Lost and Found (FBAWTFT, Percival Graves)

[RiversD]

It's a quick one, but I got a sudden hit of Graves-feelings the other day and needed to put them somewhere . Set post-Fantastic Beasts, working on the assumption that the real Graves was alive and imprisoned somewhere during those events.

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It was a somewhat greyer and considerably thinner Percival Graves who returned to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement after the exposure of Gellert Grindelwald. Where exactly MACUSA’s agents had found him was still an official secret, but it was clear to the whole office that it had not been anywhere pleasant.

Everyone was impressed at the speed with which he had insisted upon returning to work, but no-one in constant proximity to him could fail to notice that he was far from physically fit. His aurors respected his determination, however, and found ways to tactfully work around his slightly reduced attention span, his inability to speak at length without his voice cracking, and his tendency to start swaying if he was forced to stand upright for too long.

Today, though, it was getting ever harder for Tina to ignore her boss’ obvious ill-health. Graves had sat down in the main office to hear Hanson’s report on smuggling activity in southern Illinois, and had stayed in that chair ever since, flicking through paperwork and pausing intermittently to cough. Tina didn’t like the sound of that cough. He’d been coughing every now and then since his return, but it had progressed from a dry, ticklish-sounding thing to these heavy, wracking affairs that seemed to pull from deep within his chest.

Perhaps it was guilt making her worry more than she ought about him. Tina was still struggling to rationalize how Graves’ replacement could have gone un-noticed for so long, and she couldn’t help but feel that she, personally, should have realized something was off. Admittedly, her sudden demotion had forced her out of any direct contact with the man, but… surely it wasn’t that easy to steal someone’s entire life?

A flicker of white caught her eye, and she glanced up in time to catch Graves folding a handkerchief over his nose, eyes screwed shut in vicious irritation.

“eh-ghhsch’eue! ghsschh’ue!”

The effort he was putting in to keep his sneezes relatively discreet showed on his face, making Tina wince in sympathy. Hobbes and Wilson, the only other occupants of the office at present, didn’t even turn around.

The handkerchief stayed where it was for a few seconds, then Graves straightened his back, dabbed firmly at the underside of his nose, and turned his attention back to the file he had been considering before the interruption. Tina tried to regain some sort of focus on her own work. There was enough of it.

She looked up as a memo-mouse scampered through the door near her desk, but it paid her no mind and scuttled over to Hobbes. She nudged Wilson and passed the unfurled message to him. Then the two of them gathered their things and headed for the door. Wilson knocked on Tina’s desk as they left, and said;

“Hold the fort, Goldy. Don’t burn the place down while we’re gone.”

He grinned at her and dodged out of the door, leaving her alone in the office with Graves.

This was perfectly fine, she told herself. She had things to get on with, as was doubtless the case for him. There was nothing to justify conversation.

Nonetheless, while she did her best to keep her eyes on her work, she couldn’t help listening intently to the increasingly distressed sounds coming from Graves’ side of the room. It was all Tina could do to keep her head down as he sniffed and hacked his way through his own tasks. It sounded like he was making pretty steady progress, but he really didn’t sound well.

She heard him slap a file angrily down onto the desk as he succumbed to a particularly painful-sounding fit of coughing. Her resolve not to pay him any obvious attention lasted for the duration of her superior’s convulsions, but broke at the presumably involuntary groan that escaped him at their conclusion.

Tina pushed her chair back and stood up. Looking over, she saw that Graves had his eyes shut and walked slowly across the room towards him, not really wanting to sneak up on him if she could help it.

Graves was leaning back in his chair, one hand holding the bridge of his nose in a loose pinch. His face was fixed in a slight frown, which accentuated the lines on his face and made him look several years older than he was.

The closer she got, the more obvious the dark circles around his eyes became, until they almost looked like bruises. His nose looked as if it had taken a fair bit of abuse too, and his lips were chapped and dry.

Tina hesitated beside him. She had a feeling that there was a line here, one that she couldn’t easily retreat behind once she’d crossed it. Then again, she wasn’t sure she could live with herself if she didn’t at least ask.

“Sir?”

Graves cracked his eyes open and lifted his head a fraction.

“Goldstein?”

“Yes, sir. Are… are you alright, sir?”

Graves gave a hollow laugh, and passed a pale hand across his eyes.

“It’s come to that, has it?”

Tina didn’t understand. “I’m sorry, sir?”

“I was wondering how bad it would have to get before somebody asked,” Graves explained. “You’ve all been treading so carefully around my ego. I’m well aware that I look like a ghost right now.”

