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nihilistlover · 7 years ago

Text

Splinch

(Thanks to @ladyoftheshrimp for all the poking and prodding. Her beta-ing. Her ideas. And her AU. You’re amazing! Triggers: Fucking Nazis (but they’re dead) POW, descriptions of injury, warfare, and mentions of the holocaust)

December 1944: Eastern Front, After Soviet Liberation

Status of The Second War: Active

Status of The Greater Good Revolution: Active

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

Theseus was in the silent, pillaged streets of Romania when the Soviet soldier appeared. He was on the last line of a telegram, and then, his unit heard the crack. The privates rustled out their rifles, and they all stood still in the dry air.

A terrifying and complete apparition approached them. The soldier had flashed into existence suddenly strapped on his dark horse, a riding crop at his side, rifle across at his back. He cantered towards them. The hooves hushed in the layer of ash covered snow, faded gun smoke from artillery lashed at the lean legs of his Budyonny steed. In his high mount the Soviet soldier approached them in a frame of rubble and exposed supports. Closer, and the hollowed husks grew in size around the phantom.

Theseus handed off the telegram to a medical officer in the Field Division of the Graves Registration Company. He felt pulled, footsteps slow, an absence of constant gunfire enveloped him.

“Scamander, are you daft?” Theseus’ Chief of the detachment asked, his arms full of curtains and tablecloths. He passed them off to a Romanian soldier, who returned to cover the spread of lined-up bodies. All the while the Chief watched Theseus drift away, his heart heavy for the officer.

Theseus wasn’t daft. Not entirely. He was compelled, and transfixed. The Soviet soldier had stopped just under the branches of a lamp post, his Budyonny whinnied. A message for him and only him.

The Soviet soldier pressed the tip of his wand into his neck. “Lieutenant Theseus Scamander, would you come with me?”

He then quickly switched to the wand being at his temple, and waited, blue eyes a tired gaze. His ushanka pushed low, and telogreika synched tight. The horse shuffled, its breath huffed out in wisps of condensation from its nostrils.

“And how do you know I’m him?”

The Soviet’s eyes narrowed at the translation. He moved the wand back down to his neck.

“No bullshit, Scamander,” the Soviet brought his wand down. He took out a picture. A moving image of Percival and Theseus. He pointed to Theseus with a stubby mitt, it completely covered Percival. The Soviet soldier stashed the image, tugged on the reins with his left hand, and returned the wand to his neck. “You were a war hero once.”

“Once,” Theseus said, his breath wheezed out of his nostrils.The frost nipped at every inch of his exposed face. He pulled his scarf up higher over the bridge of his nose.

The Soviet pushed a heel into the Budyonny’s side. The horse turned, and exposed its chestnut neck to Theseus. The Soviet tossed the reins over towards the officer and patted at the horse’s shoulder. The soldier twisted his hand in the reins, and made a fist then let the black leather drop. He stared at Theseus. Theseus twisted his hand in the reins. They disapparated.

Theseus stumbled away when they re-appeared. He tugged at the reins at first, but he heard the horse. It keened and clacked at its bit. He let go, and fell into a post. He watched the the last few inches of hair cascade down from the horse’s tail. They had been splinched off.

“A whole horse, why would you apparate a whole horse?” Theseus pushed off the post. The greatcoat of his battledress snagged on gnarled barbed wire. The wire twisted around the post. It punched through the splintered network of holes. When Theseus pushed away; he saw how it created an unforgiving barrier at the edge of the camp.

At his post, the barbed wire was tangled up and around a support beam. It jutted straight out, like the branch of a light pole. On its end, a cut noose dangled. Barbed wire thorns gleamed in the braids of the empty noose, ice crystals collected on the metal points and rope hairs.

“Where are we?” he asked. But the Soviet soldier didn’t answer. His horse’s head dipped low. He looked down at the shrivelled and snow-covered bodies by the entrance of the long sheds. Theseus saw them too, and quickly came to an inevitable conclusion. The bodies were in striped gowns. They showed through the layer of gray snow that blanketed them.

