ataraxionlogs | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

CHARACTERS: thomas and william.
LOCATION: william's room!!
WARNINGS: probably maze runner spoilers.
SUMMARY: ill advised decisions, that's about the long and short of it.

[ this is a bad idea. it's not like thomas doesn't know that, but knowing something is a bad idea hasn't necessarily stopped thomas from doing anything before. besides, he trusts william. whatever happened on that last recon mission, there was next to no one left from it besides william. thomas isn't sure whether or not this place is another test, another kind of maze to solve, but he has the same ties of loyalty to william as he does to newt and minho, to any other glader that might show up here. when he offers to let william try to test his powers on him, it's all born of that.

which is why he's fidgeting in william's room, fighting down the urge to start asking question after question about how this works. he's about to get a very practical demonstration, so it seems only polite to wait until after that to start interrogating him. ]

How do we do this? [ okay, maybe some questions are unavoidable. ] Do I need to go to sleep right here?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[William is trying not to look nervous, which means that he managed to stop himself from getting up and pacing like a maniac all over the place. Instead, he's forced himself to sit on the lefthand bed, hands on his lap.

He has a huge bottle of melatonin tabs over beside him, and a light tranquilizer beside. Nothing that would shoot Thomas up to addiction after a dose or even a couple days of dosages, but enough to help.] Yeah. These drugs should help, [he nods his head at the table.] If you ain't feeling sleepy at the moment. They're the mildest we've got and very rarely cause any kind of an unusual reaction.

But if we need something else, I've got fuckin' textbooks I can read to you. [William's eyes crinkle, an attempt at humor, but it's the kind of joke that isn't really a joke. It's perfectly bloody boring, really. He holds up his tablet.]

[ drugs. thomas tenses up, apprehensive in spite of himself. it's william, and thomas knows william, but it still takes him a few minutes to shake the flickers of memory, held up like reasons he should turn and run.

thomas wants to help. he doesn't let himself forget that. ]

I think it's been a long time since someone read me a bedtime story.

[ possibly. it's not like thomas knows for sure. he holds out a hand, nodding at the pill bottle. ]

Can we try those first?

[Two little matte white pills drop into Thomas' palm, one by one. William scoots a glass of water closer, and then also, ridiculously, reaches over to punch Thomas' pillow into shape with the other. So that he'll be comfortable, with his doctor friend trampling around his brain.]

There's a mindfulness exercise we can do at the same time, while it's taking effect, [he says, dragging his foot up off the floor to rest on his seat with him.] It's going to sound a little like bollocks, but it works well enough for plenty of people who've got some shit to get past. You've got to settle back, close your eyes. Picture a river in your head now.

Tell me which way it's flowing.

[ thomas looks at the pills for a long moment before tossing them back, draining the cup. if he's thinking of wicked and experimentation, he tries to keep it all off his face.

thomas has to bite back his questions, suppress the urge to ask what mindfulness exercises do, or what it is william thinks he needs to get past. the latter is a loaded question. thomas is fairly certain he has plenty to get past, but he likes to think he has it all under control. or somewhat under control. he looks at william for a long moment before tipping his head back on the pillow and closing his eyes, fidgeting until he's in a comfortable position. ]

Down? [ hesitantly, before amending-- ] To the left of me, I mean.

[Anxiety bruv. It's perfectly understandable to be a little bit nervous.

It's also something William understands that Thomas has got maybe amnesia and masses of trauma and a history of people performing unholy experiments on him, but that isn't something that can properly and comprehensively be treated by anything William knows about. so. just. anxiety.]

Awright. Watch it go for a moment. There's stones in the bottom of the river that you can see, but over that, the sky's reflected in the surface. A tree, too. Pretty fucking tall; leaves is green and orange. [William barely had any trees in his homeworld, okay. Why can't they have all different plumage at the same time.] You see a leaf fall in the river. Put your next thought on it; the first one that comes to mind. Even if it's something like, I feel bloody stupid, or I don't know if this is working. It goes on the leaf.

Which starts to drift. Not fast. You're still thinking it. But it goes. Shrinking, shrinking.

'Til it slides off your river. And the next leaf falls.

[William keeps going for awhile. It's the same thing each time; he encourages Thomas to put his thoughts down, float them off. Even if the same one comes again. His voice is slow, familiar, mild. He listens to Thomas' breathing.]

