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It’s the same indigo shard as it always was.
The same one Lucas had held onto when Newt got his letter from Epsilon, sealed with the signature wax seal to denote their Kingdom, their new “home.” The same one Lucas had discreetly pressed into his best friend’s hands, just as Newt used to do, on Newt’s first day of studies under the head researcher. The same one Lucas is holding out to him now, bound with string into a pendent.
It sparkles despite how faded the color has become and Newt can’t do anything but look at it’s owner.
Lucas. It’s always Lucas with him, isn’t it? He smiles, just as he always does, and his eyes are certain with something. With trust. And Newt doesn’t even deserve it.
Newt tightens his fist. “Lucas, I don’t think—”
“Put your trust in me, just as I have with you.” There’s a moment of silence and Newt looks away suddenly. His posture is stiff and he’s hardly holding himself together. There’s a string of thoughts, of things to say, of requests or alternate solutions, all interrupted like a blaring freight train when he catches the meek voice that picks up to his right—
“Please Newt?”
He makes that same small voice he makes when he’s trying to get Newt to do something for him.
Please Newt, can we go out and play for longer tomorrow?
Newt, won’t you take a day off from the flower shop for me?
Newt, please, won’t you give this a chance?
‘This.’ An attempt at sneaking into the Kingdom’s Royal Archives, won’t Newt love to give that a chance, Newt thinks, trying to ignore how he and Lucas are standing just a small ways away from the entrance to those very archives in question.
Newt catches sight of Lucas jutting his hand out a second time in his peripheral vision, the amethyst charm swinging from the motion. His hands tighten again.
“That amethyst shard is of no use to me.”
Lucas grins. “It’s a lucky amethyst shard.”
“I don’t believe in lucky charms.”
“Those words don’t belong to you.” And he’s right, isn’t he? Newt thinks back, another researcher under Epsilon—an intern, older in age and lower in rank—someone whose face Newt didn’t even care to remember after the things that he had said when he caught a glimpse of Lucas one day after Newt’s responsibilities in the royal laboratory had concluded. Newt remembers saying something, something probably unprofessional, before rushing Lucas home so that he wouldn’t get the chance to introduce himself.
Newt swings his head for the first time to look at Lucas, still able to make out the look on his face in the night. His grin has hardly disappeared and the moonlight is reflecting in his eyes as he looks back at him. His eyes are warm. “Take the charm. For me, Newt?”
Newt looks away as he snatches the pendent from Lucas’ grasps.
He does his best to ignore the giggles escaping Lucas’ mouth as he pulls it over his head.
“You frustrate me, immensely.”
“You love me.”
Two truths.
Newt crouches down and pulls Lucas down with him. “You wanted some crystals, right? For all of your skulk research? For—for the sake of everyone, right?” He tries not to think of what Epsilon had said yesterday about the death toll. 2500…
Lucas puts his hands down on Newt’s shoulders, looking at him earnestly. Right. Concentrate.
“My…friend—the one I told you about yesterday? The one at the vaults, I’ve got his—” Newt fumbles with his coat, the sound of metal hitting against itself before he pulls it out: A set of keys, bound by another metallic ring with distinct kingdom embellishes. It glints when Newt holds it between him and Lucas and Newt moves to mute the sound of the keys clinking against each other.
Lucas looks from the keys to Newt, determination taking over his eyes. “Okay. Okay, okay. Then we—we cross the courtyard, we break into the archives—”
“Cross into the back, use the key, get into the vault.” Newt can hear himself breathing, puffs of white smoke being let out every time he exhales.
“And then…we get my crystal. Easy as that.”
Newt also hears his own heart beating in his ears. “Yeah. Easy as that.”
One lie.
The courtyard in front of the Royal Archives is vast, but unobstructed, an easy path to cross over. Newt repeats the same reassurances that he had told Lucas yesterday: Everyone is asleep. Today is Beta’s funeral. All kingdom laborers and artisans were ordered to take off today. Why would anyone be out on a day like this?
When they arrive at the archives’ gates, Lucas spins to Newt. Newt tries to forget the smallest hint of anxiety that he had caught in his eyes as he fiddles with the keys, flicking between them before finding the one he needs, cleanly slotting them into keyhole and unlocking the door.
