@cupstars ≫ the 100 starters ≫(accepting)

Newt Scamander had always been told he was odd. His brother had been the first to say it, when he was four and wanted to go with their mother on one of her trips into the jungle. Theseus had always been the people person, though, certain to follow their father’s footsteps into bureaucracy. Newt had always been his mother’s child, even more so than she did he preferred being in the wilderness.

For as long as he could remember cities were cold places. Places that felt crowded– Full of the living and, as he eventually found out, the dead. There were children with hollow eyes on street corners that no one else saw. Men with disfigured heads and women with sinister smiles. The first time he’d seen one had been his grandmother, a kindly figure who merely brushed through his hair at bedtime and followed his family. Most beings, he found, were simply lost. In a place that they once were but no longer belonged.

There were others, he knew, who wasn’t just lost but angry. Vengeful. Full of hatred to the living. He’d spent too long trying to help some to not know the stories– to not know there weren’t places that death had touched and death had stayed. Rotting away on the grounds and clawing for the souls who dared to step in its grips. These places, he found, stood no chance. Those who came soon left or, worse, found themselves stuck their forever. His own wanderings brought him close but even he knew when not to step through a threshold.

His mother had once called it a gift, but the young boy had never been sure. Even when he tried to help those who could be set free. It was a painful experience, borne of nights of no sleep and strangled cries as he felt what they did and saw what they needed. A quiet pain that left him odd and detached, as if he too didn’t quite belong with the living but not yet the dead.

So he spends more time in the wilderness– Where humans have touched less. Places where animals roam and he’s at peace. His father and brother disappointed at the way he utterly ignored their plans– to join them in some ministry affair in London he could only assume– and instead of working as a zoologist who specialized in caring for endangers species. Well known for his abilities to care for them it’s on occasion that he’s called to a city to help in some zoo–

As was the case now when a mother lost a cub and refused to feed the other. He’d been there a few weeks when he met the youngest Crain. Made famous, he knew, by the book of their childhood– A book the man had read, as well as many others about hauntings in his attempt to understand his own sensitivity. It’s not a topic he dared to bring up, not a topic he knows is one kind to discuss if anything in its pages were true. 

He finds a quiet sort of peace with the youngest of the siblings, however, when they meet not once but twice at the same coffee place (incidental, though it was). And it’s the second time that they decide they both have time and take a walk, Newt a more solemn figure as they approach the park (a park he’d avoided based on rumors of its so called nature– a suicide forest in the 80s they said). Green eyes flickering fom the sidewalk to the forest beyond wondering if he’d see anything before puffing out a breath

–The woman speaks and he’s drawn back to her, notices the way her gaze falls on him and he colors just slightly. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” he mentions quietly, fingers tapping against the holder of his coffee. Head ducking as he considered her words– wondering if they were borne from the discussion at hand (his participation in the war) or the expression he wore when he’d glanced up.

“I’ve come to learn there is some pain that is all-consuming no matter what you do,” He glanced up from beneath his fringe– First at Nellie and then at the forest just beyond, “sometimes it’s simply living with it and the marks it leaves you with.” The man’s eyes flicker back to Nellie’s, an uncertain smile pulling at the corners of his lips as he turned his attention back to his feet. He was never very good at human company, he thought, as he brought the hot beverage to his lips.

Newt’s lips curl into a frown around the lid as he thinks a moment about the woman’s words. And we will. A beat, and he brings it away once more, considering. “You will overcome yours,” He adds, turning his attention to her, forcing a more comforting smile on his features, “you seem much stronger than myself. And if I could…” It’s a light-hearted attempt, the best he has. But in the short time he’d known her he’d like to think he’d seen that strength. A woman who might have faced what he read wouldn’t be able to smile in a way that makes him return it, if she couldn’t. A quiet, light-hearted joke that he hoped conveyed how much he cared for her.