Chapter Text
Newt stares at his hands silently, marvelling how blurry they seem. His face is wet, sweat and tears and probably blood mingling – he has a cut on his forehead he probably should get looked at but… but…
His hands shake and he squeezes them into fists. There's grime under his fingernails, it looks red – it probably is red, but he can't – he can't tell for sure, everything is wavering a little. He can't breathe. His throat hurts, everything aches and yet, and yet… he can't feel anything. Or maybe he feels so much, that it's tipping over to the real of too much and soon he'll go numb.
He wishes he'll go numb.
"Well, you look like you need a drink."
Newt looks up, and comes face to face with a bottle of Dragon Fire, the label water stained and peeling off but still recognizable. He doesn't know the man holding it, but he can recognise the uniform well enough to categorise him as ally. Which, at this point, is good enough.
"T-thank you," Newt mumbles through numb lips and then, grateful for the fact that the cork is already off, he throws his head back and drinks. It burns terribly – he has wounds in his mouth, he's bitten the inside of his lips again and they string – but it's a welcome feeling. It aches in his throat and makes his chest radiate with heat and that too is welcome.
Newt lets out a stuttering breath of hot smoke and then hands the shaking bottle back, looking at the man who'd given it. "American?"
"Now what gave that away?" the man asks with a wry, black sort of amusement and then falls to sit beside him without further ceremony. He looks pristine in his coat, his hair brushed back and neatly short at the sides. Newt knows his haircut is nowhere near as neat – and he hasn't seen his razor in weeks. He can't even recall the last time he bothered to cast a cleaning charm on his clothes. He probably looks just as bad as he feels if not worse and sitting beside this pristine man makes him feel every inch of grime on his skin.
He wonders idly which one of them feels more out of place here.
"Not my favourite spirits," the man muses, examining the bottle in his hand. "Bit too warm for my tastes – and I prefer something with an edge."
Newt arches his eyebrows tiredly. "I'd be happy to keep it if you don't care for it," he mumbles. Maybe if he drank it all he'd stop feeling so hollow. Maybe, if he drank it all… he could sleep that night.
The man smiles and takes a drink – a quick sip, that for a moment leaves newt staring at the column of his throat. He's clean shaven even there and there's a hint of cologne in the air. He's… so clean.
"You're one of the new arrivals, aren't you?" Newt asks and he's not sure if he's jealous or pitying.
"Depends on your definition of new," the man says, peering at the bottle label. "It's not my first bout here, but true enough – I've been off the field for a couple of months. Had to get some training done state side."
"Right," Newt answers, taking in the neat clothes, the clean shirt peaking past the coat collar – the collar pins. They look valuable.
"You don't believe me," the man says and smiles.
Newt looks away. "I don't care enough to decide whether I do or don't," he says and he really doesn't. Having the man there, so nice and neat, was a awkward reminder of the world outside, though. He wasn't sure he appreciated it.
The American eyes him for a moment and then holds out his hand. Even his nails are clean. "Percival Graves."
Newt takes the hand in his own, and tries to muster up the strength to match the man's firm grip. His fingers look dark against the other man's pale skin, dark and filthy. "Newt," he says.
"Well, Newt," the says. "Are you going to turn your wand onto yourself in the night?"
"Excuse me?" Newt asks, and finally looks at the man's face. Graves arches his dark eyebrows at him, bleakly amused.
"You got the look. And also, that's the Hippogriff Core insignia," the man says, motioning at the patch on the shoulder of Newt's jacket with the whiskey bottle. "The Twenty-Thirds, right? Forward attack position. I hear you guys got slaughtered."
Newt stares at him, speechless.
The man hands him the bottle with a knowing look. "I can do the same as everyone else and pussyfoot around it if you like, but I doubt that will do shit for you in the long run. Drink up, Newt."
Newt drinks, three deep gulps that give him the time to get his thoughts in order and burn away some of the horrified outrage and black misery. "You, sir, are a bit of a git," he says with a cough of smoke once he's done.
"A complete bastard, most people would say," the man says and smiles at him. "Do you want to talk about it?"
Newt shakes his head. "Not much to say. We flew, we got spotted, we fell," he mutters and eyes the bottle. "Nine Hippogriffs and eight wizards. Gone in blink of an eye."
Graves hums low in his throat, watching him. "And you?"
Newt doesn't say anything. He'd disapparated out just before he hit the ground. Benefit of having a famous duellist for a brother – he has quite bit of experience with battle apparition. "They really need to start teaching apparition in schools," he murmurs. "It should be a required course."
"…ah," Graves says and folds his arms. "I agree with you there."
