Mercy

Apparation just didn't get easier with experience, Jacob decided. The flash in which the Barebone hovel sheared into a table-lined office jarred his aching bones and quite nearly made Newt an addition to a nearby desk. Literally.

"Really?" Newt growled, ripping his right sleeve free from the wooden panel it had mysteriously bonded with.

Graves dangled Modesty's wand and gave a hapless shrug. "It's an ancient model."

Papers fluttered behind them and Jacob whirled around, meeting crystalline eyes that seemed as startled as he.

"Mister Graves!" the woman gasped, clapping her hands over her mouth. "You brought a No-Maj!"

"Miss Goldstein," the wizard said urgently, holding out one hand to placate her as her horrified gaze swept over his beggar's garb. "Look into my memories, and do it quickly. Did he allow you to read his mind?"

What followed next, Jacob couldn't explain. Emotions whipped through gorgeous blue; dismay, fear, hurt and courage, finally concluding with something like relief mixed with guilt like a kid felt when his mom walked into the room and saw that her favorite vase had shattered over his head. (Not that Jacob had too much personal experience with disappointing his parents – besides, that was a long time ago.)

"What do you want me to do, Mister Graves?" Miss Goldstein said. In one unsteady exhale she was incredibly calm. Jacob wondered if she'd been a nurse on the warfront. Maybe she'd tended him once 'cause if he'd ever seen an angel….

He didn't realize he was staring until Miss Goldstein giggled and he noticed Graves eyeing him with a particular form of resignation.

"Miss Goldstein can read minds," Graves stated.

Mouth dropping, Jacob fumbled. "I, uh… I mean…."

"Aw, don't be so abashed, honey," Miss Goldstein said, crooking her fingers under her chin. "I've never been called an angel before. And don't call me Miss Goldstein all the time. Call me Queenie."

"Miss Goldstein, my wand," Graves reminded her.

"Right in a jiffy, Mister Graves," Queenie said, darting to one of the desks further down the row. "Tina keeps the licensing records. I know how to bypass her wards."

Jacob took a moment to observe the room. It looked the same as any other office – dingy and partitioned with cabinets, desks and typwriters – but Queenie was the only living worker among hundreds of typewriters that clicked on their own. Mystified, Jacob peered at the words miraculously appearing on one paper.

"This would fix all the White House problems," Jacob mused. He laughed as the paper scrolled free, folded itself into a mouse, and was promptly shredded by another of its kind. "Mice! They're everywhere!"

He looked up, pointing to the squabble of paper rodents, and trailed off when he realized he was the only one amused. Right. No-Maj tourist. Straightening, Jacob cleared his throat and stuck his hands into his pockets. Graves rolled his eyes.

"Queenie, what could you possibly want from my desk this time?" The weary tone accompanied brisk, tripsy heel-clips, which squeaked against the floor as the speaker halted. The brunette paused, pulling off her cloche hat as she edged forward. "….Mister Graves?"

"Tina, this is the real Percival," Queenie said, pointing a wand daintily at Graves. "Grindelwald breached our security months ago."

"What?" Three running strides had Tina shoving past Newt with a fleeting apology. "Grindelwald's here? When did this happen? How did you find out?"

"Well, he orchestrated everything," Queenie said. She stared admiringly, and Jacob glanced over his shoulder.

"What, me?" he squeaked.

"Who else risked prison to help a total stranger," Queenie said. Pain jolted her eyes and she raised a hand to her chest. "Claude – it's a nice name. Oh, but you lost your bakery for it. You bake?"

Feebly Jacob nodded. Newt's right shoulder dipped.

"And Bill… I'm so sorry," Queenie whispered. "He was a good man."

"Yeah… uh… the best," Jacob said, coughing when his voice scratched.

"Miss Goldstein, would you mind?" Graves said, waving for Tina to come forward. "Grindelwald has my wand. You have the records, I presume, or has your security been revoked?"

"Not that far," Tina grumbled as she yanked open a file cabinet. "So who's the guy in the suit?"

"Oh, this is Jacob," Queenie introduced, beaming as she glanced his way. "Why darling, you're a true hero, aren't you? Taking on Grindelwald personally – and you conkered him with nothing but a medicine bottle, while all these years London couldn't keep him under control. Are all No-Maj's so brilliant and resourceful?"

"No-Maj?" Tina countered, popping her head above the desk.

"Look, I just do what needs to be done," Jacob chuckled, certain he was blazing from ear to toe. What a gal. Five minutes in her company and he felt like he could bear to live around witches after all.

"His memories," Graves said shortly, tapping a finger against his temple and drawing it against his thumb.

