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He found Credence in the same place, the same conditions he had met him first.
The Manhattan Bridge rose like a mammoth of metal and rust, steel cables whipped by the corrosive winds of the bay.
Under them, a chasm.
In the boy’s eyes, yet another.
“I knew you’d be here”, Gellert said and leaned on the railings, completely unafraid. He wasn’t wearing his own face, nor the one he had stolen, and yet the growing tightness in Credence’s fingers around the barrier told him the boy had understood. “Seems like the water keeps calling you.”
“Ma is dead”, Credence replied, muted. “Ma is dead, and so is Chastity. Modesty was taken away.”
“And your Mr. Graves”, added Gellert, “he never knew you. Did he?”
Credence nailed his gaze to the waves below, crashing against the foundations. He didn’t say anything.
“Should I do this twice?”, asked Gellert. Not unkindly. He hadn’t come as far as he had without learning from his mistakes, just a little. The fact that the boy hadn’t attempted to murder him on sight told him he could give him a little push.
In which direction, he didn’t know yet.
“All these things”, Credence quoted, “will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.”
He straightened up then with a deep sigh. He had nowhere to go, and nothing to his name, and the ledger of his sins dripped in red and ashes. It wasn’t like he was scared of the ultimate one, against himself. This fake Mr. Graves, after all, had talked him down from here once.
“You offered me... sustenance. And protection. And then you went and offered me a place of honor. I-- I guess it’s normal. That God didn’t came to aid me. I accepted all of it.” There was something so broken in the slight, slight quirk of his lips it would’ve pierced Gellert, had he had a heart. “It was written I’d be wretched.”
For a moment, all there was to be heard was the cry of seagulls, the rush of a polluted ocean under their feet. The East River, it had been murdered by New York long before either of them had been born.
“Human beings”, commented Gellert, “they do the strangest things to cut themselves short of opportunities… and to have someone else to blame, too.”
Credence looked at him and for the very first time, a hint of an expression stronger than self-deprecation bloomed on his face. Pulled away - from the edge, from the other man, schooled his features.
Gellert kept his smile on, and pushed.
“It doesn’t have to end like this, you know. You, my boy, are closer to a miracle than to a wretch.”
“A miracle that murders people.”
“Fire and brimstone. Isn’t it grand?”
Enticing acceptance, joyous awe. Credence felt them like a slap to the face.
“I… I never asked for it”, bitter like bile, words spilling out like drops from a poorly closed valve, “I didn’t want to lose control… hurt anyone.”
“You wanted to hurt me, though.”
Credence, had he been less literally on the verge of an abyss, would’ve spat in his face. But the only anger he still had energy for was towards himself.
“The last thing I ever wanted was to become her.”
“Then you have an entire lifetime to learn to control it.”
When he lifted his eyes again, Mr. Graves’ serene face was looking at him, and it was such luck he had lost his capacity for emotions along with his will to live. Credence wasn’t sure he could’ve stood it otherwise.
Something clawed violently at his chest. Distant, vicious, tearing him to shreds. His lower lip trembled quietly.
“Aren’t you…”, he tried to get out, failed, choked. Tried again, “aren’t you being hunted?”
“Why does it matter? So are you”, Mr. Graves smiled at him, put his square, neat hand on his shoulder. Told him as if it were either a private confession or an amusing piece of gossip, “I told them from the beginning they couldn’t hold me for long.”
Words were dangerous. They carried the threat of a misstep, and those, Credence knew were purged through blood. So he stayed silent.
Gellert cupped his face the way Mr. Graves had learnt Credence liked, stroked a sharp cheekbone with such care it pleased him to find no cuts on the pad of his thumb.
“Men who don’t learn from their errors, you know”, he confided. “They never amount to anything.”
Credence looked at him the way a salt statue might - immobile and silent, turning around only to see the wake of devastation left behind him.
“I was wrong about you”, offered Mr. Graves. Quiet like a noose, so much warmer and smoother than the crashing waves, the howl making beams and cables tremble. “I was so terribly wrong, and you didn’t deserve any of it.”
It must have been the very first time anyone apologized to him, Credence mused. Did it matter if it was all false?
Who was he to reject it?
“There’s so much to see and learn”, Mr. Graves told him. “All the things that were kept from you, the magical and the mundane. An entire world outside of this city you’ve never left. ”
‘All these things…’, he knew. Again and again and again. But Credence was the furthest possible thing from holy.
“You want me to kill for you”, he observed. No judgement. Thou shalt not kill had been already broken, he was already damned. He, if his Ma was to be believed, had been born on his way to Hell.
Mr. Graves smoothed fingers through his hair.
“A very small price, for the Greater Good. Worse things have been asked to rise up a revolution.”
“You’re a murderer.”
“A visionary”, and those were his fingers, down down down Credence’s nape, curling behind his neck. Making the boy shiver and sigh deeply, eyes closed.
How long were his lashes, thought Gellert.
How immense was the power beneath this boy’s skin.
“My Ma”, and there it was, that maudlin quirk of lips that was melancholy itself wrapped in a smile, “didn’t have any kind words towards revolutionaries.”
“Revolutionaries, zealots…”, Gellert shrugged. “From one cult to another, perhaps. But I’m not ever laying my hands on you. I’m not ever lying again to you.”
Lies. They both knew it. Dipped in honey, and Credence was so, so very hungry.
“I get to keep this face. You get to share my bed.”
Credence outright laughed. There was no mirth in it.
“Really.”
“Wasn’t it what you wanted?”
From one cult to another. From a quick suicide to a longer one, just on a last promise of happiness.
“Mr. Graves”, Credence admitted, for that was the name he had known this man by. “I wanted so much more than that.”
Greed wasn’t about money. Greed was about desiring far more than the lot God had disposed for you.
Greed and gluttony and lust and pride, all wrapped up in the perfect, orderly husk of Percival Graves carrying a zealot inside.
“My boy”, and that was Gellert, speaking close enough Credence’s hair tickled at his forehead. “You can have that, too.”
When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own.
Gellert Grindelwald had no heart to give.
Credence was way past caring. He pulled the other man in, kissed him. It tasted like his own despair and hunger and inexperience. Mr. Graves’ body, he held him there. Carefully invaded his mouth, slowed down the needy rhythm of this stupid, stupid child he was claiming.
“Would you like to be taken away from here?”, he asked, clearing away strands of Credence’s bangs.
“Yes.”
“Will you obey my words?”
“Yes.”
“Then we have a deal. Don’t we?
“Yes.”
“Credence”, stated Gellert under the mask. Soft, a curl of pleasure down his spine taking root. “I have so, so many plans for you. For prosperity. Not for harm.” He pressed a kiss to the boy’s forehead, aiming for a feel of benediction. “For hope, and a future for all of us.”
Jeremiah, thought Credence. That’s Jeremiah.
He was exhausted enough to let it go and take the words to heart. If he had clung to life past his expiration date for so long, what else had he to lose?
God had never given him anything.
Nobody would blame him for selling his soul to a distorted mirror of Him.
“Thank you, Mr. Graves.”
He bowed his head and took the plunge.