Work Text:
London, May, 1924
The afternoon light slanted through Theseus's office windows, casting long shadows across the polished desk and its neat stack of paper files. Newt stood just inside the doorway, fingers twisting in the worn fabric of his coat sleeve, aware of how out of place he looked among the precise lines and ordered spaces of his brother's domain.
At his desk, Theseus was taking his time finishing up writing. Dragging out the amount of minutes in the encounter, letting Newt wait to face whatever this was.
Safe, he thought, or not safe?
Bunty's letter was still burning a hole in his pocket. He’d barely caught a glimpse of her, really. He’d been presenting at an academic conference, shoved into a corner with his little table on Hippogriff flight patterns and common Niffler diseases, sections of his manuscript commissioned in 1918 that had research so close to home.
“Your work on dragon breeding patterns is revolutionary," she'd written, referencing the work he’d published immediately after leaving the Dragon Research and Restraint Bureau in 1923. Several of his contacts in Japan also regarded it as his best work. "I would be honoured to assist in your research, compensation unnecessary."
She was currently training to be a nurse, but wanted to work with him. Newt had written back immediately and said yes. Bunty Broadacre—young and redheaded and with a manner similarly awkward to his own—was the first person who'd ever volunteered to work with him, who'd seen value in his scattered academic papers.
It had been the first hint that maybe he could build something lasting , not just something he held onto by the skin of his teeth.
Which made it all the more terrifying to be back here in the Ministry, watching his brother Theseus flip through case files with that intent expression that meant he was building to something. They weren’t even estranged at the moment, even if they had been throughout much of Newt’s childhood, and doubtless would be soon again, repeating their mistakes as if moving forward could only take place on a wheel of repeats. It was a continuum, not a switch he could turn off. Newt would never be able to pretend, with a light heart, that he didn’t have a brother.
But with the directions their careers were taking—they were drifting, gently, like chunks of ice splitting off a floe, spinning away through cold sapphire waters.
Sighing to himself, rubbing at the everpresent furrow between his brows, Theseus eventually looked up from his papers. He’d clearly heard Newt come in. But he’d waited. Like Newt, he’d clearly prepared himself to give the greeting. "Newt? I didn't expect..."
"You asked to see me," Newt said, the words coming out too fast. "About this case."
Something in Theseus's expression softened, just slightly. "Yes, but I didn't think you'd actually come."
Neither did I, Newt thought.
Under normal circumstances, Newt would have already made his excuses and left. He was good at that: at slipping away, at avoiding, at maintaining the careful distance he'd cultivated over years. But today was different. Today, his defenses were already worn thin by Bunty's unexpected offer to work with him, the sudden, terrifying possibility of having something to lose.
He had to be careful.
But, somehow, he was also possessed, parched, seeking more. Years in relative isolation, with a handful of friends and colleagues and weeks-long romantic partners, never seemed to ease the deeper loneliness he felt of being different. Her letter had stirred it all up; Newt’s feelings on it all were so strong they could have bowled him over, and yet he didn’t recognise them at all.
"The wards you found," Newt said. "The ones designed to contain living creatures. I might...I might know something about that."
Theseus straightened, his pen forgotten in his hand. "Sit, please?"
It wasn't quite a command, but Newt found himself obeying anyway, settling into the chair across from his brother. His skin felt too tight, like it had in childhood when he'd tried so hard to be normal, to be good, to make people like him.
Before he'd learned better. Before he’d even gone to Hogwarts, he’d learned better.
"The smuggling routes, um, through Eastern Europe," Newt continued, his voice distant to his own ears. "They're more complex than most realise. The poachers aren't always...it's not always clear cut."
"How so?" Theseus was already reaching for a fresh piece of parchment, and something in Newt's chest twisted at his brother's familiar methodical approach.
"Sometimes..."
He trailed off.
"Sometimes?" Theseus prompted gently, and oh, that gentleness was worse. It made Newt want something, like he was seven years old again.
"Sometimes the creatures aren't the main commodity," Newt said. "Sometimes they're just...byproducts. Of other operations."
He watched his brother's hands as they sorted through papers. Theseus's fingers were ink-stained despite his usual fastidiousness. "Like blood rituals?"
Newt's head snapped up. "What...?"
"The woman we found," Theseus said. "The one who escaped. She mentioned something about being bonded to a creature against her will. Some kind of ritual her family arranged without fully understanding what they were getting into."
Something cold slithered down Newt's spine. He remembered Albus’s cryptic questions about blood bonds, about ancient magic. What did that have to do with any of this? Was this what Albus was researching?
No. He trusted Albus too much to believe that.
"That's..." Newt swallowed hard. "That's not supposed to be possible."