Queenie's eyes dropped. "Oh. Then you'll obliviate him afterwards." Hesitating, she took a deep breath and commented, "Not the same as the Barebone children, huh?"

"Miss Goldstein, I told you not to read my mind," Graves said curtly.

"Sorry, Mister Graves. You're not usually this open with me," Queenie responded. She fingered the tip of her wand, watching her sister rove her wand over an official looking document.

"You won't have far to go, Mister Graves," Tina said, as dark eyes latched onto the ceiling overhead. "He just reached the stairwell."

"Floo," Tina said, snatching up the papers and flicking out a drab, unadorned wand. "Mister Graves, who's the other guy?"

"Theseus Scamander's brother," Graves said shortly, dubiously waving Modesty's wand at the lights. His left eyebrow shot up as the bulbs dimmed to a flickering glow. "He's trustworthy."

"Sure hope so," Tina said. She beckoned urgently, leading them to the far end of the hall. "Floo network's this way, up two flights of stairs."

"We're apparition-proof," Queenie commented. "How'd you make it inside?"

Graves gripped the wand shaft between two fingers, squinting at the unremarkable wood. "Hardly a child's toy."

"Miss Goldstein?" a voice earily like Graves' called from down the corridor.

Glancing over her shoulder, Queenie gasped softly and balked. "I can't read him," she whispered. "I could delay him….."

"Don't be an idiot," Tina said, snatching up the blond witch's hand and dragging her along. "He'd kill you before you could draw your wand."

"On sight," Graves corrected. He paused to grab a lagging Newt by the arm. "No heroics, Scamander."

"How much further?" Newt interjected in a strained voice.

Jacob saw it without anything needing to be said. Dragging left leg. Sweaty brow and wretched gaze fixated on scuffled shoes. Skele-grow meant skeleton, right? Maybe it had fixed the bones, but what did that say for the tendons that had been wrenched when the No-Maj's first mangled the kid's leg?

"Hey, we gotta stop," Jacob said, tapping Queenie's arm. "He's – "

Queenie swung around and her eyes lanced. "Oh honey, there's no way you can make the stairs!"

"What choice do we have?" a frazzled Graves debated.

Lights crackled behind them, overheating and smashing one by one. Jacob could barely make out a dark shape lurking towards them. One line of desks flared in a combustion of cindering paper, then another. Paper mice scattered with fearful squeals.

Tina and Queenie locked eyes.

"Of course," Queenie said briskly. She snatched up the shorter witch in a brief, desperate hug. "Don't let him catch you." Swiveling in the most perfect about-face, she yanked open a door and skittered up the first steps. "Mister Graves, follow me."

"We'll take cover," Tina said, prodding Newt away from the stairwell.

"Once London is notified, MACUSA will automatically enforce emergency procedures," Graves said. "The president will listen to me. Give us ten minutes." Grimly he folded Modesty's wand into Newt's hand. "Do not apprehend him."

The door slammed behind him, and Jacob heard more bolts slide into place than a steel barred dome in a bank.

"Come on!" Tina hissed.

"You're gonna hate this, but…." With no further apology Jacob swung into Newt, slinging him over his shoulder. Grunting, he spewed an oath, swearing that after this he would run to work every day until evading dark wizards seemed as easy as rolling pie dough.

"I can walk!" Newt gasped out.

"Yeah, but run?" Too winded for banter, Jacob swiveled left as Tina ducked into another room. The hallway was almost dark behind them. Newt cursed between his teeth.

"Left!"

Unthinkingly Jacob swerved. A blue bolt struck a cabinet just to the side. Paper sifted in crumbling, blackened threads.

"Left again!" Newt hissed. He flailed, off-balancing Jacob as he stretched out an arm. "Protego."

Light flashed behind them and bounced, striking a cloister of fleeing mice. Didn't matter if they were paper – their final shrieks were kinda pitiful.

Another spell jostled the shield and Newt whimpered. The acrid stench of charred wool stung Jacob's nostrils. "Did he hit you?"

"M'fine. Hurry," Newt implored.

There wasn't anywhere left to run. Swerving into the room Tina had entered, Jacob scanned the darkness briefly and then flung himself and Newt behind the nearest solid object. It scooted, much to his dismay, and he heard Tina's anxious shush. Finally his eyes adjusted enough to make out yet another cluttered office space. There was one large table in the room, surrounded by rigid wooden chairs. Possibly the worst place they could've chosen to hide.

Spotless black shoes strode ponderously over the threshold. Tina lowered her arm, wrist poised, taking shallow breaths. Newt clamped a hand over his nose and mouth, and when that itself seemed to make too much noise, stopped breathing altogether. Jacob closed his eyes and prayed.

