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poppiesforthirteen · 2 years

Text

in all its pulsing quiet

a eulogy.

tags: companion death, regeneration, writing exercises

—

"i always knew it would end like this," the doctor admits. their mouth tastes like the ash that settles into anything it can find. soon, this place will be unrecognizable, unknown. the doctor will recognize it, of course, but that's only because they saw the wreckage before they witnessed the fall.

"did you know?"

she doesn't answer. her eyes are shut, were shut by a kind person the doctor is finding harder and harder to remember. her skin is pale, still warm, or warm again. the doctor's hands are twitching. it's beginning.

"i did. first thing i saw you. and i wanted to stop you, but she wouldn't let me" —the tardis is at the other side of the battlefield. it couldn't have ended any other way—"because she liked you. doesn't happen often."

light, like liquid gold, snakes through the doctor's veins. it's beginning.

"and you loved it all. i didn't—" they sigh and a cloud of carbon dioxide pushes the ash further before it spirals back, coating their tongue. her skin is pale, ashy. an ending, a beginning. "who could have stopped you, once you set your mind to something?"

the sky is dark. the doctor can still see the look on her face the first time she saw the stars in all their beauty, mesmerized, the light of nebulae illuminating her eyes.

"i'm sorry." they swallow. "not that it makes a difference, but i am. i'm so sorry; i—"

it hits them, all at once.

"i won't be me anymore, and you won't be here to see it. it's already starting"—the light creeps upwards, the energy, burning the cells along its way, rebuilding—"and i can't show you." it hurts. the doctor can't afford to flinch at pain; they don't want to flinch; they want to run.

they lean back, next to her, in the middle of all the bodies, as new life fills them. not erupting, not yet; there's been enough erupting here. the doctor's lungs fill with it, a beat of drowning in light. a beat of staring into an eclipse and feeling a burn without shying away. a third beat, and another.

new life, from death.

neurons fire; they're reshaping. they can't stop it now. have they ever been able to recover a body? has there ever been something to save?

"i will miss you. i know you doubt—doubted it, but in time and space there'll never be someone like you again." the doctor is feverish—it feels warm, indulgent, to sit and talk. taking two sweets from the jar after never being allowed even one. their hearts beat faster, try to rid themselves of the sticky light feeding into them and changing them to the unrecognizable. time lords regenerate, but their bodies resist it with all their might.

they lose, in the end. change. become new. die, and with it, create life.

the doctor never really found out what she was running from. they know what they were running from, but something about her was always a mystery. it's always the same: mundanity, grief or helplessness.

is it still grief if the part of them that dies is born anew? is it grief if they can't remember the death that created them?

they would compare themselves to a phoenix, but they haven't earned that honour. regeneration isn't purifying flame—it's a book burning of their past and ashes set free in the air to stick to everything they touch.

they take her hand and it burns them. it burns her, actually, but she isn't the one in flames and she isn't the one about to rise from ash. they kiss her knuckles. it always made her smile.

if she died with a smile on her face, the doctor was too late to see it.

it feels wrong to take her with them, like plucking a flower after its bloom or burning a field of them only to lose in the end. the doctor would like to think of themselves as purifying. they know they're polluting instead.

it's begun, and they're in the middle of it. they can't hold out forever.

"thank you." they let go of her hand. it drops unceremoniously. it's too late for purifying flame, for saving grace. it would have singed her anyway.

the doctor is alone, surrounded. they're full. they're new.

starting anew. new life. new energy.

they have to leave her behind. if only they didn't take so much.

—

title is from bluets by maggie nelson; this was inspired by a post from rearranging-deck-chairs and rowanthestrange - both these and the ao3 link will be in the notes

#doctor who #doctor who fanfic #hm. don't know how to tag this #poppy scribbles #🥀#in all its pulsing quiet

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words-writ-in-starlight · 4 years

Note

JEAN/SCOTT FOR THE MEME PLEASE. if i'm allowed to send multiple i WILL be asking about other fandoms later but like. I LOVE THE KIDS.

The kids!!!!!! This turned into kind of the Jean hour. Please enjoy this puree of Comics I Enjoy, ft exactly nothing from the comics of the last twenty to thirty years.

Headcanon

This is actually straight up comic canon, but I love it so much that I have to expand on it a little. In that...niche, that plateau, when Jean is Phoenix but hasn’t quite tipped over the event horizon of power, she becomes the only person who’s seen Scott’s eyes since he first gained his powers. She’s never quite clear on what she’s doing, she doesn’t know and has an alarming thought that she might be in his brain far more literally than usual, but he smiles at her thoughtlessly. Jean can feel that he’s a little dazed by the experience, he touches her face with poorly-concealed wonder, and then his hand lands in his hair and he says in delight, “Your hair actually is this color!”

“Of course it is,” Jean laughs, halfway to sitting in his lap with his glasses dangling from one hand. “What, did you think ‘redhead’ was metaphorical?”

Scott flushes a little at the teasing, but he still has a lock of her hair between his fingers, turning it in the sunlight like he’s never seen it before. His glasses are as transparent as anyone can make them, but Jean knows that he still sees the world through a film of scarlet, half because of the quartz, half because of his own uncontrolled powers. It’s tricky to keep his optic blasts leashed, takes more of Jean’s concentration than she’d like, but it’s worth it to see the way he smiles at her, warm brown eyes crinkled at the corners.

Heartcanon

Jean writes Scott a letter, in the handful of hours that she’s--herself, that she is Jean Grey, who grew up in New York and likes riding in convertibles with the top down on the highway and sometimes makes herself peanut brittle at three in the morning so that she doesn’t have to share, and not Dark Phoenix, beautiful and terrible and hungry. Those hours of sanity were hard bought by the X-Men, by her family, and so she petitions Lilandra for paper and pen, and she writes Scott a letter. Jean already has plans for this trial by combat. She’s sorry about those plans. But she can feel the fire chewing at the base of her skull, she can taste the iron-sweetness of a dying star on her lips, she wants--

She’s got plans.

The letter isn’t long, not really. One page, unlined, with the polished cursive handwriting that Jean had drilled into her in middle school marching neatly across it. It’s all the things that anyone ever wants to say. I’m sorry, I wish it wasn’t like this, it’s not your fault. She underlines it’s not your fault until her pen rips through the paper and marks the glass-smooth desk underneath. Scott won’t believe her, but God, she wishes he would.

I could make him, Jean thinks idly, tapping her pen against the desk as she wonders what else there is to say. I could make him believe me. I could tell him, and explain, and he would understand, and then he would stay with me, I could make him stay with me, I could keep him forever, it wouldn’t matter what else I did, I could keep him--

Jean lets out a shaking breath that tastes like ash and hydrogen, and writes one more sentence.

I could never have lived with myself if I did anything else.

She signs it Love, forever, and writes her name for the last time.

Gutcanon

Before everything goes horribly wrong, Jean forges a mental rapport with Scott, a permanent link, one that will let her find him anywhere, let him call for her as easily as if she was in the next room. It’s what finally lets him drag her free of Mastermind’s illusion, of Jean as the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club, much too late to make a difference. It’s what lets him taste blood in his mouth when Jean’s control snaps and Phoenix’s teeth bite through her lip. It’s what lets him feel the billowing heat of the star she swallows down, and what lets him say with assurance that Phoenix cannot kill what Jean truly loves, and then--

And then she’s Jean again, herself, tearful and shaken by what she’s done, what she’s become, and the rapport is closed.

It stays closed until the last moment, when she’s already given away her plan and started her suicide, and then Jean’s mind comes crashing back like the tide held away through sheer force of will. It’s all fire and savage rage and joy and hunger and love, and Scott can’t tell what’s Jean and what’s Phoenix and what’s both--

The silence afterward is worse than anything he’s ever felt.

Junkcanon

Jean is the kind of person who leaves fights with a lot of left-over adrenaline and tends to crash like a motherfucker if she doesn’t handle it somehow. Scott is an extremely good sport about this, although he does enforce a very strict policy about even semi-public sex, so Jean has mastered dragging him into closets or bathrooms to kiss him dizzy before he can protest. She has a very fond memory of managing to pin him to the inside of a vault door in a bank, one time.

Also, telepathic sex! I have a lot of thoughts about it. Safewords are for people who don’t have a continuously open door into their partner’s brain. They do Stuff With Blindfolds because Scott finds it reassuring to know that he’s harmless. Jean enjoys sensation play because...*gestures to the entire Dark Phoenix saga* she just does, that shit’s canonical.

