Before we begin, I would like to formally apologize to one Percival Graves. Sorry man.
5. “You’re burning up.”
TW for like, all the torture and injuries, and Grindelwald being scary.
The fic isn’t done – I have more I want to write, and the completed version will be posted on AO3. In the meantime, enjoy ❤
He loses count of the blows, after a while. He doesn’t know what he did, what someone else did, to make Grindelwald so wrathful. His captor’s voice rises like a tempest around him, thick with German frost. He tosses Percival about like a ragdoll. Bones snap, wounds bleed anew. Percival howls in pain.
It is not enough to make him stop, not enough to bury the anger boiling beneath his skin. Percival’s screaming grates on his nerves, so he silences him with a well placed curse that cuts off Percival’s tongue cleanly. The man gurgles and chokes, spitting it back out, rivers of blood flowing down his chin. Lying on his side, holding his right arm close to his chest, he looks up at Grindelwald. There is fear in his eyes, and more than fear – bone deep terror. He thinks he is going to die. He cannot even plea for his life anymore. His body is wracked by tremors, and there is not a single inch of his skin which isn’t covered in deep, purpling bruises. One of his eyes is swollen shut, his hair clings to his face, toenails are missing from his feet. Vine are wrapped around his ankles, with the sole purpose of eating away Percival’s skin if he so much as thinks about escaping. Quite useful, these ones.
The man beneath him is disgusting. Grindelwald turns him on his back like he would a beetle, and blood floods Percival’s throat. Grindelwald idly presses his foot down on Percival’s neck, and his body seizes as his eyes roll back in their sockets.
Grindelwald sighs. With a flick of his wand, he cauterizes the wound inside Percival’s mouth, and watches, feet back on either side of Percival’s waist, as the man rolls over to cough up blood, desperately trying to breathe. Weak, pathetic, and not even pretty anymore. Grindelwald feels oddly detached from the situation. Even when Percival lifts a shaking hand to weakly hold onto the hem of his own coat, begging for mercy with gestures rather than words, Grindelwald only stares at him as though he was God, deciding whether or not to give Percival a chance at purgatory.
This is a waste of time. Grindelwald disapparates, half aware of the broken sob he leaves behind, his mind already preoccupied with matters others than the life of one fallen man.
–
He does not come back until a couple of days. Percival is not fed, but it is nothing his prisoner isn’t used to. The frailer he is kept, the better Grindelwald can sleep. As long as he does not die, he can handle torment.
When he appears in front of Percival, it is with the sole intent to curse him into oblivion again. His temper is at its worst; not as bad as his last visit, but flaring all the same. Power sizzles and boils beneath his skin, demanding an outlet. Percival was kind enough to provide that in the months since his capture. Before him, it used to be some muggles drunkards he found in the dead of night who no one would mourn. Percival is much the same in that regards. No one cares about him.
He expects to find Graves sleeping in a corner, curled in on himself, exhausted but unable to find the respite of sleep for fear of Grindelwald’s return. He expects to find him sitting, or standing. He’d been standing before, before Grindelwald used the vines, when he’d had enough strength to pace inside these four walls and spit and snarl at him with all the fierceness of an untamed creature. He’d lasted four days before resorting to begging and crying, which was more than Grindelwald could say for any of the people who were unlucky enough to hold his interest. They usually pissed themselves after twenty minutes, and broke in half after two hours.
Percival had been better. But in the end, he was just as human and useless as the rest of them.
Most of the time when he arrived, Percival was sitting. Legs outstretched in front of him, his back against the wall, and he’d raise tired eyes at Grindelwald when he saw him, before hanging his head in defeat. Grindelwald could almost hear his teeth shattering as he braced himself for the pain. He was never ready enough – no one could be. Grindelwald was a creative man, and he applied that skill to everything he did, including torture. Albus had once admired that about him.
Thinking about Albus only worsens his temper. His feet find solid ground, and he materializes inside Percival’s room with a blood boiling curse on the tip of his tongue.
He did not expect, upon seeking Percival, that he would find him in the exact same position as when he’d left him. Turned on his side, hugging himself and lying in a pool of blood. His face a ghastly white sheen, his long hair fanned around him, his eyes closed.
Was he dead? Grindelwald stills. Was he?
“Oh no, no, no. That won’t do.”
He crouches down, placing two of his fingers over Percival’s pulse point. The man moans weakly, and Grindelwald can feel it – extremely faint, and slow, but alive all the same. Percival is on the brink of death. Perhaps he’d met Her already. Perhaps they were having a little chat, figuring out whether or not Percival felt ready to die. But – he was not allowed. Gellert had use for him, still.
He kisses him, using a spell to suffuse Percival with his own magic. His skin is so thin Grindelwald can see the light as it travels through his body, and suddenly Percival surges upright, coughing up dried blood again, his pulse fluttering beneath Gellert’s finger.
“Anapneo.”
Percival heaves a breath, his chest rising and falling brusquely like that of a resurrected man. It is the first time, Gellert thinks, that he gives life instead of taking it. But Percival is special to him, much more useful than any person he has taken so far. He needs him.
“Wanted to leave me, did you?”
Percival emits a noise akin to that of a wounded animal. At the sound of Gellert’s voice the tremors start again, and Gellert clicks his tongue in annoyance, forgetting for one second that Percival cannot speak.
He grips Percival’s jaw tightly, shaking him, and Percival doesn’t stop him. His eyes are glazed over, his skin clammy to the touch.
“My God, you’re burning up,” Grindelwald says.
He lets Percival fall. His head hits the stone with a crack, and he doesn’t move again. Each breath he takes is rattled with a wheeze, and Gellert curses under his breath. How annoying. He pokes Percival’s cheek, making his head loll this way and that. The man resembles more a puppet with cut strings, left dirty and abandoned in the back of some old antique shop rather than a living, breathing person. To think that he once held New York City in the palm of his hand. Grindelwald is too good at his craft.
He needs to decide. Should he leave Percival to his death, when – no. He rejects the thought as soon as it comes to mind with a scowl and a violent shake of his head. He needs Percival to help him with his plans. If nothing else, he needs the man’s body to use as relief in order to avoid killing people from his own office in a fit of anger, lest his disguise be discovered. He cannot be found out, not yet. Not when he hasn’t found the child. Not yet. He needs more time. He needs Percival at his side.
He clasps his hands together and the four walls of the makeshift prison crumble to dust. They are in Percival’s bedroom, and Grindelwald levitates the puppet to place him onto the bed covers, only just realizing the extent of his mistakes. Oozing wounds, broken bones and accumulated filth. It is no wonder the man is feverish. It is a wonder he survived so long. Gellert feels heated again, but it is at himself. No matter – he’ll take it out on a useless subordinate.
If Grindelwald knows how to inflict pain, he also knows precisely how to take it back. He knows how to vanquish each and every wound on Percival’s body until it is a blank canvas again, knows exactly how much pain a human being can bear before it is too much. He’d only lost his temper last time. It wouldn’t happen again.
A sleeve over his mouth to repel the foul odor, he cleans Percival’s wounds with a spell of his own volition. It makes Percival arch off the bed, mouth open on a scream. Crusted blood, pus and dirt are reduced to nothing but swollen tissues around gaping injuries. Slowly, painstakingly, Grindelwald repairs him, mending tissues and forging new skin to mask gruesomeness. By the time he is done, Percival’s body is transformed, topped with chains of angry white scars giving him new depths that Grindelwald maps out with his hands.
He puts Percival under a sleeping spell, insuring a painless process as he breaks, resets and heals each broken bone. Percival twitches and whimpers even asleep, and it makes Grindelwald smile.
By hand, he cleans Percival, scrubbing the sole of his feet with wet flannel, caressing each of his toes to give him new nails. He takes care of the man’s hairiness with a spell reserved for women; it’ll only get in the way of the healing. After the feet come the ankles; then the shins, calves, thighs, his ball and his cock, limp under Grindelwald’s eyes. He touches it idly, a burst of magic at the tip of his fingers to make Graves hard. He nods to himself and cancels the spell. At least that part of his prisoner is still functional.
He massages Graves’ hips, his waist, caresses his stomach. It makes him heave, and Grindelwald tuts in disapproval. He continues up his chest, down his arms. Percival’s hair is a lost cause, so Grindelwald shaves him there too, cutting the long strands short until there is nothing left. Once that is done, he waves his wand, and bandages slither around Percival’s body, enveloping each of his wounds in a tight embrace. They are as good as a healer’s would be. Grindelwald had to mend himself more times than he can count; he could even say, without a doubt, that Graves is in better care with him than he would be in a hospital.
He spells a few healing potions directly inside Percival’s stomach. Percival’s breathing has quieted down, and underneath all the blood and dirt, Grindelwald is reminded once again that he is a pretty man. The thinness of his ankles and wrists is worrying; Grindelwald compares his own hand to Percival’s, and finds he could easily break it again by gripping him too tightly. He adds nutritive potions to the man’s blood, transfigures a vase into a glass of water and fills it up.
Levitating Percival up once more, he changes the bed sheets before letting his new care down gently. He pulls a light blanket over him, and heightens the room’s temperature. He washes his own hands off of blood in the bathroom, wiping them with a white towel which he then throws in the trash. He changes his own clothes as well.
There is nothing to do but wait. A simple charm will inform him when Percival awakens; he suspects the both of them will not be able to have a talk until Percival is better, which –
Oh, right. They cannot have a talk, at all. Once again Grindelwald curses his own temper, before giving it a pause. He does not need Percival to be able to talk, to use him.
With one last look at his frail captive, Grindelwald diminishes the lights in the room, leaving only a few candles to illuminate it – almost as if he was at Percival’s deathbed. He smiles. Once Percival is better, he will use him once more. In the meantime, he has a life to live that is not his own.
Mercurial Tenacity 