"You can come out now, Mister Scamander. Miss Goldstein," Grindelwald coaxed. The benevolence in his voice so keenly mimicked Graves' response to the Barebone children that Jacob almost thought the ten minutes was up and they had been rescued.

Deliberate footsteps told him that luck was nothing more than a bit of timely inventiveness limited to magical suitcases and children's wands.

Dark shoes paused two feet from Jacob's chair. He shuddered, counting the seconds, and stopped breathing altogether as Grindelwald stooped. A wand flickered inches from Jacob's nose.

"Get up," Grindelwald commanded softly.

"Relashio!" Tina shouted, afoot and running before Grindelwald could spin around. The spell flashed around him like thousands of blue lightning bugs. Irritably Grindelwald swung his wand in a high arc. Jacob didn't hear the name of the spell that collided against a file cabinet and drilled a smoking hole into the wall behind it. Tina shrieked, awkwardly somersaulting and retaliating with a red, sparking slash that zipped harmlessly over Grindelwald's shoulder.

"Expelliarmus!" Newt huffed, spinning to the right so that the next spell veered safely away from Jacob's position.

He'd been trapped in the field with an empty gun before. Heck, he'd even cowered with a full load once in the earliest days of the war, back when he saw people die for the first time and he knew he was one of the guys who drew the bullet.

But after that first mistake he'd never been kept out for lack of a weapon. There were always guns lying around soon enough. And if there weren't any guns….

Stuff like morphine bottles usually did the trick.

Jacob waited till the moment Grindelwald's shoes swiveled in Tina's direction before he jumped to his feet and grabbed the nearest chair. Nothing like the rickety, splintering wicker in Newt's suitcase – this was polished, solid oak. He heaved it over his shoulder, anticipating the satisfying crack of wood on bone as he aimed for Grindelwald's wand arm –

And found himself plastered against the wall six feet away as something invisible tried to smear him into the woodwork. Grindelwald regarded him passively, swinging back his wand in a snapping, white coil.

"Your kind may have forced us underground," he told Jacob. "But the inspiration of fear begins with a single spell."

Lightning fizzed short of Jacob's nose and he cringed, sweat bathing his face as the heated charge flickered closer to his eye. Grindelwald smirked. "It's the source of democracy, Mister Kowalski. Someone always has the upper hand."

A flit of bright blue yanked Jacob's attention to the other side of the room. Grindelwald spun around just as a chair soared towards his head, catching it under his wand in a burst of smoking particles. With a snarl Newt barreled out from behind the table, shoving it over end as he shouted, "Confringo!"

Black walnut rumbled and split under the spell, pelting Grindelwald with slivers the size of steak knives. Covering his head, Jacob plopped onto the floor in another jarring reminder that neither he nor Newt had any decent reason to be running around plaguing dark wizards.

The worst of the shards vanished as Grindelwald wordlessly barricaded himself in a fiery shield. The tendrils arched, snapping towards Newt's throat with dragon's teeth, and as the blue wizard ducked and raised the collar of his blue coat, Grindelwald stabbed through the kaleidoscope of flame. Light pummeled into Newt's side and sent him crashing into a chair, over the backing and against the doorway where he struck with a grievous thud.

Hissing a sigh, Grindelwald twirled his wand and flicked it, spiraling Tina's wand to his hand. The young witch hadn't stirred since Jacob threw the chair. He hoped… he prayed….

But who was he kidding? This guy had just bested a witch and a wizard and nothin' was stopping him.

Nothing unless help came soon. And that would come too late for Newt, who was hunkered by the wall, gracelessly trying to pull himself up against the doorpost as his juddering knee gave way.

Like the kid laid out on the street, kicked and broken 'cause a mad woman thought witchery deserved to be beaten down.

Jacob was tired of watching people brutalize their own kind.

"Hey."

Grindelwald paused, one eyebrow soaring as Jacob stepped forward. "I was going to spare him the pain of watching your corpse melt. You keep pushing my hand."

Jacob kept walking.

"Have you ever seen a man electrocuted?" Grindelwald wondered. "Sometimes he survives. Other times the skin sloughs away. External membranes drip like boiling wax. The organs cook in their own blood flow, but long before consciousness flees you'll feel your hands turn to ash."

Fists shaking, Jacob planted his feet in front of Newt. He braced his shoulders and remembered Claude, the stupid kid with the heart for remarkable animals, who for six days couldn't even lisp his real name.

The kid wasn't going down while Jacob was still standing.

"You're brave for a muggle," Grindelwald acknowledged as he raised his wand, "But you're going to die."

Clenching his fists, Jacob stared down the last enemy commander.