Timeframe/Info About This Fic: Post TGE...basically when the American War really starts boiling. Natty's only 15. Doesn't really fit into canon. Warning: There are a lot of graphic descriptions of injuries and blood in this story. Just lettin' you know.
Disclaimer: Jonathon Stroud is a genius. I am not. I do not own this obviously.
Authors Note: Yes, yes, I'm a part of this fandom too. Unfortunately, it isn't as, well, alive as my other main fandoms, so I decided to brighten things up with some lovely angst and gore. Yippee. Sorry if my characters are weird for my first fic. There's always that typical adjusting period where you learn how to write 'em right, of course.
Please enjoy!
"Are you…are you the magician John Mandrake?"
The young magician felt a faint stir in the air and heard the slight creak of the old floorboards as his visitor shifted in the threshold. The youth didn't even glance up from his paperwork.
"Ms. Piper didn't inform me that she would be out today. You must be her replacement."
"Are you John Mandrake?" The interloper persisted louder. There was something in the man's tone that caused the boy to finally tear his gaze from his current project. The man had taken a hesitant step forwards which caused the magician to run through a basic summoning spell in his mind. Just in case.
"Excuse me, but can I help you?" Nathaniel frowned at the intruder. "If you do not have a reason, I shall be forced to summon one of my most dangerous slaves and forcefully esco—"
"You're the one who wrote this!" The young man across from Nathaniel waved a well-worn and creased pamphlet violently in the direction of the latter's face. The boy squinted at the faded yellow leaflet and his brow creased in confusion.
"Ye-es…" he started slowly, "but what business do you have with me that concerns the Real War installments?"
"My name is Martin Beckett."
Beckett? Why does that sound familiar…? Mandrake blinked once, then twice. "I'm sorry…? Any business you have with me must first be organized through my secretary, Ms. Piper. She's, ahh, not here at the moment, but I assure you, Mr. Beckett, you can have an appointment with me within the month." For perhaps one of the first times in a while, Nathaniel was starting to wish that someone else was in his large house with him. Being alone with this intruder was beginning to make the boy nervous.
Beckett slapped Mandrake's booklet on the magician's desk and buried his hands back in his massive trench coat. "M'brother read your lies every day," the older man snarled.
"I object to the te—"
"He believed every word you wrote! He even took that damn book with him when he went to fight those rebels." Nathaniel felt a cold pit in his stomach. He didn't like where this was going. The young author looked down at his handiwork and his frown tightened further. He had only been able to see one half of the book. The other half was slightly singed with a suspicious crimson liquid lacing the pages. If Nathaniel had to take a guess, he would have said the possessor of the leaflet was hit by an enemy Inferno or a very hot bullet. Or both.
"This was the only thing left of little Freddie to send back to his family. To send back to me!"
Oh… Frederick Beckett the Second had been one of the first casualties of the American conflict when an enemy magician and a few rebel troops apprehended a unit of young trainees. John Mandrake had been obligated to speak at a memorial service for the seventeen casualties. Freddie Beckett Jr. had been the first name that the youth had honored.
"My condolences for your loss, but there is nothing I can do." Mandrake steeled his face into a grim expression, but internally Nathaniel's mind was churning guiltily. I have nothing to do with his brother's death. It wasn't my fault he went to war, he countered to clear his weak conscience. "Your brother died honorably serving and protecting our country."
"No!" Beckett took a threatening step forward. Nathaniel stood up automatically to try to counteract the feeling of vulnerability he was current experiencing, but it didn't seem to work. Beckett was still nearly a foot taller than the youth and had perhaps fifty pounds on the boy. "It's your fault he went over there! It's your fault he died! Your stories tricked him into going!"
Nathaniel swallowed thickly. He honestly had no idea what to say or do next, but he hated the sickening sensation of being helpless. He scrutinized the intruder's face again. The man's watery, pale blue eyes darted from side to side, taking in Mandrake and his office with desperate glares. His limp yellow hair hung in greasy strands on either side of his face and a stressed, gray-tainted beard grew ragged across his trembling chin. The man's eyes were red rimmed; he obviously hadn't had a decent night's sleep since hearing about the death of his brother a month or two earlier.
Before Nathaniel could think of another honey condolence to murmur in order to placate the mad man across from him, Beckett's hand jerked out of his pocket. Something glinted in his outstretched fist.
