As I Rise

He- because he is a he, he thinks; he has a real, corporeal body now and that body is male so that has to count for something. He is not they anymore, he needs things, things he didn’t when he was a step out, hovering above. He sleeps again, longer than he ever has, he feels the chill air dampen against his skin, the solid ground beneath his feet and the air so heavy around him. He feels the need to eat. He is so hungry. Ravenous. A hollow ache burrowing deep inside him. The weightlessness he had felt when he was they and they were infinite, has long gone, and with it his freedom. His body is too much, too heavy. Cumbersome. He wore it before, he knows he did, but has it always been this ill-fitting?

But the hunger, that is something else. All-consuming. A creature crouched in his belly, growling and clawing at him, demanding recompense for his carelessness. He doesn't know how to feed it. The place, the real, physical place in which he exists is empty. There is nothing. Nowhere to dig scraps from like he remembers doing in the harsh winters when food was scarce and kindness scarcer.

He exists and he doesn't, half there, half not, but present enough to feel the weakening, the brittleness as the itch of irritability skitters along his bones, prickles his muscles. A low-level thrum of energy, a lift in listlessness, a buzz of hyperactivity. Starvation begins its slow squeeze.

He scares the boy.

He scares the boy but another comes, younger, and another so much older. Brother. Father. Family.  

They bring gifts, offerings to the monster that dwells beneath their feet. Cookies and cakes, a little stale but still good. Still, the most delicious thing he has ever tasted.

The first time they appeared he ate them all at once and almost cried- could he still cry? - The cramping in his stomach like knives under his skin. The sickness. How could eating hurt him so much when he was so hungry? Why did this body, this ugly, useless sack of flesh purge what it most craved in sour acid clawing from his throat?

 And then nothing.

And then another.

He was smarter then, knew to keep them. Eat slowly, stretch them out for the days there were none.  

It was fine.

Everything was fine.

Then the man came.

Then the man came and spoke to him.

*

As painful as the journey is- and it is blindingly painful; rakes claws into his muscles and clenches painful- somewhere in this very apartment block lives another creature who finds comfort in anonymity. It is the closest he's felt to truly being not alone since they found him, naked and half-mad in the darkness. The joy he feels as he returns to the basement to collect the crockery- a steaming, cooling bowl of scrambled eggs white-knuckle held in trembling hands just in case- almost overcomes the gnawing at his muscles. He knows it is ridiculous to hope, hope for what? That he isn't alone in his misery? That is a singularly sickening thought; is he really the type of man to wish ill will on another just so he can know, can have real, visceral proof that he is not the only person alive to feel this much anguish? Still, the tremor of excitement is impossible to quash, a small, trembling thing which crescendos at the sight of an empty pot licked clean and waiting for him in the watery pool of daylight. Like whoever, whatever, whoever it is knows how much he hates the dark, how it makes his skin crawl, an itchy, twitchy tightness like his body is too small.

“Thank you” he breathes, quiet and all too loud in the silence. And he is thankful, more than they will ever know. Grateful for something to take his mind out of himself, calmed on some animal level that he isn't alone, that he may be hopelessly broken but he can still help. He might still be worth something.

There is no answer, but he didn't expect there to be. He knows what it is to want to hide away and let the world go on turning without him.  It’s all he’s wanted for himself for what feels like forever.

He wants to linger- oh but he wants to, craves it- but he can’t, he can’t. Can’t be alone together. He flashes a tired smile to the room and leaves, leaning heavily on his crutch like it’s all that’s keeping him upright.

 It is all that is keeping him upright.

He desperately wants the eggs to still be hot for his new companion; something warm and light to ease the hunger the way he would have wanted, not the rubbery mush they had fed him. It’s a stupid thing to hinge his happiness on, but that is the truth of it. He cares for the poor soul because they did nothing to soothe him when they could have, should have.

The door shuts and he hesitates. Just for a moment. And he hears a scuffle, the tell-tale tinkle of cutlery. The thrill of excitement at knowing for sure there is something in the room- something sentient enough to use cutlery- wars with the creeping realisation that he was being watched, leaving him with a confused mess of emotions that serve to highlight to him his own exhaustion. Look, Graves, you’re too tired to even process base emotions. And lower, a smaller voice like daggers in his head do you really think they’ll let you back when this is what you’ve become?