When Newt locks the door and turns around, Lucas is looking at him with a wild look, his smile increasingly contagious. He tries not to roll his eyes. Adrenaline junkie…
“Step one, complete.” He drops the keys into Lucas’ hands, smiling.
The archives are…extensive, to say the least, and Lucas runs through them like a child prancing about delightfully in a candy store. All the knowledge, from every field of the Kingdom’s Academia, from every corner of the Kingdom’s history all lies within the amalgamation of all the pages within the Royal Archives. Newt blows into his hands, trying to get the chills in his hands to disappear as he follows after Lucas.
If Newt had it his way, he could spend the rest of his days within the archives alone. Despite the privileges from being a researcher allowing him to access a restricted portion of the academic depository not seen by the public, even Newt hasn’t gotten time to properly peruse the shelves lined with books upon books of any topic that could possibly peak his interest. And neither has Lucas, obvious from the childlike wonder in his eyes.
Maybe another day.
Arriving at the end of the restricted section, Newt motions Lucas forwards. The crystals, he mouths, gesturing at the door dividing the vaults from the rest of the archives. Lucas nods, digging out the vault key before slotting it into the keyhole.
Newt can’t tell how much time passes before Lucas turns the key, immediate relief flooding his system when he hears the click from the door unlocking and the lack of immediate alarm bells.
And then Newt catches the expression on Lucas’ face, or rather the severe lack of one, as he stills in front of the vault doors. “Lucas, what’s—”
Lucas suddenly jumps into motion, immediately stumbling back from the vault doors. “Newt, I think we have to get—”
“Out of here? I don’t think so.”
Newt stills at the third voice ringing out from within the vault itself. It…can’t be…
The door swings wider, and Newt stands in horror as he catches a glimpse of the person inside.
Lucas looks at him, confused and desperate. “Newt, do you know this person?”
Newt forces himself to cough the words up. “That’s—that’s my—” Well, Newt doesn’t want to call him his friend anymore, now does he? “The person I was talking about! The person I—”
“'—Stole the vault keys from?’ Is that what you were going to say? Hm, Newt?”
Newt was paralyzed into place. “I—”
His “friend” takes a step closer. The fragments of corruption within the vault glow radioactively, a purple hue casting itself over the person Newt thought he used to know. “And to think! Epsilon’s newest and brightest apprentice? Betraying the kingdom? All while we suffer from the blows of the corruption? And on the day of Beta’s funeral no less! Have you no shame?”
There are two guards, Newt notices, now crawling out from the shadows deep within the archives and slowly making their way closer to the both of them. They have to get out of here.
Lucas is riling up for a fight when Newt starts looking for a way out of the archives. “You tipped off the guards?! What could you possibly gain from that?!”
“I’m just a concerned kingdom citizen! How could I rest easy when Newt approaches me with a treasonous plot such as this?” And then he fixes Newt with a smirk. “Although, when it comes to fields such as ours, I have everything to gain. You wouldn’t know anything of that though, would you, you rogue mad scientist?”
Lucas stills. “You tipped us off so you can steal Newt’s job?!”
The argument between the other two people become background noise when Newt spots his next best solution, a stairwell hidden off to the furthest side of the archives’ walls. The words on Newt’s tongue die when he turns around to grab onto Lucas and witnesses what happens next:
Lucas. Moving at full force. To pummel Newt’s supposed “friend” in the face.
Newt flinches at the distinct crack of bone when Lucas’ fist collides with the other’s nose. That’ll definitely hurt. A sentiment echoed by the immediate shriek and string of obscenities let out by the victim in question, although it was hard to differentiate from the vulgar words Lucas was yelling out in his own adrenaline-powered frenzy.
There was a smile itching to break out on Newt’s face, perhaps because of the weird sense of sentimentality in an act such as that, but there were also now incredibly alert guards rushing their way over to them, so Newt quickly clutches onto the wrist of his childhood best friend, pockets the crystals, and dashes for the stairwells.
“Traitors! He called us traitors! And not just that, but compared us to one of those…things, too! Can you believe that?” ‘The Corrupted,’ Newt completes in his head before flinching at the loud crash against the doors when Lucas unceremoniously obstructs the stairwell’s entrance, the guards banging aggressively from the other side. While they may be covered on this front, there’s more than one way they can get to the two of them.
Newt pulls at Lucas again by his wrists, careful not to trip at they climbed the stairs as quickly as they could. “Alpha isn’t like himself these days, that’s what I told you yesterday!” Newt heaves out in a rush of words between his gasping to catch his breath, and then cringes the smallest bit in his own insecurity. “How wrong even is he? They’re right, this is treason!”
“’Treason’ for the sake of everyone’s lives, Newt!” Lucas pulled his wrist back and takes a few steps back when they arrive at where the stairs lead to, a small spire with contents resembling that of a broom closet, with the notable addition of a window where Newt can spot a sea of figures halted there. Guards. Newt looks to him in a rush and is crushed by Lucas’ expression, conflicted as he stares back, flitting across both of his eyes as if he is trying to understand him. “I thought you understood this, Newt…”
Newt runs his hands over his face, trying to still the overwhelming emotions beginning to bubble in his chest. “Of course, I understand! But that doesn’t change the fact that there are—By the void, there are guards lines up outside this damn window for the both of us, never mind the ones down those stairs! Lucas, I just want for you to be safe.”
“Then, I’ll be safe! We’ll be safe! We’ll escape and everything will be fine!” Newt glances at the window when Lucas says this and doesn’t even bother to count the number of bodies out there, awaiting their capture, he just turns to friend and shakes his head with a look of regret that Lucas couldn’t even begin to decipher before digging into his coat. “I don’t think there’s a we in this anymore, Lucas…”
The sudden sound of shattering glass interrupts whatever Lucas was going to say, for when Newt opens his eyes, Lucas was no longer in his line of sight. And when Lucas opens his, Newt is stood right in front of him, smiling back at him with a look that doesn’t reach his despairing eyes. He mouths at him. Invisibility.
Newt pushes back when phantom limbs rush up to clutch at the collar of his clothes frustratingly. Even though he can’t exactly see Lucas, he’s still much too…close. He’s whispering at him angerly, desperately, hopelessly. “There was enough in this damn potion for the both of us, you-! you—!” And Newt fumbles around to place the corruption crystal into Lucas’ palms, still saying nothing. “Please, Newt—Newt, tell me you have another for yourself, please.”
Lucas continues pulling on his coat when Newt fumbles open the window, feeling the harsh winter wind blow back at him and causing a chill to run down his spine. “Newt, please, I can’t do this without you, please—”
Newt smiles at him remorsefully, running his palm over the corner of his Lucas’ eyes, wiping away the tears welling up in them just as he used to do when they were children in their village, when they had problems insurmountably smaller than this. “Run. If they get us both, then who will finish what you started…?”
Lucas is still shaking his head, holding onto him when Newt gently pushes at his shoulders out the window frame. The fall is by no means so far that he won’t survive it, but Lucas is still reeling, everything going too quickly for his mind to comprehend. “I can’t leave you behind—Newt, please, I—”
There’s a bang at the doors to the tower both him and Newt are in and he stills suddenly. Newt spins around, determined. “Lucas, go. You’re the better of the both of us…” And without room to complain, Newt pushes his dearest friend out the tower’s window, into a sea of guards that’ll never see nor capture him. Lucas catches only the barest final glimpse of his childhood friend before he sprints for his lives’ sake through the guards:
Newt, turning around and accepting his fate as the doors burst open.
The winters in the kingdom have always been harsh, and while Newt had his own experiences huddling between every blanket him and Lucas owned for whatever warmed they offered early into their lives in the kingdom, in their small shelter that didn’t hold much fortitude against the cold settling in, nothing compares to the permanence of the chill that grows underneath his skin as he sits alone in the Kingdom’s cells.
He’s as contorted in on himself as he can be, preserving whatever warmth his body offers and tries his best not to spiral into insanity, figuratively and literally. The dungeons are filled with a combination of both criminals and of…those folk. The people who’ve gone mad from the corruption, their minds either shattered or under its control. While Newt doesn’t exactly agree with the Kingdom’s handling of what seemingly appear to be innocent people coupled between those who are parasitically incapacitated and literal criminals, it’s not as if there is much he can do as he rots in a cell of his own.
These days, Newt’s sole comfort has been the only reminder of Lucas he has left of him, a tauntingly purple amethyst shard, still bound around his neck as it was the day he received it.
