TRIGGER WARNING: this chapter contains: bullying, suicide attempts/self harm, graphic content and child abuse. If any of this triggers you, I would warn you to skip this chapter.

A/N: look at me! 2 chapters in one day, I'm on fire! This chapter is entirely from Credence's POV! Hope you guys enjoy, this is going to be a rather sad one, and it's a bit shorter than the others.

Darkness. That's all that appeared before me as I opened my eyes. I wondered silently, had I woken up in the middle of the night? Was that why I couldn't see anything?

No. That couldn't be right. I couldn't feel Newt next to me, couldn't feel his arms wrapped tightly around me, I couldn't feel his breath on the back of my neck and I couldn't smell the all too familiar comforting scent of his rose scented hair shampoo.

I slowly came to realise that I was floating. I didn't know how this was possible, nor where I was. Simply floating in a world of unending nothingness, the darkness practically swallowing me up.

I looked around, seeing nothing but the inky blackness surrounding me, feeling crushing as it came down from every angle.

And then there was light. Vague light, barely visible in the distance. I was curious now. I wanted to see what it was, I wanted to walk towards it. And so I did.

I couldn't feel my feet hitting any sort of ground beneath me, couldn't hear the sound of my bare feet. It was the strangest thing, yet I discarded this fact and continued towards the light which grew brighter and more discernible as I got closer.

I now saw that it was something akin to a TV screen. Completely rectangular, shining brightly. There was no sort of TV set behind it, simply this rectangle.

I could make out what was seemingly being played on it now, and my mind reeled. A memory. I remembered this one well. It was one of the first days I'd left the church after being adopted to go and buy a loaf of bread, I'd been seven years old at the time. Frowning, pained slightly, I settled down to watch.

******

Credence walked along the footpath, hugging his black jacket closer to himself. He looked around, noticing all the children running, playing in the still falling snow.

They filled him with anxiety, a desperate need to leave. Yet he couldn't. He had to get this bread, and then get back home, or his Ma would punish him again.

With this thought in mind, he continued, doing his best to avoid eye contact with anyone he passed. Grown ups watched him worriedly, children whispered about him. They whispered about why he was so pale, so sickly looking, why his eyes were so empty and haunted.

He knew he wasn't normal. He wasn't like them, he wasn't ordinary, he wasn't boring. Credence was...different. Special. Yet he didn't like it, he hated it. He hated the looks people would give him, he hated their pitiful eyes. He hated the children who called him names, who regularly beat him up for simply existing.

He was halfway to the bakery, walking down one of the emptier streets. He let out a yelp as he was dragged into a nearby alley, eyes widening in horror when he recognised the two boys who'd pulled him into the secluded area.

They were both older than him by a few years, both at least nine or ten years old. They were stockily built, like thugs. One was called Jake. He had dark hair and stood taller than the other, who was called Sam.

Credence whimpered at the sight of them, inwardly cursing at himself for being so terrified.

Of course, they'd had their way and had punched and kicked him until it hurt to move. He couldn't do anything. They were strong, and he was weak.

They yelled at him, called him names. But the name that had always stuck with him, always remained as a tainted memory, a stain, a name that could send him into a violent panic, was 'freak'. Everyone called him that, everyone called him that because it was true. He was different, and he hated it.

******

A single tear rolled down my face. I didn't know if I could stand to watch a child version of myself be brutally beaten up by two boys twice my size. That word still echoes in my head, their voices still taunt me. Freak.

I blinked the tears out of my eyes as another memory flashed up. This one was a fair few years later, and I was now ten years old.

******

Agony was something that crippled Credence nearly daily now. He felt pain everywhere that was possible. Some days getting out of bed was impossible, and others he'd just scream into his pillow, mind battling against demons and depression.

He couldn't recall a day where he hadn't cried, whether it be from pain from his Ma's furious beatings, or simply from the darkness that he knew was swallowing him up.

He hardly spoke, he hardly ate. He hardly slept either, mind plagued of nightmares, demons that walked his dreams and taunted him, yelling at him. Pain shot through him whenever he walked, constant pain and terror flooding his systems, so badly that he'd fainted once or twice.

Panic attacks were happening daily. Anything from the thought of seeing Jake and Sam to his mother's belt sent him into a hyperventilating, crying mess and not even his sisters could help him. No one could.

******

I was crying at this point, knowing that this was where it all truly begun. The days I spent sleeping, doing nothing, or screaming for no reason till my throat was sore. My mind was the darkest place I'd ever been, shadowed monsters lurking in the dark and waiting for the right time to tear me to pieces.

Depression had hit me like a train, dragging me down faster than I could've ever believed.

I had no one, I was completely alone. Another memory began to form, so I lifted my tear stained face and began to watch.

******

Credence stared at himself in the mirror, hatred in his eyes as he glared daggers at his own reflection. How he hated the boy who stood in front of him, bruise marks covering his pale chest, the bruised darkness of a black eye, the ugly scars that littered his hands and lower wrists.

He was filled with hatred. Hatred towards himself. Towards the boys that still beat him up, the beatings becoming worse as time progressed. Hatred towards his mother who would lash him with a belt with every chance she got.

"I wish they'd all die."

His words were quiet, but filled with such happiness at the thought.

"I wish they'd all go to hell and burn. Burn where they belong."

Yes. That was it. He wanted to see them suffer. To see them pay, to hear their screams.

Wait. No, no he didn't. Credence stared at himself, horrified of the words that had slipped past his lips. Something inside of his mind screeched at him, telling him to kill, to maim, to cause pain and suffering. Yet he was fighting back, fighting a war inside his head.

He didn't want to hurt anyone, but at the same time he wanted to watch the world burn.

******

I remembered this clearly. This had been the day when my homicidal thought began, telling me to kill everyone in sight.

At the time I'd been terrified of myself. I had no idea what was happening to me. Now I understood. The obscurus was already festering, and I was living to long already. I was supposed to die at ten.

My eyes widened as I saw the next memory. No. No. This was something I didn't want to relive. Desperately. Yet I couldn't tear my eyes away.

******

Credence could only let out a sharp whine of pain as a foot connected with his ribs, seeing Jake cruelly smiling down at him. Sam wasn't there today, but Credence was in too much pain to care.

"You're just a stupid little kid, aren't you?" The boy's words were cruel, Credence dissolving into a panic attack, unable to breathe properly. "You're nothing, you hear me?! Nothing! You're just a stupid, little, freak!"

That was when time seemed to stop for Credence. He was sure the next events happened impossibly fast, yet for him they seemed to play out in slow motion.

An explosion like sound ripped through the air, Jake's eyes widening.

His body was becoming horribly contorted, limbs twisting brutally, accompanied by the agonising cracking of bones and tearing of muscle. He opened his mouth to scream, only a gargled cry coming out as blood poured down his face. His limbs finally tore from his body, blood spraying out like a sprinkler.

Jake's eyes had rolled into the back of his head as he vomited, his brain completely overloading, unable to handle the agony he was being forced through.

Finally, his head was ripped brutally from his body, which exploded into a mass of blood and meat, flying from every direction. It splattered up the walls of the alley, over the cobblestone floor, and all over Credence, who stood defiantly, face expressionless as he watched his tormentor become nothing more than a dark, red mess.

He didn't feel anything. He simply felt... Calm.

Yet he knew what he'd done. He knew he'd just killed someone. And the strangest thing was, he didn't even know how he'd done it. He just knew he had.

He'd grabbed a hose off the nearby wall and had rinsed off all the blood, finding himself completely soaked, but thankfully clean. Some bleary red stains remained, but people would hardly notice.

He'd walked back to the church, and had received a beating for getting himself unexplainably drenched, yet he could hardly focus on the pain shooting though his hands. The events that had just unfolded played in his mind, over, and over.

He knew he'd never forget the look in Jake's eyes, the look of complete terror and hopelessness when he'd realised it was his end.

******

I watched, nearly throwing up myself. I could still feel the warm blood spray all over me, I could still see the red liquid staining my hands.

Of course, I hadn't been caught. No one had. They never found the body, purely because it didn't even exist as a body anymore. Missing posters had been put up, and every time I had looked at one the sinking feeling of dread and regret had filled me.

I didn't want to kill him. The regret had never faded, the blood would never truly wash away. I remembered those nights where I'd scrub furiously at my skin, wishing for the feeling of dread and horror to leave me, for the homicidal thoughts to all be washed away. Yet all that was washed away was my blood down the drains.

They never did leave. I could still feel the pain, even now. But it had become... Bearable. I could live with it. I had done so for eighteen years.

A new memory began to play out, this one was one I most definitely didn't want to see. One I never wanted to remember. Ever.

******

The memory was hazy, as his mind was too clouded for him to remember horribly much.

All he did remember was turning on the water to the shower and stepping in, a bottle of the strongest alcohol he could find and a knife in his hands.

He found himself drunk rather quickly, unable to feel the pain as he hacked away at his skin, watching the red darkness fall and drip down the drain, the blood colouring the water falling from the faucet pink as it swirled around him. He was too drunk to care anymore, too drunk to cry.