Newt nods and takes another sip of the whiskey before handing the bottle back. "Where are you stationed?"
"Nowhere yet," the man says and leans back a little. "From what I hear they're planning for a push, take back the river and the tower. We'll probably be taking part in that, once they got the plans cleared out."
Newt frowns a little at that – not at the words but at the delivery. It's… vaguely familiar. The oh so casual mention, the slight pride it's being spoken with and of course the disregard of sharing of what should by all rights be fairly sensitive information. He'd seen Theseus talk exactly like that, when he was carefully trying to plant information in the right ear.
Newt glances at Graves and then the camp. Well he was sitting apart from everyone and his earlier ruminations might look like silent observation. And he was… the only survivor of what was basically a massacre – and that was never not slightest bit suspicious.
"Right," Newt says and narrows his eyes a little, wondering what to do with the knowledge that this man thought he might be a spy.
"What about you?" Graves asks. "Have you been re-assigned yet?"
"Not yet," Newt answers vaguely and looks down at his hands, the blood under his fingernails. Mostly it wasn't his. It was his mount's. She'd been dead before she hit the ground - before he'd disapparated out and left her body and his fellow cavalrymen to their fates.
He doesn't think he can stomach another mount. Honestly, he isn't sure he can stomach another battle. What he wants to do the most is get up and just… walk away. Turn his back to this madness and just walk away, far away, to someplace with no people and no guns and no spell fire… and no dead birds.
Taking a breath Newt wipes a hand over his eyes and cheeks, probably only managing to make his face dirtier. His hands are still shaking. Maybe they will always shake now.
"You know what," Graves says and hands him the bottle. "You can have the rest of this."
"Sure?" Newt asks, even as he takes it. It's probably the only bottle of whiskey out of the officer's tent, and it's not as if he would turn something like it down.
"You can toast me good luck and long life," Graves says with a mirthless laugh and stands up. "I'll see you around, Newt."
Newt watches the American walk away, frowning a little as the man makes his way through the camp. Well, it wasn't exactly surprise. Newt had never been that good a company, and he's even less so now. Right now… he's a miserable wretch.
Not exactly unusual for him though, that.
Shaking his head, Newt lifts the bottle. "Good luck and long life, Percival Graves," he murmurs – but he drinks for the Hippogriffs.
Graves got off the Thestral with as much dignity as he could, straightening his coat as soon as his feet touched the ground. The beast scoffed at him and threw it's head back, neighing in that awful way Thestrals did – like their vocal chords were shredded.
"Yes, yes, you ugly brute – I'll get you something to eat," he muttered to it and then quickly decided against petting the damn thing when it bared it's skeletal teeth at him. "Well, if you want to be like that, I can just… not."
"Lieutenant Graves, sir?"
Running a hand through his hair, Graves looked up. The rest of the company were only landing now, but there were already people coming out of the camp to greet them. "Are you Lieutenant Graves?" one of them asks, a British man judging by the accent, peering at his insignias.
"Lieutenant Percival Graves of MACUSA's Eighty-one-Fourths Cavalry Company," Graves says and throws a salute along with it just for appearances. The man was young, probably new – those liked very much to be saluted and it never hurt to start on a good foot with the allied troops.
"Welcome to Camp Iron Gut sir," the young soldier says, quickly saluting as well. "Sir, they're waiting for you in the officer's tent."
Graves blinks at him and then frowns. "My Thestral needs looking after," he says slowly.
It's obvious the young man can't see the beast, his eyes sliding over it blindly. "Ah, um…" the young soldier fidgets, now embarrassed.
The war would fix that, Graves thinks grimly and shakes his head. "Either go get someone who's been here a little longer, or show me to the stables," he says, trying to make it as neutral as he can.
The young Brit still blushes, humiliated. "Yes, sir," he says, looks around wildly and then motions. "The stables are over here."
Graves nods, glancing back at his company. The others are landing now, wrangling their exhausted and irritated beasts as they do. His company, the Eighty-one-Fourths, is an complete Thestral Company – and to fit the image, they'd even been assigned black uniforms. It had been originally considered a tactical advantage originally, to use creatures that can only be seen under special circumstances… a sort of stealth company.
Problem is, the special circumstances tended to be every day occurrences in war zones and in the end, there isn't that much of an advantage to the Thestrals over any other flying mounts – aside from the fact that due to their skeletal structure they took less feeding than Hippogriffs or even Pegasi.
Shaking his head, Graves turns his attention to the task at hand – and then there's a shadow over head. The beast at his side recoils and cries out and Graves can just barely rein the creature in before he looks up.
It's a dragon coming, to a land.