He doesn’t have flowers or any friend of his own to press petals into the palms of, so he has spent his days in the same repetitive pattern, rhythmically tracing the sharp edges, the grooves, and the imperfections until he has the feel memorized.
His days play out the same, quiet and to himself and his own mind’s antics for however long until they decide to finally free Newt from this…cage, and he would remain committed to this ‘schedule’ if it weren’t for the annoyance to his right.
Newt feels his eyebrows twitch when he hears another call of his name from the other side of his cell’s bars, running his thumb over a particular groove of the amethyst shard he held so hard onto. “Newt…do you seriously take me for a fool? I know better than everyone you are simply ignoring me.” Newt’s gaze flutters briefly to the side at the owner of the voice before returning back to his own two hands.
The Rat, as Newt has taken to calling him, rocks bandages over the bruises on his face and a particular broken nose gifted to him by a certain “rogue mad scientist” that Newt knows quite well. He looks (in complete honesty) absolutely ugly and ghastly, and if Newt were a worse man, he’d slam his skull against the bars just to see the him writhe in a pain rather then continue to persistently bother him. He’s been on and on for about twenty minutes now and Newt’s will to continue ignore him was growing dangerously worn, so much so that he might actually entertain a conversation if it means that he gets left alone afterwards.
He smiles when Newt snaps his gaze up at him and rudely utters to let out with whatever he wants to say, quickly making Newt regret his choice in the first place. “Oh, Newt, how long do you intend to rot out in this…” He grimaces as he pointedly stares around his cell. Newt makes the choice to pretend not to notice.
“However long until the Alpha and the others gain some sense. Leave me be.”
“Alpha? Sense? Haven’t you heard what he’s been planning these days? He couldn’t be the furthest away from sense…”
He chuckles slightly, as if he said some hilarious joke, and Newt pauses for an explanation, cringing when he gets another creepy smile in return. “Alpha is commanding everyone in the kingdom to be present when they go to slay the dragon. He believes that if they are successful, the corruption we’ve been faced with will vanish for good.”
“And…when he says everyone…?”
“Ev-ery-bo-dy!” He emphasizes each syllable for effect. “The youth, the elderly, even you, and all these other, uh, criminals.”
”I’m not a criminal.”
“Well, between the both of us, one of use in on this side of the bars and…” He looks down at him, curling his lip in disgust, “…one of us is not…” Newt’s eyebrow twitches again.
“Then perhaps they put the wrong guy in the cell.”
“When will you drop it, Newt. Lord, nobody forced you to create some treasonous plot against the Kingdom, you knew how the consequences would be far before we caught you. And that…pathetic scientist you’re so fond of—” He curled his lips back and Newt’s eyebrows furrowed, staring at him sharply.
“Watch yourself.”
He rolled his eyes at the comment. “Please, as if I have to do anything for you. That boy you care so much about is probably dead, either from the cold or from the corruption. And if that’s that case, it’s probably your fault.”
Newt feels like screaming, like crying, like being put out of his own misery. Instead, he just burrows deeper into himself, blocking off his peripheral vision to stare at the shard in his lap. He’s beginning to debate if, rather than lucky, the purple shard is cursed.
“Whatever, I’m not even sure why I’m wasting my time on you. I’ll see you when we slay that dragon. Maybe then you can prove your worth to our cause.” And the vile rat finally scampers off…
When enough amount of time has passed to make Newt comfortable enough to let his guard down, he grabs at the shard in a fist and blows into his palms. The shard is committed to memory and the dungeon is quiet and Newt is alone, just as he wanted to be.
But that dastardly chill, it’s settled under his skin, maybe even under his bones, and there’s nothing he can do about it rather than withstand and resist. Newt makes a silent and selfish wish, that he would give anything to feel alive and warm again.
The cold never disappears.
Not after every time he reminds a confused and freshly awoken Lucas of his name. Not after he secretly takes him out of his test tube for the smallest amounts of freedom he was capable of offering, taking him to places he was never meant to see, showing things he wasn’t meant to know, things he was never meant to remember. Not after he does it all over again the very next day.
Some days it’s not as apparent. Those days Newt decides to share more than just the few memories he tells Lucas of on his repetitive schedule. He shares the barest bits about himself too, about the both of them, about their village, about their shelter and their home. Sometimes Lucas asks questions, to which Newt will answer. Most of the time though, Lucas sits there silently as Newt goes through the story of their lives, looking everywhere but at him, occasionally even with his back turned.
