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firmamential-blog · 7 years

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Ataxia

Percival Graves is missing.

Contains torture scenes and graphic content. Comments and feedback are much appreciated!

Grindelwald takes him from the elevated porch of his brownstone.

Graves is just apparating when the hairs on the back of his neck prickle with danger. When the world rematerializes around him, he whips his wand outward, a half-formed hex sparking off in a flash of white light.

“Protego,” he grits out, as an answering hex flies at him, and it almost pierces the silvery shield, grinding into sparks against the barrier. Graves staggers back a step. He flicks two disarming charms in quick succession in the direction of the attack, but the pop of Disapparition leaves them to scorch the edifice of the building, shattering one of his windows.

Graves turns quickly on his heel, anticipating. When the second pop echoes behind and to his left, he curses, dropping into a roll, but a flash of light and a sickening crunch fill his senses as his left shoulder implodes with pain.

“Oppugno!” He roars, sweeping backward, and the shrubbery bordering the patio flies behind him, pots shattering as his attacker advances.

The purple bolt of a hex lands next to his head, by his foot. As he tries to right himself, the breath is knocked out of him by a blow to his back. His muscles lock abruptly. Pain blossoms across the crown of his head, cold trickling down his spine in slow motion, like sickly molasses.

The night sky reaches down toward him, covering him like a shroud.

When he wakes up, it is to darkness.

Cool air presses up against his skin. It is thick with moisture, like the atmosphere in caves and old storm basements. When he gasps in a wheezing breath, he smells the staleness of stagnant air, tastes the heaviness of mold and must.

Graves shifts. Pain thrums across his body, demanding attention. It throbs across the back of his head, through his torso, focusing in the ruined ball of his left shoulder and radiating outward, down his arm. Dankness presses up against his skin; he is covered only by his button-down shirt and underwear. The floor is cold and abrasive, like raw stone.

His heartbeat rises. Graves forces himself to breathe deeply, holding his eyes open, willing them to adjust to the sepulchral dark. He moves his hands, and realizes that they are bound together at the wrists. His feet, too, are attached at the ankles. Graves looks down, attempting to gauge their make, but the thick black of the atmosphere refuses to yield.

He pulls at the binding viciously, and a sudden hiss has him jerking in surprise, an aborted shout echoing off the walls of his prison. The bindings feel like rough rope, but at his sudden movement they begin to coil and writhe, curling even tighter, cutting off the circulation and grinding down on his bones. He can’t bite back a shout of pain.

There is a small sound to his left. He stops struggling, listens.

“Hello?” he says quietly into the dark. Nothing.

“Who the fuck are you?” he snarls. “Who’s there?”

Without warning, a bright white light explodes across his eyes, blinding him as the squeak of rusty hinges resonates around him. He holds his hands to his eyes to shield them, squinting.

The door closes, and the darkness settles again, hemming him in on all sides.

“Who are you?” he shouts again, and desperation begins to rise, unbidden, in his throat.

Graves’ mind starts to reel through every possibility, every outcome. His wand has been taken from him, of course. He forces his brain to still, finding a center of focus, reaching within himself to slim his magic to a pinpoint.

“Accio wand,” he says, knowing that it’s a long shot. Even though the darkness is complete around him, he closes his eyes, picturing the smooth ebony and glinting silver, the bond between them. “Accio,” he repeats, like a prayer. He waits, holding his breath, but nothing comes; no telltale rush of wood through air, no knocking on the door.

“Fuck,” he spits. “Lumos. Lumos!”

It takes him three tries to bring a wavering light to life, and it flickers dubiously above him. Its fickle light doesn’t even reach the corners of the room he’s held in, only bright enough to illuminate the ropes literally snaking around his wrists, the blood on his shirt, and the inert grey face of the stone floor below him.

Graves lets the orb sputter out, fear tightening his throat.

“Help,” he says to the darkness. Then, louder. “Help me. Someone… Help me!”

There is no response.

He’s been drifting in and out of consciousness for what feels like days. His stomach rowls with hunger, and his mouth has gone cotton-dry. He has no way of marking the passage of time in this place. There is no day or night; just blackness and more blackness.