[ if william had asked newt or minho, they'd probably have told him there weren't enough leaves in the entire world to get thomas' head clear. and for a while it looks like they might be right, because thomas can't just relax. he doesn't know what happens next. he trusts william not to hurt him, but inviting anyone into his head seems like a recipe for disaster. thomas sticks all of those thoughts onto leaves, one after another, trying to keep his breathing steady. it's going to be fine. this is fine, it'll be fine.

and eventually his breathing evens out. the combination of william's voice and the pills thomas swallows drag him down bit by bit, put him out like a light. thomas ends up only half aware of it happening, and too far gone to stop it by the time he figures it out, all probably for the best.

at any rate, he drifts off, leaves, river and all, sprawled across william's bed loosely. if william's going to run through his dreams, this is his big moment. ]

[The moment Thomas' breathing evens out, William goes into a bit of a scramble, as quietly as possible. He gets off his shoes, crosses his legs on the chair, makes sure no glasses of water or bottles of pills are anywhere they might get knocked over if someone should suddenly start flailing and manfully ~~crying~~ yelling.

And then it's William's turn to close his eyes.

Sink into the metaphorical black water, on a slow exhale, drifting out of himself and into the unknowable stuff of Thomas' mind. It is a Hell of a moment and he is determined, frankly, not to fuck it up; the kid is as brave as any he's ever met.]

[ thomas didn't know what this would feel like. for all that people have trampled in and out of his head, he doesn't know exactly what that entailed and what sort of sensations it would provoke. whether or not william's entrance into his head was meant to hurt or not, thomas would have taken that.

instead thomas is dreaming about the glade at night, the grinding and clicking of grievers in the distance. it's dark and not particularly welcoming, more the start of a nightmare than a dream, but it's where thomas always inevitably ends up. he's swinging in the hammock, tangled, struggling his way out of it before he dumps himself on the ground in his usual excess of movement. ]

Hello?

[ the glade's empty, somehow more unnerving than the distant sound of grievers. ]

Hello, mate!

[William looks younger now than he ever did on the Tranquility. There's still a boyish narrowness to his chest, a gangling quality to his limbs, his face is softer. He's teenaged-- maybe Thomas' age, though his heritage c: makes it a little harder to pin down years properly. He's wearing proper Glader clothes: simple T-shit, trousers, boots. They look very much like Thomas' for a moment, before the boy's attention starts to focus in on minor details and Thomas' own subconscious starts to fill in important differences. Smudges of shirt, dyes in the fabric.

He's holding a torch in his hand. It lights the earth around Thomas' hands, as well as the dim shapes of their shelters and sheds built from earth and sticks. No firelight touches the walls, of course. Those vast edifices are too far away and black as death, silhouetted by nothing but indifferent stars.

William's face is friendly. Familiar. But there's no way for William to tell how familiar; how much of Thomas is lucid, how much is fraying in the fires of impending nightmares, or if he's merely pulling together pieces from then and now. So it's gently that he asks:] Do you know me?

[ it takes a minute. william's face doesn't fit in the glade, jars slightly against the memory. thomas is quiet for a moment, trying to sort out the confusion before he nods. ]

Yeah. William?

[ a little hesitant, worried. maybe he doesn't remember. maybe he's just grasping at straws and something else in his head has gotten loose. ]

[William nods.] That's me, [he says, glancing over his shoulder. Stepping fractionally closer, when he hears-- something, he thinks, in the trees.

The trees in Thomas' mind are very dark; darker than the ones aboard the Tranquility ever get.

There's no need to push for lucidity. William is careful not to push at all, really. Already, he can guess that there's ugliness enough permeating this place without him prying, and if his plan is to learn stillness and observe the color and context of Charlotte's mind, then that's what he should do here. He turns his head to look.] Thomas-- [there's a stilted quality to him saying so. He fixes his stare on his friend again.]

Where is everyone?

[ it's hard to tell how true the memory is, or whether everything about the glade is exaggerated by the horror of it, of the last stretch before their escape when so many had died. everything seems menacing, uneasy, and thomas doesn't seem to find any of it amiss.

he hadn't considered this far, of how much he'd be exposing by letting william into his head but he won't have the presence of mind to think about it until he wakes. ]

I don't--

[ thomas breaks off at the distant sound of a griever, tensing up. he shifts instinctively, protective even though he doesn't know what he'd do if a griever crashed into the glade. ]

They're gone. [ and then, amending: ] Escaped. Or dead.

That explains it, [William says, but despite the lackadaisical quality to his words, his face has gone tense.