Mostly, he feels bad for eavesdropping.

He doesn’t mean to, isn’t trying to spy or listen in or catch them out. He just cannot face the stairs. A sudden desire to cry punches through his chest. He is just so tired. Achingly so. He had woken up that morning too early, barely an hour after he succumbed to sleep, the stench of that place in his nose. He still can’t shake it. A cloying, rotten stink; the sweetness of decay, the sour note of sickness. It follows him. Chases him through every brightly lit room, lingers in the corners where the shadows whisper. He would never have thought it before the incident, but the darkness has an odour and it smells like death.

It follows him up the stairs, wrapping around him as each step all but takes his breath away. It’s too much, it’s all too much. He shouldn’t have pushed it, shouldn’t have walked so far, so very far. Shouldn’t have pushed himself so hard. Each stair aches, pinches, claws, burns, hurts. Hurts in a way he never knew he could feel, not just physical; something deep inside of him, something infinitely tender wails, beats and batters at the walls of his broken psyche.

“They didn’t know” it cries, so late at night that it’s early morning, “They know you, but they didn’t know.”

It’s a haunting thought, insidious in how easily takes over his mind until he wants to weep, wants to scream and cry and rage at the world. But what use would that be? It wouldn’t erase the past few months, wouldn’t bring back his reputation or change a single wizard’s mind about him. There is no catharsis for him, not even snapping at Seraphina bloody Picquery helped. Nothing can help him. He is alone and that’s just how it has to be.

His flat is bone-chillingly cold when he finally crawls back through the door, and really isn’t that just the icing on the cake.

*

 Three days. Five trips.

That’s all it takes before things start to change.

*

The pain never gets any easier, and really he knows better than to push himself this way, but he wants, needs to keep doing this. For his conscience. For the creature in the basement, and he knows there’s something- someone- down there now, knows with more certainty than he feels for anything else in his life. He does it because no one did it for him.

The O’Hannigan’s are great, a kind, charming family who are always happy to see him, but spend too long with them and a cold, clenching ball of shame inevitably curls in his gut. Shame for the law he is breaking, ignorant though it is. Shame because they are so open with him and he can tell them nothing of his life. The most important thing about him, the thing which has defined him for as long as he thinks he can remember, and he has to keep it under wraps for their own safety. He couldn’t stand to see them obliviated. It would probably kill him.

He can be so unbearably selfish sometimes.

He likes to kid himself he’s taking food to the basement as some sort of selfless task. Make believe that he does it to help and nothing more, to make sure that whoever it is down there, they don’t die like he could have. Let them know they aren’t alone, there is an entire world waiting for them outside of the shadows if they so choose. Most days he can almost convince himself.

He has begun to detest his own footsteps, the shuffle-clunk-step throws harsh light onto the reality that he is not getting any better. Thanks to Aideen and Cillian his weight has been wavering towards a rise- one or other of them have an uncanny ability to foretell the days he hasn’t the energy to cook, and instead drop their own food parcels on his doorstep when he inevitably finds himself unable to answer- but he has yet to predict how often he can bear to eat or to keep anything down, so even that is an achingly slow process.   

That is in part the reason that, even though everything below his navel is submerged in breath-taking pain, he still pushes himself down, down, down to the basement twice a day.  He detests idleness with every fibre of his being, has refused convalescence since he joined MACUSA and refuses to lend himself over to it now. A better Wizard would call it a form of self-harm; the slow creeping torment to his own body forcing him to push himself until there is nothing more to give. If they said it to his face, though, he would probably hex them.

His hands are trembling by the time he reaches the door, the pot he carries with him threatening to slip from nerveless fingers. The day has been especially cruel, from the lingering sparks shooting razors down his nerves, to the heaviness of limbs made leaden, to the inability to grasp even the finest tendrils of sleep. They combine in a melting pot of madness, form the shape of a man more trauma than flesh. The room feels colder than usual, the light dimmer, the smooth concrete racing too fast towards him.

