They Left Me Once (Gally X Reader)

Out There, Somewhere

"I... I know this name..." Thomas whispered as he ran his fingers over the name Y/N, the letters now with lines carved through them. "I thought you said there weren't any girls in the Glade?"

Alby leaned against the wall carved with names and looked across the Glade with a grim look on his face. "There was one." He lowered his eyes and rubbed his rough hands together. Even past Alby's calm and collected exterior, Thomas could see how pained he really was. "She disappeared a couple of weeks ago."

"How?" Thomas asked. At this point in the tour, Alby was beginning to grow tired of all of Thomas' questions. But, he knew the importance of answering them.

Alby looked to the maze doors and then back to Thomas. "She was mapping with Minho, the keeper of the runners. As he tells it, they went their separate ways in order to cover more ground. Then, she just never came back. He searched for a week straight and never found a sign of her."

Pushing off of the wall, Alby muttered glumly. "Can't say he's over it yet, either. Or any of the boys, for that matter."

Thomas figured if Y/N and Minho had been as good as friends Alby made them out to be, he wouldn't be over her disappearance either.

"Gally said she found something...and that she'd been having these nightmares...but wouldn't exactly tell him what. She must have gone after it and something happened."

Even though Thomas had just been tossed into a stone box surrounded by a seemingly inescapable maze with absolutely no memory of who he used to be, the one thing that pried at his mind was Y/N. Not who put them here, why they were put here, or how they were going to get out. It was Y/N.

Like an itch he couldn't quite scratch, the girls name made Thomas feel like there was a memory locked away somewhere in his mind trying to break free. This peculiar feeling was also what convinced Thomas he needed to become a runner. He wouldn't settle for any other job because he already knew what he was meant to do.

That night, Thomas' mind was nearly torn apart by nightmares and only what he assumed to be his memories. At the break of dawn, he woke in a cold sweat. An echoing rumbling came from his right, and there he saw Minho and his running partner sprinting off into the maze, being waved off by the second-in-command, Newt. Disorientated, confused, and exhausted, Thomas stumbled out into the brisk Glade towards the fissures in the stone walls. Half way there, he threw himself down into the grass and just stared into the dark abyss before him.

The memories that had flooded his mind last night puzzled him. There was nothing more than the flicker of a few faces, some he'd already seen here in the Glade. Some voices. And most evidently, a woman, repeating 'WICKED is good,' over and over on an endless loop.

"You sleep alight, Greenie?" Newt's voice rattled Thomas' skull and dragged him back down to earth. He'd been so deep into his thoughts he's practically lost perception of reality.

"Uh—Yeah." Thomas picked at the grass at his feet, tossing the torn up pieces in his hands back to the ground.

Newt stifled a little laugh and sat down beside the brunette slowly. "You sure don't look it."

"What did Y/N look like?" Thomas asked abruptly, glancing at the maze and then to Newt with furrowed brows.

"Y/N?" He said breathlessly. "Well, she was around Y/H, had this Y/H/L, Y/H/C... Y/E/C eyes. Most contagious of all bloody smiles." The second in command lowered his head and glued his eyes shut tight. "Why?"

"I—well, I think I knew her." Thomas bit his lip and searched his mind relentlessly for any kind of memory.

"Most of us have some kind of memory of her before we were brought up in the box. Strange, seeing as how none of us remember each other before being coughed up in this place." Newt explained. "I remembered her laugh. The first time I heard her laugh after she showed up in that box, I knew for certain we'd met before. Neither of us could remember where or how, but there was a familiarity."

"Hmm," Thomas hummed. He didn't remember much of her. But, the girl he'd seen in his dreams met the description Newt gave faultlessly. Yet again, he felt a kind of tug in is gut telling him to step foot in that maze. Maybe, she was out there. Maybe, there was a clue which would explain why she'd disappeared. Maybe, she was still alive.

Thomas suddenly sat up straight, trying to not let the heavy, defeated feeling radiating off of Newt drag him down. "I want to be a runner."

"Have you lost your mind? No one wants to be a runner, Thomas." Newt scoffed.

"I need to get out there. I can find a way out and I can find Y/N. I promise." The brunette reaffirmed.

With the mention of Y/N, Newt seemed to break a little. He, more than most of the Gladers, missed Y/N. She had been their unexplainable spark of hope when all else seemed to fail. She had held everyones heads high when they couldn't themselves. She had taken on the most dangerous job in hopes of searching for a better life for her friends.

"I can help you, but I can't guarantee Alby will allow it." Newt admitted. If he were to be honest, Thomas did seem to have the mind to be a runner. He was painfully curious, which wasn't great here in the Glade, but would be in the maze. Thomas had a determination like no one else here, and genuinely wanted to help them escape this nearly inhospitable place. It remind him a little too much of Y/N.

The Glade may have been home, and all that the Gladers knew, but most were aware that they could't stay there forever.

If Y/N really was out there, and somehow returned, Newt wasn't sure if she'd be the same person. Two weeks completely alone in a place like the maze was impossible as he knew it, but if she had lived, there was no way she had gone unchanged in some way. She would have been constantly on the run from grievers and changing walls without food or water.