Chapter Text
Thomas stumbles out of the med-tent for the first time two days after they dock in the bay. It’s a ramshackle operation, their shelters flimsy and temporary pending a real, solid look at the land and what it has to offer. He knows Vince’s plans for them, from the voyage to the landing, but seeing the beach, littered with tents and crates and what supplies they could scavenge from the Scorch, he has no idea how they’re going to do this. It doesn’t look like enough. They have only a handful of adults—people who know anything about the world before the solar flares, before the virus, the experiments—to a hundred teenagers with vague knowledge and no memories.
The wound in Thomas’s side twinges, a deep ache having settled in his core. He lays a hand over the bandage under his shirt and closes his eyes against the burning pain. The med-jacks—barely trained field nurses, courtesy of Mary, who taught Sonya how to stave off simple infections and bind wounds, who then trained two others in the Haven—tried to keep him in bed, fell just short of begging him to return to the tent and rest a while longer.
“We can’t do a whole lot if it gets serious,” Sonya warns him, a finger in his face and a stern look on hers. Thomas arches an eyebrow because a bullet to the belly seems pretty damn serious and he’s still alive, all thanks to her, so how much worse would it have to be. She pinches the bridge of her nose and shakes her head at him. “Infection is a bitch and you’re not out of the woods yet. Just… promise you won’t do anything stupid. Or strenuous. Please.”
Thomas mumbles a promise in return and turns toward the settlement proper. He’s seen so little of the Haven, only a glimpse of the beach and the hammocks; the rest of his time spent staring at the grey canvas of the med-tent or talking to Minho, Fry, or Brenda. Seeing them fills him with so much warmth he thinks he might spark a light because he was certain when he turned out of the train station and went back to Wicked, that he’d never see any of them again.
(Gally stopped by a time or two; he stuck his head into the small space, gave Thomas a once-over, and nodded to himself. Thomas furrowed his brow in question.
“Just making sure you’re not dead.”
“Not yet, check back later,” Thomas said, wryly.)
Stepping out into the sun, onto the sand that warms his bare feet and the wind that ruffles his hair, is like walking in a dream or a fantasy. Paradise is beautiful, all glittering sea, yellow sand, blue skies; it’s safety and freedom and no more walls to hold them in.
(The stone by the fire is its own type of prison built on guilt, as far as Thomas is concerned, though he’s learning to see it as a beacon, instead.)
Vince preaches at his pulpit each night for the first week or so, the bonfire roaring away and the survivors sitting around Thomas soaking in the promises he’d been handing out since the Right Arm started pulling kids out of their prisons. But part of Thomas doesn’t want to believe. He’s wary, worn, and promises crack and break easily because control is a fickle thing. Hope, even more so.
Thomas finds himself sitting at the end of the world.
The brittle shale edges jutting from the cliffs that surround their settlement are almost iridescent with sea spray at sunset. Thomas spends hours there, watching the waves crash against the ridges, letting the salt sit on his tongue and stick to his skin like sweat. His feet dangle over the edge and he thinks about physics and velocity—falling from twenty stories, air rushing over him and through him, and the sudden ache in his bones when he hit the water. It feels like a lifetime ago and just like yesterday.
“Don’t you have a job?”
It’s Gally. Again. Most days, actually, at this spot where Thomas watches the Haven come together from above. Gally sits beside him, leaning back on his hands, head thrown against the sun. They don’t talk much, mostly greetings and good nights, and the odd ribbing that tries to spark a fire in Thomas, begging to start a fight, but it fizzles and dies.
He found the spot early, when all he could do was explore and eat and sleep. It’s been a month since he woke up. At least he thinks so. Time is different here. They barely had time to breathe in the Glade and then the Scorch, where sleep came uneasy and unpredictably, and every second was adrenaline. But the settlement is slow and calm and it’s been at least four weeks of hard, steady work, fishing and hunting, and growing and building, and Thomas thought Gally’d be too busy planning the new shelters to show.
“Don’t you?” Thomas replies.
“The first hut is done. Kind of.”
“Kind of?”
“The roof just needs to be covered and tied, but if I braid another rope, my fingers are going to bleed.” Gally holds up his hand and wiggles his fingers in Thomas’s face. Thomas grabs at them, pulling his hand close to get a better look; the skin is red and raw, looks hot and painful, and he wouldn’t be surprised if Gally ended up without fingerprints after everything. He doesn’t think about it, just holds the fingers close to his lips and blows cool air over them to soothe the ache like he’d done a million times to his own in the Scorch, when climbing the dunes involved feet and hands, and the hot sand burned his skin.
Gally makes a noise, something choked off and Thomas flushes. He drops Gally’s hand and looks up slowly, but Gally’s face is blank, though there’s red at the tips of his ears and a pink dusting across his cheeks. He stands, brushes himself off, and pauses, awkwardly. He won’t look at Thomas, eyes skittering over the ground instead. Thomas’s face burns and he knows he’s turned his own shade of pink.
“Don’t you have a job, greenie?” Gally asks again brusquely, and walks off. Thomas lets out a long sigh, rubs at his temples, and lets the cool sea air chill the heat in his cheeks.
It starts with a rock slide.
Thomas’s hands shake as he reaches out to a young girl, maybe fourteen, one of the youngest, and the thought of her in a Maze, stolen from her home and tortured by Wicked, twists his insides into knots. She reminds him of Chuck, red cheeks and curly hair with a look on her face like she trusts him with anything. But he can’t hold on to that thought, that image, because it feels like acid in his veins, no matter how much he tries to come to terms with that particular pain. It’s too much and he can’t control the tremor in his limbs.
She’s trapped under a pile of wood and stone. A wrong move might collapse it completely. He has to focus. He needs to keep his head on straight.
“It’s okay, I’m gonna get you out of there,” he soothes as she cries and begs him to get her loose. This side of the camp is torn apart. At least eight people are missing and there are giant slabs of shale littering the base of the cliffs where there were once four huts. He scans the camp and can’t find Minho or Fry or—
“Hey, can you tell me your name?” he asks the girl.
“Amanda.”
“Okay, Amanda. I’m Thomas. I’m gonna get you out of here, but I need to leave you for a second to find someone to help.”
Her eyes go wide and she cries harder.
“Shh, I’ll be right back. See him?” He points toward Gally, standing down the beach, shifting smaller slabs and pieces of wood to check for missing people. “He’s going to help and you’re going to be okay.”
She clutches his wrist hard and he has to nearly pry her fingers apart before turning down the beach.
“Gally! I need you over here with me.” He points toward the rubble and Gally barely spares him a glance as he takes off as quick as he can and kneels in front of the girl.
“Hey, Amanda,” Gally says. “Are you hurt?”
She shakes her head. “I-I don't know. I don’t think so?"
“Okay, okay. We’re going to move some of this stuff so we can get you out. We need you to hold still and you’ll be alright.” Gally’s voice is soft and low. Amanda isn’t crying anymore, though she looks terrified, and Thomas is actually a little amazed by what he’s seeing. But then he remembers the way Gally'd been with Chuck in those two days before everything went to hell, a big brother who ruffled his hair and laughed at his stupid jokes. The memory aches and Thomas wonders about the three years before he’d been sent into the Maze; thinks about how much more the sting and the gunshot and the blood fucked up Gally than anyone else in that room.
“Thomas, grab that side.” Gally points at the top-most hunk of wood and Thomas grabs his end, waits for the go-ahead. They lift in tandem and work in silence, pulling wood and stone from the pile until it creaks and flexes and Amanda can wiggle from under the mess. She crawls away from the pile on her hands and knees until she’s clear, and Gally follows. He helps her stand, watches as she takes stock of any injury, and then lets out a breathless grunt when she crashes into him with a hug.
Thomas laughs a little when Gally stutters, pats her lightly on the back, looking uncomfortable, but he gives her a smile when she pulls away and thanks him for his help. She turns to Thomas and thanks him, too, as a group of kids run up to her and pull her away.
“Thanks,” Thomas murmurs. He lays a hand on Gally’s arm and nods, trying to show his gratitude, but Gally’s been skittish since the moment on the cliffs, so he keeps it simple, detached. Gally nods back, shakes Thomas’s hand loose, and turns back toward the beach to look for survivors.
Days come and go, and they learn that four people were crushed. Four kids. Teenagers like him.
They plan a funeral. Vince and Jorge remember them, the old traditions of the Western world, but this is the new world and all they’ve known is disease, so they burn the bodies and mourn and carve new names into stone. They attempt to rebuild.
Gally doesn’t speak, just collects the rubble and surveys new plots, draws up new plans. He frowns and mutters and the guilt is a shadow he can’t shake. He built those huts, chose the land, and Thomas can see the weight of it all on his shoulders, feels them tense when he reaches out and lays his palm on his back and says, “This wasn’t your fault.”
He forces Thomas’s hand off of him, doesn’t look at him, keeping his eyes on the rope he’s tying around a bundle of wood.
“Sure.”
“It wasn’t.” Thomas pushes because it’s too soon, the guilt they carry around from the Glade and Chuck and Newt, and every other death they take responsibility for, is still too heavy. Adding this? Thomas isn’t too sure Gally won’t work himself to death over it.
“Fuck off, I’ve got shit to do.”
“Gally,” Thomas says softly and reaches for his wrist. Gally rears back, slings the bundle over his shoulder, and turns to deposit it in its designated pile. “Gally.”
“What?” he shouts and Thomas winces.
“It’s not your fault, you have to know that.” Thomas tries again. No answer, just a deep frown, and an angry stare. He reaches out again and Gally doesn’t move, but the frown gets impossibly deeper. “List-“
“Go away, greenie.” Each word comes from between gritted teeth, his jaw clenched tight. Gally pauses a moment, a far-off look coming over him. He sighs and shakes his head, then walks around Thomas, back toward the rubble to work.
Thomas finds himself sitting at the end of the world with Gally of all people.
It isn’t the first time, would hardly be the last, their routine set and immutable—for sanity’s sake on Thomas’s part, for consistency’s sake on Gally’s.
Thomas learned, quickly and by necessity, that Gally values, above all else, consistency. He needs it, thrives on it, and it was the reason they locked horns like bulls. Thomas was all fire and Gally all stone. They were two pieces of sandpaper, puzzle pieces that didn’t quite fit, jagged edges meeting at the worst of times; they were all the ways you can describe two opposing forces.
Thomas finds himself sitting at the end of the world with Gally, at the top of a cliff, the slabs of shale that ripped their camp apart in full view, and neither of them wants to talk about it, but Thomas can tell that Gally probably needs to.
They’ve cleared most of the stone, what parts they could manage to lift, and they scouted new land to build on, far away and across the beach, closer to the bay. Gally looks like he hasn’t slept in a week, bags under his eyes and a shake in his hands, although he hides it by keeping them in motion: tying seagrass for roofs, braiding cord, and shaving lumber.
There’s a weight on his shoulders, blame and shame in the shape of four dead teenagers, even though Vince and Brenda and Minho and Fry and everyone tells him it couldn’t possibly be his fault.
Thomas sits at the end of the world with Gally, who leans into him, exhausted and glassy-eyed, but Thomas isn’t sure he realises he’s doing it, because they’re not like this. It feels a little incongruous, and Thomas is tense, but doesn’t move. He also doesn’t speak, because the chance that Gally will snap out of whatever daze he’s in and decide Thomas can go fuck himself is high.
Instead, Thomas watches the horizon between watching Gally and staring, unseeing, into space, thinking about how they got here and how everything has changed and will change and–
Well, Thomas sits at the end of the world with Gally, who needs a moment, which Thomas can fully understand and appreciate, so he sits and has a moment, too, and calls it growth.
If things are bad, they can always get worse.
Thomas tries not to think that way. He imagines the things Newt would tell him if he ever said those words out loud, but he’s not Newt, hasn’t been able to talk to him in too fucking long, and he can’t make the pep talk happen in any useful way. The voice in his head sometimes sounds like Minho or Brenda, but more often than not, it’s Gally, calling him names with that weirdly fond tone he’s taken on recently.
(It is weird, because although they don’t hate each other and have found some kind of balance, Thomas wouldn’t call them close enough to be fond.)
Thomas stands on the beach, as he does sometimes, his feet in the surf even though the water is cold. The sky is growing dark, huge clouds coming at them like a wall, and Thomas wonders where exactly they landed and whether it has a storm season. If it does have a storm season, how long will it last? Should he be worried? Hm.
He walks along the beach, watching the sky and the horizon, and tries to remember the maps Vince used to get them here, to maybe get some idea of what he should be expecting so he can write it down in his notebook simply titled “Weather Patterns”.
He’s lost in thought when a flash of lightning strikes the water, then another and another, closer and closer until every hair on Thomas’s body is standing on edge. The phantom stench of scorched skin washes over him, pulling him into the image of Minho smoldering in the dark of Jorge’s hideout. The memory is strong, pungent and raw and his heart races.
The rain feels like it comes out of nowhere, a torrent that stings his skin like a million needle pricks. He cries out, but his voice is taken by the rumbling of thunder and the roaring downpour. It’s cold, sharp, and it takes a moment for him to come out of the shock of it, taking stuttered steps backward. Suddenly, there’s a hand around his arm, an arm around his waist, and a muffled shout in his ear, and he’s being dragged away from the beach into a shelter.
It’s a temporary build, somewhere to crash while the new huts are built, so the roof leaks and the walls judder under the strength of the rain and the force of the thunder. It doesn't matter, so long as it holds against the deluge. He breathes heavily for a moment, barely noticing the arm leaving his waist or the hand that brushes against his jaw before pulling back.
“What were you doing, dummy?”
Thomas focuses and Gally stands in front of him. He steps back and crosses his arms, an angry frown on his face. Thomas makes to answer, but his teeth chatter with cold and Gally sighs, clearly disgusted with Thomas’s lack of self-preservation.
(If he could speak through the shaking, he’d tell Gally that he was caught unawares and that’s the excuse he’d stick to in court.)
The rain is more than cold, closer to freezing and Thomas remembers that it’s barely Spring by his calculations, and the shivering almost sends him scuttling across the ground. Gally’s frown eases and he puts his hands on Thomas’s bare arms, rubbing up and down to warm him.
Gally rolls his eyes when Thomas stares at him stubbornly. “Stood out in a fucking monsoon and now you’re gonna die of hypothermia.
“Don’t be dr-dramatic."
“Don’t be a moron.”
"Make me.” Thomas knows he’s being childish—almost sticks out his tongue like a kid, but decides against it, because he's not that ridiculous—but he can’t help it, because he’s cold and uncomfortable and his clothes are sticking to him like a second skin.
Gusts take more from the structure, the roof barely holding out the torrential downpour. He tries not to think about the others, what the camp looks like, if anyone is hurt or worse. He’s worried about hurricanes and tsunamis and every other natural disaster they could possibly come up against and finds himself working up a panic attack.
“Hey.” Gally grips his arms hard, giving him a slight shake, and Thomas realises he’s halfway to hyperventilating, his body trembling more and more as the minutes tick by. He sucks in one, two, three slow breaths and steadies.
“Yeah, I’m good.”
Gally gives him a skeptical look. He moves to let go, but Thomas grabs one of his hands; he stares at the ground and holds on awkwardly and Gally just looks at him, questioning. When Thomas doesn’t do anything, eyes far off and glazed over, Gally sits against the wall and tugs Thomas down with him.
“You sure you’re good?” Gally asks and Thomas nods.
“Just… we were supposed to be safe.”
“We can’t control the weather.”
Thomas huffs and squeezes the hand in his before he realises he’s doing it. He drops it, an embarrassed flush coming over him. “Guess not.”
He leans into Gally’s shoulder, closes his eyes, focuses on the pressure at his side, not the other problem of natural destruction. If he starts now, he’ll never stop. The cold seeps into his bones. He pulls his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them, trying to warm up, but his clothes are soaking and water is still making its way into the shelter little by little, so it’s almost useless.
“You’re not allowed to freeze to death,” Gally grumbles and puts his arm over Thomas’s shoulder to pull him close. The shivering calms a bit. Despite the wet clothes, Gally is warm and even though the camp is crumbling under un-fucking-lucky circumstances, he feels a little safer.
“Didn’t know you cared.”
“Didn’t know you’re an idiot.”
Thomas wants to fight, get defensive, but it’s useless and he’s tired. He pushes down any frantic energy trying to build and tells himself it can wait, there’s nothing to be done right now. It’s not his specialty, actually the thing he’s worst at, but he’ll wait here, just for a bit, and hope for the best.
The storm ends and another one comes and then another. Three days and they hunker down as best they can in the rickety shelter. They see hail that tears through tents, breaks down the roofs of the hammock shelter and mess hall, and destroys building supplies. Thomas steps out of the shelter, its own roof nearly shredded and the walls crooked from wind and pocked by hail, to face a disaster. The camp is torn up and tossed around the beach, people huddled together and shivering.
Their haven is in pieces. The rock slides weren’t that long ago, still fresh, the wound barely closed. Another mess and everything is falling apart. Gally stands next to him and curses under his breath. All Thomas can do is nod along.
Thomas does have a job. It’s tedious, needs a patient hand and a focused mind, and he thought Minho had gone mad when he suggested the idea.
“You’re going to archive everything.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Thomas was skeptical.
“It means you’re going to write down everything that happens around here and use that big brain of yours to make sure there’s nothing going wrong that I can’t see.” Minho flicks him between the eyes. "We'll need records, man, and I don't want to hand that job to someone I don't trust."
So, Thomas spends his days with a notebook in hand and pencil tucked behind his ear, moving from the bay to the flat land to the gardens and back again, jotting notes and making graphs and studying the data, an image of their camp coming to life.
He spends hours connecting the dots, feet dangling from his cliff, murmuring thoughts and ideas into the wind. But the patterns aren’t clear yet, and though they get clearer by the day, there's something odd about them, setting him on edge. The urge to hyperfocus on the feeling is strong, like the Maze all over again, but it’s not the time and not the place and nothing is that serious, so he breathes and remembers they’re okay here. Everything is fine.
“You’re going to fall off one day,” Gally chides, though his own legs hang over the edge.
“Hypocrite,” Thomas points out.
“I’m not the one who can’t chill the fuck out. Ever.”
He watches Thomas fidget and sway, unable to keep still even now when there’s no reason to be on the move. But Thomas can’t stop, likely never would, the static under his skin keeping him full of energy that needs to be spent. He rolls his eyes and leans forward to stare straight down into the rocks at the bottom. While he loves to watch the waves crash against the sharp, pointed stones, he does it now to spite his companion, a grin crossing his face in defiance. Gally puts a hand over his chest and pushes him back.
Thomas stops moving and looks to his side. Gally’s brows are pinched together and his mouth is held tight. The grin falls from Thomas’s lips and he slides back until his knees are snug against the edge. Gally drops his hand from Thomas’s chest and leans back on his palms, looks away, out toward the horizon. Thomas follows suit, but knows Gally is watching him from the corner of his eye.
“What’re you writing?” Gally asks after a few minutes.
“Today's results,” Thomas says. He makes a note and then turned the page to fill in a data point on a rough graph. Gally hums an acknowledgment, but doesn’t ask questions. They do these same things almost every evening, after work has halted and before the bonfire has dwindled: Thomas writes or blows a tune through a blade of grass between his thumbs, and Gally watches the horizon or braids rope for huts or whittles away at a blob of wood that hasn’t really taken shape yet.
Tonight, Thomas is jittery, more so than usual, so he closes his notes, tossing the book behind and away from him, and sets his head in his hands, his elbows on his knees. He doesn’t mind his job, actually enjoys it most days, the dots connecting in his head, then on the page until he’s painted a picture. It’s exciting to see everything develop in real-time. But–
“Do you ever think we’re doomed?”
Gally snaps his head to the side, pinning Thomas with a skeptical look. “Since when are you a fatalist?”
“I’m not a fatalist, I’m trying to be realistic.”
“Realistic? ‘Do you ever think we’re doomed’ is a lot closer to being severely pessimistic than realistic.”
Thomas sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “Just think about it. We’re a bunch of kids. We don’t know anything, and Vince and Jorge are pretty much the only people here who know anything about before, and they were still only teenagers when the flares hit. We don’t know what the fuck we’re doing.”
Gally lets out a long breath and shakes his head. “Shut up. We’re doing what we can.”
“But what if it’s not enough?” Thomas grits out. He squeezes his eyes shut and takes even breaths. The sudden feeling of dread vibrates from his core and his hands shake in his lap. He jumps when Gally lays a palm across his shoulder blade, then against his neck, pressing down against him.
“Calm down,” Gally demands. “Just… shut up and breathe.”
Thomas bristles, opens his mouth to fight back, but closes it and tries not to pout. He rubs a hand over his face, instead.
“I know we couldn't have stopped the storms or the slide, but I–maybe it's a sign.” He pauses, picks blade of grass and tosses them over the edge idly. "I'm just scared, you know?"
The words come out small, vulnerable, and he’s not sure when he got so comfortable being either in front of Gally.
“I know,” Gally replies, like he is, too.
Thomas paces. Has paced for at least an hour now, if his internal clock isn’t entirely broken, from the beach to the lean-tos that replaced the storm-torn shelters, then back to the beach. He talks to himself in a low murmur, and though the others give him a wide berth, he knows their eyes are on him, taking in his very public near-breakdown.
He figures he deserves it; he usually tries to keep the panic on the inside, contained and quiet, reserved until he can abscond to the highest point in their camp and stare into the waters far below him. He never notices he’s there until he is and there were moments in the beginning when he’d find Gally next to him long moments after that, having followed him from whatever point to the cliff in silence. They didn’t speak, but Gally sat close, a heavy hand on Thomas’s shoulder to keep him still and present until the tremor drained from his fingertips and his tongue felt less like lead and his head stopped drumming an insistent beat.
(Thomas doesn't know if Gally watches him all the time, waiting for him to lose his shit, though he’ll have to find out and decide if it's worth it to work out whether that bothers him or not.)
This time he's not heading to the cliffs, he doesn’t see Gally watching him, and he’s having a hard time breathing through the tightness in his lungs. He stops suddenly, running a hand through his hair that’s already a mess from previous hair tousling, and lets out a ragged breath. He opens the notebook in his hands and flips through the pages, again and again, then once more for good measure.
The problem: the soil. It’s bunk. Infertile. Fruitless. Absolutely useless, as far as Thomas can tell. Months of trial and error and error and error scribbled in a notebook titled “Crops—Result—7.2” tells a story he isn’t ready to accept, let alone bring to Minho, who works hard and long and is the best leader they could ask for, even though he doesn’t take care of himself enough. Putting this mess on his shoulders, on top of the rock slide and storms and rebuilding, feels cruel.
But he has to tell him. Soon.
The days are longer, hotter, sticky with salty sea air, and the hours spent crouched over notebooks are punctuated by beads of sweat rolling down his back, itching as they dry. The notebooks hold a catalog of every change in the settlement: current rations, hunting and fishing, crops and their growth. Everything he’s observed, every data point, is studied and assessed and then he endlessly frets over results. It’s tedious, his patience wears thinner and thinner, and every mark is a new failure.
They haven’t even been here a year.
Shit.
It’s midday and people mill about, some heading to the mess. They walk by, murmuring greetings, offering weak smiles that he barely returns. He closes the notebook and tucks his pencil behind his ear and follows.
The food is almost always canned vegetables or beans, sometimes a combination of both. They don’t have anything fresh. Not often, at least, and when they do, it’s small bony fish that do nothing to help the hunger. No deer or squirrel or other wildlife to be seen. Thomas’s data isn’t showing him why and probably never would, not without some tech and a lot more information. But it’s clear, they’re just gone.
He sets his plate down at an empty table and sits with his back to it. Part of him knows that everything they've done here is important. It’s a chance to rebuild, to live despite the things Wicked did to the world. To the Immunes. To him and Minho and Gally and Fry.
To Newt and Teresa.
But it won’t matter if they starve.
“Fucked,” he hisses to himself. “We’re so fucked.”
It’s quiet, barely audible, the usual Thomas-talks-to-himself volume that no one really pays attention to. Except, apparently, Gally, who sits next to him on the bench. “What’s fucked?”
The bench wobbles. Thomas loses his balance as it shakes and he leans hard into Gally’s side.
“Watch it,” Gally grumbles half-heartedly, steadying Thomas with one hand and his plate with the other. Thomas barely spares him a glance and grabs the other boot, tipping it over like the first. "You couldn’t do that outside?”
“They’d just fill up with sand again before I got in here. And also while I’m in here. It’s not like it has a floor.”
“We eat here,” Gally says flatly. He shovels vegetables into his mouth and Thomas grimaces.
“Some of us should eat in a barn.”
A slap on the sole and then another rings through the mess, and Thomas decides it’s good enough. He sets the boots aside and throws his legs over the bench. He leans over his plate, but his appetite is gone, has been for a while now; the stress wreaks havoc on his nerves and his stomach, so he pushes the meal around instead. It’s hard not to lose focus, stare into space as the anxiety fills him up, until he hears Gally say, “So, again, what’s fucked?”
Thomas pushes the plate away from him and lays his head down on his arms that are folded over the table. Gally raises an eyebrow at the dramatic sigh that comes loose.
“We are. Everything.” Thomas waves a hand vaguely at the people congregating around them. They all look a bit weary, worn out by hard work and heat, but they smile and laugh and seem as close to content as Thomas has ever seen.
But they don’t know.
The sight is bittersweet, knowing the whole thing is going tits up.
Gally cocks an eyebrow. “That’s dramatic, even for you.”
“I’m not being dramatic, I’m being observant,” Thomas counters. He raises a middle finger and burrows his face into his folded arms when Gally snorts. Everyone jokes about Thomas being pretty oblivious, have since the Glade, but this is patterns and data and all the things Wicked trained him for. And he’s good at it.
Gally grabs the notebook, flips through the pages, skimming graphs and notation, humming and leaning close when he sees something interesting.
"See. Fucked," Thomas grumbles.
It’s clear, and getting clearer, that they can’t grow crops. The soil is bad, in one way or another: too sandy, too tight and doesn’t drain correctly, not enough nutrients, presumably, because even the weeds aren’t growing right. In the end, no matter where they plant around their settlement, it yields rotten potatoes, wilting greens, and small vegetables that are either diseased or can’t feed enough of them.
The cherry on top of the pile of shit: their reserves are so close to empty, just the thought makes him grind his teeth and gnaw painfully at his nails.
(He falls into a memory: Newt chewing on his thumb, nearly to bleeding, face pinched with worry as they planned a rescue that would eventually fail and then succeed and then end in tragedy. He rips his nail from between his teeth and clenches his hand into a white-knuckled fist.)
Gally closes the notebook and slides it back toward Thomas. “What’s the plan?”
“I don’t have one,” Thomas confesses, though it’s partly a lie that he’s sure Gally can see through, if the raised eyebrow means anything.
“Have you told Minho?”
“Not yet.”
Gally sets down the fork that was halfway to his mouth. “You have to tell him. And soon. If you’re right and we’re not pulling up any food and also running out of reserves, there’s not much time to wait.”
Thomas glares. He sits up and spins on the bench, grabs his boots, and slides them on.
“I know. You don’t think I know this? We got hit by that fucking storm and the shelters aren’t even rebuilt yet, and now I have to go to him with this. I’ve thought about it for days, weeks, and it’s not getting better and I don’t know what to do except maybe move the entire settlement, which sounds like a fucking nightmare, so save me from all of-,” he gestures in Gally’s direction. “-this shit. I don’t need to hear it.”
Thomas is nearly shouting by the end, drawing attention from the others in the mess. Gally grabs him by the wrist and pulls him down to sit again. “Okay, I get it, sit the hell down. If you don’t want people to freak out, keep your voice down.”
Thomas wrenches his arm from Gally’s grasp with more force than strictly needed, but his body’s shaking and tense, and he’s sure he’s going to suffocate no matter how much air he pulls in. If the people around him start speaking again, he doesn’t know, doesn’t care, because his head is hollow and full of cotton all at once. Vaguely, he knows he’s speaking, the same two words he said to himself when he first sat down, over and over and over— we’re fucked, we’re fucked, we’re fucked.
Suddenly, hands are on him, around the back of his neck and along his shoulders blades, forcing him to bend at the waist, head between his knees. Any breath in his lungs is forced out and he gasps for air.
“Thomas,” a voice says close to his ear, hot breath washes over him. “Thomas, you have to calm down. Take a breath. Good, now another.”
He tries to focus on the voice—Gally, it’s Gally, shit, he’s got huge hands, jesus, focus Thomas—and follow the instructions.
Slowly, he evens out. His lungs burn and chest aches, but the buzzing in his head recedes until he can hear someone else checking in, asking if he would be okay, if Gally needs them to get help. He sends them away, assuring that Thomas is just having his regular midday meltdown (ha ha, asshole).
When his head stops spinning and he feels less like vomiting, he sits upright with a shaky sigh. Gally rubs circles on his back soothingly and it bleeds the tension from his shoulders, the steady pressure keeping his head from spinning off again. An irrational part of him is angry that he’d let himself lose it in the middle of the mess, but Gally’s still close, still talking him down from the panic, so it matters less and less.
“You okay, greenie?”
“That’s not my name,” Thomas croaks. Gally chuckles and takes his hand from Thomas’s back. He unconsciously follows the pressure as it retreats, wishing it would stay.
“You’re never gettin’ out of that name, I promise.”
Thomas scowls, but it’s weak and Gally ignores him to pick up both of their plates and give them a quick wash. Thomas watches absently, not taking in much of his surroundings; he needs a moment more to come back online.
“You won’t fall over if you stand, will you?” Thomas jumps at Gally’s voice, too busy zoning out. He rolls his eyes but stretches his legs to make sure they’re steady before standing. "Sure you’re good?”
Gally lays a hand on Thomas’s shoulder gently, like he might collapse at the slightest push, and his face is tight with worry. Thomas nods and stands and grabs his book from the table, not sparing a glance at the people pretending not to stare.
He’ll talk to Minho. Soon. As soon as he can get a handle on the way he feels off-center, blurry and unreal. He glances at Gally, an unspoken agreement to meet where they always do to be quiet, to collect themselves.
For all that Thomas can analyze and strategize—usually on the fly and with varying success, but who’s really counting—he does know he misses a lot of the things happening around him. It’s one of the reasons he’d looked at Minho like he’d grown a second head when he was given the Archivist job.
Who in their right mind would give him that job?
(Minho, that’s who, though Thomas is a little shaky over whether Minho is entirely all together again. Yet. Thomas can’t blame him, considering the six months of who-knows-what kind of hallucinations they put him through. Still. Thomas? Archivist? Weird.)
Except now, he’s sitting at the cliffs’ edge, legs dangling, whistling an odd tune that he doesn’t recall ever learning through a blade of grass, and Gally sits as close as he can, touching Thomas as if to seep away the panic that sits right under his skin and niggles at his brain, itching.
It took a while to see the way Gally seems to touch him more. Since the storms, especially. They come even when Thomas hasn’t been panicking, hasn’t been losing his head about something or other, and Gally doesn’t really seem to notice, just does it; a hand on Thomas’s back, arm, along his neck and sometimes so close to holding hands, it makes him twitch.
Thomas would think about it more in-depth, except he finds himself reciprocating and it’s something he doesn’t really want to explore at the moment. Maybe ever? But there’s something about the contact that brings him to ground when he’s floating away into the miasma of worry and guilt and shame, his body going numb and achy at the same time—when he’s so full of tension, he might snap in half.
He never thought he’d end up relying on Gally like this, even by accident, but he finds himself sitting with Gally at the end of the world more often than he’d ever, ever imagined, even after he realised there was an end of the world to be had, and just… doesn’t mention it. It doesn’t need mentioned, honestly. They never really needed to talk anyway. Thomas decides that’s good enough.
Thomas goes to Minho with the news as soon as he can talk about it without wanting to puke.
Minho looks worn out.
No, Minho looks half-dead.
“The desalinator still works. We have, what, only a few months worth of unperishables, and the worst stock of fresh food I’ve ever seen.”
Thomas decided, as soon as he woke in paradise, that he wanted nothing to do with leadership ever again, declined any and all offers to be a guiding light for the camp, and the sight of Minho slumped into his chair with his head in his hands reinforces that decision ten fold. He feels the heavy weight of guilt settle over him, though. If he were more involved, maybe Minho wouldn’t be spread so thin.
Actually, he suddenly realises he hadn’t noticed exactly how sunken Minho’s eyes were or that he was pale despite the hours of sun he got.
Fuck.
“Shit. Okay.” Minho straightens up, shakes his head and lays his hands on the table. He stares at the wood for a moment before moving to grab a rolled map from where it leaned against the wall. He spreads it out and compares a page of Thomas’s notebook against the map of their settlement.
It's a piece of a larger page, the rest missing, lost. Vince’s collection, scavenged from old Wicked installations and deserted cities along the Scorch, is a godsend, but there's still so much missing information. And most of them don't have labels, not that it means much anymore. This one only shows fifteen miles surrounding their settlement, all of which were searched and picked dry of its resources within the first two months.
Minho marks the paper with shorthand notes regarding failed crops or a distinct lack of deer and fish. By the middle page, the map is covered in pencil marks.
“You weren’t lying,” he breathes. "Any idea why we can’t grow anything? Please follow it up with suggestions on how to fix it.”
“A million reasons,” Thomas replies, slumping into the chair next to Minho. Gally sits across from them. “I mean, I’m grasping at straws with most of this, everything I know is either from the track-hoes or what I saw in the data, but everything either comes up rotten or sick, like it’s got some bacteria.”
“And who knows what the solar flares did to wildlife, even outside of the Scorch. Maybe the water’s fucked and we just don’t know it.” Minho falls quiet, staring at the map with blank eyes. Thomas puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes.
“We need to go further inland,” Gally offers. “We can hike out, map the territory, and hopefully come up on some fresh water and hopefully some game.”
It looks like Minho isn't going to reply for a moment, but then he meets Gally’s eyes.
“Alright. Yeah. We’ll get teams and send anyone who can take care of themselves. Thomas, you'll need to get them caught up on anything they should look for, what conditions will be best for us."
"I'm going."
Minho doesn't look surprised to hear Thomas volunteer, but he immediately turns to him and puts a finger in his face. "Listen, shuck-face, you're staying right here in camp."
"Like hell I am!"
"You will." Minho gives him a hard stare, his face stony and unyielding. He isn't usually so stern, so serious, and Thomas isn't entirely sure where the attitude was coming from. He'd gone hunting, spent time in the wild areas around their settlement, without issue. Mostly without issue. He only came back bleeding once, but Minho hadn't worried, just sent him to see a med-jack and went on about his day.
Thomas looks to Gally and raises an eyebrow, asking for some support against Minho's decision. Gally only shrugs.
"Seriously?" Thomas huffs. "I'm capable-" Gally snorts. Thomas glares and continues. "-and I know better than the others what to look for. We need as many hands on as possible, we don't have time."
Minho doesn't budge, keeps the same hard look.
“I’m going,” Thomas repeats. They stare at each other for a moment and Minho’s expression slowly bleeds into frustration, then a sadness Thomas never seen settles over his face. Minho curls in on himself and breathed a long sigh.
Seeing him shrink into himself is… something. It makes Thomas’s skin feel tight and his eyes sting, because Minho isn't so easily defeated. He's a force to be reckoned with and the spirit of their camp. This? The glaze over his eyes and the way he seems small, unassuming is not how he should exist. Ever.
Thomas looks to Gally. The worried look he’d worn for Thomas earlier is back.
“You’re fried, shank,” Gally says, standing. He rolls up the map and shuts the notebook. “Go the hell to sleep for the next twenty-four hours and come back when you’re not about to collapse.”
Minho’s attention snaps to Gally. “We don’t have time, man. We gotta make a plan, get people prepared, and there’s shit around here I gotta take care of and-“
“Not right now and no, you don’t. It can wait a day. You’re no good to anyone dead.” Gally grabs Minho by the arm and half drags him toward the tent exit. “We need you to not be as stupidly self-sacrificing as this dipshit.” He points his thumb at Thomas over his shoulder.
“Jesus, fine, get your hand off me, or I’ll feed it to you, slinthead.” Minho looks back before he leaves and points at Thomas. “Don’t do anything while I’m in dreamland.”
Thomas rolls his eyes. "Fine."
Thomas sits at the end of the world with Gally and decidedly doesn’t tell him that he plans to leave before the sun rises and hunt for a new place to live on his own.
It’s not that Thomas thinks Minho can’t do it, that he can’t lead them to somewhere new, somewhere that actually grows something worth a damn—that he can’t save them from starving to death in a matter of months.
It’s that Thomas realised exactly how much he’s left on Minho’s plate, as it were. He just… removed himself. Completely. If not for the archiving, Thomas would be a lump on a log in this new world they’re building and that sits heavy on his shoulders. So, before the sun rises, Thomas will leave, head inland with a copy of his most important, most relevant notes. He’ll leave a letter for Minho attached to his original notebooks so he has all the info he needs if he decides to send out more people.
(Thomas hopes he won’t because there’s a chance he won’t return and they really don’t need to lose anyone else. He’ll take the chances. No one else should.)
Thomas isn’t telling Gally, but he’s clearly telegraphing all the pent up excitement in his veins, because one of his hands—still huge, which Thomas cannot stop noticing, fuck— is resting on Thomas’s shoulder, rubbing absent circles with his thumb and, dammit, Thomas feels calmer for it, no matter how much he wants to hold on to the static skittering across his skin.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
Thomas jumps, nearly out of his skin and into the ether, because it’s the middle of the damn night and no one else should be awake.
“I’m going to find us a new place to live,” he snaps, barely casting Gally a sidelong look before going back to the bag he’d been packing. He hears Gally make a noise, possibly of disbelief, definitely of disgust.
“You didn’t tell Minho,” he says. “You can’t just leave.”
“Why not?” Thomas shoots back. “Minho already made it clear he wants me to stay in camp, which I can’t do, and more to the point, won’t do. I’m not just going to sit here and do nothing.” He pauses to take a breath and shove the last of his provisions into the bag. “Besides, I’m the one who knows–”
“Yes, I know, you know what you’re looking for and all that,” Gally interrupts, crossing his arms. He looms over Thomas, who squints at his obvious display of intimidation. “You really can’t figure out why this is a bad idea? Why Minho is so against it? You? Going into the unknown wild all by yourself for who-knows-how-long?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, sure, easy to say, but you don’t know that.” Gally snatches the bag hanging from Thomas’s grip and slings it over his shoulder, out of reach. “Anyway, that’s not the point.”
“Then get to it,” Thomas snaps.
“Just leaving without saying anything would be the worst thing you could do to him. He wakes up and you’re gone? Ring any bells?”
Shit. Right. Minho lost the most important person to him right after waking from a six-month-long nightmare and losing one of the last people he has is a nightmare of its own.
“I’m still going,” he pushes, though he has the grace to look sheepish, chagrined.
"You're an asshole, you know that?" Gally says simply. Thomas sputters. "You didn't tell me you're leaving, either, and that's bullshit."
"I can go alone."
"No, you can't. First," Gally releases him and holds up a finger then pokes at Thomas’s chest. "Minho would flay me in my sleep. Second, you'll zone out and walk into a ravine or hole or something else stupid. Third, I won't let you."
"Why?"
"I just told you."
"I know you're not afraid of Minho and I don't believe the ravine thing."
Gally sighs and rolls his eyes. "I know it's hard to believe, but I don't want the people here to starve to death."
Thomas doesn’t move, squints at Gally, who shifts a bit and won’t look at Thomas directly. He’s being weird again. The kind of weird he’s been since that one time with the fingers and the blowing and Thomas needs to not think of it like that.
Gally turns out of the tent, but looks over his shoulder and says, “Jesus. Don't let it go to your head, but Minho's not the only one who'd be worse off if you didn't come back."