Day 849
Maze Trials, Site A
Council of Three
It’s strange, he thinks sometimes, that it’s doing this where he finds the most calm. It certainly isn’t what Newt would have thought, and yet here he is. Kneeling in the dirt of the Gardens to tend to the small tomato plants under the tarpaulin they installed above them just a month ago. And so far it really seems to be working, the idea that they don’t like water from above, like the rain that waters most of their other plants regularly. They are already bigger at this stage than the ones they have planted for the past two years, and that is a really, really good sign.
The Gladers usually leave him alone when he’s here, and somehow Newt is thankful for that. He’s ready to help each of them with anything, any time of day or night, but sometimes it’s good to be alone. Especially in a place where privacy is a commodity that is hard to come by most of the time. These minutes, hours if he’s lucky, give him room to breathe, calm his thoughts, give him a measure of peace, if he wants to sound so dramatic.
Usually it makes him huff inwardly at himself.
He glances up and blinks in the sun, redirects his gaze and finds Gally next to him, crouching low so that they’re mostly on eye-level.
“I need to talk, to you and Alby. You got a moment?”
He isn’t sure why. Or at least he tells himself he isn’t sure what Gally wants to talk about, because the part of him that wants to whisper ‘Tommy’ is making more about this boy than would be realistic or normal. Newt isn’t even sure why his thoughts linger on him like they do, but… they do.
Five minutes later finds them in the Homestead, just the three of them, and Gally’s voice is quiet but insistent.
“You can’t trust him. I’m serious.”
Newt needs to exchange just one glance with Alby to know they’re thinking the same.
“What do you know?” the black boy asks, his face serious, his arms crossed over his chest, and Newt’s heart is hammering.
“I’ve seen him. I’ve…” Gally searches for words for a moment, looking frustrated. “I don’t know, Alby, I remember… something. He was there.”
Newt sees Alby frown and glances back over to Gally, something sharp tugging inside his chest for a short moment. Sometimes he still misses him, that boy he used to be, without the frown, without the silences, without the harshness. Misses that quirk of a smile he used to have, the kind of humour that seems to have left him when he got stung by that Griever.
“There’s nothing else?” Alby wants to know, still serious, and Gally throws his hands up.
“There’s something not right about him. Most of what I remember is blurry by now, yeah, but I’m telling you he was there, with the Creators. I’m not crazy, I know that much.”
Alby looks at him for a long time and then, after a long moment, breathes out.
He knows what he’s going to say. The only thing he can say, really, and he’s lucky that his heart and his mind speak with the same voice on this. He find’s Gally’s eyes, and despite everything he’s sorry, somehow.
Maybe they still know each other too well, even after everything, because Gally knows what his answer will be before he voices it.
“We can’t just operate on vague feelings. He hasn’t done anything, Gally.”
They stare at each other for a few long moments until, finally, the other boy starts to nod, as if he’s not surprised, but thinks they’re making a mistake anyway.
Newt catches himself wishing things were different, and is angry with himself, because wishful thinking doesn’t get him bloody anywhere.
Gally leaves without another word, and Newt sighs before he turns to Alby.
“I’m going to keep an eye on him.”
“Yeah, you do that,” Alby sighs, and for a moment Newt wonders what he’s getting himself into.