When he is awake, he screams for help until his voice gives out; when his voice gives out, he thinks of all possible ways he can escape.

It’s a dishearteningly short list.

Graves is damn good at both wandless and wordless magic; but there’s no way he’s getting out of here without his wand to aid him. Burrowing, shattering, or otherwise moving through solid stone was something that required a level of magical focus beyond even what he could manage, at least in his current state. The door was a more likely target, but Graves’ had fired every opening, unlocking, and destructive spell he could think of at it, and the most it had done was shudder under his (considerable) ire. The thing was undoubtedly magicked shut, and reinforced to boot.

In the end, he decides, he has to wait it out – whoever has captured him, whatever they want, they’ll have to come back eventually to get it. And when they do, he’ll be ready to hex them, take their wand, and Disapparate the both of them right into the front hall of the Woolworth building.

He turns this plan over in his mind until he falls asleep, and while he’s sleeping, he dreams of it.

It’s from one of those dreams that Graves wakes when the grinding squeal of hinges and blinding light ousts him from sleep. Reducto is already formed in his mind, halfway off his tongue, when his entire body freezes up, words caught in his throat.

“No, no,” a smooth voice says, chiding. “None of that, now,” and a squeezing pressure is suddenly winding around Graves torso, pushing against his ribs. The air leaves his lungs, flying from his throat with a wheeze, and he falls over onto his side, writhing against the crush of the spell.

It releases abruptly, and Graves sucks in a gasp of air. “Reduc- “ he starts again, desperately, but the vice-like grip is back in a moment, crushing, tightening. Graves is choking, fingers scrambling against his chest in reflex. He feels his insides curling in, flexing beyond their capacity- something inside of him gives way with a loud snap, and he jerks in soundless agony, tears flowing from his eyes.

The pressure recedes, more slowly this time, and he breathes in ragged gasps, air catching in his throat. His own moans of shocked pain resound through the chamber, and he curls around his middle, feeling whatever popped move incorrectly within him.

“Foolish, Director Graves,” the smooth voice tuts, and he registers the clicking of shoes approaching against the shrinking light of the doorway.

A boot is pressing into his side, and he grinds his teeth against a yelp of pain as he rolls over, onto his back. A slim figure looms up over him, silhouetted.

“Lumos,” the voice says, and the room is filled with soft light.

Graves is still gasping for breath, and he chokes a little as he recognizes the blonde hair, the sickly pale skin, the mismatched eyes.

“Grindelwald,” he hisses between breaths, a snarl curling his lips.

That disgusting face smiles charmingly. “Indeed,” he says, and then is folding himself downward until he sits, cross-legged, on the floor beside Graves, who is still fighting for air and grunting in pain.

“Well, Director Graves, I realize that we’ve never officially met – I spent a good deal of time avoiding you back in Europe. But I suppose you already know me quite well, and I certainly know you. So, we can skip the introductions, I think, and get right to the point,” Grindelwald says, reaching into his coat. From an inside pocket, he procures a long, silver pipe, which he proceeds to pack diligently. “You and I have been presented with a most unusual opportunity to work together.”

A flame flickers to life at the end of one long, point-nailed finger. Grindelwald holds it to the pipe, puffing until a thick curl of smoke creeps forward from it. Instead of drifting upward, it falls, heavy, like ink in water. The stench of burning tobacco fills the small space, and it scratches at Graves’ raw throat.

“I find myself in need of a connection that will allow me to work most intimately with the leaders of the MACUSA,” he says, lightly. “A way to… gain information, and avoid confrontation, so to speak. I need someone who is willing to give me full access to MACUSA records and who will protect my movement through the city. Cover for me, as you say.” He waves the pipe in a searching gesture. “You, I believe, are the perfect candidate.”

Graves sucks in a breath, disgust curling his face. “Fuck you,” he spits, voice hoarse and cracking. “I’d rather kiss Merlin’s droopy- “

“Ah ah ah,” Grindelwald says, holding up a finger. Graves’ jaw locks shut, and a thick piece of fabric is winding over his mouth, settling there. “That’s not very polite, is it? Anyway, I was almost certain that this would be your exact response, which is why I skipped over diplomacy and jumped straight to kidnapping. Which was much easier to accomplish than I assumed it would be, by the way. Getting lax, are we?”