The youth took an involuntary step back and placed his splayed palms in front of him. Any thought of summoning a demon instantly left the mind of the boy as he saw the gun. Even if he had wanted to call upon one of his slaves, he wouldn't have been able to pry the needed words from his tongue. His inability to react made the boy magician very cross with himself indeed. Calm down, Mandrake. It's just a gun. However, his more cautious counterpart eyed the weapon warily. Although his years of magical training caused him to be more adept at identifying weapons of mystic origins, he was familiar enough with the primitive, brutal devices of commoners to know that the trembling gun was, in fact, very dangerous. Several of the old issued revolvers from the first world rebellion had escaped confiscation and were repeatedly sold by unruly commoners on the underground resistance markets, much to the chagrin of Mandrake, who had been issued the task of containing them all. . This particular gun model, he knew, was as equally skilled at misfiring without warning as it was firing empty blanks. It was, quite literally, a deadly game of Russian Roulette. The boy magician blinked weakly at the shaking weapon pointed at his chest. If his heart wasn't pounding so painfully, he would have laughed at the irony.
Obviously my search was not as thorough as I had thought.
His ill-humor bolstered his confidence and he decided to attempt to reason with the borderline-deranged man. "Sir, I promise you that if you desire financial compensation for your loss, I will direct you to some—"
"Shut up!" The older man snarled, lurching towards the youth. His outstretched arm holding the gun trembled as he shakily tried to train it on Mandrake's chest. He brought his other hand to the gun butt in order to stabilize the shaking. "Your lies are the reason that Freddie and the others are dying." The man's bloodless knuckles tightened as the gun dropped slightly and suddenly a loud BOOM echoed through Mandrake's apartments.
Nathaniel's eyes widened at both Beckett's final accusation and the sharp shudder of his body as something hot ripped through his gut. He took a step back partially from the force of the bullet and partially to escape Beckett's words. The boy's ears were still ringing seconds after the original shot, so he wasn't sure if he had cried out or if Beckett had said something, but judging by his assailant's equally shocked expression, nothing apart from the bullet had shattered the silence. The youth took a small sip of air, trying to do anything to keep his mind from shrieking from the pain and shock, but soon the pain started to overwhelm the young magician. His attempt at being stoic and professional chipped away as his knees threatened to buckle. Nathaniel glanced down at the hole in his side and mashed his lips together tightly to keep the gasp from leaving his lips. His pale, right palm pressed heavily on the spurting, crimson wound. Although he kept his hand completely over the small entry wound, the sticky crimson lifeblood was starting to spurt through his sealed fingers and soak in the surrounding white undershirt and black suit, giving the latter a sickly sheen.
Initially, Beckett had observed this all with at first a shocked horror, which then slowly morphed into cool satisfaction. Nathaniel's lowered gaze rose to meet Beckett's now composed and indifferent stare. The youth didn't dare unclamp his lips in fear of shouting or crying out; his chest heaved with each desperate breath through his nose, causing his wound to smart with each rise and fall. Moisture welled up in his wide, eyes from the broiling pain but they didn't overflow across his dark lashes. Unable to support himself any longer on his trembling legs, the young man all but toppled sideways, nearly collapsing against the chair he had recently vacated. His sweaty palm fumbled for purchase against the smooth mahogany. He eventually was able get a grip on the cool wood like a drowning man; the chair squeaked shrilly under the weight and slid into the table with a jarring clunk. The papers on his desk rattled, sending an ink pen crashing to the ground. The relatively forceful impact sent shudders through the boy's arm and into his burning torso, causing him to grimace. After a few more moments of quaking, Nathaniel could hold himself up no longer and collapsed heavily to his knees with a faint yelp, finally allowing himself to breathe in quick pants through his mouth. His mind swam with equal parts of darkness and muted color images, and it took a few moments of careful scrutiny of the wooden floorboards below him to completely gain back his sight.
Nathaniel peeked up weakly at his assailant and struggled to remember the words for a summoning. The pain was excruciating, lacing its way from the tiny entrance wound to other connected parts of his body. Every time he was able to pluck a few of the (hopefully) right words from gray, heavy fog in his mind, they shimmered and shattered with each careful breath. He wasn't desperate enough to start shouting out random words for any type of summoning without being first in a pentacle. The situation was bad, certainly, but the magician knew it would turn infinitely worse if he summoned a demon without binding it properly. Mandrake still believed he had control over the entire crisis, but Nathaniel still seemed to be in shock from the man's accusatory words. That had floored the youth more than the bullet.