"And yet." Theseus set down his pen, meeting Newt's eyes directly. "We need your expertise on this, Newton. The Beasts Division is stonewalling us—Grimmson's doing, I suspect—and Travers is about to close the case for want of evidence or resources, despite our best efforts. But if you were to testify as an expert witness..."
The room seemed to tilt slightly.
"You want me to be your expert." It wasn't a question.
"I want your insight," Theseus corrected, and something in his voice made Newt look up. "You see things others miss, Newt. You understand..."
"The monsters?" Newt suggested, a bitter edge to his voice.
"The victims," Theseus said quietly.
"I can't," Newt said, but his voice was weak. "The attention it would draw—um, you see, my own activities aren't exactly—"
"I know," Theseus said. "I know what you've had to do in your research. But this is bigger than that. People are getting hurt, Newt. Creatures too. That woman—she was different. Changed."
Theseus's voice stayed carefully neutral, but Newt could see the tension in his shoulders. "The wards we found weren't just for containing potions or ingredients. They were designed to hold something alive."
And there it was—the impossible choice between human and animal welfare that Newt had faced so many times before. But this was different somehow.
This was Theseus asking, Theseus looking at him with that careful hope, that tentative reach across the gulf between them.
"I..."
Newt's fingers found the letter in his pocket again. Bunty's words swam through his mind—about his brilliant research, about wanting to help, about believing in his work.
He had something to lose now, he reminded himself. Something to protect.
But Theseus was still looking at him with those eyes that both settled and unsettled him, and before Newt knew what he was doing, he was talking.
“Of course," he heard himself say, as if from a great distance. "I'd be happy to help."
Theseus's eyebrows rose slightly—he'd clearly expected more resistance. "Really?"
"Yes." The word felt strange in Newt's mouth, foreign. When was the last time he'd agreed so readily to anything Theseus asked? "I've...encountered similar operations in my travels."
Something shifted in Theseus's expression: a small curve of a satisfied smile, his brows still wrinkling as he smoothed his shirt collar with a thumb. Checking the door was closed and locked behind him, Theseus rummaged in his desk and pulled out a leather notebook much like the journals he’d kept as a teenager. Newt felt himself drifting slightly, watching from afar, staring at the pages filled with his brother’s neat, slanting handwriting.
"I—“ Theseus began, and swallowed. “Well. That would be excellent.”
Safe, or not safe?
"So, um," Newt said as he knitted his hands together in front of him. "What do you—do you want me to tell you about what I know about smuggling?"
"Just the general patterns," Theseus said quickly. Too quickly. "The routes they use, the methods. Nothing specific."
Nothing that would implicate Newt himself, he meant. Nothing about the trafficked creatures his brother knew Newt often spent his research summers illegally liberating.
"I could..." Newt started, then caught himself.
What was he doing? Why was he suddenly willing to risk everything he'd built—his research, Bunty's offer, his careful balance of legal and not-quite-legal work—just because Theseus asked?
But Theseus was leaning forward now, hope brightening his tired eyes. "Help us find out what really happened to that woman. She was bonded to something, Newt. Something not human."
He remembered Albus mentioning something similar, months ago, though the professor had been frustratingly vague.
Theseus pulled out another file, this one filled with photographs. "The marks on her arms..."
Newt found himself leaning forward, examining the images.
They talked a little about them.
Newt neither registered nor understood any of it.
He was drifting, disappearing, sliding into an utterly unfamiliar pattern: nodding at the right moments, making appropriate sounds of interest, offering small pieces of information that wouldn't compromise his own activities too much. It was like watching himself from a great distance, like being back in school trying to be normal enough to avoid notice
"A forced bond," he heard himself concluding, and didn’t know how or why he’d reached that point.
If he were more comfortable, he’d remember things, places. Egypt, Thailand, Japan, Oregon. Beasts with human eyes and humans with the eyes of beasts. Albus, in his office, asking about blood bonds and dragons and things Newt, who’d only learned exactly how to connect with them through respect that had shattered him by the end, had not understood. He knew how these smuggling rooms reeked. He knew that the poachers fought back, hard, and he’d understood some were only trying to survive too late.
"Exactly." Theseus was scribbling notes now, his pen moving rapidly across the paper. "Which means..."
"They could be experimenting," Newt finished. "With both creatures and people. The spacing. It's not optimised for profit. Most smuggling operations pack the creatures in tighter, maximise their space. This looks more like...research."
Theseus watched him as intently as a ticking, out-of-time clock. Something flickered in his brother’s eyes—concern? Pride? Both? Neither?
Newt couldn't read him anymore, if he ever could. It was the same look he'd worn when they were children and Newt had done something clever but dangerous.
"This is extremely helpful," Theseus murmured. "Though I must say, the situations you've found yourself in..."
