whispers after some internal debate, I think I’m gonna archive this blog and start over with a new one. it’ll be the same URL, muse, & au, and I’ll probably keep some threads going too, but overall it’ll be a blank slate to start fresh on. I’ve had this blog for a while now, and some things have changed since I read TFC, not to mention I’ve changed my tagging system several times, as well as my name, guidelines, etc.
SO. I’ll be quiet while I work on the new one. recent plotted threads are still a go and I’ll respond or write starters on the new blog, but everything else will be dropped unless you let me know you wanna continue them!
“I don’t even know why you pretend to care anymore.”
@glueiisms / @bleedingcrank | x | always accepting
They didn’t have much time. A few minutes, tops, before WCKD realized the two of them were missing, and Thomas couldn’t let it get that far if he wanted his plan to succeed. His very, very terrible plan, the plan that would PROBABLY cost him all of his friends’ trust — but he kept telling himself that didn’t matter so long as it worked.
That’s what he told himself. But then there were moments like these, moments where he risked everything to try, however briefly, to convince them he was still on their side, no matter what he had to say or do whenever WCKD was watching. They were few and far between, because it felt to Thomas like WCKD was always watching, but whenever he saw an opportunity, he did his best to take it. Like he was doing now, alone in a corner of the compound with Newt, cameras set to loop to delay the inevitable for as long as possible.
(Teresa wasn’t the only one who could figure out how the system worked.)
Despite the lack of time, he still wanted — needed — Newt to understand, maybe more than he needed anyone else to. To believe him, in spite of everything he’d said and done. He knew it was a lot to ask, considering the circumstances and all the ends justify the means BULLSHIT he’d had to spout since they’d been captured again (the very thought made his blood boil with bitter hatred and a barely-contained rage that surprised him sometimes; he could barely look Teresa in the eye without it showing, even months later), and he could tell that it was getting harder and harder for all of them the longer it went on — but he had to try.
“Listen, I know I’m not your favorite person right now,” he tried, tone and eyes pleading, begging for Newt to understand. “Believe me, I’m starting to hate myself too. But trust me. I know it’s a lot to ask, but please, Newt, just — trust me. I’m still your friend. I’m still on your side. I will ALWAYS be on your side, I swear. All this bullshit about how WCKD is good and all this will be worth it in the end is just that, bullshit. Please tell me you believe me.”
out of curiosity, since there’s a post circulating about roleplaying with muses 25+, who here would be open to roleplaying with muses 35+ or even 40+? please reblog if you would.
i’m the worst kind of ship partner because i’ll get really excited when we’re plotting and prematurely fall in love with our ship and send you obnoxious headcanons at 3am and tons of ask memes and tag things on my blog with their ship name and then i won’t reply for a week or more
“I’m...” really not fine, actually. Newt was right. All the places where the cranks had gotten him, all the bites and scratches and bruises that littered his skin, still hurt like hell no matter how hard he tried to keep them covered. And what was worse, he could feel himself getting sick; he was immune to the Flare, of that he was certain, but not bacterial infections. He knew he was running a fever, and all the physical exertion pushing his body to the limit wasn’t helping any. He felt awful, but despite all that, he still felt the need to pretend it wasn’t that bad. For the others’ sake. “I will be fine. Seriously, Newt, don’t worry about it. I’m immune, I won’t get sick. Let’s just...focus on getting to the mountains, okay?”
Before I keel over and die, he thought but did not say.
“I was going to tell you about her. I was just trying to figure out HOW, and then Teresa---”
Thomas made himself stop there, and heaved a sigh. “Newt, listen. I told you I was done hiding things, and I meant it, okay? I wasn’t keeping your sister a secret from you, I swear. I’m sorry I didn’t get the chance to tell you before. So I’m telling you now.”
“I don’t want help. I just want the pain to stop.”
@glueiisms | x | always accepting
”Hey. It will.” Thomas offered him his best attempt at a reassuring smile. Even now, he still remembered how terrifying and confusing the first few days in the Glade had been for him, and he hadn’t taken it nearly as badly as some others had. It had been close to three years ago, but he remembered, and he felt for this new guy. For all the newbies, really, but there was something about this Newt guy that just made Thomas like him. “It sucks, I know. I’ve been there. We all have. But pretty soon, you’ll find something you’re good at, you’ll make some friends, and things won’t seem so bad anymore. I promise.”
So. I remembered a line from the first book yesterday morning. And the more I think about it, the more I feel like it sums Thomas up pretty damn well:
“I feel like I need to save everyone. To redeem myself.”
Thomas recognizes that he helped do something terrible. He recognizes that the Gladers are real people with real lives and experiences, and that their lives and experiences haven’t been all that great — often downright terrifying — the past two years, and that’s because of WICKED’s experiments. Which Thomas helped with. And he feels awful. That’s one thing that line says.
The other thing that line says is that he’s selfish. He needs to save everyone because he needs to redeem himself. Not for the others’ sake, but for his own. Because he feels bad, and he wants to feel better, and he figures the only way to do that is to save as many people as he can.
And in all honesty, I kind of love that. Because it reminds you that he’s still a kid. A very smart (when it comes to puzzle/problem solving anyway), charismatic, stubborn, and intense kid, to be sure, but still a kid. A 16 year old boy who sees the world like most 16 year old boys do, in relation to himself and his own feelings and not always much more complexly than that.
And that’s okay. Because he is still a kid, and that’s how the vast majority of kids think. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about his friends, because he does, and it doesn’t mean that he’s not empathetic at all, which he is. It also doesn’t mean that he’s going to stay this way for the rest of his life, because who you are and the way you think at 16 years old is not set in stone. It means he’s a child, and children tend to be pretty selfish and terrible people sometimes — especially teenagers, and especially teenagers who have been thrown into very stressful situations with no guidance whatsoever like all the Gladers have.
Honestly, Thomas being a dick in the way that he is is probably one of the most realistic things about this whole series. Because you can be a good person overall and still fuck up sometimes. Maybe even a lot of the time. And that’s really refreshing to see in a main protagonist.
Because April 1st is coming up, I feel the need to mention that my blog will not contain “screamers” of any sort. No pound noises unexpected, no “flashers”, no “jump scares”; none of that nonsense
just when I was actually starting to hope this hotel I applied to wouldn’t call me back, they do. 3 weeks after my interview. to start training tomorrow morning. I....okay......
The feeling of his arms wrapping around her made her nearly melt into him. She hadn’t realized how much she had missed everything about him. It had been too long. Way too long. Quickly drying her eyes, she did something she didn’t want to do for at least another decade, she pulled away slightly. “For it all.” She replied simply. “If I told you to trust me, would you?” She asked. Wanting the truth before she fully explained why she did what she did. “I need you to trust me.”
Pulling away fully, she took a seat on the bed, her eyes slowly shifting back to his. “I only did all of that, so you’d live.” She began to explain, “Thomas, if I didn’t listen to WICKED, you would be dead, I had to do what they told me, I did it despite knowing what it’d do to us. Despite knowing it’d tear us apart. Despite knowing how much you’d hate me.” She tried not to let herself start crying again. She had to stay at least semi strong.
“That depends,” he answered honestly, “on whether or not you’re gonna try to tell me ‘WICKED is good’ again. Because if you say that one more time, I don’t think I can ever trust you again.” It hurt to say it out loud, but it was the truth.
He remained standing even when she moved to sit on the bed, too restless --- and wary, if he were being honest with himself --- to join her. He started pacing the moment he realized she must be talking about the Scorch, more frustrated than anything by her words. “I don’t care about what happened in the Scorch,” he said, even though that wasn’t entirely true. “You have your memories now, you know just as well as I do how good WICKED is at manipulating kids to do what they want. I want to know why you abandoned us.” Abandoned me, he almost said, but he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. “Why did you leave? Why come here?”
He’s disoriented at first. Everything around him is pitch black, no light whatsoever to help him gauge his surroundings, the air dank and stale. There’s the sound of metal grinding against metal, and a sudden lurch upward that startles him, makes him fall onto the hard floor of the elevator as it begins to ascend, swaying all the while. He has no idea where he is. At first.