The boy was doubled over while on the ground with his knees and one palm planted firmly on the cool wooden floor. His trembling, crimson-stained right hand still remained clamped to his injury, hoping to keep his precious blood from spilling out further. His head was swimming from the pain, yet despite the steady flow of red, he was, at the moment, in no danger of bleeding out. It would only be a matter of time before the guards patrolling the street would burst in after hearing the gun shot. The boy could certainly last until then. The wound hurt like hell, but the youth was confident that he was not fatally wounded. This little piece of knowledge drove away any of the fear the young magician had previous been feeling and emboldened the boy.
Eventually Beckett met Mandrake's bright gaze and a sneer rose on his nervous, paling face. "You don't even care that Freddie's dead. You're all the same. Magician scum!" With the last growl, Beckett took another threatening step towards Nathaniel and with a heavy boot, all but stomped on the boy's thin back. Supported only by two thighs and a trembling arm, the pressure from the boot forced the magician to the ground quickly and harshly enough to cause the elbow of the aforementioned arm to make a terrible popping sound as it jerked unnaturally to the side. Unable to hold back his weakness anymore, the youth went down with a loud cry. Nathaniel suppressed the urge to curl up in a tight ball as his breathing grew ragged and desperate. Fire now streaked across his back, his elbow, and his gut. A blood-tainted cough racked his thin, broken frame and bubbled from the base of his throat to coat his mouth and lips with a foul iron aftertaste. The boy hesitantly poked his crimson coated teeth with his tongue and suppressed another gag that ripped itself through his aching chest. He was unable to stop another cough from wreaking havoc through his rib cage and a small bead of maroon dribbled out of the left corner of his mouth. His sight was blinded by a salty, crimson haze. Nathanial squeezed his eyes shut, but when he opened them again, the world was still slightly shimmering.
"Get up!" snarled Beckett. Nathaniel stirred weakly. In the almost delirium caused by his recent assault, he had almost forgotten that Beckett was still watching him with a curled lip of derision. The only thing running through the youth's mind at the moment was the constant pain he could not escape. "I said, get up!" Beckett repeated in a curiously foggier voice. When his victim did not seem to be responsive, Beckett let out another furious growl. He attempted to grasp at the boy's hair, but was unable to snag any purchase from the short, military crop.
"You even mock them with your hair!" Beckett improvised by grabbing Mandrake's stained collar and hoisted the boy sharply by the neck back to his knees and palms. Nathaniel made a weak gasping noise as Beckett held him practically suspended by his choking collar. In order to stay breathing and conscious, Nathaniel had no choice but to remain on his hands and knees, though each limb screamed with a leaden exhaustion. Although he knew it was incredibly important to keep the bleeding as contained as possible, the boy had to reluctantly use his good arm in supporting his quaking body. His left arm dangled weakly on the side of his body, providing no benefit to the injured boy whatsoever. There was something very wrong with his left elbow and he was starting to lose the feeling in his minor phalanges of his left hand. As he pulled his good hand from the warm, wet wound, he felt his palm stick briefly to the glistening clothes and another gag rose in his throat. He placed the crimson palm flat on the floor and no complaint about staining the wood even rose in Mandrake's mind. Mandrake was now reeling from the lack of control he had previously though he had possessed.
Keeping one hand firmly grasped on the youth's collar, Beckett forced Nathaniel's dangling head up by prodding under his chin with the gun. The cool barrel on the boy's warm skin caused an icy shudder to dart down the boy's throbbing spine. Nathaniel's wet, wide eyes watched the man carefully. Combined with the knowledge of the instability of both the gun and the wielder, Nathaniel was finally afraid for his own life. Also for the first time, the commoner seemed to be a bit squeamish with his attack on the young minister. Beckett swallowed loudly and pursed his lips together. He regarded the magician not as the author of the pamphlet that killed his little brother, but as a young boy.
"You aren't even that old…" Beckett hesitated. "How old are you?"
It took Nathaniel a moment to find his voice. "Nearly sixteen," he rasped through his cracked throat and darkly stained lips.