The groaning and shifting noise of the maze has gotten louder. Too loud. Light is creeping over the tops of the walls, a cold and sterile illumination, too empty of color, to pass for the sunshine of dawn. Blank white; familiar to them, not from either of their worlds but the half-preserved nightmare of recon. Whiter than white; unwalled, draining white; the white that means death and assimilation and incomprehensible nothing, in a world that has nothing to do with Thomas' maze.

The light doesn't come from the East. It's diffusing over Southwest, grey but intensifying. The distant wall cracks, and light starts to seep through, along with the silhouette of a griever, scrambling, trying to get through. Not unusual, for the monsters. The panic deep in its shrieking voice, though. That's-- different.

The griever isn't reaching for them, the light is reaching for it.

It's no accident William has somehow installed himself behind Thomas.] That thing killed them? [he asks. He means the griever.]

[ this is maybe the part that comes easy, even in a dream. it's a different kind of fight, the griever and the light chasing it, putting himself immediately between william and all of it is natural. ]

It did. That's what they do.

[ the light or the grievers? both, maybe. thomas doesn't know what the light does, but the terrifying swoop of fear doesn't bode well. thomas trusts his gut. ]

We need to--I don't know where to go. Back into the Maze.

[ though the walls are crumbling, and who knows what's going on beyond that? thomas' voice is urgent, panic underscoring his words as he reaches back a hand to catch at william's. ]

[Reflex-- but clumsy even in fantasy-- closes William's fingers around his friend's hand. The look on the erstwhile medic's face is no lie. He hasn't heard noises like that. His world didn't have grievers, and he'd yet to meet one on the Tranquility. What kind of a home--]

What the shuck.

[The borrowed verbiage comes to him easily, but that's rather beside the point. He takes an involuntary step back.

More light seeps through. The griever's front half has bucked its way through the widened gap of stone, into shadow, but partial reprieve does not apparently bring it enough to stop its horrible shrieking.] The Maze. [William knows all about white lights in the Tranquility, which is to say he knows as precious little as anyone else aboard the Tranquility, but enough to know very well by now that they ought be avoided. If the griever's screams weren't enough.

In broken happenstance, the light through the widening rift pushes through then enough to touch the far wall. With a gasp of grey stone dust, the far wall parts too, jagged, illuminating the cold shadows of the labyrinth beyond. And just in time, an avalanche of parts-- maze parts, ivy parts, grieve parts-- in the ruined wall temporarily blocks the light again, affording them passage free of its ruinous illumination.]

[ it wasn't a home. it had been an experiment, wasn't ever meant to be a safe place for them to live in. and now it's something else, a marriage of the maze and the tranquility, a mingling of the horrors that dwelled in both.

thomas isn't even sure if the maze is safe. he just knows that it's dark, and the way out is here, it's supposed to be here, and they have to find it. he has to get that out. his legs don't hurt here. he can run, and the driving need to run as hard as he can, as fast as he can to get them away from this is burning in him. ]

You have to keep up with me, okay? I know how to get out. I think.

[ there's a nagging sense that this shouldn't be so easy. that part of him that wants to circle around and watch, see if the light devours the griever, it's not so easily shaken. his hand is sweaty in william's clutching tight. ]

Come on.

[Kids shouldn't have to be brave. This notion comes from a place of commonplace idealism that William, pessimistic in a squishy and kind way, is otherwise rarely susceptible to, but he knows it's true. Be it in this Hellish world that Thomas came from or the Tranquility, or even his own. It's like taking issue with gravity, but William has never been much of a fighter, so he can't be relied upon to tell which ones are a losing battle.]

Yeah. [William nods. He'll keep up. He can run as fast as he wants, in here; an ironic departure from the spaceship in their waking world, where he never seems to be able to run fast enough.] I trust you. [This too is relevant. His hand isn't exactly dry either, gripping Thomas', but he doesn't let go as he starts to pick up running. Ostensibly, it looks like they're running through a melting nadir of worlds, Frankenstein's nightmare sewn together out of the worst parts of Thomas' life. In truth

it's memory. Just memory. Nothing worse, but horrifying nonetheless.

They're twenty yards across the glade, maybe thirty, when a cry goes out behind them. Even if Thomas doesn't look back right away, the voice is unmistakable: Gally's, not quite distorted, not yet screaming. Instead, he's yelling something like Thomas' name, from the wall's vast-- but deteriorating-- shadow.]