Sometimes he pretends even not to recognize Newt.
Until it isn’t pretend anymore.
Until he forgets again, and the cycle starts once more.
It was on just a few occasions when Newt got far enough to mention the amethyst shard he’s grown possessive of. It was only a few times over when he got far enough to show it to what has become a husk of his owner, a frightful shell of his closest and bestest friend. And then he’d be given it back.
Nothing about Newt is particularly human anymore. The blood in his vein is coupled with something…else. On some days, he wonders if, just as how his Lucas might be lost, he may be too. And on those days he clings harder onto the memories he does hold onto, the last human thing of him that still remains, and sleeps with the shard close to his heart. On those days, the cold feels deeper, to nearly such a point that it stings.
Newt remembers precisely how it all happens, just as he was talking to one of the first four outworlders, when one of those eyes—observers, as he has heard—snuck up onto him and the outworlder he was conversing with, where he’s suddenly teleporting with a fright, leaving behind the report he had been working on. While his fright was true, it gave Newt the chance he had been waiting for.
He thinks offhandedly, as the red alarm lights of the laboratory go off, of outworlders who slayed the dragon in the way his kingdom was never able. The outworlders who inhabit what is soon to become his dearest friend’s new home.
He pulls Lucas up from where he finds him. He’s lethargic, weak, and freshly awoken, and Newt tries not to think of whatever the High Keepers may have done while he was away, whatever they might have taken from Lucas while he was missing and planning for his escape. “Quick! We don’t have much time!”
Lucas pulls back in his confusion and watched wide-eyed at the iron door Newt was pulling him towards. Newt tries his best to calm him while abiding for how little time they have left together. “This portal… It will send you to the Overworld, back…home. Things out there are different, a lot of time has gone by, but… I am sure the Outworlders will accept you as one of their own..”
“You will find a way to help them too, in this new life I am giving you, that, I am sure of.” Lucas begins asking questions, fearful and scared, in almost a hysteria. “If my plan works,” Newt interrupts, “then remember these numbers.” He lists off a set of coordinates and then stills.
The alarms are still blaring, and the heart deep inside his corrupted, other-worldly body can be heard beating in his own ears. Lucas is scrambling, for answers, for safety, for something and Newt stares at him pathetically. There’s nothing more he can give him now. He thinks one last time of that lucky charm of his, how long ago it was when he acquired it, and makes a choice.
“Even…even if you never remember me, I…am happy with the life we shared. I will be there for you. You won’t know it, but I will…” The scene feels familiar, Newt thinks, as he senses the bodies of other people, other keepers drawing near. He’s letting go of his Lucas again, just as he had all those years ago, in that other life of theirs. Just as he had in that terrible tower.
He urges him towards the exit. “Now go! Before they find out what I did!”
Lucas takes a few steps closer before looking back at who he will forget was once his friend. Newt anticipates this, but the pain of letting go never grows easier. He’ll just have to rip it off like a bandage.
Out of his own love for him, Newt will have to let go.
He may be a pushover for the rules, for the High Keepers and their plots, but he’ll commit a treasonous act just once more if it means it’s for Lucas’ freedom.
There are voices Newt can just faintly hear in the distance, and he looks at Lucas, sorrowful. One more goodbye and it’ll be over.
Lucas yells over the noise, still standing in between the portal gates, refusing entry. “Please! Just…tell me your name, just once! Maybe…maybe we can meet again when this is all over! And I can thank you.”
Newt shakes his head and doesn’t bother to answer, trying to ignore the gutted feeling growing burdensome in his chest. “May we meet again, Lucas… And, welcome to our Realm, Lukey…” He pauses at the pit in his stomach and swallows his pain. “Don’t look back.” And with that, he pushes Lukey through the portal, towards his new life and his new identity.
Newt disappears himself from the scene, leaving no trace of himself in the laboratory and leaving with no trace of Lucas left with him either. Well, apart from the lucky charm, still sat in the palms of his hands, taunting him just as it always has.
The edges have grown softer, rounder, even duller when Newt gives the charm back to Lukey. He tries to ignore the part of him that would have preferred holding onto it, for his own selfish sake, in favor of giving it back to it’s owner, though Lukey will never know that’s the case.
