that old millhouse out in the middle of no where. The magic house that had always sort of tripped him out.

"Yeah? And?" So what if John and Chas had taken Jasper's daughter there -- what had been her name again? Liz? Liv? It must have had something to do with Chas' sudden and spontaneous desire to reach out after all this time.

Chas let out a deep breath through his nose, apparently growing irritated with his tip toeing as well. He eyed Ralph, who was still watching the exchange perplexedly, before turning back to Jeremy earnestly. "John went on a trip. He won't be back for awhile."

"And?" Jeremy asked. He'd been so caught up in the tension of the moment that he hadn't immediately registered the meaning behind Chas' words.

It wasn't the first time that John had run off on his own, insisting that he was too damaged and that people always got hurt around him or whatever stupidly annoying reasons he had for that behavior. It seemed strange for Chas to be worried about that now, after all this time of dealing with it.

Chas let out another heavy sigh, repeating himself, this time with much more force and edge to his tone. "John went on a trip. He won't be back for awhile."

And suddenly it sank in. Jeremy's gaze snapped over to Ralph. "Can we have the room?"

Ralph looked between the pair of them, a befuddled expression painted over his face. He must have decided it wasn't any of his business, though, or -- the more likely scenario -- the tension was too much to bare, because he gave a curt nod and hurried out of the room.

As soon as the door closed behind him, Jeremy's full attention was on his old friend and former colleague. "So, about this trip John's taken..."

"A place called Heddwich, Pennsylvania," Chas said, getting right down to business. "Went to investigate the case of Lannis Cadogan."

Jeremy rapped his fingers against the desk absent mindedly, humming thoughtfully. This case clearly wasn't a normal one, or else John wouldn't have gone for it, never mind going it alone. "Yeah? What's his deal?"

"He was burned alive in the shower." Jeremy examined the other man's face for any signs that he was joking, but Chas remained completely passive as pure usual.

Jeremy chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment, contemplating his response to that. "Yup. That definitely classifies as demonic behavior."

Chas gave a short nod, but he remained silent, apparently waiting for Jeremy to comprehend something.

It took a moment for it to click, and when it did he let out a long, frustrated sigh. "You're going to ask me to follow him, aren't you?"

"He'll need the backup, whether he knows it or not," Chas insisted. "He usually does."

Jeremy hesitated. He hadn't seen John, let alone picked up a demonology book (except those times he was checking the office and Ralph for otherworldly activity), since Newcastle.

Part of him worried that accepting this case would cause all those memories to come flooding back, and that wasn't really something he particularly fancied.

Not to mention, things would not doubt be even stranger between him and John than it had been between him and Chas. John was the one who cast the spell for Nergal. He blamed himself for Astra's... disappearance, even if Jeremy didn't. Not really.

Still, Chas was right. John always attempted going about things alone, and more often than not that tended to get him into a lot more trouble than he would have been in had he just accepted help. But why did that person instantly have to be Jeremy?

He eyed Chas apprehensively, still tapping his fingers against the desk without even realizing he was doing it. "You can't go?"

Chas shook his head. "Remember that train derailment?"

"Ah." Jeremy, in fact, remembered that incident well. He hadn't actually been there, but after the events had transpired Chas had encountered them to John and him at a crummy bar.

He'd been on his way back from running an errand for John (because of course he was) when a demon decided it would be totally awesome to highjack the conductor's body.

Poor Chas had been forced to deal with the whole thing on his own, miles away from any sort of intelligent backup.

Fortunately, Chas expelled the demon from the conductor's body before anyone was hurt. Unfortunately, he hadn't managed to do it before the train fell off course, crashing into the building of the train station.

Local authorities, of course having no idea about the existence of demonic bastards, had assumed it was all Chas' doing on account of a few ignorant people telling them so.

Apparently, the warrant they'd put out for his arrest still stood annoyingly strong. Chas wouldn't be able to go anywhere close to the state for a good, long while.

Jeremy sighed another long, heavy sigh, finally ceasing the tapping. He really did not want to deal with this shit today, but he found himself begrudgingly agreeing anyways. "This is a case. You're paying me for it."

"So you're going?" Chas said.

"As long long as you're going to pay me," Jeremy repeated.

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever," Chas waved the thought away. Jeremy squinted at him, making sure that he understood good and well that he was, indeed, going to pay him for this case.

When he was sure that the message had been made crystal clear, Jeremy turned away from his old friend, moving towards the door. "I'll meet you at the Mill House when we get back or whatever."

Hehe, I'm so excited for this. And honestly, I think I love the way this first chapter turned out!

I decided to skip the episode with Liv because she never shows up again anyways in canon and...I just don't care enough about her to do an entire five or better chapters based around her. 😂

Just move straight on to Zed! Who is much cooler in my opinion.

It should also be noted that this story is taking place during Flash S1 (albeit after Flashpoint) and S3 of Arrow as I'm including the rest of Arrowverse in this because -- well, because I just can, alright? 😂😂

Updates will be anywhere between midnight on Sunday and 11:00 pm on Monday.