Two men walked towards them, between their grip, hung a white stretcher. They placed the body on the pile. It was a child. Small, too small, her wrists bird-like, skin paper thin. Sewed onto her gown was a flipped purple triangle, right over her heart. Theseus stared into the black-edged bullet hole between her eyes.

He felt anger. A kind of anger that becomes misplaced, and in its wayward path, falls to the nearest conceivable entity of blame.

“After you liberated them, what did you do? Did you kill them?” he asked, and looked up at the Soviet soldier high on his perch. The Soviet soldier didn’t have his wand out. He just shook his head, and sighed. His breath turned to feathery tendrils.

One of the soldiers at the body pile tugged the white sheet from under the girl. She rolled away. He gathered and tucked the dirty sheet into himself. The silent soldier in front of him pointed towards the Soviet and Theseus. He turned. Theseus recognized the familiar fatigues that peeked out under the soldier’s long coat.

“Theseus,” said the soldier, his hands still clutched in the sheet. “Theseus Scamander.”

The Soviet nodded to Theseus, and pushed the side of his Budyonny with his heel. They turned to the left and sauntered off into the camp.

“You’re American,” said Theseus, looking back at the American soldier.

“Yeah, yeah, I am. I’m Cooper.” Cooper paused. The other man, the silent soldier, nodded, but didn’t say anything. He just bit his lip, his green eyes searched Theseus. Cooper continued, “we’ve got to show you something.”

“What is it? I have a unit waiting for me-”

“It’s pretty serious,” said Cooper. “We found both of them in one of the lower compounds. Underground types, down in the Nazis’ Mole Hole. I just.”

Theseus felt it. That tug again, like he was supposed to be somewhere else. “Who?” he asked, but it was quiet, sucked up by the cold air.

The silent soldier waved for him to follow. Cooper nodded, hands knuckle white on the sheet.

There was a series of compounds, connected in a long U-Shape. The double doors at the straight belly of the U were open. Three men drank cups of steaming coffee, cigarettes in-between their teeth. They cast jokes and asides at the Soviet who waited, still atop his horse, at the cusp of the two forks of the sheds.

The horse scuffed a hoof at the ground. It kicked its head back, eyes white and wide, directed at Theseus. He, Cooper, and the silent soldier approached along the Budyonny’s side. The Soviet calmed the horse, and watched them. His eyes on their boots, and hands. He looked to the doorway. The three men had stopped. They all looked at Theseus.

In the silence that rained down on them, soft and subtle as the snowfall, Theseus heard it. Whiplash voices that echoed into his ears, but held no present meaning. He needed a connection. A determination that things weren’t what they seemed, and the drawn faces that watched his reaction weren’t testament and witness to reality.

A spell, lightning quick, and just as strong as the comparison flashed bright white in the doorway. It fizzled out. Smoke, grayish-black curled out, and one of the three men stepped away. He took a sip of his coffee.

Theseus stood in the yawning doorway. His hands twitched. It smelled, overall, like the rest of the camp, but his sinuses were barely catching the full array of scents. Unable to smell the flowers. The shit, and piss, and blood. One descriptor in his head for the smell: dirty. He wiped at his mouth with his scarf, and finally tugged it down. The smell was stronger.

“Are there still Germans down there?” he asked.

“No, they all,” one of the soldiers with coffee gestured to his head. He mumbled around his skinny cigarette, a gun symbol to his temple.

Theseus looked to the wet stairwell, snow dripped down into the dark entrance. A desk was pushed to the side, right before the head of the stairs. On the table top there were abandoned logs. Stamps were kicked to the side, a pen still in an inkwell. Serving as a long dried up remanent of the near past.

“Right, I-” but Theseus didn’t finish. A butcher bird, somewhere on the trails of barbed wire, let loose its horrible cry.

