He saw her fall. He saw the sheet of blood pour from her body. He saw her hands desperately try to stop the bleeding. He saw the look of terror on her face. It took him too long to reach her. Too many seconds. He frantically propped Tina up, hoping it would stop the bleeding. The battle raged around him as blood poured out of her wound.
Her face had gone deathly pale. Her hands were slick with crimson from her attempts to stop the bleeding, and they hung limply at her side now.
"Tina… Tina!" Newt was yelling. Tears pricked at his eyes.
"Shhhh," she breathed, hand ghosting to his wrist. She spoke frantically now, fitting all of her words into one breath, "I love you...I-" She shuttered, her eyes went glassy. Newt put a hand to her cheek, her hand fell away from his wrist easily.
She was stone cold.
All he could feel was the heat of anger. She was gone now. And it was all because of this goddamned war. This savage fighting. Contempt for all that was happening around him filled his soul. How base? They all just slashed at each other. This would end. It must.
Newt pressed a kiss to Tina's forehead, tears splattering onto her skin.
It is said that the winners write history, so, with Grindlewald slain, the British Ministry of Magic gladly omitted the fact that, in one hour, 58 people had been killed by one man, using only one spell.
He had visited her grave every day.
He had heard the rumors. The whispering about how he needed to move on. How it was all a little obsessive. You know what he told those people? He told him that it wasn't her death that was his biggest regret, or even all the deaths he had caused, it was the fact that after the battle was finished, all they had found was a half-eaten corpse. Some savage had eaten her and God-knows what else. He may have been the Widow-maker, the Final Battle's Savior, or the Grindlewald Slayer, but if he had just had the sense to stay there, he would have happily been a casualty instead of a hero.
Oh, but at least you got the satisfaction of making the bastard bleed? They would say. Yes, he had made Grindlewald bleed. He had not given him an easy death, but that was only because she had bled. That revenge shoulf have gone to someone else because while Grindlewald was staring into Death's face, they had been tearing at skin, sucking the marrow out of her bones and violating the flesh that had been her body and although she was gone he could imagine her screams.
And they haunted him.
Newt awoke, to see Tina standing in the doorway.
"Tina?" He breathed a sigh of relief, "I just had the worst dream. You'd never believe it."
Tina hesitated, obviously unsure how to speak.
Newt could hear whispering.
"Tina? What's going on?" He said nervously.
"No, erm, Mr. Scamander," said a woman's voice, British, definitely not Tina, "erm, it's not Tina. Erm, you're confused again."
His eyes didn't see the form of his wife, but the form of a nurse.
He looked down at his old wrinkled hands and shook his head lightly.
"Oh," he smiled at the nurse, "my apologies, Miss. Old memories."
The nurse smiled back. "It's okay, Mr. Scamander."