Chapter Text
Newt stood by the cell door once again, rubbing his hands anxiously. Theseus stood beside him, back against the wall, ready to hide his presence from Tina. Theseus wasn’t allowed to participate in the arrest given that he wasn’t an American Auror, but he was still permitted to work within MACUSA itself, and he had immediately volunteered to help Newt.
Newt had talked to Theseus the day before, wondering why Theseus hadn’t joined their visit at Tina’s cell. Theseus had avoided the question, but Newt suspected he was scared to look her in the eyes after the last few days. He had finally had a day to process everything that had happened, and he had not taken it well. Even though Theseus was difficult to read, he looked ashamed. Close to hopeless, even– exactly what he had been seeing in Tina’s eyes the last few days.
Now, he was staring away blankly, his head tilted back against the wall. Newt didn’t know what to do to help him, and had just remained quiet while Theseus had poured his heart out to him earlier, no longer able to push away the emotions. Theseus’ eyes were still red from when he had cried silently into Newt’s shoulder in a tight embrace.
It was midday, and so Newt stood with two bowls of soup at the door under the guise of simply having a meal together. As the creaking door was pulled open by a guard, Tina looked up from the book she was reading on the bed and smiled. “Hi Newt.”
She dropped the book beside the pillow, and he recognised the cover. The cover he had seen many times before by now: ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.’
Tina seemed happier. Perhaps not hopeful, but somehow less hopeless.
“I’ve brought some soup. I thought maybe you would want to have some lunch together,” Newt said, trying to remain as neutral as possible. He couldn’t give anything away, but in reality, he was terrified that Tina would see what was coming next as a betrayal.
Tina nodded and joined him in the doorway, reaching her hand out for the bowl. It seemed she had briefly forgotten about the barrier, because she bumped her hand into it and her eye twitched as she remembered. She took a step back and let Newt send it through instead.
“Thanks, Newt.” She leaned her shoulder against the doorframe and began to sip her soup. “Wow. This is good.”
“I heard from some of the Aurors that soup is one of the few things the kitchen here does well,” Newt said with a chuckle. The guard beside him nodded in agreement. “How have you been?”
Tina shrugged. “I slept alright, for once.” She left it at that.
Newt brought a spoonful of soup to his lips. “Oh, it is good!” Tina chuckled in response.
Out of the corner of his eye, Newt saw Theseus glance at his watch nervously. Everything had to happen at the exact correct moment–each Auror’s watch had been matched down to the second.
Neither of them knew what to say, so they continued to sip their soup in silence. Any safe topics had been discussed fully over the last visits, and nothing new had happened since the evening before. Well, nothing that Tina could be made aware of.
After eating every drop of soup in the bowl, she placed it on the ground and pushed it through the barrier as far as she could. Newt placed both bowls against the wall, out of the way.
“How’s Pickett?” Tina inquired.
In response, the little green creature peeked out of Newt’s coat pocket. Tina smiled. “Hi!”
Just as Tina was about to ask something again, he heard voices coming from down the hall.
Two Aurors appeared, deep in conversation with each other.
“I mean, so far we’ve gotten Thorn to speak, he seemed to know a little bit about Grindelwald’s plans in the United States. Lewis might be close to breaking,” said one of them.
“So the mission on the West Coast might actually work! Alright, pass the information on to Crawford and he can-”
“No!” Tina shouted, raw desperation in her voice, trying to interrupt the conversation as quickly as possible. She covered her ears and began to sink to her knees. “Don’t talk! Don’t say anything!”
The Aurors looked at each other and stopped walking, knowing that the trick had worked, but Tina didn’t see. Her eyes were clenched shut as she focused everything she had on trying to keep Atlas out. “No, no, no, no, no…” she kept repeating to herself, her hands forming fists as she gripped her hair tightly. Newt crouched down beside, wanting to be near her, needing to be near her.
Tina’s entire body spasmed out of nowhere, as if she was fighting some invisible force. Newt knew she probably was. “Tina, I’m right here. I’m right here.”
“I don’t want him here. My shield was up, I swear. Please, Newt,” she begged, even though they both knew that there was nothing he could do. She closed her eyes, grimacing from the concentration. “Help me, please,” she whispered.
Tina curled in on herself, her upper body close to the floor as if in prayer. Her chest heaved and Newt heard her stifle a sob. She released her hair and pressed her palms against the floor, fighting. Tina groaned as her hands started to slide forward, toward Newt.
Toward the barrier.
Newt noticed too late, and as Tina’s hands collided with the invisible wall, and an oily sheen rippled throughout the doorway as the enchantment fell.