Panic wells up inside him, makes his heart pound in his chest, makes him want to scream — to call out for someone, anyone, to help him. Nausea churns in his stomach. He tries desperately to think back, to pull up the last thing he remembers, hoping it will lead him to an answer, tell him where he is and why this is happening to him. It’s hard, but he focuses, drowning everything out and doing his best to picture the thing he’s trying to grasp in his head, just like Ms. Denton had always taught him in her classes.
Doctor Paige. She’s the last thing he remembers. Bringing him tea that had been laced with some kind of drug. Talking to him before…
It hits him like a ton of bricks. He’s being inserted into the Maze. He’d been lied to, for what feels like the millionth time — they’d tried to take his memories just like they did to all of his friends, he knows they did, remembers seeing the mask above his head as Doctor Paige had spoken. But then, why does he remember? Had it not worked? Or had it been another test to see how he would react? Another one of their mysterious Variables?
No, that wasn’t it. Everything from waking up on the table, to the familiar, sterile smell of the room, to the words Doctor Paige had said (it had been a lie, he’d helped kill seventeen innocent people so that she could keep torturing him and his friends, he’d trusted her and she'd lied), to the mask above his head, it had all felt so real — too real to be a trick. They had meant for him to lose his memories. The question that remained was, what should he do about it?
The half-hour ride up to the Glade is agonizing, even now that he knows where he is. The nausea abates over time, but the panic lingers, tinged now with anger, bitterness, and an overwhelming uncertainty. He scoots backward until his back hits the wall and pulls his knees up, hugging them to his chest. And at some point, as the elevator brings him closer and closer to the friends that won’t recognize him, he comes to a conclusion. He’s going to go forward with his plan after all. He’s going to escape WICKED. But he has to be careful. He’s not supposed to have his memories, and all the psychs and scientists and everyone else who monitors the goings-on of the Maze are undoubtedly going to be paying close attention to everything he does; not to mention the Gladers are unlikely to trust him if he immediately starts going off about memories and WICKED and sun flares and escape. No, he’s going to have to be smart about this. He’s going to have to blend in, just long enough that he can do what needs to be done.
Confusion spread across Teresa’s features. Was he really here to talk to me? She thought to herself. Taking a sharp breath, she nodded, opening the door further so he could step inside the room. She faced the window, she could feel her emotions heightening, as his presence filled the room. Oh how she had missed him. She knew what she had to do, and at the time it was the right thing to do. She knew he would have died if she didn’t betray him like she did. Still, she couldn’t help but feel guilt rise in her with every breath she took.
“Thomas.” She breathed out finally, the sound of her voice filling the once quiet room. Turning to face him before taking two long strides towards him, arms wrapping tightly around him. The breath she had been holding onto, finally releasing. “I’m so sorry.” She whispered out, as tears threatened to fall.
After everything he’d been through, her sudden movement startled him, and he instinctively took a step back before he realized what she was doing. She was hugging him. Out of all the scenarios he’d imagined in his head of how this meeting might go, a hug hadn’t been on the list --- although, now that he thought about it, maybe it should have been. She was still Teresa, after all. The same Teresa. (The same Teresa. He still wondered about her spotty memory loss, wondered if maybe he was the only one Doctor Paige had betrayed. But he didn’t want to think about it right then.)
He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her back, tightly, surprised to find himself wanting to cry too. The tears didn’t actually come, but he felt the familiar lump in his throat, the surge of emotions in his chest. God, how he’d missed her. Missed this. He held on for a long moment, relishing the feeling, before finally pulling away, only enough so that he could look her in the eye.
He didn’t want to ruin the moment, but he had to ask. He had to.
“Sorry for what? What happened in the Scorch? Or leaving us behind at WICKED?”
Note: details can be tweaked for convenience, especially if I specifically mentioned your character!
It began when Thomas was tasked to keep an eye on a pack of teenage werewolves.
