Searching For You (TW/TMR Fusion)

Chapter 9

Red...

Blood dripping from the walls.

Claws flashed and fangs sunk into the unarmoured throat, ripping and tearing...

Snarls and growls filled the air, along with the stench of terror.

He had to go somewhere, he had to  go to someone...

But WHO?

He couldn't see anything and the darkness was pressing onto him from all sides.

Someone was calling him, crying out so loud their voice cracked.

A flash of strawberry blonde hair whipping through the air, a molten brown, fear-filled pair of eyes, a flash of red...

Thomas woke up with adrenaline rushing through his veins, gasping for breath but very much alert. His eyes mapped his surroundings with the wariness of a veteran soldier. His body was still in the fight-or-flight mode, so tense that he seemed to be carved from granite.

It was still dark and everyone was asleep. Well, everyone except him apparently.

Thomas didn't know what to make of his dreams. Everytime he woke up, he could always feel the echo of the tumultuous emotions that his dreams had invoked in him. He didn't know what to think of the life he had probably led before this whole Maze and loss of memory fiasco. It also ticked him off that he couldn't remember what exactly his dreams were made of.

He had a feeling that his memories weren't actually lost but were, instead, suppressed. That might explain how he kept dreaming about things that he wasn't supposed to remember. Even right then, whatever knowledge he had gotten from his dreams was starting to fade away like mist under the sun. The harder he tried to grasp it, the faster it dispersed.

He was snapped out of his thoughts when Chuck gave a loud, rumbling snore as he turned over in his hammock.

Thomas chuckled.

Chuck was like a breath of fresh air in the Glade.

Thomas first noticed it on his first day there. The other boys looked world-weary. That's the only way Thomas could describe them. They carried a lot of weight on their shoulders. He guessed that every day that goes by without them finding a way out of the Maze only added to that weight.

Even though none of them remembered their lives from before, Thomas knew that they were all working to go home. Because, in the end, only the hope of going home, hopefully somewhere safe, could have kept them all from breaking apart and crumbling under the ever-growing pressure.

Maybe it was because Chuck was the most recent addition to the Gladers, other than Thomas himself, but he was still untouched by the hopelessness. The other Gladers knew that too. Thomas realised that the others considered Chuck to be the kid of the group. And even though they gave him a hard time, he had seen how Chuck's innocence and laughter always brought a smile to their faces and loosened some of their tension.

Thomas had only been in the Glade for a few weeks and already, he had started considering Chuck to be like his younger brother. He was certainly feeling that vicious protectiveness towards him.

He only wished that the Maze wouldn't corrupt him and make him lose his smile.

Like it did to Newt.

***

It was morning.

Thomas was stretching himself when he saw Newt looking particularly grim, staring at something. Turning, he saw that Alby was getting ready to run into the Maze with Minho.