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Gally has had a rough go of it since Chuck and everything that's happened since. Months of escaping those demons. Escaping a lot of things.
Now here he is with Thomas and Newt and they're trusting him after everything he's done. He doesn't deserve that trust, he doesn't deserve anything from them except perhaps another swift punch in the face from Thomas. Twice from Newt, hopefully.
But still, they trust him. And he knows then that he's NOT going to let them down this time. He's going to fix this as much as he possibly can. Tunnels, tracks, all of it happens. Now a train comes and Newt's been left back. Newt's on the ground. Gally has under a split-second to make a decision and the minute he sees Thomas make a move to run back to him and he flashes back only briefly to Thomas running into the Maze. He remembers how Newt was that whole day - the panic, the pacing, the broken glass in the kitchens.
More than that he knows it's Thomas, though, who will do this. Who will see them through to the end and end up getting Minho out, getting as many people as he can out. It's always been Thomas since that day in The Maze.
Gally doesn't want to think about what it means when he's already decided Thomas needs to stay back because of the chance of death. He doesn't want to think about how he's literally deciding which of them should die trying to save Newt. He doesn't want to think about the fact that he's already accepted Newt's fate on the tracks. He pushes it out of his head as he pulls Thomas back. And he runs.
He's been here before. He's seen the trains. He knows there's just enough space against the tracks and if he can just get to Newt in time, get him into the right spot, maybe he can save Newt. Maybe he can save one boy when he couldn't save another. Himself? He doesn't care about himself. He'll lie on top of Newt if it means the train hitting him instead.
In the four seconds it takes for him to get from Thomas to Newt it's a flashback of memory. A quick moment in the Maze. In the Glade. Newt making Gally a Keeper. Working together. At each other's throat sometimes but always having each other's back too. It's a friendship. Brothers.
He's not doing this for himself. It's not about his lack of care about himself. Yes, he's guilty. But Gally likes himself too much to die anymore. He doesn't want it. No, this is about Thomas and Newt, because hasn't it always been? He's doing this for them.
Pushing Newt to the ground between the rails and fitting them side-by-side in the small hint of a safe space comes like second-nature somehow. Adrenaline, he tells himself.
Newt lets a shudder of a breath out next to him and it’s in that broken sound that Gally hears a memory. The same shudder two beds over in the Medjack tent. The same shudder of a breath after he broke his leg running in the Maze. He thinks he was running when it happened. He never found out.
It’s the same shudder.
Gally doesn’t think about what it means.
After the train has passed, Newt groans and Gally pushes himself to his knees. “Well,” he says, nerves not even on edge anymore. He’s lost any sense of nerves at this point. “That was a first.”
He’s clutching his chest now, the sharp stings piercing into him with every single breath. His pounding heart doesn’t help. He looks down to Newt, breathing on the tracks. Alive. He was alive.
It’s like a switch goes off in his head and he’s back to himself. Thomas is alive and so is Newt. They were both alive. Everything was alright. And now it was his mission to get them out. Get them to Minho. And then get all three of them to The Safe Haven.
He could do it. They could do it. They’d just have to be fast.
“Never were great runners were we, Newt?”