It was cold. The coffee was cold, and tasted like dirt. Marcus drank it anyway and felt his insides settle, lulled into obedience by the mixture of potions, caffeine and cream.
He hadn't even registered until the last second that his hand still held the insulated cup with the snap on lid, amazed again at his primal survival instinct. In the midst of his transformation, he hadn't so much as creased the cardboard sleeve.
His eyes quickly adjusted to the low light of the cramped space, cluttered with shipping crates and rolls upon rolls of blank, uncut parchment. The woman lit up her wand, and they'd settled in with her propped up against a wall, and him sitting on one of the storage crates labeled "quill nibs". He looked over to see the woman watching him with crossed arms, nodding.
"That's the way," she said. "Better?"
Marcus rubbed at the back of his neck as his insides made an ugly, hollow sound.
She mumbled something under her breath and made a curiously familiar gesture with her fingers. Two brown sacks with the Three Broomsticks logo stamped on them appeared next to her, smelling of hot food. His team had done the same thing a dozen times over the last month when they'd been stuck in the security rooms at Gringotts, working on a peculiarly stubborn curse on an emerald ring from Zimbabwe. The goblins weren't going to let the team leave until the item was safe for resale. They'd already found a 'secure buyer', which merely meant that the unnamed individual was willing to put down half a lifetime's galleons for it.
"This was last night's that I forgot to pick up," the woman said. "I think you need this more than I do."
It was still early in the morning, but he was hungry. Starving. He took one of the sacks from her outstretched hand, careful not to get too close, unsure of how long this respite from the beast inside him would last this time.
He'd had his coffee every day for three weeks straight. He should never have turned.
The crate creaked with his weight as he settled back and put down the drained coffee cup. Then he opened the sack. Whatever was inside hit his senses like a bucking Hippogriff.
He made a mess of himself, gobbling down the greasy, deep-fried chicken, temporarily forgetting that he was being watched.
Whoever this woman was, she'd saved him when he should have been taken in to be exterminated, or whatever they did to whatever he'd become. The claws and teeth had receded for now, but unless she had gillyweed for brains, the reality of what he was should have sent her running far from the little alleyway near the coffee shop.
His eyes darted to her, sitting casually on the floor, not at all afraid or bothered by him or his poor etiquette. She had eaten the exact same thing, but there wasn't a spot of mess on her.
He tried to clean himself up with a paper napkin, but the grease had settled on the hair around his chin. The scars streaked along the left side of his face were stubble-free, but the rest of his face and neck were a mess. In all the panic of the morning, when he had woken up to the unnatural cravings and spent all of his energy trying to remain human until he could get to his coffee, he had forgotten to shave.
"Tonks," the woman said, startling him out of his head and back into the present.
"What's that?" he asked.
"My name," she said. "I'm Tonks. I thought you should know."
Even if he should, he didn't want to know. He wanted to remain as ignorant about her as possible, and at the same time, he had so many questions.
How did she know that he would be trapped in that alley with Hunters hot on his heels? And why would she want to get herself involved?
The most important thing right now was to keep her as far away from him as possible. But somehow, he felt compelled to talk to her.
"I lost someone," he said. It hurt to say it out loud, which was why he never talked about it. Briefly, he wondered why he'd even brought it up. He didn't want anyone's pity. He pitied himself enough as it was.
She was looking at him as if she knew. She'd known enough that he'd needed his coffee. But if she was expecting him to share his life story with her just because she had scratched the surface, she was wrong.
"Listen, I'd better go…"
But where? If the Hunters found him, he couldn't go to wherever he usually went. And from where he was, sitting on a stack of crates, he couldn't see a door. Or windows. If anything, this woman knew how to find a secure hideout.
"Where'd you take us?"
"Someplace safe," she said. "Where we could talk."
That was the last thing that he wanted to do. "I don't think you…" he started, but she interrupted him.
"I lost someone, too. In the war. He fought at the Battle of Hogwarts, and…"
The woman who called herself 'Tonks' ran a hand through her short, spiky hair. It was greenish-brown, but he'd sworn it was blonde back in the coffee shop. Or maybe it was just the light in here, wherever here was.