The answer had a dual reaction on the attacker. At first the man's pale blue eyes softened into an expression of muted horror, as if he hadn't realized the magician was so young. He stared into Nathaniel's frightened, dark eyes that were almost pleading for an end to the pain, whether it be through death or mercy. At the sight of the boy's silent begging, Beckett's gaze hardened and he forced the gun deeper into the youth's tender, bloodless under-chin. He cocked back on the reloading mechanism and Nathaniel squeezed his eyes shut.
"Little Freddie wasn't even a man yet neither. Only seventeen. Lied about his age so he could fight like the men in your lies."
Nathaniel tried to stabilize his rapid, pounding heartbeat with heavy breaths through his nose, but again he was hit by another wave of terrible guilt that was almost as painful as breathing. He…he wasn't that much older than me…
"Because of you, Freddie won't ever see his own wedding or have children. He won't get anything. And now you won't either."
The young magician braced himself for the final, fatal shot in the agonizing silence. Distorted and grainy images of his past and potential future flew through his mind. Bartimaeus, Mrs. Underwood, Mr. Underwood, Kitty Jones… He wasn't sure if it was pain or guilt that caused his stomach to twist sharply. It's my fault. The dark corners intruding upon his vision made the young man briefly wonder if he was sincerely guilty or if his delirium was causing past feelings to be drug back through his murky history. Mandrake's composed, guiltless monotone was strangely absent from the boy's thoughts.
The boy flinched as the cold barrel clicked on the skin under his chin. Beckett cursed loudly and Nathaniel slowly pried open his eyes. The man pulled away the defunct gun and checked the smoking cylinder to find the next bullet.
In the next moment, several things happened. When the commoner pulled the gun away from Nathaniel's exposed flesh, the pain-weakened boy was unable to gather enough strength to hold his neck up without the very convincing motivator. The young man's head lolled heavily to the side, tipping his body weight towards his injured, right side with the stronger arm. Beckett also removed his iron grip from the boy's collar in order to better inspect the faulty weapon, which caused Nathaniel to completely slump to the right, nearly collapsing onto his right shoulder.
Suddenly a loud bark echoed through the house from outside, most likely from a passerby dog walker on the street. Although the offending barker was probably no worse than a jabbering mutt, the close resemblance of a wolf's growl to the dog's bark caused Beckett to panic. The man fumbled with the gun, expecting the Night Police to burst in any moment. Nathaniel was slowing sliding down to the floor, but he wasn't moving fast enough before the second gunshot rang like an explosion through the magician's apartments. Beckett's desperate jerks and handling of the gun caused it to accidentally fire; the ill-aimed bullet was only in the air for a brief moment before it dug itself into Nathaniel's left shoulder—exactly where his jugular vein had been seconds previously.
The youth screamed hoarsely as fire flared up his limp limb. Previously numb phalanges suddenly made themselves known to the boy with a vengeance. The force of impact sped up the boy's collapse and drove him sooner to the ground. With an entire limb incapacitated, the young magician knew that once he went down this time, there was hardly any chance of him getting back up into a kneeling position. As quickly as the pain had come, though, the deep-seated numbness in his fingers and forearm returned, taking with it some of the pain. He wasn't sure if it was due to the already existing pain or the lack of shock (he was relatively prepared this time, unlike the first bullet), but the pain in his shoulder only seemed fleeting in comparison to the burning in his gut and ravaging pain across his arched spine. The boy minister was no doctor, but he bleakly supposed shock or the dark fog rolling in could have also been muting the pain. He didn't want to think about what was wrong with his elbow that was causing him to lose feeling in his fingers.
Although it wasn't as excruciating as Beckett's first two blows, the wound to the shoulder still left Nathaniel incredibly weak and further in danger of blood loss. He now had two (three, if he counted the blood he was still coughing up) major open wounds in his body that were relentlessly pumping out his life blood. The boy's head began to swim and he started to wonder when he would finally, blissfully lose consciousness.
He strained his ears, but was unable to hear even the faintest of canine growling, so the magician concluded with a dismal drop in his aching stomach that the dog bark was not a sign of his immediate rescue by London's hairiest. The only thing he could do was lie there and wait for Beckett to either shoot him again or stomp in his neck until it snapped. Neither option was particularly inviting.
Finally coming to terms with the fact that he was very likely going to die, Nathaniel tried to twist his sore neck to the side in order to glance up at his attacker from one, half slit eye. He wanted to at least know how he was going to go if he had no possible chance of stopping Beckett. Nathaniel studied the wide-eyed assailant, careful not to say or do anything that would further incense the mad man. For a long time, no one spoke.