Spleencanon

I have to believe that Jean and Scott were able to raise Rachel for at least a couple years. Please let these two raise one of their kids. I understand that they’re the Skywalkers of the Marvel universe, but just let them! Raise! Their! Kids! In! Peace!

On a related note, AU where they find some assorted clones of Jean, courtesy of Sinister. They’re all half-grown, five girls with bright hair and hard eyes--the oldest is maybe twelve and the youngest can’t be more than two--and Scott and Jean stand there for a moment, looking over the lot of them.

“We’re not perfect,” the oldest says in a clear, cool voice. She reports her name to be Six. “So we weren’t finished. I was the closest--the most recent. So he put me in charge. Who are you?”

//I’m going to kill him,// Jean says silently, and Scott grabs her wrist before she can march back to Sinister and crush him.

“Let’s--okay,” Scott says. “Let’s slow down. I’m Cyclops. Scott. This is Jean.”

“We’re going to take you away from here,” Jean says, with the kind of absolute confidence that implies and god help you if you say we’re not, Scott Summers. “You’re Six--how many of you are there?”

“Just us,” one of the middle girls says in a shy whisper, the one holding the little girl on her hip. “I’m Four. One didn’t--we’re not sure. She didn’t make it.”

//All right,// Scott allows, on his private link with Jean. //Maybe we do kill Sinister, actually.//

#jean grey #scott summers #phoenix #the skywalkers of the marvel universe #xmen #starlight writes stuff #ask meme #headcanon meme #i promise i didn't mean to sideline scott so hard i really do love him #i just am...SUPER obsessed with jean as phoenix #everyone who wants to do phoenix as just Jean But Crazy is a coward and i will not be moved #make phoenix the star-swallowing heart of a nebula that never knew what it was to feel before it found jean #before it felt the strongest mind in the cosmos SCREAM for someone to save her family and answered #because how could it not? how could a thing that stirred itself out of stardust and fire not answer that kind of power?#it starts as magnet to magnet and it ends in horrible co-dependence and the entire time phoenix clutches at jean with claws of iron #and asks 'why? why are we not together? why do you fight me? why is the joy not here anymore?'#'what will bring us the joy again? the joy of flying and feeling the wind and loving the world?'#and then phoenix swallows a sun and all the people who love its light to make jean love it again and jean--#god help her jean almost does #THAT'S the shit i crave!#'phoenix is just jean but op' you are a bitch sir!#phoenix is an alien intelligence so far beyond fathoming that all jean can do it swallow it whole and wait for it to burn through her bones #jean grey knows the taste of a supernova and the sound of a planet in flames!#phoenix knows the feeling of gentle arms and stolen sweets!#these things are inimical to their respective natures and yet they are thoroughly intertwined!#a queue we will keep and our honor someday avenge #smallblueandloud #asked and answered

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atamascolily · 6 years

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A Natural History of Tatooine, part 17/?

Luke survives watching a holo film version of his "adventures"; and Tor makes some observations about Luke's struggles with the academy.

(Previous Installments)

Luke Skywalker and the Phoenix Women of Deshar Nebula turned out to be a mixed bag. It was less pornographic that Luke remembered, but it made up for it by being spectacularly boring, with plot holes big enough to hold a Star Destroyer. How do writers come up with this crap? Luke thought towards the end of a very long and mind-numbing action sequence involving the titular hero surrounded by hordes of the scantily clad Phoenix Women in a swimming pool ostensibly at the heart of a secret Imperial space station. Is this what people think I do? Is this what they want to see? Ugh.

He thought about the holo Brother Marco had mentioned earlier--the one with the red-haired dancing girl and the trained rancor. He hadn't heard of that one before, but at a guess, it was a fictional version of his time at Jabba's palace, framed as a romance. That might actually be interesting--maybe he should ask Brother Marco for the title--

He wondered if the actress resembled Mara or not. She, too, had been at Jabba's Palace at the same time, undercover as a dancing girl and on a mission from the Emperor to kill him. It was just the sort of plot that the holos loved, and he wondered if the writers had even the slightest knowledge of the facts. He guessed not--ever since he and Mara had started working together, rumors had swirled of their romantic involvement. Teaming up to run the Jedi Academy and the Yavin hot springs resort had only fanned the flames.

