Could - Crewt

Chapter 4

My struggle with AUgust continues... but I know some of them will be Crewt, so that's a plus! Summer seems to be rather busy.

December 20, 1926

Credence has always had his heart in the wrong place.

It's... it's a strange thing to have his mind linger on so much, the way turns of phrases work. The way people always say her heart is in the right place, and that seemed to overrule everything else.

Her heart was in the right place.

Another thing they say:

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Well, Credence's intentions are good, aren't they? He doesn't feel as though they are wrong. But they are. They are wrong.

He hits the ground running.

Right down the road to hell.

With his good intentions—because they are good intentions. They're just not right. He's wrong about them, but he feels them in his heart to be good.

So many words to say he can't trust what's inside of him.

Yes, he means the Obscurus. This wild, angry thing inside of him that swallows him whole and kills people and rages, taking orders not from some uncontrollable agent of chaos, but from his heart. The darkest, most hurting, angriest part of his heart, but his heart, still.

Yes, he means the he, him, his thing, the button-down shirt and tie thing, the tight cloth around his breasts thing, the man thing. The thing that breaks the link between his body and his spirit, as if he was transplanted. As if his heart was transplanted, out of harmony with his body. His heart is always at war with his body.

Just like his heart is, apparently always at war with his magic.

He means the lust. He... he wants things from men, the kind of thing women want from men. The kind of thing that is a sin a dozen times over, the reading assigned every time his eyes catch on a man perhaps a little too long. Leviticus. The duality of being a man and loving men—Ma wouldn't say it, but the two were contradictions to her.

Is he a man? Well. Child of the devil.

Does he love men? Well. Child of the devil.

Why does he have to be both?

And of course she did not say it. Not in so many words—not in any words. She refused to acknowledge the if he was a man, the possibility even for the sake of posing a hypothetical. But it was there in her gaze, written between the lines.

She never was around to see him crushed by magic, not until minutes before her death, but she would've called him a child of the devil.

Unnatural, she called him. Unnatural.

Because his heart is wrong.

His heart is in the wrong place, sending him running, leading him right down to hell, child of the devil.

Mr. Scamander doesn't think so.

Mr. Scamander doesn't say he doesn't think so, but he doesn't think Credence's heart is wrong—at least, from what Credence can see.

That's the thing about Mr. Scamander—he doesn't push. At all. He carefully doesn't bring it up for a few days, and now here they are, watching the sunset on the balcony, Mr. Scamander's hand tentatively turned palm-up between them.