Mercy

Jacob's shoulder cracked against stone as leather binding thudded against the far wall. Needling sparks ricocheted from his collarbone to his fingertips. He groaned, testing the joint, muttering an oath and a prayer when it moved without hitching. No dislocation, at least.

Briefly Jacob scanned the narrow brick walls, blackened with soot and grime and the shadow of New York's eventide. He hissed between his teeth, recognizing familiar territory. This was the alley just outside the bank. This was where it all began.

A sharp whimper across the alley sent Jacob blundering to his feet. He swore profoundly and scampered, narrowly missing a puddle that could have been dog or horse or human. Before Newt could slide into the waste Jacob grabbed his arm, leaning him against the filthy wall again. The Brit cringed against him, wand falling from lax, blue-tinged fingers, and something darker than rain spattered the ground.

Jacob swore. "Here – no – lemme see it." He pulled Newt into the dim streetlight, already feeling wetness squelch from torn fabric. Newt cried out and shoved with his casted arm.

"L-Leave it. My case!"

"The case is fine!" Jacob insisted, pulling back the ripped ends of the left sleeve. Orange light revealed an inch-wide gash that split the arm from shoulder to wrist. Blood instantly welled into rainwater and red cascaded over Jacob's hands.

"Oh, man, that's…. that's bad," Jacob whispered, shrugging out of his coat and bundling it around Newt's arm. The wizard swayed, already wracked with shivers, his hobbled ankle barely supporting his weight.

"Easy – stay with me, kay?" Jacob hushed as he tied the sleeves ferociously tight. "Is it magic? Did he curse you?"

Slurried eyes blinked agitatedly. "Splinched," Newt gasped out. "Wrong wand."

"You're gonna be okay," Jacob swore. "We're gonna get you to a doctor." Not Bill. He couldn't think about Bill. "Hey, taxi!"

He was too far away for the cabbie to hear him, and before he could shout again Newt twisted free and tottered three steps before collapsing an arm's length from the case, blood-slicked fingers closing around the wand. He scuttled forward on his elbows, splinted fingers scrabbling at the suitcase latches.

"Clau – Hey, wait!" Jacob shouted, pelting to the wizard's side. "Leave it – we gotta go!" He turned to holler for a taxi again.

Air crackled to their right and he knew it was already too late. Keening, Newt wrenched his bad wrist and flung the latches open. "Move!"

Jacob didn't know what possess him, but he jumped. Away from Newt, away from the case, scant inches from a mauling crush of shrouded death. He saw Grindelwald retreat, bracing one hand, before the darkness breached its cocoon and lunged in a twist of concussive blasts so loud and physical that Jacob could only think – Claude! – before the wall sprang into his face and roaring filled his hearing. His cheekbone crunched and his right eye went black. He rolled, smashed into the wall again, and rolled onto his side, barely lifting an arm in time as the entire fire escape crashed over his head.

He dimly realized the alley was quiet again. That blood was trickling down his face. Someone moaned his name.

Dark shoes stepped out of the sifting rubble, striding purposefully to the left. Newt screamed. A blue coat slithered past Jacob's line of sight, and there was another crack.

Jacob opened his mouth, reedy air pushing through the pain in his throat. "N-Newt–"

Silence.

No.

Just before blood forced Jacob's single eye shut, he knew he was delusional. For an instant orange light glinted on silver fur, before the soft 'click' of latches closing jolted his hearing. A low whimper sounded above the creak of settling iron, and with a springing patter the suitcase bobbed out of sight.

Then Jacob let the pain take his mind away from the anguish. Bill was gone. The dark wizard had Newt. And he was dying.

Maybe when he opened his eyes, he'd know he'd always been dreaming.

Setting foot in his bakery for the first time, a deed in his hand and a battered suitcase fisted in clammy fingers, Jacob glanced over the empty shelves with dismay. There were a few scattered pastries, stale and inedible, probably as dusty as the rest of the building. Cobwebs looped every corner. The door was just like the one in his bedroom closet, chipped with one beaten streak down the middle. One lonely table looked more like it belonged in Bill's ancient kitchen.

But this was his bakery. Despite the age, despite the fact that this was opening day, he was expecting customers, and not a single bag of flour was unpacked, it was still his dream. Everything he had ever wanted. Everything Mildred had left him for lacking thereof.

Setting down the case, Jacob stepped across the polished wood floor and unfolded the bakery deed.

He curled his nose at the image of naked women dancing on the front page.

"Wake up! Wake up!"

A deep-set, dusty cough ripped Jacob out of his dream. His half-vision swished into black before both eyes settled on an ashen, iron-barred world.

"Wake up!" the voice commanded.

