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credere

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From:

yedinyy

"Yes," she nods. "You believe that you're someone else. Maybe these people actually exist maybe they don't."

From:

credere

Credence shakes his head, a tiny quick little jerk.

"I don't want him to exist. He could. He could do things, things other people couldn't do, so they. They took him." He swallows dryly; his throat feels scraped raw. "Needles in his veins, electric shocks, drills in the brainpan," not his word, but he can't stop talking, "made him hurt, made him stronger, so they could - aim and fire, like a gun, bang - "

He says it loud, too loud, and then startles himself back into silence.

From:

yedinyy

Oh-- she wants him in her arms already, she wants to tell him he's not a weapon anymore, that it's all fake, or he can believe it is anyway. But she's too afraid to startle him, so she asks him, in a pinched but calm voice:

"Can I come closer? Can I touch you? It's alright if you say no, Credence."

From:

credere

He looks up at her, and he's shivering, but his posture is already opening up as if he can't imagine anything better than in this moment to be touched.

"Yes," he says, and he can't draw the breath for another word, to say it's okay, to say please.

From:

yedinyy

She does, in that case, walking forward the few steps she needs to. She kneels down next to him and wraps both of her arms around his shoulders, pulling him up against her, and if he wants he can put his forehead in the crook of her neck.

"You're back to yourself now," she promises him, softly.

From:

credere

He does, burying his face against her, hiding himself. He breathes deep and the scent of her skin and clothes is familiar; she feels like safety, like normality, or at least as close to normality as he can possibly get here.

"I could hear them," he mumbles. "I could hear people's thoughts in their heads, like they were talking just to me, I could see it when they were hurting, nobody - nobody could hide anything away from me."

And he feels terrible, because it had been an awful burden then but he wishes he could still do it now. He wouldn't have to be afraid, he wouldn't have to wait for the moment that he'd be betrayed or used. He could just know, right away, who was being truly kind and who had some other agenda.

From:

yedinyy

She puts a hand on the back of his head, fingers sliding through his thick, dark hair. She's rocking him just a little, almost instinctive after so many nights with her actual children.

"Was that part-- knowing people, was it good or bad?"

Because she knows him, and there's something in his voice-

From:

credere

"I - he knew when people were lying to him," he says wretchedly. "It was easy, it was just like...reading a page in a book. But I can't. I can't. When people say things to me, do things - I don't know why."

From:

yedinyy

"No one ever really knows," she promises him, pressing her cheek against the top of his head, encouraging him to keep talking. "But it makes you worry terribly, doesn't it?"

From:

credere

Credence doesn't answer - he doesn't need to - he just looks up at her, his tired eyes heavy-lidded and dark.

"Nobody does?"

He doesn't know what to do with that. Elizabeth and Rey and Mr Shelby, even Mr Scamander and Quentin, and Mr Graves before them: they always seem so sure. Compared to him.

From:

yedinyy

"No," she agrees, shaking her head. She brushes some hair out of his eyes, and gives him such a sympathetic look.

"I'm worried so often. Back home, here, anywhere. I don't remember a time when I didn't."

From:

credere

"Oh," he says, uselessly. It feels like a little flicker of hope being extinguished; where before he'd thought that knowing who to trust and who to believe was a skill he could learn somehow, he now has to accept that even his most seemingly confident friends are just as lost as he is? It brings him closer to them, perhaps, but not in a way he wants.

"I - I'm sorry. I used to...I used to believe everything Ma told me, almost everything, it was...easier."

And now the world feels huge and hopeless and like God isn't listening to him any more, and he has no idea who to put his faith in.

From:

yedinyy

"It's hard," she agrees, stroking his hair again. Her own hair frizzes a little around the part, something that's only clear when you're that close to her.

"But it's better to live a hard truth than an easy lie, isn't it?"

From:

credere

No, he wants to say. Not according to the evidence of his life so far.

He's at a crossroads right now. He could keep moving forwards, he could try to learn magic, he could take the inheritance that has been denied to him for so long. It seems like it's possible. But if he could go backwards, if he could crush the Obscurus under his breastbone and into his gut, if he could go back to his life of ignorance and obedience and abuse....

That would be very, very tempting, as well.

"I don't know," he confesses. "Ma'am, the - the breach, were you...?"

He doesn't know what to ask. Was she alright, was she hurt, was she anything like herself?

From:

yedinyy

"I was a smuggler," she says, not bothering to correct him when he calls her ma'am again. "I brought medicine and other important things to communities who needed them. It was an exciting life."

She was fine. Nothing like what he experienced.

From:

credere

He nods, visibly relieved.

"So you didn't -- " He halts himself, about to say something unnecessarily specific. "Nobody hurt you?"

From:

yedinyy

"I got into fights, but no one used me," she tells him. She got hurt, but no one hurt her like that.

From:

credere

"Good," he murmurs, "that's good. Fights with, um, other people? Other smugglers."

He knows it doesn't matter if Annie hurt her, neither of them were themselves, nobody can take the blame. He hates that he's even asking.

From:

yedinyy

"Other smugglers, the Alliance..."

She trails off, and proves her earlier words: she's worried now, suspicious now. Why is he asking her that?

From:

credere

But he's not meeting her eyes, because he knows he's not a good liar, and even worse when he's challenged.

"But you weren't hurt badly," he says, as if he's trying to underline it, like that's all that counts.

From:

yedinyy

"I wasn't hurt badly," she repeats, and then asks him, point blank: "Why are you asking me this, Credence?"

From:

credere

He fidgets.

"I....I found someone," he says quietly. "I don't want to say who it was. She...wanted to hurt a lot of people. It was all she wanted. It was all she could think about, it was - all the way through her, like she'd been - rewritten. She was hardly even a person any more."