Forty-three days. My choice (Percival/Newt)
He's waiting for Death as an old friend. She stood in front of his tortured mind endlessly tortured, light serene laughter, drowning out the husky voice of the mocking of his free body Green de Valda. She never appeared before him, coming from the back, putting cool, thin hands on his face, closing exhausted dried eyes, soothing them in blissful darkness. Her lips gently touched her cervical vertebrae, sending warm discharges all over her body, reminding her that her life was still alive, even though she believed it less and less.
Today, Percival is back on the edge where the silver-blue haze shimmers, a light cobweb wrapping around the reality that he could no longer touch while drowning in the viscous air. He feels like he is slipping away from what has bound him to this world. The sensation of pain piercing the whole body, the cold, the overwhelming terror - everything disappeared, clinging to the silver threads, hanging on them shining drops. Percival recognizes the easy steps he could hear even through his own shouting, and he is pierced by a shiver that makes the threads ring like the strings of a violin. According to the rules he has studied for a long time, he does not dare to turn to her and remains to wait for the first touch. As always, palm to palm between the shoulder blades. Graves recognizes her by that penetrating cold, which makes her heart light up a little bit more, so as not to freeze finally. But something in it changes, the palm seems completely different, at the same time strange and familiar. Even so - alien to Death, but familiar to someone else. For someone who dared to be too close to the cold and ruthless aurora. The guess is more frightening than the possibility of death.
The threads ring more intensely as if they are ready to break.
Lips find a familiar place under short-cut hair, where the sharp bone of the spine is particularly strong. The discharge of current passes through the spine, responding to slight pain. Lips were not tender and warm as they were a few years ago. They are weathered and dry, leaving a rough feeling behind. He studied these lips thoroughly: every sensual bend, every crack, and even the little scar that the baby hippogriff left him as a child.
For the first time Percival heard not how the steps were removed, leaving him alone, but on the contrary, approaching, rounding, and Death becomes the first time with him face to face. But this is not what he expected to see.
In front of him stood the sun shining from the inside with its soft smile and a shabby blue coat of Newt Skander. The only thing that was wrong and frightening was a deep, cold look that mixed cruelty and ruthlessness.
- It can't be...
The smile becomes softer and as if indulgent when the mahosoologist had to explain elementary things again.
- You know me better than anyone, Percival," said the pleasant Scamander voice, which sounded in harmony with the melody of the silver strings, merging with it to form a cold echo that reveals who really stands before him.
- Why him? - Graves wheezes in a painful grimace, feeling the heart of the blade piercing: love, desire, regret, loss.
- Because you must understand, - continued to rustle Newt, approaching Graves, frozen, as always before him, Graves. His wrongly cold fingers touch his temple and descend to his chin, and then press his lips. - I have to understand what you're leaving me behind.
- Or to pick me up more quickly? - Percival is frowning, and in return, Scamander laughs quietly, a funny wrinkle of a nose bridge.
- I don't take away those who don't want to," he says, shaking his head slightly, clinging to the cobweb with red curls and tearing its strings. - Do you want to leave now?
Graves looks at the pale skin, on which the sun scattered freckles, at the dry, scarred hands, at the soft lips in a confused smile, at the red eternally tangled whirlwinds.
Everything is there, it is true that Newt is in front of him. However...
Percival touches the cold palm of his hand, gently squeezing his icy fingers. He smiles guilty, looking into the dark eyes of strangers in a cruel and confident way, and sees in them an understanding.
- Well, that's your choice. You have to live with him. And maybe you admit that I would be your salvation.
- My salvation beyond the other side," Percival whispers, feeling the coming pain, which was held back by the silver cloud. - And I am ready to accept everything from him. But I can't accept you yet.