Coughing again, pain rattling through his chest, Jacob hurled himself onto one elbow and groaned. Too quickly he remembered. The dark wizard – Grindelwald, Newt called him. Spells and the horrible, quenched gutter of Newt's struggle.

Then being buried alive.

"Please wake up!"

The tinny, panicky voice pulled his attention down to the small hand braced against his shoulder. Squinting at soot-marked fingers, Jacob blinked dizzily until grey eyes and dirty curls stabilized into a child's anxious expression.

"You can hear me, can't you?"

Jacob nodded slowly, and the girl swirled into a peach and grey blur.

"No! You can't fall asleep again!"

Something jolted through him, energizing and rough and frigid, like a chunk of ice stuck to the roof of his mouth. Jacob hollered as he spasmed upright and fell onto his other arm. Pain sliced down his back and into his shoulders, congealing at his temples until he thought his right eye would explode. He shuddered, feeling returning in muscle-gripping pangs that sent buzzing numbness through one limb after another. When the sensation finally ceased and he could move his toes without ants biting every nip of skin along the way, he shifted one leg, then the other, then carefully braced his arms against the ground.

No broken limbs. His shoulder felt torn apart, but ….

He should be dead. A solid fire escape had crashed over his head and yet here he was, crawling away, his wits still intact. Jacob wasn't a doctor (no, that had been Bill's task before – before – ) but he knew humans could only survive so much, and he wasn't a ninderheaded, nigh invincible wizard.

But someone out there was, and he would die because Jacob was only human.

"Can you talk?" the girl asked, crouching beside him with the merciful innocence that only children exhibited.

"H-h-h-h-h!" Jacob hacked around the hoarse syllable, bracing an arm against his stomach as his ribs shifted. Heaving, he gasped out, "How'd you find me?"

Grey eyes flew alight with pride. "I saw your arm under the ladder." The girl looked around, flighty as a spooked crow, then leaned closer and whispered, "I think I magicked you back to life!"

She clapped her hands over her mouth, trembling as though fear and giddiness had overwhelmed her and vanity had won.

"Magicked…." Jacob huffed, falling back on some protective line that meant something for a kid named Claude and nothing to the rest of the non-believing world. "Ain't such thing's magic."

He didn't see fear relight in steel grey, but he felt the hand jilt just before it could settle on his arm.

"I was… make believing," the girl stuttered. "Of course I know there's no such thing as magic. Mother's always says that witches are born of fire and wicked dreams."

Raising his head, cringing past the slicing pang between his temples, Jacob peered at the young face. For an instant he saw the same uncertainty and senseless courage as that of a young wizard in a blue coat who didn't know how to run. A week ago he would've thought that Mary Lou Barebone's child was mighty peculiar.

Now he wondered if he'd been misreading magic in New York his entire life.

"You… you say you magicked me?" Jacob asked, trying to be gentle and instead giving himself the impression that he merely sounded like he'd been half-crushed and left for dead.

Jaw clenched, the girl forced a nod. "You can't tell my mother," she said fiercely, raising her chin. "She ain't here anymore, and the police won't believe you."

"I won't," Jacob whispered. Brave, foolish child. Were all wizards so ignorant of the ferocity to be found in strangers?

But he wouldn't be the one to destroy this child's trust.

Jacob cleared his throat, failing to clear the rusted scrape in his voice. "You see another wizard? With a blue coat?" There had to be a blue coat.

"Only you. Are you magical, too?" Such awe in the eyes of hovering snow clouds. The child skittered back, allowing Jacob to roll to his knees.

"No." He coughed into his elbow, grateful when his ribs only clenched instead of threatening to crush his stomach. There should've been more broken bones. "You said you – you magicked me back to life?"

"I…." Grubby fingers laced uncertainly. "I felt something push into you – like it was making the hurts go away. My brother told me magic could help people. I tried to do it for Chastity, but…."

Jacob tried to nod agreeably, even though he had no idea if Chastity was a person or a pet cat, but he could only moan as vertigo crushed his skull. The girl suddenly jumped to her feet, scowling with the primness of a distempered magpie – that, or she might have been repulsed, as Jacob's stomach chose that moment to leap from his throat – but before the heaves could settle and he could ask her to call for help, scuffed shoes clattered on far streets and a blur of grey slurred into the surrounding buildings.

Collapsing against the gutted wall, clawing at his ringing head, Jacob squeezed his eyes shut and prayed for the flashing lights to stop.

He knew this was bad. Head injuries coupled with vomiting always scored deep underlines in Bill's medical journals. He knew that while he was wallowing, crawling away from his own sick, that somewhere – in New York or England or however far wizards could travel – someone wickeder than Mary Lou held a kid too battered to defend himself.

But as the spike in his head pounded deeper than a tent peg, Jacob couldn't bring himself to care.

He just wanted to close his eyes and feel nothing.