Graves has more than a few choice words in response to that, but his grunts are muffled by his lockjaw and gag. Grindelwald puffs coolly at his pipe, watching him, breathing out thick smoke rings. They float through the air and land on Graves’ face, stinging his eyes.

“Your position within the MACUSA is one that comes with certain enviable privileges,” Grindelwald continues, over Graves’ muffled stream of profanities. “I intend to exploit those privileges to their fullest extent. And so, Director Graves, I will need a few of your memories and, if you please, another lock of that lovely hair. I took a small piece when we got here, polyjuice potion takes an awful long time to brew up, you know. But I’ll need to freshen the pot soon enough.

Now, I know what you’re going to say,” Grindelwald continues, holding up a finger. “That you’ll never do what I want, etcetera, etcetera.” He puffs on his pipe, expression bored. “But before you decline my offer, I would like you to think, if you would, from my perspective.”

Grindelwald’s face grows serious, and he lowers his voice. “Since the beginning of magical civilization, Mister Graves, magic-wielders have been forced to hide ourselves from the sight of the non-magical. We have had to cover both our power and the glory of our communities, moving in the darkness; a mutual agreement among our kind to hide ourselves from the light of day. Every minute, magical folk are punished – by their peers, no less – for casting pithy spells in front of Muggles who barely ever have the wits to know what exactly they’ve seen.

And for what?” He asks, spreading his hands. “Ostensibly, it’s to protect both of our communities – though even when they were attacking us, the Muggles only ever succeeded in wounding themselves. I posit that this ridiculous secrecy statute isn’t to protect us, but to protect the Muggles alone.

Because a non-magical person would never stand a chance against a magical one, Mr. Graves. Unless, of course, that magical person was a squib, but what use are squibs anyway?” He shrugs. “They’re as well as Muggles, in my opinion. But that’s not quite here nor there.

There is a power in New York that will allow me to reveal the truth of our community in a single moment,” he says.

Graves’ brow furrows. Grindelwald smiles viciously.

“Ah, I thought that would interest you. Yes, Mr. Graves, there is an extremely powerful magical force dwelling somewhere in New York, one that even the MACUSA has not seen, has not noticed. If I can harness it, and use it the way that I intend to, then it will start a chain reaction that will leave the leaders of every nation with no choice but to agree to put it those dreadful laws to rest.

I’ve been turning over every stone and miserable sewer cover I possibly can to find what I’m looking for, but unfortunately, I have already been met with an irritating number of obstacles. I need the ability to move through this city freely, without suspicion. And your teams of aurors would certainly make the task that much easier.” His eyes twinkle jovially at Graves, as though they are sharing a mutual joke.

“You have the chance here, Director Graves, to serve the rise of magical kind. To freely give your assistance to me so that I may carry out the destiny of this great race, and establish the world order that was always meant to be. It will be painless, and you will be honored among magical people when this is over, I will make sure of it.

But if you refuse, Director,” he says; the glint in his eyes hardens, sharpens. “If you won’t help me by giving me your memories willingly, I will be forced to take them from you. And taking memories is a much harder task than being given them, and I do so loath being inconvenienced.” His smile is more of a snarl. A cold curl of fear raises the hair of Graves’ arms.

Grindelwald shifts forward, lowering himself down so that he is hovering mere inches over Graves’ face. The sickly sweetness of his breath cloys in Graves’ nose, like rotting flesh. He lowers his mouth to Graves’ ear.

“I promise you this, Director,” he whispers, and nausea spikes through Graves as his hot, dank breath creeps over the shell of his ear. “If you choose to not help me willingly, if you choose to inconvenience me…” he pulls backward so that they are nose to nose. Those mismatched eyes glint like pure steel in that knife-sharp face. “I will make you… beg… for death.”

The threat hangs in the air between them, and suddenly Grindelwald has pulled away, sitting upright, taking another pull from the dying embers of his pipe, face calm once again.

“Now, Director, I want you to take a moment. Think it over. Make the right decision.” He smiles.

His voice fades into the dark, replaced by quiet puffing and the smell of more tobacco. Graves stares up at the darkness that hides the ceiling.

