Chapter Text
The first time Tina meets him, the sun has not yet risen over the city of New York. The No-Maj world is just beginning to stir: lights clicking on, radiators gurgling to life, men and women with weathered hands and hungry children tiptoeing out of crowded bedrooms to make themselves a meager breakfast. The Magical world, however, has been awake for the past 48 hours, tripping over itself to locate a woman suspected of orchestrating attempted sabotage of MACUSA headquarters.
Tina, too, has not slept in several days. Queenie’s coffee sits uncomfortably in her chest like motor oil in an engine, and every thump of her heart is almost painful against her ribcage. Her hand, firmly on the handle of her wand, shakes almost imperceptibly. She pretends that she’s not tired. She pretends that she’s not cold. She pretends that she will not return empty-handed.
She almost believes herself.
The clack of her feet on the cobblestones echoes in the dampness of early morning. The streetlights are swallowed up in the fog, and the streets are still too dark for comfort, even with the faint glow of the first No-Maj lamps behind curtains.
“Lumos,” she whispers. She holds her wand out in front of her, glad for its familiar blue light. It’s not that she’s scared. She just has to be cautious – even a No-Maj with bad intentions could catch her unawares in this light. Her heart hovers somewhere in her esophagus, her ears magic-enhanced to catch any sound. She’s a good duelist, she reminds herself. Well, an alright duelist.
There. She turns, wand out, into a dingy side-alley, the kind full of wash-water and sewage.
“Who’s there?” she calls. Her voice sounds both too thin and too loud in the damp. The sound repeats: an aborted hitch of breath. A sweep of the light shows nothing.
“Homem revelio.”
She sees a flash of him then, as her spell returns to her the image of a gaunt, sullen boy crouched in the far corner of the alley. His breath comes out in plumes before him, and he’s shaking.
It’s clear he’s no wizard, or at the very least not a good one. An experienced wizard would recognize the feel of a Revealing spell in a heartbeat, but the boy makes no move. Abruptly, Tina realizes what the sound is: shuddering, half-hidden sobs, quieted now that it’s clear someone heard him.
This isn’t her business. In fact, it’s so incredibly not her business that it would be appallingly irresponsible for her to interfere.
She feels her heart beating uncomfortably in her chest. The yawning futility of her search twinges in the back of her mind.
The boy gives another muted half-sob.
She kills her spell and steps in to the alley.
“Hello?” she says, quieter now. “I can hear you back here. Are you alright?”
The boy still says nothing.
“Look, I know you’re here. Please, really, I don’t want to hurt you. Please come out.”
A rustle, and then he stands. He’s taller than Tina expected, certainly taller than her, but he’s so thin – just barely bones – and he’s in such a state that it’s clear he couldn’t hurt her even if he wanted to.
“You were crying,” she says, stupidly, because of course he was crying, they both know he was crying, and she didn’t have to just go and say it like that. He wipes his face. The sun has risen just enough for Tina to tell that he’s casting his eyes down.
“Sorry. Um, what I meant to say is – well, what I think I said at first was –“ She pauses. “Do you need help?”
He looks up at her at that, just briefly, as though taken aback, as though he suspects her of some kind of joke.
“No,” he mutters. Tina is no Legilimens, but it’s obvious that he’s lying.
“Well...what are you doing out here? Do you have a place to stay?”
“Yes.” He hasn’t budged from the corner, and he keeps glancing at her warily. She steps slightly to the side, to which he responds by edging forward.
She scrambles for something else to say. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” he says, more firmly this time, shaking his head at the ground. “No, I’m okay.”
The silence stretches between them, punctuated by the sounds of the city beginning to grind its gears into wakefulness. Already, people pass by on the street outside. Tina feels each hour of lost sleep acutely, but, she thinks, however tired she feels is completely unmatched by how utterly exhausted this boy looks. The angles of his cheekbones are sharp with hunger, and it appears an effort for him to keep upright. His shoulders droop forward, as though he is caving in on himself. Tina knows what grief looks like. She knows what despair looks like. She saw it on her sister for years after her parents died. She saw it on herself, in the mirror, too many times to count. What lived in her and Queenie lives in this boy’s face, in the painful way he holds himself.
God, Tina wants to help him. Everything about him begs to be helped.
“I should be going now, Miss.” He nods his head at her stiffly, his face still raw from crying. He steps forward, out of the alley, towards the street.
She turns after him.
“Wait!”
He flinches, stops, turns back to her.
“My name’s Tina.”
He looks at her like she’s something stranger than he’s ever seen. She smiles, awkwardly, half-desperately.
“Credence,” he says, finally. “My name’s Credence.”
Before she can say another word, he turns and hurries away, into the crowd of No-Majes bustling to work as the sun rises.
Tina sags against the wall, breathing out heavily. Stupid. That was stupid.
But does she regret it? Does she regret talking to the boy?
No.
And, in her painfully beating heart, she knows that that’s even stupider than doing it in the first place.