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fantasticbeasts_kinkmeme) wrote2016-11-23 07:27 am
fantasticbeasts_kinkmeme) wrote2016-11-23 07:27 am
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Prompt Post #1
ROUND 1
FUCK IT WE'LL FIGURE OUT SPECIFICS LATER
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Selkie! Graves
(Anonymous) 2016-12-01 02:40 pm (UTC)(link)1. For many years, selkies weren't considered human and were, in some countries/states, treated as pets/property. On the books, they were classified as magical beasts.
2. Real!Graves is a selkie.
Take this in any direction you want.
Honestly, don't have to include the first part. I just need selkie!Graves.
fill: "quiet/cold/dark" (selkie!Graves, gen)
(Anonymous) 2016-12-02 05:10 am (UTC)(link)___
Most stories would have you believe that selkies are tame, meek things when trapped in human skin. These stories mistake patience for weakness. They also mistake tenderness for foolishness. It's easy to scoff at a distance, mocking wives and husbands who would willingly give up their sealskin only to find themselves trapped. A sealskin is not a frivolous gift: it says here is my heart that beats only for you. Selkies can love as foolishly as men, or as well.
Percival's mother loved well, and briefly. She stayed on land with his father for six years before asking for her skin back. (That is the blessing, and the curse. No skin is truer than the other, and none will satisfy indefinitely.) When she asked, his father gave it back. She returned to the dark quiet under the waves.
As an adult, Percival will understand, even if he doesn't forgive. He will know that she aches for the harbor shore, for hearth and home, as she once did for the sea. But as a boy he only hates her. His clearest memory is of the day she left. A hand stroking his hair. A low, sweet voice. Be good, she said.
He was a holy terror for the next week, in part because he thought she would come back to reprimand him. She didn't, and when he finally understood she was well and truly gone, his father held him while he cried. His father did not give him his own small sealskin when he demanded it. This he forgives in time -- he knows it was done with good intentions. He wouldn't have survived, small as he was, and alone where his father could not follow.
His mother trusted his father because she loved him. Percival doesn't believe in love. But he believes in faith, and in the infallibility of his own judgment. He gives his skin to a man who demands it as tribute.
And then it all goes to hell, as these things do. Abstract philosophy turns to concrete planning and Percival gradually understands that he is on the wrong side of history. But he can't leave. Even as he knows that he is worse than disposable (less than human) to the person he trusted with the rawest, truest part of himself, he can't leave.
It doesn't seem so bad when Grindelwald takes his face and his life and entombs him alive. He hasn't been free for a long time.
Percival has started clawing off the only skin left to him by the time they find him. He is lost to reason. In the hospital, he is put under observation after trying to drown himself. (That isn't what he was trying to do. There was no intent involved. The water in the bathtub went cold, and he just wanted to stay there.) There is some talk of putting him in an institution. He doesn't hear it until later, and when he does, he can't fault them for considering the possibility. He is clearly unfit to resume his duties.
The world only really comes back into focus when Goldstein drops a parcel wrapped in butcher paper in his lap. He knows immediately what it is.
"Who else knows?" he says. She seems momentarily shaken. Another thing he won't realize until later: these are the first words he has spoken in weeks. She shakes her head, regaining her composure. "The president --"
"No," she says. "Grindelwald didn't say anything."
"Of course not," Percival says. "He wouldn't admit to depending on something like me." Something, not someone.
"It wasn't you," Goldstein says. "It wasn't your fault. Sir."
"Not all of it," he says. His hands rest on the package. He doesn't worry at the twine because he isn't a child, doesn't want to seem like one in front of a former subordinate. The fact that she would still defer to him as an afterthought seems like pity. "But some of it was." He looks back up at her. "What happens now?"
"The conversation changes now that you're in it," she says. "I don't know where things will go from here." But she's looking at the package now, too. Percival understands what she won't say: he could take it, and leave. Sidestep the mess for the dark and the cold and the blessed quiet of the North Atlantic.
He waits until she has left the room to open the package. His hands shake, and then are still.
No, he thinks. Then he says it aloud. Goldstein appears in the doorway.
"There's been a mistake," he says. "This isn't --" He can't look at it, can't touch it more than he already has. The sealskin in his hands is brown instead of dappled grey.
"Won't it still work?" she says. She doesn't mean to offend, but he can't stop the fury rising in him.
"Would you wear someone else's body like a coat?" he snarls, and she takes a step back. (Even in human skin, selkies have teeth.)
"We'll keep looking," she says. She wraps the skin back up in paper gently, as though swaddling an infant.
"Look for whoever this belongs to," he says. "If they aren't dead already, they'll want it back." Need it back, he should say, but he doesn't want to admit that much.
"It won't be easy," Goldstein says. "It's not as though there's a registry." Percival has never felt any particular kinship with werewolves. Humanity is portioned out to them differently. Still, the thought of a registry suddenly strikes him as hideous.
"Did you become an auror because you wanted easy work?" he says. Her expression hardens. Whatever other qualms he might have had about her work, he could never fault her determination.
Re: fill: "quiet/cold/dark" (selkie!Graves, gen)
(Anonymous) 2016-12-02 09:03 am (UTC)(link)Re: fill: "quiet/cold/dark" (selkie!Graves, gen)
(Anonymous) 2016-12-03 01:16 am (UTC)(link)Re: fill: "quiet/cold/dark" (selkie!Graves, gen)
(Anonymous) 2016-12-05 03:14 am (UTC)(link)Re: fill: "quiet/cold/dark" (selkie!Graves, gen)
(Anonymous) 2016-12-20 06:27 pm (UTC)(link)Re: fill: "quiet/cold/dark" (selkie!Graves, gen)
(Anonymous) 2016-12-20 06:36 pm (UTC)(link)tl;dr MAYBE (and thanks for your interest)