Well, really, it began when he was just shy of five years old, and Dr. Mary Cooper took him in after his original adoptive parents had died. He’d been given time to adjust to the change and settle into his new life, to get used to the way things worked in this new place, with this new person --- to bond --- before Mary started training him to become a hunter. Not a hunter of animals, playing a lethal one-sided game of tag with the deer in the woods, but a hunter of the supernatural; a protector of innocents both human and non-human alike. Just like her.
Over the next twelve years of his life, she taught him everything she knew about werewolves, beasts and spirits, and even magic (real, actual magic!); how to track them and lure them out despite their best efforts to conceal themselves, and more importantly, how to defend himself against them. He learned how to use weapons, guns of all sizes and shapes and calibers, bows and arrows, flash grenades and devices that emitted sounds that only werewolves could hear. (”Like a dog whistle?” “Exactly like a dog whistle.” “Cool!”)
Mary had always told him that these weapons were only to be used when necessary. Taught him that most things supernatural, be they werewolves or something else, were also people. People with lives, relationships, and goals, people who were not always ruled by their instincts. Full moons could be dangerous, to be sure, but for the rest of the month, they could look like anybody. Because they could be anybody. And just because they had glowing eyes and sharp fangs some of the time didn’t mean that they weren’t also deserving of help, when it was needed.
But not all hunter families were like Thomas and Mary. Most of them, in fact, weren’t quite so lenient --- weren’t so concerned about the werewolves’ safety as well as the humans’. Hunters like Ava Paige, who, while she respected Mary’s skills and intelligence, believed that werewolves and other supernatural kind were ultimately a threat against humanity, and must be taken care of to ensure the safety of everyone around them. It was a philosophy that neither Mary nor Thomas could believe in, and one she was teaching her daughter, Teresa, as well.
Which was a problem for Thomas, because he happened to like Teresa. A lot.
But back to the pack of teenage werewolves.
Their alpha was a boy called Alby, and they were new in the area, young and rough around the edges, but all the same they were trying to find a safe place to hunker down and live their lives. Which was all well and good with Mary and Thomas --- they were far from the only werewolves in town, and the two of them were more than happy to give these kids a safe place to stay, PROVIDED that they accepted some ground rules. Namely: hurting anyone was forbidden, they must make sure they could stay in control on full moons (and make special accommodations for those who could not), and most importantly, they were under not, under any circumstances, to create new werewolves. As long as they accepted these conditions, Mary assured, no harm would come to them, and they could live in peace.
Things were fine, at first. Since most of them were around Thomas’s age, they went to the same school, which made Thomas’s job fairly easy. The pack kept their heads down, making them less of a target for other hunters, and for a while there seemed to be no problems. Everything was under control. Thomas even liked a few of them, had a particular fondness for the youngest of the pack, a twelve year old boy named Chuck. He was pudgy and dorky and had a hell of a mouth on him, but he was smart and good-natured too. Things were fine.
Until Alby bit Teresa.
(Thomas and Mary weren’t the only hunters Alby had encountered. Ava and Teresa had paid them a visit of their own --- a much more threatening visit, and the first of several. Alby didn’t take kindly to threats, as it turned out, particularly not on a full moon.)
Suddenly everything was thrown off balance, and all eyes were on Alby and his pack; them on one side, Ava and her fellow hunters on the other, with Mary and Thomas in the middle, trying to restore some kind of order. Everyone waiting for the scale to tip one way or the other.
It ended when Ava and what was left of her group retreated, leaving behind the remnants of Alby’s pack and a mess of bodies scattered over the ground. Bodies that, as it happened, included Alby, Chuck, and Teresa. Thomas was aware that there were others, too many others, hunter and werewolf alike, but those three --- those three were the ones Thomas was left standing over, unsure if he wanted to sob or scream. Unsure of anything, really, except that it wasn’t FAIR, and that Ava deserved to burn for what she’d done.
(It started over a few weeks later, when Mary found a house for sale in a town called Beacon Hills, as well as a position teaching AP Biology at the local high school. Strange things had been happening there for a while now, and it appeared as though the Argents had left; it seemed, to Mary, that it was unguarded. Unprotected. As for Thomas, well. She figured he could use a change. They both could use a change.)
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