It was bad enough when it was just Han and Leia teasing him in private about getting together with Mara, but to have a thousand different versions of it playing out in front of him in real time was jarring. Ever since the Mindor incident, he'd made a point of at least skimming the holos so he'd know what people were saying about him, but while there were a few funny moments here and there, mostly he found it depressing.

It had to be a coincidence if the actress in that film looked like Mara, he thought. It had to be-- yeah, right. Who was he kidding? Of course, she would look like Mara, at least as much as the actor in the title role resembled Luke.

"Psst," Tor whispered, poking him in the arm, jolting him out of his reverie. "Pay attention. This is the best part."

"Yeah, I'm a big fan of the ending myself," Luke deadpanned, as he watched a triumphant montage of a single X-wing fighter leading a trail of Phoenix Women through the stellar maze that entrapped them into the freedom of the galaxy at large. He had no idea how any of them could survive in the vacuum of space without protection, but this wasn't the sort of film that concerned itself with such details.

The holo ended shortly thereafterwards with a dramatic orchestral flourish and the credits rolled. The two Brothers cheered. Luke got up and stretched, glancing over the balcony to the canyon below. Darkness was falling rapidly, and he eyed the growing shadows with unease. Night came earlier here in the canyon than it did on the plains, and he and Tor should probably get moving if they were going to get safely back to the ship before dark--

A booming howl echoed off the rock walls behind him, so loud and sudden he nearly jumped out of his skin as his danger instinct flared. He hadn't heard that sound in years, but he knew exactly what it meant: a canyon krayt on the prowl.

Well, so much for heading back to the ship now, Luke thought, his heart beating rapidly as the echoes faded away.

"What was that?" Tor asked in the silence. Brother Amaeo was rapidly rolling up the rope ladder and tying it securely to the stone railing along the balcony.

"Canyon krayt," Luke said. "I think we're going to have to rely on the hospitality of the Holy Brotherhood for a little longer."

"No problem at all!" Brother Marco said cheerfully, swinging a lit glowlamp to and fro and handing another one to Tor. "This often happens on holo nights, and I am well prepared."

He led the two of them further into the shelter carved out of the rock, past a makeshift kitchen and neatly organized pantry, around a corner to a little dead-end corridor, wide enough for four or five people to stretch out comfortably. There was no furniture, but there were piles of bantha skin rugs everywhere--more than enough for a warm and comfortable night in the desert.

"It's not fancy, but I trust it will do?" Brother Marco asked.

Luke and Tor both assured him it was perfectly acceptable, and the Brother left, mumbling something about evening prayers.

"We'll have to give them something for their hospitality," Luke said, as Marco's glowlamp vanished around the corner and they were alone.

"Already done," Tor said, setting down the glow lamp on an outcropping in the wall as she began to make a nest of bantha skins on the floor. "I gave them several hundred credits and a few ration bars. And I think I'll get them a copy of the latest Skywalker holo when we get back to the ship."

"The one about the dancing girl and the rancor?"

"That's the one."

Luke sighed. "Thanks, I think."

He set about arranging the bantha hides to suit himself, pausing now and again at the familiar smoky must that arose every time he disturbed them. The scent brought him back to his childhood, to infrequent trips to Anchorhead by speeder for supplies. Owen and Beru hadn't owned any banthas, but they were a relatively common sight in the towns and settlements, tied up outside of buildings while their owners went about their business in the marketplace. Six-year-old Luke had been fascinated with them, enough for Beru to make him a stuffed miniature version of his own out of a few scraps of hide. He'd named it Banny, and it was his favorite toy until he'd discovered krayt dragons, and after that, speeders and starships. Banny had been stuffed into the back of his closet and forgotten--and had probably burned along with everything else when the Imperial stormtroopers had shown up and slaughtered his family--

"You all right?" Tor's voice cut in. He looked up to see her leaning against the rock wall, scribbling furiously into a little notebook she'd secreted somewhere in her coveralls.

"It's... been an odd day, that's all," he said as he poked his bedding. Satisfied with its fluff and heft, he lay down and let himself relax. "What are you doing?"

"Field notes," Tor said. "I want to write everything down before I forget. Like you said, it's been an odd day. And it'll be good to know where we've been, in case I need to retrace my steps later."