[ kids shouldn't have to be a lot of things, but no one took that into account when they built the maze. when thomas built the maze, something he never forgets, can't shake the guilt over it. no one thought about what kids should or shouldn't have to be, just that they had to do it. just like right now they have to run, feet pounding on the dirt-smeared ground, chests heaving, gasping for breath as they try to evade whatever's coming.

it still doesn't stop thomas from tripping over himself hearing gally's voice. he very nearly faceplants, jerking on william's arm as he pounds to a stop. ]

You heard that? Was it...we didn't see anyone here.

[ though clearly it casts enough doubt for thomas to want to go back. gally or no, he doesn't want to leave anyone, even if it means plunging into white light to drag them out. ]

You keep running. I need to check.

No-- [William twists around to look at Thomas, almost, nearly about to remind him-- this is only an experiment, to see if the boy finds himself animated by some horrible somnambulism or if he stays neatly laid up in his bed. They don't have to go any further.] We don't--

[--but the fact of the matter is, his powers are weaker when they aren't morbidly out-of-control. The tide of Thomas' dream turns, and William vanishes compliantly into the darkness of certain escape. Leaving Thomas behind, facing the ever-hardening contrast between the crumbling wall and the light seeping out through it.

The Griever ripped in two, or something like it. There's a splashy mess of a carcass still hanging off the lip of the maze, but down below, guts and spatter and metal parts. Gally's there. There's something wrong with him, familiar and no less terrible for it. Mania in his eyes, which glint despite the depth of the black, black silhouette he's standing below. He comes toward Thomas at a staggered run. There are strange guts strewn all over his trousers. Gally was always kind of awful, but he barely looks human, now.

We're all shucked because of you, [he says. Screams, really. In his hand, he's holding-- something, it's hard to tell until Thomas gets a little closer, and then it becomes apparent that Gally is merely holding his other arm.

But his other arm looks wrong. Not crank-wrong, wrong in a way that turns in a whole other universe. Claws. Skin bubbling with cellular-level reconstruction, too much muscle mounded over his bicep. Something like a tattoo peeks out, barely visible under the pained twitch of his flat-boned wrist.] Did you think about that, slinthead? Not just the glade, but your new home, too. what are you gonna do when you can't run?

[ distantly, thomas is aware of the shift. whatever part of him that had associated william with safety knows that this was foolish, that he shouldn't have left him, but it's too late. thomas is left to witness the carnage of his dreamscape, the mangled mess of the griever, the twisted face of gally. thomas is backing away in spite of himself, even as he's forcibly reminded of the last time he saw gally.

this is worse. it's everything from that last meet magnified, gally turning grotesque and mutated as they'd all been on the tranquility. thomas' face is screwed up, tears mingling with the sweat on his face. thomas trips over himself and lands hard, still trying to scramble away even as gally looms over him. ]

No. No, Gally, stop! I was trying to save you, I tried--

[ and failed. he failed them, and he's here now, where he can't do anything to help anyone. gally's claws dig into his chest, twisting, and thomas screams, and--

and bolts upright in bed, so forcefully that he half-flings himself off of it, flailing for a moment before he hits the ground. he can't breathe, can't tell if he's crying or sweating or dying even, trying to catch his breath as he shakes, the realization of what happened catching up with him. ]

[When Thomas sees his face again, William doesn't look scared. Pinched and drawn from worry, maybe, but fear and compassion look very similar sometimes. He's immediately reaching over to grasp Thomas' hand, instinctively. Something about comfort; something about keeping the boy grounded in a mundane physical way, after the dream nearly swept him away from himself. Two different kinds of anchors, but they're both anchors.

William grip is tight.]

You're back. You're all right, Tommy-boy, [and then because it's true to a nearly bewildering degree, as much a personal apology as one for unspeakable loss, he adds,] I'm sorry.

[ thomas clutches william's hand tightly, clinging on like it's the only tether he has to reality. it's jarring, the way nightmares always are. this one had felt so vivid. it had been all thomas' dreams and memories jumbling together, and he'd signed up for it, but going into this willingly hadn't prepared him for any of this.

it takes him a few minutes to catch his breath, steady himself enough to speak. he doesn't let go of william's hand. ]

Sorry? [ it's a little bit of an alien concept. thomas doesnt know if anyone's said that to him and truly mesnt it. ] It was just a dream. It's okay

[ he might be telling himself more than he's telli william, but he looks up at him anyway, squeezes his hand again. ]

It worked though, right?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

(no subject)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

ok bear with me IF THIS NEEDS TWEAKING LMK

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject