[AO3 Crosspost] Stripping your name

[terresdebrume]

✗ TECHNICAL DETAILS

FANDOM: Now Your See Me
SERIES: -
RATING: General Audiences
WORDCOUNT: 1 188
PAIRING(S): -
CHARACTER(S): Merritt McKinney, Dylan Rhodes, Henley Reeves, Jack Wilder, Daniel J. Atlas
GENRE: Magic, Animal transformation.
TRIGGER WARNING(S): None
SUMMARY:  It is a little known fact, but Merritt McKinney practically grew up with tigers -nevermind that they were behind bar and he wasn’t.


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This is a little known fact, but Merritt grew up among tigers.

Which is a slightly romanticized way of saying his mother was a caretaker at the local zoo and Merritt finished more essays sitting in front of the tigers’ indoor cages than he did at his desk.

There’s something about their eyes.

Science says, when interrogated, that tigers’ pupils are larger than a human’s, which is what makes their gaze so fascinating: because your body responds to what it percieves as a sign of sexual arousal and, long story short, prepares you for a good try at perpetuating your good old species.

Now, for his part, Merritt never got a hard on from staring into tigers’ eyes, nor anything of the sort, but there was always something peaceful about them, like sinking into a warm bath after a long day of hiking, or putting on the most worn-soft of your pajamas and slipping under the blanket with a soft plush-toy in your arms so you can bury your face in its fur.

And all in all, there were more tigers in his life than there were people.

People are easier to read. People will smile, and laugh, and move on cue, people will fear and hope and all of this is so easy to predict, so apparent on the lines of their faces… people like Dylan Rhodes are exceptions.

With tigers you can’t predict. You can’t read anything but what they want to show. It’s more difficult, more fascinating… more entertaining, too… but it doesn’t pay as well, and the tigers had to leave.

After the Eye finds them, after they complete their trial, after they’ve made sure their names are going to stay in Interpol and the world’s memory for a long time, if not forever, there’s nowhere for them to go in the States.

The kids refuse to see it, of course, young, bright, silly things that they are, but Merritt… Merritt was never one to stay once he burned all his options.

So Merritt moves.

Leaves good old Uncle Sam behind, along with a vintage set of Batman playing cards and the entire collection of Calvin and Hobbes compilation, and decides to get lost in the jungle for a few days, just long enough to let things cool down, avoid attracting attention to himself.

He settles down near a village he can’t be bothered to learn the name of and goes about the same sociable yet solitary life he’s always led. Because that’s the thing about Merritt, he can perfectly deal with an audience, but he can also live without it -that’s why he’s here and the others stayed in more ‘civilized’ parts of the world.

(There’s a gnawing in Merritt’s bones that keeps him there, too, frayed nerves and a ridiculous bout of paranoïa that keeps him alert every time he goes to town, makes him jump at sudden sound, hiss at potential threat. It’s not worrying per se, just surprising - and yet natural, like instinct.

Merritt dreams of tigers almost every night now, something that hasn’t happened to him since he was eleven and his mother forbade him from coming at the zoo after she found him in the tigers’ cage, wrapped around one of the newborn cubs with the mother licking his forehead. To this day, no one who knows about the incident -that is to say, Merritt himself- has any idea why she didn’t maul him.)

Gradually, Merritt finds himself taking longer and longer walks in the jungle.

He doesn’t bother trying to remember the villagers’ names, faces or voices anymore -just walks, and walks, and walks. Sometimes he comes by his house, shabbier with each passing day, and sniffs around a little, watches the hair on his arms lengthen to soft blonde fur, his fingernails turn to claws.

The noise of his step gets lost on the forest ground and shoes become a hindrance, his feet widening like paws, his legs too efficient to accommodate for them… clothes start to feel superfluous, ill-cut. Shirt tear off his back when he walks, caught in the bushes, falling off him in long stripes that leave black marks in their wake, brush against the whiskers he feels growing at the edge of his mouth….

One day, after he spent all of the dark time trailing a prey, he comes across one of those wood things left in the middle of the jungle.

They appear sometimes, when those who smell like fire try and come to live in the forest. This one smells old and empty but also oddly familiar, full of things he can almost recognize - strange little rocks the size of his front toes with ears like his and stripes, pieces of these skins the fire-things put above theirs, and even another one, more solid, something they put on top of their head - the name tickles at the edge of his mind but refuses to come forth.

He looks for it, tries to remember, until something catches his attention - a smell he hasn’t smelled in a long time… a flower. Flowers. And flesh, too, beneath, something greasy, something that doesn’t belong here.

When he turns his head, four of the fire-things are here.

They wear strange skins above theirs, and the one that smells of flower has red front paws, dead skin clinging to the rest of her as she pulls the larger male by the scruff of his neck.

“Merritt?”

The tiger raises its head, blue eyes shining in the unusual, pale blond fur. It cocks its head to look at Dylan, then sniffs the air and walks to Henley—

“Danny don’t move!”

Danny feels jack pushing him back -feels but doesn’t see: no one sees Jack when he’s nervous anymore since they became part of the Eye.

Beside him, Henley has stopped moving altogether, orange sparks flying from her hand when the tiger moves too close, too fast. It huffs at her, snuffing the fire out before it can even spring to life, and Dylan looks at the animal, jaw hanging and eyes wide.

“Merritt?” Henley tries.

This time the tiger looks at her.

For the shortest of seconds, Danny thinks he sees something change in the animal’s eyes, a flicker of something smaller, more human in the pupils…slowly, deliberately, it shakes its head no, then turns back to the jungle and walks away between the trees.

Soon, the forest buzzes back to life around them, birds chirping in the early morning, and the four of them stand in the ruins of what they were told was Merritt’s house for a time, looking for the raw, clumsy tiger Merritt once sculpted out of abandoned wood… all they find is a stunningly accurate reproduction of his head.

Three years after their first and only tour, the Four Horsemen come back with a new show, where they claim to practice actual magic –turning invisible, breathing fire, going through walls… their fame reaches unprecedented levels, even though their new member –an ex FBI agent, according to some rumors- lacks the charisma of his partners.

Merritt McKinney is never heard of again.