"Were necessary," Newt finished automatically.
"Were dangerous," Theseus corrected. "If word got out about your involvement… Well, we don't want to put you at risk. Or your career prospects. Your research and everything with that."
The hint of criticism in those last words made something twist in Newt's stomach. He thought of dark alleys in Bangkok, of deals made in the shadows of Marrakech. Of choices between human lives and creature lives, of compromises that would horrify his proper, law-abiding brother.
The brother whom he’d called a murderer when he’d returned from the war, having broken Evermonde’s decree.
"Of course not," Newt muttered. "Nothing dangerous."
Theseus made another note. "This could really help your standing with the Ministry too, you know. Show them you're willing to work within the system. And we can be discrete. Frame it properly."
Frame it properly. Make it acceptable.
Make it normal. Make him normal.
As if the system hadn't failed every creature Newt had tried to help. As if following rules mattered more than doing what was right. It might have not been Theseus’s office that Newt had once worked on, that had eventually formed the Dragon Corps, but it was all part of the same machine.
Something hot and uncomfortable curled in his chest—shame and recognition and anger.
He’d never wanted to end up like Theseus. And yet here he was, beginning to take himself down the same path for a hint of the approval he’d been telling himself he didn’t need ever since he was a young teenager.
"Our family name is already tainted," Newt said coolly. "What's one more scandal?"
"That's exactly my point. My position as a war hero only protects us so far, and even that depends on who’s Minister.”
Us. As if they were still a unit, still the brothers they'd been before everything had splintered. Before Newt had learned that safety meant solitude, that trust was a luxury he couldn't afford.
Something inside Newt snapped. He stood abruptly, his chair scraping against the floor.
"Is that all you needed?"
Theseus blinked. “No,” he began carefully.
"I can't give you any more.” Not safe, sounding in his mind like a klaxon, because while he couldn’t always understand people, he recognised their patterns. "Because, um, because—help who? The Ministry? The same people who let Grimmson hunt creatures for sport? Who turn a blind eye to—"
He cut himself off, but Theseus's expression had already shifted, becoming more guarded, more professional.
"Is there something you want to tell me about Grimmson?" His voice was careful, measured. The voice he used for suspects and witnesses.
Newt was beyond caring. Why would Theseus need to know? It wasn’t like the Ministry would let his brother do anything about it. They never would. In fact, a small part of Newt wanted Theseus’s good intentions in this awful establishment to go horrifically, undeniably wrong, just so that his stubborn, well-meaning brother might finally understand .
"No. You can't just...just ask me to risk everything I've built because you need something,” said Newt. “You can't pretend to care about my work only when it's useful to you.”
Theseus's eyes narrowed, but something in them was desperately sad. "That's not what I—"
"Isn't it? Isn't that why you wanted me here? To make me useful, make me proper, make me—"
"I wanted your help," Theseus said. "Because you're brilliant with creatures, because you understand things I don't, because you're my—"
"Don't." Newt wrapped his arms around himself, suddenly cold. "Don't pretend this is about family."
"Everything is about family with us," Theseus said, and there was something raw in his voice that made Newt want to run.
Or worse, stay.
Newt was shaking now. "Well, you’ve never approved of what I do. You've made that very clear. And now you want me to...to what? Just tell you everything? Trust you not to use it against me later?"
"I would never—"
"You would," Newt cut him off. "You will. You'll decide it's for my own good, or for the family's reputation, or for some other reason I'm, um, apparently too naive to understand."
Theseus’s raised eyebrows and wide eyes gave way to a familiar expression of resigned expectation. "Fine. Going to run away again, are you?"
Yes," Newt snapped, something finally breaking free. "I always leave before you can decide I'm not good enough again."
The words hung in the air between them. Theseus looked stricken, his face pale beneath his freckles.
"That's not—" Theseus started, but Newt was reaching for the handle of his case.
"It is," he said, his voice shaking. "It always is."
He lifted the case off the floor and rushed out of the door, screwing his eyes half-shut against the corridor’s dim lights that suddenly felt like watchful eyes.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
He was so stupid, he thought furiously. Stupid to think things could be different, stupid to want them to be. Stupid to still crave approval, connection, family, when he'd learned long ago that those things weren't meant for people like him.
He thought of Bunty again, of her genuine enthusiasm for his work. Thought of how quickly that could turn to disappointment, to rejection. Just like everyone else. Because no matter how many walls he built, how far he travelled, how much he pretended not to care, some part of him still wanted to be loved.
But how could he—how could he even begin to deal with any of it? How could he dare to reach for it, or dare to push it away?
The love was tangled up with so much else. What he couldn't be, what he couldn't give, and, above all, what he couldn't trust himself to want.