The sky is black.
Snow, ghostly white in the cold light of streetlamps, falls silently down from that blackness and Newt looks up at the falling snowflakes, blinking to clear his vision.
He's lying on his back on the hard pavement covered in a thin layer of snow, completely still apart from the fast rise and fall of his chest – yet, it feels like he's in motion, like he's falling. It feels like he's falling up, like he's falling up into the vast black sky, and it has him grasping desperately for something to hold on to.
There's nothing to hold on to and his arm won't move, not enough for him to reach for his wand lying but a few inches to his left already with a layer of snow on it.
A flash of green light fills Newt with sudden agony and he screams, his weak limps twitching as he's being crucified from inside out. He can't think, doesn't even remember his own name. He knows nothing but the pain, can't think of his creatures, can't even recall Percival's eyes.
For an eternity, there's nothing but the piercing agony.
It stops as fast as it began, and Newt is left sobbing on the snowy pavement, tears and snot streaming down his face now numb with cold and lingering pain.
"I've got your pretty little bird," someone says, taunts, and a tall figure hovers in the corner of Newt's eye, wand pointing. "Got to admit, Graves, your whore does have a nice ass. I can understand why you'd want to fuck it – though now you'll never get to experience that, unless you're into necrophilia."
The man was the source of the pain, Newt is dimly aware, but he's too weak to disapparate or to even crawl away. Instead, he thinks of his suitcase, misses his creatures so much it gets hard to breath.
"Let him go, Gepson. Newton has nothing to do with this."
Newt recognizes Percival's voice and, tense though it is, the sound of it soothes him as it always does.
Turning his head, he sees the familiar figure standing on the other side of the silvery shield that separates them from each other. Percival looks furious, but there's something vulnerable to him as well.
Like a dragon with broken wings, that's what he now reminds Newt of.
Percival is flanked by Theseus and Tina who both have a stern expression on their faces pale in the streetlight. Aurors, fifteen or twenty – Newt can't tell exactly how many – are running around in the background, circling the shield in which Newt is encased with the man looming above him. They are looking for weak spots in the shield, Newt knows, but he doubts there are any since Theseus would have noticed if there had been, and Percival – ever so efficient – must have looked the shield over too.
A sudden burst of laughter has Newt wincing. The man standing beside him is chuckling, but he doesn't sound happy at all. The laughter is cruel and loud and it hurts Newt's ears. It forces a pitiful moan out of him.
"Are you kidding me?" Gepson says when the laughter dies down. "The pure little Newton here-" pain in Newt's side where the man kicks him, "has everything to do with this. He's in the center of the whole matter – that's the entire fucking point! You can only blame yourself, Graves. If you hadn't insisted on bringing my operation down with the help of your British auror friend, your bird here would be getting home tonight. If you two hadn't stepped on my toes, we wouldn't be in this situation. I would still be the king of the underworld and Newt need not to have gotten involved."
"Let him go, you bastard, and we just might let you live."
It's a clear threat, and Newt has never heard his brother sounding nearly so dangerous, not even when Theseus backed Leta into a corner after Newt had been expelled from Hogwarts.
Gepson laughs again.
"I'm not a stupid man, Scamander," he chuckles. "I have lost everything. I have nothing left. All I now can have is my revenge for what you have done to me, and once I have had that, I am more than content to die. Although I must admit I never knew getting revenge on two such highly regarded aurors would be this easy. Who would have thought you two seemingly invinsible wizards share a weak spot: the oh so beloved brother of yours, Auror Scamander, and the unrequited love of the most powerful auror MACUSA has ever seen – so conveniently wrapped up in one easy to reach target. It's just… perfect. Unfortunate to him, of course, seeing as he hasn't done anything to me and I don't have anything against him per se, but perfect to me nevertheless."
The tear tracks on Newt's face are slowly freezing and he looks again up at the falling snow.
It's beautiful. It's oddly peaceful.
Every breath hurts like he's being stabbed.
Newt closes his eyes, but the lack of visuals sharpens his other senses. It makes the piercing pain in his chest the focus of his world.
The pavement is cold, and the melting snowflakes freeze on his face.