He almost isn’t expecting the impact as his knees collide too hard with the ground below, his crutch skittering off into the thick darkness. At least he managed to save the crockery. The wet of the stew seeps into the fabric his trousers, easily fixable if only he could only cast a damn scourgify. He bites back a curse, though tears spring unbidden into his eyes, thick, blurring his sight in that way that means they’re going to fall and there is nothing he can do about it. Embarrassment bursts hot and bright inside him, scalding him, burning what little dignity he had managed to scrape together into a husk. He clenches his teeth against a sob, one, hangs his head for two beats, three, then begins the slow, agonising process of finding his footing. Panic flares for a minute as he realises his crutch isn’t beside him but rather lost to the never-ending gloom. He can’t get to his feet without it, can’t walk, can’t turn tail and run from whoever lurks in the depths.

But there it is, the blunt end hovering a few inches off the ground not far from his head, near enough that he can tentatively reach out trembling fingers, slide them around the smooth wood. He looks then. He cannot help himself. Slowly, inch by inch, up, up, past the rubber tip, the leg, the Y bend, to the padded support. Moon-white fingers, long and slender, a delicate wrist, though not unblemished, the beginnings of a cuff two inches up, then shadows. It is the most he has seen of the person in the basement, and he is truly enthralled.

“Thank you,” his voice is more strained than he was expecting, choked with the threat of tears.

A beat. Then;

“You’re welcome.”  

It is a soft voice, though Graves has the distinct impression that is by nurture rather than nature. A timidity that belies a core strength greater, probably, than his own.

For a beat they are connected, a handshake through the length of his crutch, then the fingers slip away, though he can still make out the vague shape of a body. Whoever they are, they do not offer to help as he rights himself- a slow process, made all the more precarious without a support, only his crutch to lean on whilst he gets his good leg under him- and for that, he his pathetically,  painfully grateful. He’s there to help, not to be pitied.

“I’m sorry about you dinner,” he says as he scuffs a foot through the mess he had left. Stupid, stupid, stupid. “I’ll bring you some more” a promise, though his heart clenches at the thought. He doesn’t even know if his hip will let him reach his door, let alone make a return journey. Merlin but he’s never felt so damn guilty.

He braces himself to retrieve the fallen bowl, but before he can attempt movement, the pale hand is there again, swiping the bowl from the ground and cradling it close to a shadowed chest. He thinks he should feel some sort of indignation, some perceived insult. Mostly he feels tired. He wants to bristle at the apparent charity, but it would, after all, save him a needless journey, one he isn’t even sure he can make at all given the way his knee throbs fresh agony along his nerves. This is not a Picquery with her lies that reek of pity, this is like the O’Hannigan family, all bright smiles and soft kindness.

“Not that I don’t appreciate the company,” he says, carefully- the last thing he wants is to spook them, whoever they are, “but wouldn’t you be more comfortable staying here?”

A movement, a shake of the head, and the bowl is clutched tighter against the mass of their body. He shuffles back a step, further into the room, past the point they know Graves cannot go. The almost-muteness is vague and a little unsettling, but damn if it doesn’t stir something in the tender bruise of Grave’s heart. It feels too damn similar to the days early on in his recovery, fresh from the void and aching like a raw nerve. It feels like the reason why he left Wizarding Society altogether, rather than carve out a new life or bury himself alive under the debris of who they say he once was. He has nowhere, has nothing that isn’t tied into a life he can barely scrape together more than a handful of memories from.

At long last, he sighs out a small “Very well.” If this strange creature wants to follow him, then why not let them. He feels little in the way of a threat, and if this means he’ll get attacked in his sleep, well he hasn’t been sleeping much anyway. No one would notice for weeks if he just up and died.

As they reach the door, Graves turns almost absentmindedly to check that this is really something they want to do, that this stranger is really ready to leave the sanctity of this place. His breath stutters somewhere in his chest. Merlin’s beard but he’s so young. Not a child, older even than adolescence, a young man maybe half his age at best- though he feels so very old these days even that much is hard to gage- yet an aura of innocent vulnerability enshrouds him, shines a light on the careful hunch of slim shoulders, a head ducked in subservience. He has seen next to nothing of the world, save perhaps the underbelly of the beast.