She immediately sat up, the streaks from her tears contrasting with the cruel glint in the grey eyes that seemed to stare directly into his soul. She thrust her arms forward and Newt felt himself slide rapidly across the ground before his back collided with a solid stone wall. It knocked the air out of his lungs and he coughed, trying to regain his breath. His ribs ached from the collision, as did his head. He must have hit the wall too.
He scrambled to get up, but a sharp pain in his side stopped him and he collapsed again. He guessed a rib or two were broken.
After getting up, groaning as he did so, Newt finally was able to process the scene in front of him again.
Before him, he saw Tina standing outside her room, no, her cell, back to the doorway. Theseus stood frozen, undetected by Tina thus far. The other two Aurors, however, were not faring well.
Tina had somehow managed to get ahold of one of their wands, probably using the element of surprise. The guard was on the ground, unconscious. One Auror was pinned to the ground, unable to move beside thrashing his limbs. The other Auror was against the wall, half a metre above the ground. Tina was pointing the wand directly at the man.
None of them had expected her to break through the barrier. All they wanted was to capture Atlas’ attention. The fake information should have been enough just to capture his curiosity, but he clearly wanted to know more.
“What’s the West Coast mission?” Tina demanded. The Auror shook his head, refusing to answer. “Tell me.” Again, no response. She lifted the wand, ready to cast a spell, when Newt shouted from across the hall.
“Tina! Stop this!” Newt realised his mistake. “Atlas!”
Tina turned to face him, grinning. Her eyes, despite being grey, looked sad. “Are we finally becoming the same to you, Scamander?” Atlas hissed with Tina’s voice.
“No, I didn’t mean– Tina, I’m sorry,” he said desperately. He knew she couldn’t answer right now, but he needed her to know.
Tina flicked the wand she was holding at him, and the room lit up with a burst of white light.
Newt gasped from the sudden pain that began to course through his body. Jolts of electricity made his muscles twitch uncontrollably and he fell to the floor, writhing from the bursts of burning pain from the bolts that crackled along his body. He couldn’t scream– his throat wouldn’t let him.
With all his energy, he turned his head to look at his brother. Theseus was about to move to apprehend Tina, but Newt shook his head weakly. It might have looked like a twitch, but Theseus seemed to understand and took a silent step back again. They needed to keep Atlas occupied, even if it meant Newt would have to suffer for it. By locking Tina up again, they risked Atlas leaving in an instant, unable to collect the information he was searching for, no longer distracted for the planned arrest.
Tina laughed loudly. “You should hear her right now. She’s screaming,” Tina said.
It was breaking Newt’s heart. Tina didn’t want to hurt him, and he didn’t want to hurt her, and yet they were in a situation where both were necessary. Another violent twitch made his head snap back, and he couldn’t see any of the four Aurors anymore. He needed to know what was going on, and he eventually broke. “Stop. Please,” he murmured almost inaudibly, his voice not cooperating.
Surprisingly, the pain diminished and turned into a strange tingle instead. He tried to push himself up, but the electricity flared up again, the neurons in his body firing wildly as the tingle turned into what felt like flames. Newt collapsed again, panting as he looked at Tina.
“If you move, that will happen again. Stay put.” Tina turned her attention back to the Auror on the wall. “The West Coast. Speak.”
“No,” the man stated plainly. Tina’s head twitched in annoyance and she raised her free hand too, forming a fist.
The Auror lifted his hands to his neck, trying to fight off an invisible force. His face turned red and his legs kicked as he struggled to breathe. “I will snap your neck without hesitation. Answer me.”
She loosened her grip and the Auror breathed in carefully, avoiding too big of a gulp of air. “Raid,” he croaked. “In a week.”
No one made a move to stop him talking. It was false information, so it didn’t matter that the Auror seemed to be breaking under pressure.
“Where?” Tina demanded.
“Your North-Western base.” The knowledge of the base was nothing new to the Aurors, that much Newt knew. They knew it existed, but knew nothing about the location or who was staying there. It was a total shot in the dark, but it worked.
Tina sighed in annoyance. “I know you don’t know where it is. Tina didn’t know, so you can’t have known either.”
“We have prisoners, Atlas. They talk.”
“That idiot Thorn!” Tina huffed. In anger, she began to clench her fist again, and the Auror began to choke.
“Stop! He told you what you wanted to know!” the Auror on the ground shouted. Tina glared at him.
“Oh, I know you all have more information than Tina here. Isolation really does change the way I have to get my answers.” She brought the wand down on him and he thrashed in pain, his wrists still pinned to the floor.