Whatever loose thread of sanity that Beckett had been previously grasping on to before he shot Mandrake twice was clearly gone with the wind. While the youth was observing his attacker with a calm acceptance, Beckett was staring down at his victim with a mangled mix of horror, shock, and disgust.
Realizing he only had one bullet left, Beckett took a shallow, hiccup-y breath and focused his trembling gun on Mandrake's sweat beaded forehead. The youth in front of him was already in pretty bad shape with two bullet wounds and potential internal injuries, but his brother's death wouldn't be avenged unless Beckett took the last shot and watched the life drain from the boy's eyes. Nathaniel wasn't intentionally trying to plead his way to mercy, but his pained, dark eyes were bright and almost mournful, forcing Beckett to turn away uncomfortably. Little Freddie had had wide, dark eyes as well, which he had used relentlessly in their "puppy dog" manifestation when they were younger. Nathaniel's drooping eyes watched him carefully, but again he resisted the urge to vocally plead for his life or a quick death. Half of his silence was brought on due to stubborn pride—never would a member of London's political body beg for mercy. However, his other reason for staying deathly silent was a concept unfamiliar to the boy. The more moralistic side of the boy was wondering if he actually deserved to die. On the surface, it hardly seemed fair. He was just a dutiful citizen who free-lanced as an inspirational author; he had done nothing illegal or morally wrong. However, Nathaniel also realized that it wasn't fair that young men had died (nobly, of course, but they were still dead) not because of their patriotic sense of duty, but because a few scribbled words had deceived them.
The silence in the room was almost as loud in the boy's ears as the gun shot(s) had been. His thin chest heaved sharply as he struggled for each desperate breath. Beckett's chest was rising and falling just as rapidly as the youth's, yet his was more from adrenaline than pain. Nathaniel's once pain-sharpened eyes were starting to dim and he had the sudden urge to firmly close both eyes and float away in to the blackness. But he knew that once his eyes closed, they would never open again.
Finally, Beckett stirred from his stupor. The action caused Nathaniel to perk up a bit, dragging his consciousness forcefully back to him. Beckett took one last step towards the downed youth and knelt in front of him, nearly planting a knee on the stained, upturned palm resting at an odd angle in front of the boy. He pressed the now warm gun barrel in between the young man's eyes and pushed slightly, forcing the youth's head back into his neck. Beckett watched the child's eyes carefully. Fear flickered briefly across the boy's dark irises before his gaze returned to its customary, carefully-crafted blankness. The boy mashed his crimson lips together to form a red tainted white line. He was just waiting for something to happen. Above him, Beckett was trying to steel his face into a cold, careless mask, but the older man was having some obvious difficulties.
"Dammit…"
All of a sudden, Beckett's bluster and determination died away. The older man was the first to blink in their deadly staring contest. He sighed loudly and pulled the gun to the side away from Nathaniel. The magician's assailant stood up and looked down at his crimson stained knees. He cast one long glance around the room, halting for a moment on the faded pamphlet on Mandrake's desk. He finally dropped his heavy gaze on the bleeding, broken boy on the cold floor in front of him and slowly backed out of the magician's apartments. He did not utter a single word.
Nathaniel was alone again and realized with a burn in his lungs that he hadn't breathed since Beckett had pressed the malfunctioning revolver to his forehead. He dropped his clenched jaw and gulped in several deep breaths and instantly regretted it. The boy suppressed a pained moan as the sudden inflation of his lungs caused his throbbing ribs to creak and the hole in his gut to burn anew.
He may have survived the encounter with his potential assassin, but Nathaniel knew his survival wasn't still guaranteed. Ever since the first bullet had ripped its way through his gut, the young magician's mind had been reduced to a tumultuous sea of goo, but whatever clarity he had once possessed was now fading significantly. He was having difficulty remembering what he had eaten only a few hours previously, much less drawing up a basic summoning invocation. Exhaustion burned his eyelids and in his limbs and he knew it would only be a matter of time before he succumbed to the inviting blackness.
If he wanted any chance of survival from Martin Beckett's attack, he needed to get to his pentacle. Immediately.
Tadaa...?
Thank you for reading! There will only be two more chapters for this story :D Let me know if you liked it! Let me know if there are things I can improve!