He'd decided he was ending it. He couldn't live like this anymore, hating himself each and every day. He was consumed by guilt, sick and tired of being in a constant state of mind that told him he had to kill people. He was tired of everything. Tired of himself.

He'd been saved last minute, and to this day he still didn't know how. He'd figured that perhaps one of his sisters had found him, probably Modesty, as she always seemed to care for him a lot after that.

She was almost like his big sister, even though she was basically half his age. It was clear she cared a lot for her shy, mentally scarred older brother.

******

I hated that day. I hated it so much.

Tears were freely flowing down my face once more, I could taste the saltiness on my lips and my vision was blurred.

I'd attempted to take my life many times, simply because I didn't deserve existence. I didn't deserve it, and no one else deserved to die at my hands.

I tuned back in to the memories unfolding, blinking at one. This wasn't an unhappy one. It wasn't one that had left me with mental scars. It was the first time I'd ever seen Newt, my husband.

******

Credence stood at the top of the marble stairs, keeping his gaze cast down, too shy and terrified to look at the crowd that had gathered to hear his Ma preach about the evil of witches.

There was quite a large crowd, many people listening intently to what the woman had to say. It was when Credence's Ma picked out a certain man in the crowd that made him look up.

The man stood out against the rest of the crowd. Something was different about him, just as something was different about Credence.

He was tall, his skin pale and his hair messy and golden brown. He wore a blue long coat, and held a large suitcase. Yet despite all this, his eyes were the most fascinating. They held a childlike wonder, a sparkle that could no doubt light up an entire city. He spoke with a thick British accent, and it was clear from the moment he opened his mouth that he wasn't from around here.

Credence felt drawn to him almost immediately. He wanted to talk to him, to ask him what his name was. Just to hear his voice again.

Yet the man had rushed off rather quickly, and Credence didn't think much more of him after that.

******

It seemed like such a long time ago to me.

Such a long time ago, when Newt was a stranger. Now he was the closest person I'd ever had.

A face I recognised with nostalgia appeared.

******

Graves. He'd been everything Credence could've ever wanted. Someone who'd heal his broken hands, tell him he was special and that it wasn't a bad thing. Someone who'd hug him, be there as a shoulder to cry on.

But as quickly as Graves had become the light in his life, he disappeared.

Graves had slapped him, after he was unable to reply to his questions about the Obscurus. He'd just killed his mother, he was too traumatised. The only thing he was able to utter was "help me." And Graves had done the exact opposite.

That was the day when he truly gave up, gave up on everything, including himself.

He'd flown into a rage, twitching unbearably as the walls began to collapse between him and the man who'd just torn down everything he'd ever had.

Credence remembered the way Graves had looked at him, with utter shock in his eyes.

The building had nearly been blown to pieces as Credence found himself as nothing more than a huge, swirling mass of dark destruction, on a warpath to wreak revenge on those who had ruined his life.

******

I still feel the betrayal, the betrayal of the only person who'd ever shown me care since I was born.

Trust became a difficult thing for me to comprehend. It was only when I saw the mysterious man again, the man I now knew to be called Newt Scamander, that trust returned to me.

******

Tears of fear completely clouded Credence's vision as he watched spells fly past, eyes widening as that familiar figure was thrown against the stone wall with a crack. The man gasped in agony, before catching sight of Credence.

Blood was dripping from the man's lips and down his chin. He remembered Newt's slurred words, the words that had finally given him hope. A desperate hope, that he might live. That there was someone, this blue eyed, british, strange man, who still cared about him and wanted him to survive.

******

And that led me to where I was now. More memories appeared, ones of me being attacked by the vampire, falling asleep on the tower floor, kissing Newt at the Yule Ball, the aftermath where Newt had kissed me until I was out of breath and was practically begging for more.

That kiss at the Ball was a memory that brought a weak smile to my tearful face. It still filled me with a warm, fuzzy feeling.

He'd been so gentle with me, knowing that one wrong move could ruin it all. He'd never do, or had ever done, anything that would ever hurt me. I know he wouldn't.

I trust him.

A/N: believe me. I'm still shocked myself at what I've just wrote, and I just want to leave this here at the end. Credence has not killed any children in the actual series (that we know of) and this is simply me adding more depth to his character.

Credence is still the same character. I find myself having to constantly remind myself that he has killed other people (his own mother for example) and that I've created the character Jake to explain how dangerous he can truly be in moments of utter desperation, and especially towards those who have tormented and hurt him. I still might remove that part, or this whole chapter as I'm not completely sure about it.

Please let me know what you think.