Newt x Reader || A13

Julian opens his eyes.

Light floods in, unbearable from every angle.

It's the deranged assault of an uninvited intruder; his head pounds; his throat hurts; his breath rips through the scratchy column of his exposed throat.

There is nothing before him. He is not yet a part of this new world.

Still entrapped in his past, fragments flash before his eyes.

Glitches, he thinks briefly, like a broken version of the simulations he used to run.

He remembers the emptiness of a white-walled lab, the frown of a woman disappointed, and the smile of a girl holding a little brown notebook.

Most of all, he remembers her- that girl.

The arc and curve of her hurried scrawl.
The slight shuffle in her step on the afternoons she'd made progress.
The turn of her lips as she'd whispered that word- the same one, over and over.

Always.

Always, he thinks.

Always, he remembers.

And so he clings to these fragments of her as he rises into consciousness, as the light of day no longer becomes an unrelenting assault, and as the picture materializes.

So when Julian opens his eyes to the girl's perilous creation: four walls closing in, a thing of beauty, sharp as the death's eternal blade,

he remembers.

- - -

My fingers knot in my lab coat as Dr. Paige raises the syringe to the light.

I pinch my lips, not daring to draw breath.

Instead, I count the seconds that pass as she studies the cool blue content within the tool of death between her fingers.

One.

Light from the overhead fluorescents filters through the translucent cyan substance. I bite my lower lip. It's not a perfect match; if it were me, I'd have noticed the little detail; the mistake.

Two.

If it were Julian, he'd have noticed it as well, how the shade of the liquid in the syringe is slightly tainted.

How the hue of the memory serum is not identical to what it's supposed to be.

Three.

Dr. Paige purses her lips. For a moment, I tell myself it's been too easy.

That it was too easy to access the serum through the laboratory vault Julian designed with his own hand.

That it was too easy to drain the contents of the true syringe into a separate vial, to slip it into my lab coat pocket: a forbidden, deadly secret.

Four.

That it was too easy to slightly alter the memory serum's formula, to replace my creation with a new one, one with the purpose to save over harm.

Five.

That it was too easy to help Julian remember.

Six.

I loose my breath as Dr. Paige brings the syringe down from the light.

She turns to us- a cluster of white lab coats surrounding her examination table.