Could - Crewt

Chapter 1

Back with more Crewt!! I know people have asked me to write more Crewt, and I love them very much, so I was more than happy to oblige. My usual posting schedule applies!

December 8, 1926

Everything.

Hurts.

The wind, the cold.

The echoing sensations, like the phantoms of a missing limb, of the searing magic cast, thrown, shot, like the crack of lightning, or the crack of a belt.

The inescapable pain of too many people saying you are wrong. You are not who you are meant to be. You should not exist.

And so, we will put an end to your existence.

Again.

Maybe in not so many words.

Maybe in no words at all—blood and bruises only, a million gestures and looks, maybe in clothes unwanted and hair too long and the tightening of a corset, the tying of a bonnet, the sharp words of an adoptive mother, the looks from sisters in the hallways of the church.

Maybe in far more words, dancing about the topic, never quite acknowledging a subject too gross and taboo and depraved to touch someone's lips, to be spoken into being. Scissors were easy to steal, hair fell all over the floor, and the next day screams of fury, the sting of a belt on the delicate hands of a "woman."

And now, all over again.

Whispers about the black thing that rises and lashes out, screams as it whirls and pummets and shoots back up again, screams and screams, horror. Horrifying. A dozen wizards with their wands pointed, afraid.

That word again: unnatural.

Again.

But for different reasons—magic is unnatural to the church, a body disjoint from its soul is unnatural to the church. And now, this magic is unnatural to those with magic.

What is natural?

Not this. This is dangerous. Terrifying. Wrong.

You should not exist.

Again.

Newt

It's hard to extract himself from the gatherings, though Madame President of MACUSA tells the wizardfolk to scatter as Grindelwald is led away, and they begin to drift off, fixing up buildings as the rain washes memories away.

He does manage to extract himself. He just leaves.

"Goodbye," he says, "thank you. I regret I have somewhere to be at the moment."

To be quite fair, it isn't so much that this is a reasonable way to leave a scene that will go down in magical history books (especially, he flatters himself to think, as someone who might even go down in a mention or two of this event). It's not the schoolbook he'd like his name on, though.

He's just so odd, they let him leave. He reckons they all view him as rather a ridiculously awkward creature, and would be equally nonplussed were he to stay around and begin speaking enthusiastically on magical plumbing to interviewers that are Apparating into the area in scores.

"Tina." Tina has followed him, muttering that they need him for the records, or has he never stopped to consider how occurrences like this are dealt with cleanly? "Where's my book?"

"That's what you're thinking about?" Tina's a little out of breath and her voice is—as always when it comes to him—high-pitched with incredulity. "Have you been awake these past twenty-four hours?"