Tina forbore to comment. Graves sighed.

“To answer your question, I feel like hell just spat me out. But I can manage. Thank you.”

“I see.” Tina hesitated, knowing that should probably count as a dismissal. But he looked so done-in that she pressed her luck.

“Is there anything I can get you, sir? Couldn’t you take something for this?”

Graves shook his head wearily.

“I already have. But I’m afraid prevention is rather simpler than cure in these cases.” He drew a slow, creaking breath, and continued: “You might want to think about that. I’ve no idea if this is catching.”

“I don’t think I need worry about that, sir,” said Tina. It was true enough- Queenie would know if Tina was coming down with something long before Tina would, and she’d be pumped full of preventative potions before she could develop so much as a sniffle.

“Oh? Good.”

Graves pushed a disobedient frond of hair back into place and opened one of the files in front of him. When Tina made no immediate moves to leave, he graced her with an exasperated half-smile.

“It’s really not th-hh’GHISSCH!” The sneeze seemed to surprise him as much as it did Tina. He barely had enough warning to cover his mouth. He scrabbled urgently for his handkerchief as his breath stuttered in preparation for another.

hh-uhh’KHTSCHeue!”

Whether he’d decided there was no point trying to repress it when the only other person in the room was standing two feet away from him, or whether he had just lost the energy to care, Graves let his body have its own way this time, and the sneeze was violent enough to make Tina jump, even having had those few breaths of warning. She pursed her lips, far from reassured by the wheezy edge to his breathing in the aftermath.

“Bless you.”

Graves nodded almost imperceptibly, still hunched over his handkerchief with his eyes closed, breathing like he’d been running for his life. He coughed hard, blew his nose, and straightened up, blinking away the extra moisture that had gathered in his eyes during that strenuous loss of control.

He took one look at Tina’s face and scowled.

“You needn’t look at me like that. It sounds bad, but I told you, I can manage.”

“If you’re sure, sir.” Tina worried at her lip. “Because I feel like we could see through to the end of the day if you wanted to-”

“Don’t push it, Porpentina.”

The extra gravel currently occupying Graves’ throat turned what would otherwise have been a mild note of warning into a growl. Tina did her best to pretend she hadn’t noticed the reflexive swallow that chased it, or the way his hand came up unconsciously to touch the base of his throat.

“Understood. Sorry, sir.”

Graves gave her a hard stare, then sighed, breath catching slightly in his throat. His shoulders slumped, and he rubbed pettishly at one eye.

“I’m going to my office. Can you see that I’m not disturbed for-” he looked up at the clock on the wall and grimaced. “Call it an hour?”

“Absolutely, sir.”

“Good.” Graves started to rise, sat back down again almost immediately, and took a slow breath. Then he lifted one arm, its elbow pointed towards Tina.

“Would you…”

Tina blinked, then realized what he was asking of her. “Oh! Of course, sir.”

She took his arm and helped him out of his chair with what she hoped was minimal cosseting. She was somewhat surprised when he didn’t pull away entirely, but left his hand resting lightly on her arm as they walked to his office, more for stability than support, if even for that. Tina wisely kept her mouth shut and let him set the pace.

Once he was safely inside his office, he shut the door in her face. She was actually pretty relieved. The world had been off-balance for a few moments there.

 

 

 

Edited May 18, 2017 by RiversD
missing word

[Fuzzy&Warm]

Yay!  More Fantastic Beasts stories and with Percival too!  I love it.  

[RiversD]

@Fuzzy&Warm I'm glad you liked it! Thanks so much for commenting!

Many moons later, I have finally composed a part 2. To whit:

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Tina dutifully gave out the ‘do not disturb’ warning to other aurors as they passed through the office. None of them seemed surprised.

She didn’t give any of them a time frame for silence, having decided that ‘don’t disturb me for the next hour’ was not the same as asking to be disturbed once the hour was up, and made a call of her own. So it was getting on for two hours later when there was a loud knock on the door of the main office.

The knocker was Francis Gainthruppe, administrative assistant and general dogsbody for Internal Affairs. He poked his head around the door, scanned the room, and announced:

“The state reps from Arizona are here to see Graves. They’re barely in the door, so don’t say I didn’t give you fair warning.”

This sent a ripple around the room as various people subtly adjusted the environs of their desk to give an aura of alert professionalism. They’d been warned about the Arizona delegation. They were here to wrangle over assorted legalities, among which loomed the question of who was going to pay to register, protect and conceal the Thunderbird who had recently arrived in their state. Such discussions between state and federal representatives would always involve a certain amount of blame-flinging, which no-one in the office was keen to stand in the way of.