Cooper put a hand on his back, “They’re down there. We finally got their names. From your brother, Newt, he’s the one who talked. I don’t know, P-”

“Merlin,” Theseus hissed out, interrupting Cooper. He looked back. The silent soldier had taken the Soviet’s horse by the reins. He lead him away. The three soldiers by the door started back up their chatter with one another. One kicked at the wooden door absently. It creaked. Theseus blinked, startled. He could hear Cooper again.

“I don’t have much for consolation, but you can go down. They’re the only ones we haven’t evacuated yet.”

“Are they hurt?”

Cooper breathed in, “Ah.”

“How bad?”

“We don’t know yet. Theseus, we can’t get a single god damn man close.”

A coffee drinker slipped into the conversation, “Yeah, the shorter one tried to hex my face inside out.”

Smoke puffed out of the soldier on the far left. He snorted, “Love to see that.”

Theseus shook his head, “Any medics?”

Cooper nodded, “I can work my way around a field dressing, sir. The Soviets too.”

“Right,” said Theseus, and he toed towards the steps. A paper from the desk’s log fluttered in his wake. The icicles along the doorway dripped. A relentlessly cold drop wormed its way in the gap between his collar and scarf.

“Good luck,” he heard tagged on behind him as he descended.

It wasn’t all darkness in the hole. The farther he creeped down the steps the colder it got, and the closer he came to a light. A light that provided no warmth in the arid air, but instead softly lit the center of the Mole Hole.

There were tables. Rooms dispersed around the hollowed out setting. All of it concrete and cold. Filled with dirt, and grime, and the old smell of German roaches. A single candle flickered, too bright, and luminous. It dripped yellow wax on the long bows of wood. It cast a bright and strict halo of light.

Once Theseus hit the ground floor he functioned just outside of it. He traversed in the packets of light that tumbled over the boundary.

Then he stumbled across his first body. His boot hit it first, and he paused. He sniffed deep, and threw his scarf back over his nose and mouth. He gagged and coughed, and bent down close. The man had shot himself in the head with a rifle. Half his face was gone.

He stepped over it, and right up the next body, his foot just knocked against this one too. Ants crawled around the eyelets of Theseus’ boots. They had crawled out of the dead man’s nostrils, disturbed from their crowded hibernation inside the headspace. Little ants dripped over the dead man’s lips. Down over the green uniform, and swarmed slow and curious at the intruder.

This one had used a Mauser pistol.

Theseus saw the blood dried on the floor. The reddish species of Formica marched about in it and trailed back to their temporary residence in little lines. An Edible Dormouse petulantly squeaked, its little hands rubbed at the man’s cheek. Its dark eyes watched Theseus. It licked up a few ants before it hurried away.

Theseus looked, there were more shapes on the floor. Shapes and shadows, that twisted themselves into corpses. Iron crosses and silver eagles glimmered on all their chests. All of them glassy stares in the soft candle light. The bygone wardens’ weapons of destruction still next to their bodies.

Theseus stepped into the halo. His hand relaxed on the scarf.

Next to the candle sat an otherworldly, illuminated version of Newt. His ass on the table top, feet on the bench seat, he leaned forward. His eyes and lips and cheeks all hollowed out by the light shining by his side. The jacket on his shoulders too big. It was unbuttoned, and just draped there. The white gashes of the SS bright at the collar.

Theseus could clearly see the ways in which Newt was injured. The scratches and greening bruises, some purple, others yellow. Newt’s left eye was puffy, the lid pink and inflamed, pus leaked out. Theseus dropped his scarf entirely.

Newt squinted his eyes. Theseus could no longer see his blue irises, just the shadow of Newt’s lashes, and the way his hands twisted into one another. Newt’s shoulders shook minutely. Little rattles, like he tried not to show that he was cold. But Theseus clearly saw the jolts in his knees.

“Newt,” said Theseus quiet, very quiet. Whisper soft. If he spoke too loud and too soon the mirage in front of him would melt away in the candlelight.