Theseus had deemed this all enough of a threat to everyone’s safety. Atlas was furious– there was no way they were going to be able to calm him down or convince him to stop, not without risking the murder of one of Tina’s colleagues. Theseus snapped out of his strange daze, stepped out toward her and grabbed her arms, ripping them behind her back. The wand she had managed to grab fell to the floor. She tried to wrangle herself free, but her muscles were weak from the last days. Her magic, however, was strong.
In the moment of distraction, the two Aurors had been released from the spells that had held them firmly in place. One Auror had fallen to the ground against the wall and was trying to catch his breath as he coughed, while the other had gotten up and was marching toward Tina. Newt, too, was safe– the strange feeling of static covering his body had faded away, and he began to crawl forward.
Strangely, Tina smiled. Newt saw her fingers twitch, and Theseus collapsed to the ground, frozen. He had been Petrified, unable to move, unable to speak, unable to control himself. And that was nowhere near what Tina was experiencing. Theseus’ eyes filled with fear as Tina turned toward him and crouched beside him.
Newt tried to crawl faster, but his muscles ached from the electricity that had roared through his body, and his ribs sent sharp pangs of reminders each time he moved his arm too quickly. The other Auror was trying to sneak up on her, wand in hand. He wasn’t careful enough.
Tina snatched the wand from the ground and twisted her arm toward the man like a viper attacking its prey. He went flying back and hit the ground hard, his head lolling to the side. It looked like quite a heavy blow as a wound on the back of his head started bleeding, and the man remained unmoving, unconscious from the impact. Thankfully, not dead. Newt’s mind briefly flashed back to Bevere’s limp body after Tina’s magic had thrown him across the room.
Tina turned her attention back to Theseus, and she placed a hand on his cheek. “Scamander. I see your shame kept you hidden. How often do you think about how you could have helped Tina, and realise that it’s simply your fault?” Theseus glared at her, tears forming in his eyes.
“Tina! Push him out! Fight him!” Newt shouted, still too far away to interfere.
Tina kept her attention on Theseus but spoke to Newt again. “Oh, she is. It’s just not working,” she said, laughing. “Scamander, you really should have known that my friends were in London. I see the Auror office at the Ministry isn’t quite as perceptive as they like to think they are,” Tina said to Theseus. Newt saw a combination of shame and anger in his brother’s eyes.
“You and your kind have been quite an inconvenience, both in Europe and here in the United States. Maybe I should stop using Tina here for information. Maybe I should turn her into an exterminator.” Newt shivered. He knew that Atlas was capable of it, based on just the last couple of minutes. Atlas was holding back right now, as if he was doubtful of which path he should take. “Maybe I’ll start with your brother. He’s not an Auror, but it would break Tina. Snap her like a twig. She’d be a complete puppet.”
The anger in Theseus’ eyes was replaced by terror. Newt knew Theseus was a lonely man, especially after the loss of Leta, and although they may not have had the closest relationship, Newt’s death would destroy him too. All pieces in the game would begin to topple.
Tina patted Theseus’ cheek and stood up, turning to Newt with a grin. Her wand was raised, and from the ground, Newt lifted his to match hers.
“No!” the remaining Auror shouted as a bolt of green crackled through the air. It collided with a ray of orange from Newt’s wand and sparks flew as the two spells battled one another.
Tina looked like she was entertained, as if this was simply a show for her. He supposed it was just a show for Atlas, simply through the eyes of a fighter. “Give up, Scamander,” Tina said, her voice sounding mildly annoyed. It looked as if an idea appeared in her mind, and her eyes shifted to a soft expression. “Newt,” she whispered softly, almost as if she was herself again, had it not been for the hollow, grey eyes. “Just give up, for me. Please.”
For a moment, Newt was taken aback. It sounded like her, the words were coming from her mouth. In his moment of distraction, the bright green light came closer to him, and he placed both his hands on his wand, pushing back with all his strength. The burst of orange grew, and Tina looked almost impressed. She moved her wand and ducked, ending the connection between the two of them as Newt’s spell hit the wall behind her.
“You put up a good fight. Maybe I should just kill Theseus instead. It’s just a shame, he’s so helpless, just on the ground like this. Hopeless too; you’ve seen it in his eyes too. Maybe I’ll put him out of his misery,” Tina said with a shrug. Her nose had started to bleed heavily. Tina was fighting brutally to get her own body back.
As she had been speaking, Newt pointed his wand at Theseus and silently lifted the Petrification. Theseus was now laying on the ground, free, but unable to stand up, his muscles still too rigid.