“I’ll let him know,” Tina volunteered, standing up as quickly as she dared without risking serious comment. She walked quickly to Graves’ door and knocked.

“Mr Graves? Sir?”

When there was no answer Tina reached out cautiously and tried the handle. Somewhat to her surprise the door opened, and she stepped gingerly inside.

Graves was sat in his usual chair, a case file open on the desk in front of him, but it didn’t look as though he had made much progress. His eyes were closed, and his head was resting heavily on one arm.

Tina hesitated.

“Sir?”

Though she was certain that her knock had been louder, Graves’ eyes shot open at the sound of her voice, fingers tightening around his wand. He drew a preparatory breath, presumably to cast some defensive spell but, recognizing her, spent it on several hard, productive coughs instead.

Face growing redder by the second, he gestured frantically at Tina to close the door. She did so, and his coughing became noticeably more violent even as the catch slid into place. Tina worried her lip, disturbed by the idea that those first few might have represented all that Graves could muster in terms of restraint.

These latest were tearing, full-body affairs that left her torn between the desire not to cause him further embarrassment and her need to find some way to relieve his obvious suffering.

She settled for filling the glass from his desk with water. When he paused, wheezing, between spasms, she nudged it against his hand.

He took it, if not gratefully, then at least without complaint. After a few slow mouthfuls he set the glass down and sat up a little straighter in his chair, bracing both hands on his knees as he did so.

He nodded to her, tried to take a deep breath, and immediately regretted it, snatching for his handkerchief as his newly-won composure collapsed like a jolted house of cards.

“h-hht’SSCHeue!  hh-h’KSCHHeue! ihh…”

The reflex had no mercy on him, the release of each sneeze flowing seamlessly into the wind-up for the next with no time to recover breath or wits until it burnt itself out with three earth-shattering sneezes that seemed to shake Graves’ whole body, taking all that he had to give.

ih-TSSSHHeuh! hh’GHSCHHuh! hah-GSCHHOO!”

This final effort left him well and truly winded, gulping air in shallow wisps behind his handkerchief until he had gathered enough breath to blow his nose.

When he finally felt able to look her in the eye, Graves stared at Tina as though he was trying to calculate something internally. Then, with a short grunt of annoyance, he lifted his wand and made a sharp motion in the direction of the door.

Tina, hearing the muffled sounds of the office beyond begin to filter through, realized that he must have laid a silencing charm on the door earlier today. Probably one that worked in both directions, keeping the office from hearing his ongoing struggle with his nose and throat as well as preventing him from hearing her knock.

“Meant to lift that,” he muttered, “sorry.”

By now Tina was completely at sea in this conversation. She couldn’t remember the last time Graves had apologized to her about anything. This might actually be a first.

“It happens,” she ventured.

Evidently this hadn’t been quite tactful enough. Graves frowned irritably across at her and replied, “It shouldn’t.”

“No, sir. Sorry, sir.”

Graves drew one hand slowly down his face, pausing partway to pinch the bridge of his nose. He looked exhausted to the point of bone-deep exasperation with the whole affair.

“Why are you here?”

“Oh!” Tina jumped back to attention. “The delegates from Arizona are on their way up, sir. Probably here by now,” she added.

Graves sighed. It crackled. Then he stood up, leaning heavily on the desk to do so, but not swaying too badly, which was a mercy. He raised his head and asked,

“How do I look, Goldstein?”

“Honestly, sir?”

There was the frown again. She was being stupid.

“Have I ever asked you to lie?”

Tina shook her head, considering the man in front of her, with his dried-out lips and too-bright eyes, the angry redness underneath his nose loudly signalling the cause of his drained and sickly aspect.

“Like you’re about to drop, sir,” she concluded and, pushing the boundary of his patience, added; “Like someone running a pretty high fever, I’d say, and I don’t have my sister’s eyes.”

“I see.”

Graves laid the back of one hand against his own neck, assessing. Tina thought she saw his lips tighten very slightly, but otherwise his expression remained the same.

“Alright,” he said at last, opening the top drawer of his desk, which rattled. “Go and get the troublemakers comfortable. Tell them I’ll be with them in two minutes.”

She was already turning away when he thought of an addendum, head jerking up so that he could her face.

“Tell them anything else and I’ll have your guts for shoelaces, understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

Tina fled. She knew better than to linger after that one.

[AngelEyes]

This is lovely!