There didn't seem to be anything to say to this, so he let it go and closed his eyes, concentrating on an old Jedi relaxation technique to calm his mind. He was surprised when she spoke again.

"You know, Skywalker, that was some amazing flying you did today. You should fly more often, you know. Get out, travel. Have you thought about that?"

"That was one reason I went out with Cray and Nichos on their errantry," he admitted. "I was restless - I wanted to be on the move. I wanted some action. Yoda always chided me for that, told me it wasn't the Jedi way, but I can't seem to get it out my system.

He hesitated, but decided that he'd come this far, so he might as well go all the way. "There's so much work to do on Yavin with the academy and I just... don't want to do any of it right now. I'm not much of an administrator or a bureaucrat. I'm just a pilot who got caught up in something bigger than myself, and I worry I can only be happy in the middle of a crisis. Only I know too much to go back to shooting at the enemy and following orders the way I used to."

There was a long pause as Tor processed this. "You know, Yoda may have been wrong," she said at last. "Or at least not entirely right. There are trees that move. They know when to be rooted and they know when to move."

"I've never seen a tree move," Luke protested, propping himself up on one elbow as he turned to face her. Illuminated only by the pale green glow, her dark hair and skin blended in with the rock around them, as if she'd been swallowed by the earth itself.

"Well, you'd be surprised, it happens more than you'd think," Tor said, as her voice broke the illusion and he could make out her form in the shadows again. "Anyway, my point is that there are different ways of being for everything, and I don't see why that wouldn't be true for Jedi. Yoda favored one way: the slow, the calm, the steady, the constant. But you are a different person, and you need different things. It's not wrong to love adventure, crave excitement, I think. As long as you don't let those desires get away from you, and steer you away from doing what's right, I don't see what the problem is."

"But it's not the Jedi way--" Luke started.

"Well, I can't speak to that part. I don't know what the Jedi way is--and neither, I think, do you, or else you wouldn't be so agitated about it. All I know is that when there's a big disturbance--say, a landslide in the mountains or a forest fire in the Yavin jungle--the plants that initially re-colonize the site aren't the same species you find in a mature forest. It takes a different set of skills to find roots in a rocky and barren place, to thrive out in the open exposed to the elements. These colonizers create the shade and shelter for other plants to grow, and in time, a forest emerges--different from what was, but still beautiful and complete in its own way. Different plants emerge at different stages and need different things, but I don't know if I would consider certain kinds to be fundamentally better than others, at least on an objective level."

"Is there a point to this?" She'd lost him with the botanical metaphor.

"Only that the skills it takes to be a pioneer and break new ground may be different from the skills it takes to follow in the footsteps of a well-trodden path. And you might not have to choose between your happiness and your work, especially as others emerge to take over."

"But I still want to be involved--" Luke started.

"It's just something to think about, all right? And maybe ease up on yourself a little. If you want to fly, you can fly. You just have to find a way to make it work, that's all."

"All right," he said, grateful for the chance to change the subject. He didn't want to admit how uncomfortable he felt right now. "In the morning, I'll climb up to the top of the canyon and take a look around. The krayts should be long gone by then and so should any pursuit. We ought to be able to continue on our way without incident. From the sound of it, the local crime boss just wanted to squeeze us for some easy credits. Probably some Hutt who muscled in here after Jabba died."

"I hate Hutts," Tor said. "They ruined their own homeworld and think they can pull the same trick elsewhere. As soon as they finish with Nal Hutta, they'll be off to find another planet and repeat the whole business."

"Not that there's much of this planet to degrade," Luke said, rolling over on his back and staring up at the ceiling.

"You'd be surprised. Compared to Nal Hutta, this is paradise," Tor said. "At least you can walk around in the open air without suffocating from the toxic gases."

"I guess." He'd been to Nar Shaddaa once on a very memorable occasion, but they hadn't lingered long enough to sightsee, let alone make it down to the planet.

"Speaking of which, Skywalker, I believe there's a story you need to continue," Tor said. She flicked off the glowlamp, plunging them into darkness.

Luke groaned inwardly, realizing he should have seen this one coming. He was equally surprised to realize he was looking forward to it, and that the resistance that had overwhelmed him earlier in the day was oddly absent.