“Theseus,” said Newt, he smiled, but his lips were so dry that blood dribbled out.

Theseus stepped forward, he shouldered off his frock coat. Newt’s eyes widened again, stark blue, his head tilted up.

Theseus’ boot rolled over a thin line of twine. The toe pulled at it, and he followed it with his gaze. It lead somewhere off behind him, running parallel to the tables.

Theseus heard Percival before he saw him. The quick gasped snarls and pried growls from the depths of a shattered ribcage. His voice bubbled, the nuances of a punctured lung.

Theseus turned, and met bared teeth, blueish fingers already clawed at him, and he tried to take a step back. But Percival fell onto him entirely.

They both collapsed onto the floor. Theseus’ head cracked against the bench of the table, his hair now pushed up against its foot. Newt sat and watched from above. Theseus’ hands flew out for purchase on the splinters and stained floor.

Newt spoke, his voice unshaken, flat and direct. “Percival, Percival, no, this one isn’t a trick.”

The candle flickered on. A hoarse backdrop to Theseus’ desperate scrabble for escape. Percival ripped and pulled at every inch of him. When Theseus felt hands at his throat he scrabbled for for his side holster.

Percival stared right at Theseus. The whites of his eyes red. His eyes distant, but very much close.

Theseus felt his own movements stutter, and sputter to a dead stop. He wheezed out a counter-spell, and ripped at Percival’s cold fingers.

He bent a few back, he cracked at the thumb, he pushed with his elbows. He was relieving some of the pressure. He craned his neck back. His boots made a too loud noise when they kicked out. Percival, who straddled him at the hips, turned to stare at Theseus’ boots.

Theseus pushed his head all the way back till he saw an upside down image of Newt. The golden version of him. The one entirely revealed by light. Bruised and maudlin, unmoving. A passive by-stander. Newt’s fingers were still clasped together in a firm embrace over his knees.

“New-,” said Theseus.

Newt just stared. Theseus mouthed a spell towards Newt’s direction. The candle went out. Newt disappeared.

“Accio,” Theseus held his hand out and away. Percival’s grip changed on his neck. The hands shifted down in the dark.

Percival made a noise that Theseus only registered as a yip.

A leg completely braced over his thighs, another twisted over his shins. Percival was laid down on top of him in the dark. His weight rushed down on Theseus’ ribcage, just when he could get a breath.

Theseus felt the combat knife hit his hand. It cut the corner between his thumb and fingers. Percival had a sloppy grip at his lower jaw and pushed up against Theseus’ chin. Shadows and non-existent colors of the dark painted themselves into partial images of the scene.

After Percival had released his grip, Theseus had thrown his right arm in front of his neck. The combat knife held out and away in his other hand.

Theseus waited to strike, Percival did not.

Theseus heard a growl and hissed out a, “motherfuck,” when he felt Percival bite down hard. He kept his arm still. Percival twisted, he ripped into Theseus with his teeth.

Theseus moved then, swung his arm down. Percival didn’t stop the knife. So, Theseus rammed it into the nearest piece of the man.

Percival finally let go.

Newt climbed off the table calmly. The candle pulsed back to life.

Percival held the space where the knife was, blood trickled out around it, his arm limp. His eyes still red-rimmed, but his attention too divided now to care. Newt was there to console Percival. Theseus scrabbled out of Percival’s range, and from underneath his legs.

Newt looked over at Theseus then, cheekbones a skeletal memoir in the candle glow.

“What? What, Newt? I’m here to save you,” said Theseus.

Above ground Cooper and the silent soldier helped him heal the two. Percival and Newt didn’t say much. Newt at least said, “Thank you.”

No one said anything back.

Theseus gritted his teeth. The Soviet returned on horseback. With Percival and Newt’s wounds erased from the surface of their bodies, they were evacuated from the camp by disapparation.

Cooper smiled in the aftermath and took a cigarette from the silent soldier. Their work was done.