He’s seen Grindelwald’s victims.

He’s seen the aftermath first hand, has watched his aurors double over and vomit in the street at the savage mass murders that made the dirt pathways beneath their feet sodden with blood.

He’s seen the torture sites, and the countless individual victims of them. Bodies warped and twisted beyond recognition. Flesh blown to chunks, bone ground to powder while the victim was still alive. Most of them were dead when he and his aurors found them. Some were still alive.

Graves honestly didn’t know which fate was worse.

If he resists, he will join their number. He might be rescued by the MACUSA; they could be looking for him right now. But there’s no telling when they would find him, or how much of him there would be left to save.

This isn’t a decision. He never even had a choice.

Graves grunts, strains against his bindings. Grindelwald raises his eyebrows. “Does that mean you’ve decided already?” he says, and flicks his fingers at the gag. “That was remarkably fast. Though, I do say I can be quite convincing when I want to be.”

Graves nods as the as the gag disappears from his mouth, his jaw loosening. He works it, face muscles stiff and almost numbed by the jinx.

Whatever power Grindelwald knows about, if he is indeed telling the truth – it cannot be allowed to compromise the Statute. It is the oldest and most respected civilized wizarding law, the same law that Graves had been sworn to uphold since the moment he knew how to speak the words and his parents were there to witness him.

He’d taken his oath. He’d dedicated his life to the protection of the American people. And he wouldn’t stop now.

Graves clears his throat, looks straight into Grindelwald’s face.

“Eat my ass,” he says.

There is a moment of stillness where the very air around them seems to congeal. Grindelwald is motionless for a moment, eyes locked on Graves’, like a snake pinning a mouse with its gaze.

Grindelwald’s face twitches up in a humorless smile. He shrugs, cocks his head; turns the pipe over to tap the ashes out onto the ground.

“Well,” He says, tucking his pipe away and withdrawing a long, crooked wand. “Well, now.”

Delicately, almost gently, he presses it into the soft skin of Graves’ temple. Graves swallows against the fear rising hot in his throat, glaring up at Grindelwald defiantly. Despite his stubborn refusal to let his panic take over, a shudder grips his body, rippling through it. Grindelwald sees it move through him, and a patronizing smile curls his lips up and over bone-white teeth.

Graves spits, and saliva splatters across Grindelwald’s razorblade cheekbone. The man freezes in shock, and then that bland smile is curdling, warping into something ugly, cold, hateful; the spark of insanity that Graves’ always envisioned when he saw the aftermath of this man’s crimes flames to life in those flinty eyes, and a hand is fisting in Graves’ hair, pulling viciously as the wand tip digs in, bruising.

“Foolish, Mr. Graves,” Grindelwald says. “Very, very foolish.”

Graves smiles, impudent, praying to whoever might hear him for strength. Grindelwald’s eyes narrow.

“Crucio!”

The first victim that Graves had found was only a child.

Beautiful; a cherubic face with dark skin and hair and eyes.

Half of her body had been blasted away, a violence that had been utilized, ostensibly, to torture her No-maj parents. They had been abducted, and were almost surely dead, or worse. Grindelwald’s followers had razed their small home to the ground.

She looks at him now from where she floats above him, half-solid.

“No,” he pleads. “No, please-“

“You couldn’t save me, Mr. Graves,” she says, and her voice is a crude imitation, a higher version of Grindelwald’s. Graves’ faces crumples.

“You’re fucking sick,” he says, backing away from the apparition all the same. “You’re a monster.”

Grindelwald isn’t in the room; it’s just Graves in the blackness, has been for longer than Graves can possibly know. Time seems suspended here. The only mark of its passage is Grindelwald, himself. When he is awake and in agony, and the moments where he is blessedly exhausted enough to fall into unconsciousness.

“It hurts, Mr. Graves,” Grindelwald’s’ voice mocks, and the girl is floating over him. Graves swears he can feel blood dripping onto his legs, splayed awkwardly in front of him, bound.

“Stop it,” he growls.

“Why didn’t you help me,” the ghost asks, and her beautiful eyes fill with tears.

“Stop…”

“Why, why, why-“

“Enough!” he yells.