"So I know about loss, even if I don't know about your loss," she said, which sounded fair to him. Her eyes held him in a calm, collected gaze.
"But here's what I need you to understand," she said with much more fervor. "This mark I have that's connected to you, I know what it is, and I wouldn't ordinarily care, but you're about to get yourself killed."
"It might be for the best," he said, and then regretted it instantly. The look she gave him could have killed him ten times over.
"What is it about this mark that you do not get?" she asked, her voice rising in pitch. "If you die, the person with the matching mark dies, too. I've been trying to track you down for months now, so that I can tell you to get off your arse, quit whatever deathwish or pity party you've been attending, and grow a pair. I'm not willing to die because some stranger has low self esteem and nothing to live for. Someone is clearly after you, and if I want to live, I'm going to have to help you stop them."
He was silent, processing what she had said.
"How do you know you'll die… that we're connected in that way?"
"I did my research after the first panic attack. And I have friends in the Department of Mysteries. Believe me, it wasn't a fun time."
Marcus thought briefly back to that very dark time after his wife had passed, where he'd almost found a way to join her, and how something had held him back at the last second. That was before he'd done the Runes translation.
He stared at the mark on his wrist. "I'm sorry," he said. "At the time, I didn't know there was someone else connected to this...thing."
She fixed him with a look. "Don't do it again. Wow, I've been waiting months to say that. It wasn't as satisfying as I thought it would be. Anyway, if we're going to get those people off your back, I'm going to need to know a little more about you."
Suddenly, she was peering at him like she was silently dissecting him, measuring him by some unfathomable scale. Maybe she was waiting for him to say something, like maybe he owed her some kind of explanation for the mark –for turning into a half monster– for simply existing, maybe? Bill had no idea where to start.
Tonks threw her hands in the air in exasperation. "Whatever. I wasn't asking for your life story. And maybe you're not ready to talk. I get that. But I was hoping we could skip the part where I stalk you and bail you out of whatever trouble you've gotten yourself into over and over again, because that can get old, fast."
She picked chicken out of her teeth with a sliver of bone and then threw it down onto the paper plate with the rest of the discarded bones. She checked the mark on her arm, which had faded back to a darker flesh color.
"Finally." Tonks gathered up her trash and put it in the takeaway bag. "It's safe now. We can get out of here." He hadn't even seen the rubbish bin, but there it was, and there she was, putting rubbish it as if it were the most natural thing to do: throwing out a takeaway bag in a storage room with no exit. He still didn't know where they were.
"I get it, you know. You don't need complications in your life, and Merlin knows, neither do I. But here's the thing."
She stood up and faced him, completely unfazed by the chicken grease, the scarred face, and everything that made him look like a complete wreck in front of her.
"I don't want to die because of you. Right now, I'm late for work. You figure out why someone is trying to kill you, and we'll meet up later tonight to discuss things."
Tonks pulled out an official looking robe from the pouch hanging on her belt. As she slung it over her shoulders, the weight of the Ministry's authority settled around her. Then she straightened up and held out her hand. "Deal?"
Marcus stared at her hand for an immeasurable beat. Then he shook it.
"Deal." The nerves in his arm jerked when her fingers gripped his tightly.
He ignored it. There was no point. This was not going to happen. He'd figure out how to stay alive, and she'd use her resources to make it happen. Then they'd go their separate ways, pretending that there was still happiness somewhere out in the world.
And everything would be fine.
She let go of his hand, rolled a kink out of her shoulders and fixed him with that knowing look she'd used before. When he didn't react, she chuckled. "It'd be helpful if I knew who I was dealing with."
My name is Marcus. I am not who I was…
He almost gave her the name that they'd fixed him up with… the cover his friends had created so that he could continue working with them while he laid low. But something about this woman in the Auror's robe told him that if he led with the lie, she'd find out the truth anyway. His wife, the way she died, everything.
"Bill," he heard himself say, and then swore silently at himself for everything else he was about to give away. He didn't want to get anyone else mixed up in his life, but if they were both going to survive, there was no other way.
"My name's Bill Weasley."