It isn't the first time Graves has seen dragons. Every nation with a preserve had tried it, one time or another – to either breed or train or tame or just down right abuse the beasts into compliance to turn them into the Cavalry Of Tomorrow or whatever else the politicians were calling it now. Every time there was a major conflict someone new came up with it, with new justifications for the expenditure and time wasted.
These days, the reason was "…but what about those hellish Nomaj flying machines". Which, granted, was a very valid concern – it had even prompted the building of a whole new dragon preserve in New York where they were doing their damnest to breed a meek dragons. The last Graves heard, a Dragon Tamer had been killed in a unfortunate accident that "was in no way caused by the dragons".
Graves had seen the "accident site". It was rather scorch marked.
Still, the hope lives – not only in politicians but also in the minds of just about everyone who had never came into close contact with the beasts. The Camp Iron Gut is another place where they were to make ludicrous dreams true – and dragons tame.
"That's Kirmizi, sir," the young soldier at Graves' side says and he sounds a little awed. He really must be new to the Camp. "One of our younger males."
"They just let it fly around freely?" Graves asks with a worried scowl, watching it. It's one of the Turkish Ironbellies, judging by the armoured scales covered it's torso and running down it's body – they really do look like iron, they even have what look like streaks of rust in their edges, like armour left without maintenance too long. It's bigger than the dragons they work in back in New York – one of the larger breeds, he dare say.
"No, never, sir," the soldier says and points, his eyes shining. "Never without a rider."
Graves stares. Now that he looks, he can see the chains of a saddle around the creature's neck – he can see what looks like reins attached to the beast's horns. It's saddled. And there is indeed a man in the beast's back, standing there on stirrups and pulling with both arms at the reins.
The dragon lands behind the tents, but it's so large that Graves can easily see how the dragon immediately tries to throw the rider off, roaring and arching it's back like a angry cat – or a rodeo bull. The rider hands on, not only to the reins but a strap on the saddle and rides it out for a moment – but then he goes stumbling off and then -
Graves' lips tighten a little at the sudden flood of flames behind the tents, and he'd be running over already if it wasn't for the Thestral, wildly bucking and trying to get away, pulling with all of it's might against the reins he was holding. "Should we go help?" he asks sharply.
"Er," the young soldier says hesitantly, his eyes wide.
Impatient, Graves hands him the reins – and if the Thestral flies off, all the better. It would exhaust itself with another bout of flying and then come back, exhausted and hungry and meek as anything. In the deserts, here wasn't any other place for it to go, but back to the camp.
With that settled, Graves wasted no time running ahead and around the stable tents, to see the damage. There are people around the dragon there, crowding and keeping the fire from spreading with shields – and judging by the looks of their attire, dragon hide from head to toe, it's not anything new. The tents and stables look to be fireproof as well, though it was well documented that there was no fireproof charm that could stand against dragonfire for long.
Graves hesitates – despite all of the fire and the enormous well of heat radiating from the landing ground, now turned into a complete fire storm, the dragon tamers seem to have the situation in hand. The only problem is – the dragon is neither calming down nor running out of breath.
Maybe a bit of water would do it good…
Before he can decide on meddling or keeping to himself, he sees a shape in the blaze – a human shape, braving into the flames. Moment later there is the strangest sound – a dragon, hiccupping. The outpour of flames flutters and, eventually, dies out.
Everything smokes and fizzles with heat and the sun seems even hotter than before. The ground around the Ironbelly is scorched and the air flickers with heath haze – but he can still see the man, by the dragon's head. He has one elbow in the dragon's neck, pressing against it's wind pipe, and the other is on the dragon's horn, pressing down.
"I got him," the man shouts, "I got him!"
"You okay, English?" one of the locals shouts out in heavy accents.
The lunatic man with a dragon in a strangle hold throws back a grin. "Wouldn't say no to a drink."
Graves stares with surprise. The man, with deeply tanned skin and freckles heavy and pronounced on his skin, looks vaguely familiar. The familiarity grows only worse when the man wrenches back the dragon hire hood and sweaty ginger hair spills out over his forehead, to be pushed back by a hasty, gloved hand.
Graves folds his arms, unable to shake the familiarity. doesn't know that many ginger English wizards – only the one, really, and this man is most definitely not Theseus. But he can't shake the feeling he's seen the man before.
The dragon groans under the man and the ginger Brit shushes it, a wild, manic grin on his face. "Now that was bracing, wasn't it, Kirmizi? A nice bit of flying there…" The dragon growls and spits out a tiny trickle of fire at the man and he laughs in apparent delight.