An insistent hissing sound forces its way into Newt's consciousness. It reminds him of water being thrown onto the stones of a sauna stove.
It's the sound of spells evaporating, harmless, from a defensive shield.
"Getting desperate there, Graves, are you, throwing spells at my shield like that?" speaks Gepson from above Newt again, taunting. "You're wasting your energy trying to penetrate my shield. It took me seven months to brew the potion I needed to create it. I assure you it can only be destroyed from the inside and seeing as you all are on the outside and can't even apparate here, there is little else you can do but to watch on as this one-" he steps onto Newt's thigh and Newt howls weakly in pain, "bleeds to death."
Exhausted, fresh tears running down his temples, Newt forces his eyes open to look at the sky. He's still falling, he might fall up at any given moment, but he wants to escape the pain, wants to focus on the snowflakes rather than the death he can feel steadily approaching with every passing moment.
The blackness is beautiful.
And they are beautiful too, he thinks, the snowflakes. Each of them different, individual in their own way.
Just like his creatures.
With his head lulling to one side listlessly, Newt can see the snowflakes better, can study the delicate shapes in the light of spells and hexes flying all around him on the other side of the shield. Theseus and Percival are shouting, but fresh snow absorbs sound and everything is somehow muffled, the voices and shouts are dulled.
The world is quieter when it snows.
Newt likes quiet.
He doesn't recall closing his eyes, but he must have done so because Pickett is suddenly there, patting his nose insistently. Newt blinks, shivering, and gives Pickett a tired smile, the sight of the bowtruckle warming his weakly beating heart.
The warmth is welcoming.
Pickett chirps and then hurries to Newt's wand. While the man looming over Newt keeps on gleefully listing the things he's planning on doing to Newt to get his revenge on Percival and Theseus, Pickett pulls at the wand, brings it closer until it comes to rest in Newt's hand, the familiar weight of it landing onto Newt's palm.
Newt can't even wrap his fingers around it and he's too tired to call for his magic. Just the thought of casting a simple Lumos has a sob forming deep in his throat, and even though Pickett is patting his fingers as if to encourage him to use his magic, Newt is too far gone to do anything to help himself.
He wants to apologize to Pickett, to Percival and Theseus, but even that he can't find the strength to do.
Dimly, he recalls being hit by a Languishing Hex earlier that evening and he wonders how much of his exhaustion is due to that and how much is due to the bloodloss he is experiencing due to the open wound on his chest.
"Snowflakes!" he can hear Percival's sudden bark of an order. "Charge the snowflakes with anti-shield spells! They can penetrate the shield, and if we get enough of them inside, we'll get rid off the shield in an instant."
"Good thinking," comes Theseus' praise – and Gepson manages to utter but half a swear when there's already a red burst of light and he's being thrown back, away from Newt's line of sight.
A blink of an eye later, or so it at least feels like to Newt, Percival is kneeling there beside him, pulling him into his arms, while a general commotion signals aurors making an arrest nearby.
"Newt," Percival is saying, cradling Newt's face. "Newt. Stay with me. Stay with me, pet. Don't you dare die on me!"
Percival is wearing his leather combat gloves, the black ones he always wears when he expects to fight ("Makes it harder for anyone to disarm me, I've got sticking charms on these"), and they feel cold against Newt's skin. The smell of the familiar leather reaches Newt's nostrils and somehow that makes him aware of the iron stench all around him.
He looks down at his chest and sees red, a lot of it, even if all his shirts are supposed to be white.
Newt hasn't seen so much red snow before, but now he does, right where he was lying but a moment before.
Percival's glove leaves his face and Newt is gently laid back down, back down onto the red snow, and suddenly there's pressure on his bleeding chest, enough so that it has Newt gasping from pain. Theseus appears by his other side, and then Percival and Theseus are both speaking in worried tones, faces grim, and even though Theseus is casting healing spells, Newt doesn't pay that any mind because
Because it is snowing and Newt is dreaming of kissing Percival, the fantasy right there at the edge of his consciousness. It makes him smile, the thought of the coarse stubble against his skin, and just as everything turns black, he hopes wistfully that he gets to feel Percival's lips against his, one day.