The ghost evaporates into the dark, leaving him heaving for air.

Graves screams as Grindelwald pushes his boot heel into his shoulder. Something grinds within it, and the pain is so intense that Graves momentarily blacks out.

When he comes to seconds later, Grindelwald is withdrawing his leg, and Graves rolls over, retching onto the ground. His stomach empties itself, a pitiful dribble of the tasteless mush that Grindelwald has been using to keep him alive. He pulls at the air to sooth the bile burning in his throat, bitter on his tongue and teeth.

Before he can properly orient himself, there is a whistling sound, and a swift kick to his side, laying him out flat. He cries, his undoubtedly broken rib screaming in pain. He curls in on himself, protecting his torso. The blows land against his back, pushing the air from his lungs, making him gasp.

Grindelwald kicks at him viciously for untold minutes before pulling back. He straightens his tie and adjusts his robes, smooths his hair back.

When he’s settled, while Graves is still sobbing for breath on the ground, Grindelwald procures his wand, twirling it between his deft fingers.

“I’m usually not so savage, you know,” he says, pacing away from the body on the ground. “But this is taking a while, and you really are a frustratingly stubborn bastard, aren’t you?”

Graves spits more bile onto the ground. “Thanks,” he grits out, grimacing.

“Oh, no no,” Grindelwald says, and levels his wand at Graves. “That wasn’t a compliment. Crucio.”

The very inside of Graves mind feels like it’s been clawed into pieces. Like curtains ripped to tatters by some vicious beast. Memories long buried bubble and flip in his mind, light shed onto dark places that he hasn’t been to in a long time.

Faces. Faces of magical and non-magical people alike. Faces of those that he’s lost, killed, that he couldn’t save.

They bloom like ink in water, spread and whither and bloom again in endless repetition. His name is in their mouths like a curse, like a prayer, like a judgment.

And the screaming. Oh, mercy, the screaming.

His face is pressed to the floor. He claws at his ears, straining against the writhing ropes at his wrists, wanting to cover them; anything, anything to deaden the wailing, each one bringing a memory exploding across the backs of his eyes.

Fear, distress, agony, fury; screams of death and torture. And beneath it all, the whimpers that echo off the darkness surrounding him, all his own.

His face isn’t wet, only gritty with coagulated blood. His body is so dehydrated that his crying is only gasps of air in his lungs, and when the dismembered body parts of children flash across his memories, he can only heave dryly against the floor, stomach long empty.

Every single nerve ending is burning. Every inch of skin is being peeled from his flesh. His very mind is melting, as though it will pour through his ears at any moment. There is nothing but the pain.

It’s been hours. Or minutes… he doesn’t know. He’s bitten through his tongue already. Blood is pouring steadily down his throat, but he can’t taste it, can’t escape the all-consuming agony searing through his veins like molten iron.

Just as the world is growing distant, Grindelwald releases the curse. Graves’ eyes cross involuntarily as the pain fades, and this time, when he falls into the blackness of unconsciousness, Grindelwald lets him stay there.

The familiar sound, the only sound, here, besides the dripping of his bloodied mouth against the stone: a creaking door. The give of wood as it permits the entrance of some body far bigger than itself. It rips a sound like a drowning gasp from Graves’ throat.

“Oh, Merlin … fuck,” he whispers into the blinding light.

The shaking in his fingers grows. He doesn’t know when it started; long after he had been dropped into this blackness, long after he stopped being able to tell the difference between waking and sleeping.

It intensifies at the approach of clicking bootheels on stone floor; it spreads into his wrists, up his forearms.

“Alright, director?” That damned voice curls down, strokes his ears with its saccharine danger.

Graves pushes himself up, eyes on the ground, trying to make room in his torso to breath around the stabbing pain, to get enough air to speak.

He stutters, trying to form words. Grindelwald squats down sinuously in front of him.

“What was that?” the man murmurs, soft. “Got something to say today, have we?”

Graves‘ elbows buckle beneath him. His body hits the ground with a smack. He sucks in lungfuls of the cold, damp atmosphere.

“Please,” he says, the word barely loud enough to reach his ears, an empty rasp.

“Hmmmm?” Grindelwald hums. He nudges Graves over with his boot. “I can’t hear you, Director.”