“Atlas. This is pointless,” Theseus said.
Tina’s gaze flickered between the two brothers, figuring out what Newt had done. Without warning, she spoke a spell. One Newt never thought he would hear from Tina.
“Crucio.”
At first, sounds around him were blurry from the shock. How could Tina do this? No, it was Atlas, of course it was Atlas. But it was Tina’s voice that had uttered the unforgivable curse.
Finally, the sound he had dreaded to hear broke through his confusion. Theseus screamed from the ground, his back arching as he twisted from the raw agony. His legs kicked in vain as he scrambled to get away from Tina, but he made no progress. Tina looked at him gleefully, seemingly forgetting the others present in the room. Newt saw tears leaking from Theseus’ eyes, and he saw what he thought was his unbreakable brother, breaking.
Newt pushed himself up, and without hesitation, disarmed Tina. Thick shackles snapped around her wrists as chains wrapped themselves around her arms behind her back. Theseus fell silent, and Newt breathed out a sigh of relief.
“You think you can hold me?” Tina asked. Those exact words brought his mind to the painful memory of the subway, almost two years ago by now. It was the place where his and Tina’s allyship truly had blossomed.
Newt swallowed. “We will do what we have to do. You will not get away with this, Atlas.”
Tina chuckled. “I believe I–”
Before she could finish her sentence, Tina went completely limp and crashed to the ground. Newt looked around at the others. “Who knocked her out?” They both shook their heads.
“They must have captured Atlas,” Theseus said, his body trembling slightly from the aftereffects of the curse.
Newt hurried to her side. “Tina?” he whispered, gently caressing her cheek as he lifted her head into his lap. Her breaths were shallow and shaky, and her eyes flickered wildly beneath her eyelids. “Tina?” he repeated. He still heard no answer.
A drop of water appeared on her face, and Newt realised he was crying. He wiped his eyes as he looked to Theseus, unsure of what to do.
Theseus had managed to wake the guard again, who immediately began casting charms at the door again, this time with a different enchantment. Theseus looked dazed again, but snapped back to reality when Newt called his name.
“What do we do now?”
“I don’t know,” Theseus answered.
“How do you now know? You’re the Auror, you’re supposed to have the answers.”
Theseus sighed and leaned back against the wall, thinking. “We need to see what state Atlas is in. Maybe knocking him unconscious while in Tina’s mind will keep her unconscious too.”
Newt looked down at her again. He was surprised to find her eyes open. They were back to normal again– almost. There was a strange shimmer of grey, almost as if the connection was lingering. Newt waved his hand in front of her face and her eyelids fluttered. “No, she’s awake again, but barely.”
Tina’s unfocused eyes found Newt’s and her shoulder twitched as if she were trying to get away from him.
“Kill me.” It was barely audible, but the words stung. It had been her instruction to every Auror present during the ceremony, the exact instruction she had given to Lowell. And now it was purely for Newt.
He shook his head. Tina’s lip quivered and she looked to the ceiling, away from Newt. Her eyes lost their focus again as she stared at nothing. Her lips parted as if she was about to speak, but she seemed to drift away. “Tina?” She didn’t react. “Tina?”
Had he done this to her? Had their plan to distract Atlas done this? His mind spiralled as he remained on the floor with her until Theseus eventually broke the silence.
“We can’t keep her out here. It’s not safe.”
“It’s not safe for her anywhere, Theseus!”
“I know that. I mean that it’s not safe for us.” Theseus looked ashamed to say it.
“She’s tied up, she can’t hurt us,” Newt said, his voice shaking. “I tied her up.” He sounded ashamed, and he was.
“You can’t let her wake up to find her arms shackled together, Newt. She already feels caged, stuck in that room all day. Don’t make it worse.”
He pushed his finger against her neck, looking for her heartbeat. It was weak, barely detectable, but it was there.
Newt sniffled, trying to stop himself crying. He leaned over Tina, failing to make eye contact as she continued to stare blankly. “I’m going to bring you back to your bed, alright? I’ll be right outside until you wake up.” He hesitated. “Until you wake up properly.”
“I will get someone to come see to your ribs,” Theseus said.
“Why?”
“You wince every time you move, I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” he said sternly. “And your head too. You’re bleeding.”
“Oh.” Newt sighed and felt a sharp sting. “Oh, you’re right. I forgot.”
The conversation was interrupted by the ‘ding’ of the elevator. Out came Crawford, ready to bring the Scamander brothers news, as promised earlier. He looked worriedly between Tina and all the injured Aurors around her, but shook it off as he put on a confident and stern expression again.
“We got him.”