Newt and Percival waited with the Soviet under the four-crowned lamp post. A blanket wrapped around both of them. The dirty sheet from the camp placed over it for extra padding.

Theseus’ Chief was still on the same street. The unit had gathered more bodies. They would have to bury them close-by. Spades were already in Romanian and British hands.

The Chief took one look at Newt and Percival at the corner of the square. Then patted Theseus on the shoulder, his eyes as gray and placid as the ash on the street. “Thank you for your service, my boy.”

“Wait I-”

“Kent, write up a wire.”

“For what?” Kent had the fabric canopy of a parachute draped over one forearm. It trailed down his front.

“Lieutenant Scamander is to be honorably discharged.” Kent paused. The Chief continued a hand to his neck and said, “For medical reasons.”

“They just have to be evacuated, Sir.”

The Chief smiled, ��Alright. You’re alright. Go help your brother,” he made a closed, “m,” with his hand, the thumb poked through.

Theseus sniffed in, quick and sharp, he nodded.

“God Speed,” said the Chief. He let his spade slide back down to his hand and called for the company to start carrying bodies to the burial site.

Theseus returned to the Soviet’s side. Percival’s eyes were locked on the snow. A foot peeked out, encapsulated by a delicate yellow heel. The rest of the body unfound. She was just an addition to the collection of rubble.

Newt blinked, and stared at Theseus. His hands twisted in the twined rope held between his and Percival’s hands. Together they were trapped underneath their thick canvas wrap, two thin spectres connected by twine. The horse shifted, and the rope tugged a little where it was knotted to a saddle bag. Newt’s eyes lingered too long on each and every footstep of Theseus. He tried to hide the gun-shot flinch when Theseus gripped his arm.

Theseus nodded to the Soviet. They disapparated again. He didn’t mention that he was no longer a soldier for the King.

They took the Floo Network to a stationary hospital on the mainland. It was a trail of back channels to England. One lead them to southern France.

There was fighting further to the south-west, but they were far enough out of the brunt of it. The flag of de Gaulle fluttered outside of the evac hospital. It was placed at the tail end of the Vosges mountains.

Theseus lead Newt and Percival inside, there was no door, barely any walls. It was just a permanent foundation and half a ceiling. The building as a whole was still strong.

Tarps were strung up in the blasted out vignette of a Lorraine villa. They overhung the filled cots. Medical engineers with clamps and splints milled about.

The low front walls of the hospital allowed some of the patients to peek out. “Soviet, Soviet,” they whispered past bandages and bullet holes. And the Soviet disappeared. Slowly, away on his horse, into the mist and soft purple flowers of the far mountain’s edge.

A confined fireplace burnt low and steady inside of the hospital. It was at the back wall. The cots all lead back to the hearth. A nurse lifted the grate aside and walked off to a bedside. A radio, at the end of a cot, hissed out white noise when she passed.

Theseus was surprised the fire existed openly. It was cobalt, red edged and dim. It gave off no warmth. They were ushered towards it and given a scoop of floo.

“Bon Voyage,” said a healer. He nodded to them bent over a soldier blinded from an exploding bullet. They stepped into the flames, and left behind the blanket and sheet.

The healer would later take them out to better cover the bodies arranged under the shadow of the flag.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

Discontinued: Operation Ys-Specialized Unit: MIA /KIA [insert status change] POW

Members of Unit Evacuated list cont.:

Graves, Percival G. 0-062-697

Scamander, Newton A. F. RAF Nr. 0-101-016

Camp: Dulag 0-5 / Outside of Geneva codes

Camp Status: Inactive

#part 1 #of a larger thing #idk #im not here for pure historical accuracy so sue me #percival graves #newt scamander #theseus scamander #ww2 #thank you #ladyoftheshrimp #due to recent events i apologize for the presence of nazis #at least theyre dead here #this is like way different than its final version #budyonny #suicide #pow

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