He swallows down the tears that threaten to well for this boy, this waif as lost and abandoned as he is; flashes instead something he hopes can be considered a smile. The door is almost unfathomably heavy as if the very room itself is trying desperately to cling on to its only companion. As if his guilt for inevitably, eventually ruining this young man’s life is forcing him back. Then they are through, out in the dreary daylight that filters in from somewhere he doesn’t care to question.

The boy blinks, blinks again, and then smiles. Small, barely there save for tremulous upturn playing in the corners of his mouth. He hugs the bowl to his stomach with one hand, whilst the other reaches out to brush tentative fingers against the bannister, grasp the wood as if he half expects to move right through it. Graves felt much the same when he was first released, like this life was just one long hallucination and he had been cruelly thrust into the epicentre without warning. Like everything can and would be snatched back from him in an instant if he put a foot wrong. Most days he still feels like that.

He doesn’t say a word as they make their way slowly up the flights, and flights, and flights of stairs; not when Graves has to stop for a second or two when the pain leaves him breathless. Not when the crutch slips and threatens to spill him back down, down, down. Not even when he fumbles for the right key with numb fingers. The boy just follows along calmly - though the anxiety buzzing off of him is almost palpable. He remembers that too, the low thrum of panic that filled his nights, underlined his days.

They shuffle into the apartment with little fanfare, save Graves’ muttered curses, a string under his breath like a mantra to keep himself grounded. His companion doesn't seem to mind if the amusement playing about his face is anything to go by.

Though he wants nothing more than to sit down and never stand up again, he dutifully leads the way through the cluttered living space, to the area half-walled off, dedicated to the kitchen.

“It probably needs warming through by now, but it should still be good” he throws over his shoulder, his single-minded focus on doing whatever it takes to get off of his feet in the shortest amount of time.

“People call me Graves” he adds when the silence stretches on almost too comfortably. It isn’t a lie per se, he is working on getting Aideen to drop the honorific, though it is a frustratingly long process.

A pause that stretches seconds, hours, years.

“Credence.”  

His voice is soft, not in tone but in volume as if he is afraid to disturb the air around him. There’s something distant tickling at the back of Graves’ mind, was the name significant? Was he forgetting something else from that hazy minefield of memory? No matter, in all honesty, he is too tired, too in pain and cares far, far too little to dedicate too much thought to it.  If it is important, it will come to him.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you Credence,” he says instead, as he busies himself with lighting the stove again, absently taking stock of his dwindling number of matches. He’d need to go shopping again soon. Sooner if his companion was going to stick around longer than just the night.

“Thank you, Mr Graves”

“It’s just Graves,” then in a brief moment of levity, “the other name they gave me just didn’t fit” as if this poor young man would have any insight into the various meanings of the mad ramblings his half-delirious mind throws up.

He merely smiles, polite if not a little unsettled, and places the bowl gently on the counter. Now that his hands are empty, his nerves are, of course, on full display in the way he wrings his fingers together.

“Have a seat if you want, this will be a few minutes yet,” he says after their renewed silence has stretched a little too far, and the hovering at his elbow has started to make his skin itch. These days he cannot stand to be watched, Cillian learned that the hard way when he tried to fathom just where Graves was going wrong in trying to change a lightbulb. They’re still finding glass in the cracks between floorboards.

The boy Credence is nothing if not obedient. Eerily so. The sort of obedience that has to be beaten into a person. There is defiance there too, just under the surface, He can sense it. It’s a special skill, something discovered at Ilvermorny and honed through too many years working for MACUSA. He might not remember much, but what he can- when he tries so hard to recall his work that a migraine beats him to subservience- is peopled with brilliant witches and wizards unafraid to defy authority if they think it is the right thing to do. Hell, his life right now is in direct defiance to Seraphina Picquery, MACUSA, Rappaport and whoever-the-fuck else wants to throw their two cents in.   