“Please,” he repeats, looking into those hideous, mismatched eyes.

Grindelwald smiles. He draws his wand, pressing it into Graves’ temple.

Graves pleads for mercy, and it does not come.

A long, silver whisp of memory dances before his eyes. It follows the lead of Grindelwald’s wand, floating gracefully through the air before landing with a twist into the bottle in his hand.

“Thank you, Director,” he says, with that smile. The bottle vanishes into his robes, and his hand reappears with a small, glinting set of sheers in it. He feels a tug on his hair, and his eyes close.

The door squeals closed, and Graves, blessedly, passes out.

Picquery is here. She’s critiquing him, as usual. Why hadn’t he escaped yet? There was work to be done.

“And now he knows everything,” she says, and her voice accuses. “You have broken your oath to this country, to its people. How could you, Percy?”

The voice echoes in his mind. “You were weak.”

A thousand ghosts are with her, surrounding him, churning in the dark. Weak, weak.

“I’m sorry,” he tries to say, but his throat is so hoarse from the screaming that he wheezes, then dissolves into a fit of coughing. Blood and drool muddle together on his chin, dripping to the stones below. “I’m sorry,” he breathes.

They do not reply.

He spends a long time in the quiet, after that.

“Mr. Graves?”

Another ghost. This one is different.

He’s not as familiar. But Somehow, somehow, he’s more solid. Real. Like Graves could reach out and touch him.

The door lets in a sliver of light that stings Graves’ eyes. So long in the shifting dark, and he isn’t used to it.

This ghost is pale, unfamiliar. Dark hair, cut symmetrically in a high bowl, rough. Dark eyes above high cheekbones that cut through the dark, smudged with dirt, ash. Full lips under a regal nose set in a squarely symmetric jaw.

Beautiful, he thinks. Like an angel from those no-maj religions. Like salvation.

“Please,” he says.

Grindelwald comes less and less often, now that he’s gotten what he needs from Graves. Instead, Graves only has the ghosts.

He has been pleading with them as they swirl above him, around him. They sear through his body, guided by a burning-cold, invisible hand. Its claws rake through his scrambled grey matter, stirring it like soup. What is he begging for?

Mercy, in any form. Release. Obliviation. Death.

Dark eyes widen in the sultered half-light. “You’re… Mr. Graves…”

One finely-boned, delicate hand shifts, reaches out, and Graves flinches behind his arms, curling in to his knees. He breathes high in his chest. The other ghosts are fading, waiting, letting this one have its turn.

There is a moment of stillness. Then, three delicate points of cool, dry pressure bloom on his skin like starlight.

He gasps. It feels like a touch.

It feels real.

“Mr. Graves,” that voice says again, and he pries his eyes open, the light still stinging. He wheezes, swallows, tries again.

“Real,” he says. Those eyes glitter like beacons. “Are you…”

Those points of starlight spread, move, and suddenly there is one hand and then another, holding both of his own. Graves stares at them. This is undoubtedly a dream. The last mercies of his addled brain as it slips into the void.

“I’m real.” The voice says. It echoes in the darkness. I’m real, I’m real, I’m real.

Cool fingers are on his bloodied face, pushing back mangy hair stuck together with sweat and grease and blood and bile. “I’m going to help you, Mr. Graves.”

Graves looks into the face of the angel of death. It’s far more beautiful than he ever expected, than he ever thought he deserved.

He closes his eyes and lays back into the stone. Gratitude washes over him, through him, so visceral it stings his eyes and pulls hot tears from them. They cut through the grime on his cheeks and land softly on the floor, more of his body ripped away and strewn over the walls of this room that he’d thought was surely forsaken by God.

“Thank you,” he sobs quietly, turning his face into the angel’s palm.

The ghosts are blessedly quiet. The pain is fading fast. The dark is resolving, solidifying from haunted pools to something both infinite and infinitely more comforting. And Graves is falling, slipping away, but for this part, at least, he is not afraid.

For this part, at least… he will not be alone.

part two

#fantastic beasts and where to find them #fbawtft #fic #Percival Graves #fanfiction #gellert grindelwald #credence barebone #body horror #torture #physical violence #tw

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