[1] a little lie will get me by

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It seemed too good to be true. Grindelwald had been laying low for a while now. After the entire fiasco with the Qilin, his support  seemed to have disappeared. But Grindelwald always has some magic tricks up his sleeve.

Grindelwald would not give up. His ability to manipulate the public, his victims and well... essentially anyone that could breathe (and even this was not a hard requirement) exceeded all expectations. Somehow, he'd managed to sickly twist the story to his favor. His followers, though not as fiercely proclaiming their support as once was socially acceptable, ceaselessly continued to uphold his ideals.

Had they simply not killed the first one before they could properly judge the situation? Had the Qilin not gone to both Dumbledore and that other yellow miss? Who was to say that the Qilin did not suffer from knee problems as it appeared to kneel down before literally anyone?

Regardless of the various doubts or rumors that were promulgated amongst the firm supporters of chaos, the essence remained the same. After all, how could one betray Grindelwald when they had compromised everything for it?

Theseus had suffered with these developments even if they were for the better. He had dedicated his life to the cause, but no clear answer availed. Everything appeared all right. But reality could not be faltered by mere appearances. Everyone felt the underlying anxiety regardless of how they acted. The ministry had a certain affinity of acting like nothing was going on anyways. Grindelwald just went from a name they whispered, to a name they shouted, back to a name they whispered. 

It was as if Grindelwald's disappearance only shun a light on everything that was lost along the way; People's morals, their integrity, their lives - her life.
Her beautiful eyes.
Her beautiful smile.
Her touch. 

The documents he had been tossing around fell to the ground and he placed his elbows on his desk, hands to his head, sighing painfully. He increasingly pulled on the strands of his perfectly done hair in the most violent manner. He proceeded to close his eyes involuntarily, firmly believing in the undeniability of his fault in Leta's death. 

Her face dwelled before his eyes yet again. Don't close your eyes, don't close your eyes, he thought. But it didn't help, it never did, quite the opposite actually. In his sleep he was tormented ceaselessly by her existence - whatever still lingered of it. It was as if all of her memory was kept alive by him - only he had the burden of carrying the death of this sweet and delicate creature with him. It had been all his fault, after all.

The promise of destroying Grindelwald had kept him on the move, but now that the wizard was vaguely out of the picture, his suppressed pain crept up on him. He had been waiting for an attack from Grindelwald, anything, any glimpse of hope to take down this wretched man, Leta's murderer. But this unfinished chapter left him with mere scribbles of mourning.

The dark circles under his eyes permanently accompanied him. Anything to run from her.

He just focused on his job, it was the only thing that he could lose himself in. But he found himself growing increasingly tired of the formalities. He remembered the way the Ministry folded for Grindelwald and could not help but to detest them for it. 

His brother and his friends (Lally Hicks, Yusuf Kama, Tina Goldstein and the newly wed couple Queenie and Jacob) brought him occasional escapes from reality, but he hardly could seek out these experiences. It took him everything in his power to do so. He felt pathetic compared to who he once was, almost powerless. He could not help but feel nice after a conversation, so he eradicated most conversation. How dared he be happy when his happiness, Leta, had been brutally ripped out of his life? 

He was so far lost in his thoughts that he had not noticed the young assistant that had walked into his office. She was too nervous to command attention, so she had just awkwardly watched Theseus have a mental breakdown. 

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