"All right," he agreed, making himself as comfortable as he could in his makeshift bed. "Where was I? Oh, right, Cray and Nichos's memorial service..."

[[Author's Note: Here endeth Chapter Three!]]

#star wars #my fanfiction #fanfic updates #a natural history of tatooine

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hamelin-born · 6 years

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For @elenothar, who requested ‘Graves and a [redacted for story purposes]’. Which, to be perfectly honest, stewed in my brain for a few days as I tried to link the two together - only to be inspired when I accidentally stumbled into the ‘His Dark Materials’ section of AO3.

Author’s Notes: Officially Not Mine. Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them is Not Mine. His Dark Materials is Not Mine. This is also a fusion between His Dark Materials and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them - namely, the concept of dæmons. Might be a bit OOC, but - well, it was written in something of a hurry, rather late at night.

Accretion

They found Percival Graves in the cellar.

Seraphina is quite sure that Grindelwald’s choice of the aforementioned location was no accident. The man was meticulous to the extreme - look. He was saying - not to her, but to the man he had captured. Captured and held in his own home, what should have been Percival’s seat of power - it was insult piled on insult, deliberately designed to further denigrate his victim.

Not that he had needed to, by the end.

Seraphina was there when they broke down the cellar door. She knows full well that by the end - by the end, Percival would have been unable to appreciate the subtleties of the insult.

She will remember Percival as he was. That is her promise to herself. She will remember her friend - who laughed with her over arithmancy equations and stood by her at her wedding, who kept her stocked with chocolate and firewhisky through her divorce. She will not allow herself to equate what - what they found in a cellar that stank of piss and shit and rotted flesh with her friend. He’s more then what a sociopathic madman did to him.

Percival Graves is her friend.

Seraphina shivers, fingers running down the slick glide of Oraculum’s scales as the brightly colored viper curls around her wrist.

Dindrane was Oraculum’s friend. Once.

She doesn’t know if her friend’s soul wants anything to do with her.

Tina’s heard the rumors. She doesn’t need to.

She was there when they carried Director Graves from the cellar, shouting, screaming for a healer, any healer, now! She was there when the mediwitches and mediwizards descended in a rushing horde.

She was there, when they opened the door, and for a long, long moment her brain simply could not comprehend the sight before her eyes.

That can’t be a person. Bones don’t bend like that. That was her response, in the split second before she realized what was in front of her. When she realized she could see bone.

She could see bone. She could see dried blood, and rotting flesh and swollen limbs and burns cuts lashes spellfire maggots no -

Percival Graves is expected to make a full recovery. Physically, at any rate. Mentally, no one knows. Especially with his dæmon’s - condition.

He wouldn’t let go of her. Tina knows that much to be true - Dindrane had been clutched to the Director’s chest with a strength that would have killed a flesh-and-blood entity; the healers had had to do everything short of literally breaking his bones in an attempt to make him loosen his hold. A dead man’s hold - no one had said that, but they’d all thought it.

As bad as Director Graves’ condition had been, Tina knows that it is his dæmon who will haunt her nightmares.

Lupercus nuzzles comfortingly at her side. Tina shivers, resting a hand on the wolfhound’s head.

Lupercus and Dindrane had never been particularly close, but even Tina had admired the eagle that could have been a mirror replica of it’s counterpart in the Great Seal of the United States of America. Dindrane - recruits whispered that the bald eagle could see everything. Especially the clumsy habits of new hires; there were rumors that Dindrane’s unblinking gaze was a particularly effective assist in interrogations.

She had been powerful and beautiful, a badge of honor, and she -

Percival Graves had been found clutching what might have been an eagle. The most that could be said about it was that it was bird-like. Feathers plucked, broken wings so much char, beak shattered, talons ripped from her feet -

And for all the qualities Grindelwald’s nameless wolf-dæmon possessed, opposable fingers were not among them. That amount of damage - that kind of damage - would have had to have been delivered by human hands.

Tina wanted to vomit. Wanted to cry and scream and shout at the taboo of it - there was a word that no one dared share, one that hovered, unsaid, in the air between them. There was a word for those that forced themselves upon others.

And there had been one last thing.

Dindrane‘s proportions hadn’t been anything near to those of an eagle. Not anymore.