Instead of sitting, as Graves would dearly love to be doing, he is staring intently at the bookshelf and all its meagre contents- a stack of age-softened books, some bought himself, others gifted to him; a cookbook from Aideen who painstakingly rewrote her family’s recipes for him, a few mechanical texts courtesy of Cillian, who wants nothing more than to one day have enough money to leave the factory and own a garage of his own, something the children can inherit. There are a few second-hand novels from Raphael, who had made the effort to seek him out after their run in, and always has something new to recommend. The rest were books he already owned, classics, novels, plays, poetry, whatever beautiful words he could get his hands on- a great deal of them first editions too expensive to be slumming it in his tiny little flat, but a small slice of himself that he couldn’t bear to leave behind lest he forget what little he can recall. Lest Percival Graves be lost once again to shadow and pain and fear.

Credence, it seems, has taste. Though his fingers dance delicately from cover to cover, he lingers a little longer over a copy of Homer’s Iliad, an epic tale Graves has been in awe of for much of his life. To love another so fiercely you would drag the body of his murderer thrice around their tomb has always struck a chord, a long-buried wish that one day he too could share such a battle-hardened connection. That dream died alone in the dark. It is a good fit for the boy, he thinks, there is a little of the tragedy about him, about them both if he wants to be brutally honest with himself. He doesn’t pick the tome up though, doesn’t disturb any of them, just looks and look and looks until Graves calls to him to eat. He feels almost sorry to startle the boy back from wherever his mind had taken him, but the food is ready, and his aching body is done in.

Credence eats with a ravenous timidity. Seated at the scuffed dining table, picking over a bowl of his own thanks to the boy’s earnest insistence- who wouldn’t take I made it for you as an answer despite the embarrassment burning bright just under his skin- Graves cannot help but watch. He eats like he hasn’t eaten in weeks, and judging by the gauntness of his face he would believe just that. Old pastries are not enough for a boy to live on alone, and with how infrequently little Bran is allowed down there- only on nights when Cillian is home with enough energy to take him down- he must have been close to starvation. He looks almost embarrassed when he finishes the bowl, like he wasn’t supposed to eat so much so fast like Graves will think less of him for it. It is a ridiculous thought. If anything it ignites a burning pride in his chest, to see first-hand what he could only assume, to know that he is appreciated.

“There’s more in the pot,” he says, an amused smile just twitching on his lips, “but I’d advise waiting a while before you eat again.”

Credence is obviously torn between heeding his advice and acquiescing to the hunger pulling knots in his belly.

Graves takes pity on him;

“I’m not saying you can’t eat more if you want it, but too much too soon will make you sick. Your body needs time to readjust.” Although judging by the vigour with which he put that serving away, he would be feeling the effects of a stable diet long before Graves does, if he even wants to stay of course - or at least keep the arrangement they had going. Though if he’s being honest with himself - and he’s just taken a strange boy who has been living in the basement into his home, so what is a little honesty going to change at this point - it was not a sustainable operation in the first place. He cannot keep going on the way he has been, too much too soon and his leg will never be the same.

Credence’s indecision clears, and he puts away another half-serving before he is done, which, he shouldn’t be surprised at how sensible the boy can be, he knows nothing about him, yet he still is. He himself it's little more than a few mouthfuls before his stomach revolts and he knows with sickening clarity that anything more that goes down is bound to come straight back up. He hovers as Graves clears their plates away- washing them by hand, a chore which has him once again aching for his magic-  and stores the remaining leftovers in the icebox. When he hobbles over to finally, finally take a seat in the armchair by the fire, the boy hesitates only slightly before he ambles over to perch on the sofa. It’s rude of him, but he does not have the energy to play host. He is so damn tired these days.

When he waves a hand vaguely towards the bookshelf with a muted “help yourself” he is up like a shot, settling into the cushions with the epic tome laid out over bony knees. They read in an almost comfortable silence until Credence can barely keep his eyes open. He offers his bed up, the only one in the apartment, but the boy had most likely been sleeping on a solid floor; and though the sofa would probably seem infinitely comfortable to him, he is long and skeletal and would not fit very well, and it isn’t like Graves could transfigure something up for him no matter how many hours he could waste trying. Hell, it’s not as if he does much in the way of sleeping anymore anyway.

Better to let the boy rest, than subject him to the horrors of his nightmares.