Graves shakes his head and then looks at the nervous young soldier who had, against all odds, managed to keep his Thestral from flying off. "Um, sir," the young man says. "They really are waiting for you in the officer's tent, so if you please come this way, sir…"
Graves hesitates, looking at the dragon – whose lunatic rider is now all but crooning at it. Then, somewhat reluctant, he turns away.
If they had managed to master dragon taming – and start on the long dreamed dragon riding here… it would change the entire course of the war.
Newt hung his head under the fountain, thanking his lucky stars not for the first time that Camp Iron Gut was a full wizard camp. On mixed camps, visible charms naturally weren't allowed – but on full wizard camps, they had infinite water fountains and thank heavens.
He didn't think he could manage it, in the scorching east, without the fountains. Especially so considering what they were working with.
Releasing a sigh as the water ran through his hair, washing away the sweat and sooty grime, Newt didn't notice the wizard watching him until he cleared his throat. "I see you didn't throw yourself at your own wand."
Newt's head jerked up with surprise and he banged it against the stone dragon head, hissing in pain. Quickly leaning away from the water he looked up with pain bleary eyes - the man was smirking at him. "Do I know you?" Newt asks, frowning.
"Belgium about half a year ago," the man says and folds his arms, leaning on the side of the fountain. "Last I saw you, you were about to drown yourself in bad whiskey. Newt, right?"
"Excuse me?" Newt says and straightens up, his spine cracking slightly. He winces and arches his back a little to clear the kinks there – dragon riding, very bad on the old back. "Belgium you say," he mutters and rubs at his back.
He doesn't remember that much of his last couple of months of Belgium to be honest. They rather blurred together – with only flashes of sobriety when ever he had some cause to try and make himself presentable, which had been few and far between. Had Theseus not dragged him off to Turkey, he probably would still be at that damn whiskey bottle.
Ah.
"Did you know," Newt says, not meeting the man's eye. "There was an infinite charm on that bottle you gave me."
The dark haired man blinks. "Well that explains the unholy howl confiscating it caused," he murmurs and frowns, looking at him more curiously now.
Newt says nothing, running his hands through his wet hair and pushing it off his face, the refreshed feeling fading quickly. "So, what brings you to Camp Iron Gut, Mr…" he trails off and frowns. "I'm sorry, I've completely forgotten your name."
"Percival Graves," the man says and shakes his head. "I saw you flying the dragon there. You really control that beast?"
For given value of control, Newt muses privately and reaches out to get handful of water to splash on his face, a easy excuse to keep from meeting the man's eyes. "If you saw me flying then you know the answer," he says.
They've strictly forbidden him, or anyone else in the business of the dragon taming, from releasing the actual results of their tests and experiments. Bad for the war effort, to spread around the increasingly grim facts. Better for the foreign officers and dignitaries to see them in the business of flying and then have them draw their own conclusions.
And then throw their gold at project which, really, had no hope of ever succeeding.
"I saw a dragon landing with you on it's back and then I saw it throw you off before it did it's very best to try and kill everyone near," Graves says, and Newt has really been in this camp for too long because it sounds like iron in his voice. "How much control do you actually have over the thing?"
Newt doesn't answer, splashing his face again instead, before dipping lower to drink. Graves waits, impatient and increasingly annoyed with him, and Newt wishes someone would just call the man away already. He usually isn't allowed to interact with outsiders here. He isn't good enough a liar to do the propaganda bit, so, usually, people were kept from talking with him.
No one is calling Graves away though, and Newt is left squirming silently under his gaze, trying to think of an escape.
"Fine," Graves says after a moment. "Is there anything you actually can tell me about the dragons? We are here as an ally – we're here to bolster the defences in light of your… successes here."
Newt thinks about it. "You and your fellows should keep clear of the dragons," he says finally.
"Obviously," the man says flatly and then rolls his eyes as Newt offers him an awkward, uneasy smile. "Never mind then," the man mutters and pushes away from the fountain. "Is there a place to get food around here?"
"Well… yes," Newt says slowly.
Graves gives him an impatient look. "And can you show me where it is?" he asks, pronouncing every word carefully.
"Um," Newt answers, leaning back suspiciously. "Why?"
"Because obviously I am going to grill you for information, why do you think?" the man says flatly and then lets out a small laugh at the way Newt recoils. "You're the only other man I know in this camp aside from my company and my company I know so well that they bore me to tears. So please, Newt, would you do me the pleasure of leading me to the food?"
Newt eyes him for a moment. "I probably shouldn't."
"You probably shouldn't be riding dragons either," Graves says and takes a few steps away. "Well?"
He really shouldn't, but… "It's the other way," Newt says and points.
"Well now I know that, thank you," Graves says while turning without a pause. "Coming?"