Re-Settling after a traumatic event wasn’t entirely unknown.

Newt had even seen it before - in the War, and during the aftermath. Strange, what people discovered themselves to be on the battlefield, when they found themselves doing things and being things they’d never thought themselves capable of. Newt had seen monkeys turn to butterflies, and leopards shift to wolves - not often, but he’d seen.

Axolotl huffed behind him, a laugh that held nothing of humor; Newt ignored her as he bent over the prone body of the other man.

Right. The point was that a settled dæmon re-settling into an entirely new form was - not common, but not unheard of. The problem, however, appeared to be that no one could figure out just what had happened to Director Graves’ soul. Or, more precisely, just what shape his dæmon had taken for her own. Harder still to tell when the small crushed form was swathed in bandages and smeared with salves.

Until someone, apparently, had remembered that Newt was, in fact, a licensed magizoologist. With extreme familiarity with - quite a vast array of animals, in various conditions ranging from healthy to - not healthy. The latter far more often then he’d prefer, personally, but - well.

“She’s not an eagle.” Newt murmured softly, eyes tracing the arch of one wing. “The wings are all wrong - “ He frowned slightly. “Too small as well. Too small by far.” There was a shiver to one side as Tina clasped her hands together; Newt shot her a quick, apologetic wince before returning his eyes to the devastatingly still form.

The frown deepened as Newt mentally ran through a list of the more common avians - raven, crow, sparrow, falcon, eagle, bluejay, chicken, pheasant - no, no, no, and no. The size was wrong, proportions didn’t match, the angles were off -

“I’ve seen this kind of bird before.” He had. He had, he knew he had. But - where? Axolotl was a firm, steadying presence at his side, and - his own dæmon. Something tickled the edge of his mind. Axolotl was to him as Percival’s unnamed dæmon (really, no one had bothered to introduce her) was to him. Yes, there was the obvious, but there was something more. Something about the specifics of his and Axolotl’s interrelationship was mirrored in Graves’ own connection to his soul, and -

Oh.

Newt stared at the body sleeping in the hospital bed in outright wonder. “Oh.” The words were tiny, seeming to come from a long, long way away.

“Newt?” Tina was at his side. “Do you - what is she, Newt? What - “ and he could hear her swallow. “What’s happened?”

“I - “ Newt plunged a hand in his pocket, searching frantically for paper, for a quill, for - he had to write this down. He had to make notes he had to take so many observations. “It’s incredible.” Axolotl was shimmering forward, her own wings half-raised - Tina shrank back instinctively as his dæmon shoved past her to stare greedily at the prone patient. “I must take notes, I didn’t think this was possible, I -” Newt’s head snapped up, hand stretching out in a futile gesture of warding. “Axolotl, don’t - “

A horned head sank; Newt watched, his mouth dropping, as the Common Welsh Green’s snout brushed, with utmost delicacy, against a small form wreathed in bandages.

Fire exploded into being; the heat hit them like an eruption as the sudden light scalded their eyes - they might as well have tried looking into the sun. Newt was dimly aware of an alarm ringing in the background, the frantic rush of feet and the cries of startled magicians - “Tina, don’t!”

Newt grabbed Tina, jerking her away and curtailing her instinctive lunge towards the hospital bed. “You can’t!”

“Newt, let me go he’s burning let me go!”

“No! You can’t interrupt!”

The flame billowed higher, and for one split-second his own dæmon was outlined in incandescence - dragons had an extremely high heat tolerance, Newt reminded himself. He wasn’t worried.

He wasn’t - all of his attention was fixed on the shape moving in the heart of the fire. On the song rising through the air - rusty and unfamiliar, but growing in strength and surety with every moment until the melody was a scream of joyous triumph.

The phoenix settled into place, plumage shining the red and gold and glory of a living flame.

Dindrane chirped, head tilting to the side as she stared curiously at the strange dragon.

Percival Graves opened his eyes.

“For a star to be born, there is one thing that must happen: a gaseous nebula must collapse. So collapse. Crumble. This is not your destruction. This is your birth.” - Zoe Skylar.

Newt’s choice of daemon was inspired by prettybirdy979's "What is Essential is Invisible to the Eye".

#fantastic beasts and where to find them #percival graves #newt scamander #fanfic #my fic

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