He also ignores the sharp ache in his heart when he finds that the shard has been…’regifted.’
And he again ignores the pain settling in when Lukey’s new beloved tosses the shard away into the ocean, leaving the shard and the greatest thing Newt had held onto to drown under the weight of everything.
For as much as a pushover he may be, Newt despises his new role as “errand boy” even more. Especially when it means having to bring along other, less experienced Keepers to do jobs that he could easily complete on his own. She was polite and older, but unfortunately inexperienced in this department that they had hurriedly assigned her to and Newt can’t help but think that perhaps the High Keepers are scraping at the bottom of the barrel as the corruption continues to deteriorate at this realm.
It’s another meteor site, a decent way away from any major spots inhabited by outworlders, and Newt jots down the coordinates as he asks his accompanying Keeper to scout out the area. The meteor is like all others, unpredictably placed and magma to it’s core. While that little outworlder—Aimsey, he recalls—had told him once before that they might be intertwined with outbursts of emotions, Newt has yet to connect how such a feat would be fundamentally possible, and neither has his outworlder informant.
A small yelp can be heard in the distance and Newt turns to find his accompanying Keeper hunched over…something? He teleports over to her and she pushes back the flowers and tall grass to show what she found: reflecting the light back at him, an amethyst shard, out in seemingly the middle of nowhere.
She holds it up in her hands at him, watching the light streaming through the crystal. “Amethyst isn’t found out here, right deary? Surely, this mean something!”
Newt offers a hand to help her up, feeling the roll of the shard on his palms. He feels…strange. When he tries to think as to why, an immediate migraine flares up in his mind and he takes his hand back to clutch at his head.
“Oh—oh no, are you alright, deary?”
He tries to reassure her, but the throbbing pain in his head doesn’t subside. He presses his palm against his temples, trying to ease it away, though to no avail. The crystal wasn’t one made of corruption, or else Newt would have sensed it. Then…why?
The last time his head hurt this bad, it had been Lukey, asking him to read that…book…
“You should dispose of that crystal. It’s clearly been discarded and it serves no use to us as Keepers.”
He can tell from the way she looks from him and then back at the crystal in her hands that she is disheartened by his response. “But, then, if it used to belong to someone, surely that means we must find it’s owner?”
Newt teleports away, turning his attention to the meteor ablaze in front of the both of them. “There’s no reason for us to concern ourselves with such frivolous affairs regarding an outworlder whose identity we do not even know.”
“Oh, but it’s a cute little thing still. We could still ask if anyone is missing it?”
“If the owner cared so much for it, he was a fool to have let go of it in the first place.”
“He?”
Another sharp pain follows in his head and Newt feels sick. He staggers in his steps and tries to concentrate, but its blaring and leaves no room to focus on anything else. The other keeper says something to him, but Newt can hardly make sense of it. Instead, he gestures to communicate something, teleporting away, but not before the other Keeper shoves something into the palms of his hands.
When Newt arrives in the lab he is so accustomed, he discards of the crystal shard immediately, throwing it across that vicious book that has been rotting away and collecting dust since Lukey told him to read it. He’s avoided it like the plague, especially so since that outworlder who holds the spirit of death had informed him it was out of intentions that he considered more than selfish.
An instinctive thought crosses his mind to burn it, but he remembers Lukey asking him desperately against the idea and he huffs at just recalling it.
Maybe he’s cursed, he thinks. That if being a keeper is a punishment meant for atoning for all the wrong and hurt he’s caused, then surely this thing that haunts him is just another part of his sentence for all the karmic debt he owes.
He looks at the shard closer. It’s dull as ever, it’s color is…faded, to say the least, and particular cuts that must have been clear and clean now feature chips and imperfections. It’s…unimpressive, and there’s nothing particularly pretty about it when compared with any new amethyst shard that could be gathered from any old amethyst geode.
But still… a part of him can sense that there was an immense value it used to hold. To…someone, but who? And why?
When he tries to think, another ripple of pain runs across his skull, and he abandons the venture altogether.
Whatever, perhaps it’s just a lackluster ornament. An unholy and dishonorable one at that, one sent from the deepest pits of whatever damnation exists for this realm to ruin the days of an immortal it’ll never get to see. But when Newt teleports away, he finds that he can’t exactly bring himself to care.
After all, when exactly has he deserved any better?