Work Text:
Each Greenie is the same. The Box brings them up, they cry for a minute, then they get on with everything and put on a brave face that no one really ever believes. This kid though? He's different.
Of course, the first difference is that.. well. He's small.
Gally definitely stared at him when the Box brought him up for a moment too long, seeing a frightened pair of eyes meeting his own from the darkness below. He looks the exact age Gally reckons he was when he arrived here almost three years ago.
Chuck, as they've learnt, is more than a Greenie. He's a painful reflection into Gally's past here, how the experiences of all these months have shaped him. Which is why, when Gally hears Chuck sniffling in his hammock over forty-eight hours later, he stifles his groan and his efforts to sleep through it, standing up instead.
"Hey." Gally whispers when he reaches Chuck's hammock, relighting a dead oil lamp on the post beside him, "How're you feeling?"
Gally's presence obviously taking him by surprise, Chuck abruptly sits up, wiping his hands over his face, "I'm s— I'm sorry if I woke you up.. I… I just—"
"What's bothering you, Greenbean?" Gally cuts him off, then crouches to be eye level with the kid once he's satisfied with the lamp. Chuck sniffs again, then his lip starts to tremble. Before Gally knows it, the Greenie is shaking once more as silent tears fall from his eyes.
"I…" Chuck swallows thickly, "wanna.. go home."
Feeling guilty over the new influx of tears, Gally quickly puts his hands up, "Whoa, okay, hey— hey." He stands, then sits himself down on the hammock beside Chuck, awkwardly turning his face to look at him.
"I want my mum.." Chuck almost sobs, crossing his arms over his chest as if to hug himself. It's a sorry sight, and Gally feels too awkward to just sit with his hands on his knees. Slowly, he wraps an arm around Chuck's side, offering a simple hug.
"Alright, c'mon." He murmurs, rubbing Chuck's far arm with his hand, "This is home now. And we're all in this with you. Besides, we're going to get out soon anyway."
"..Oh?" Chuck's crying pauses briefly as he looks up at Gally, hopeful. Gally fights down a wince. Hope is a dangerous thing in this world, they've learnt, but Alby insists spirits are kept high to maintain order and routine, preventing it from disintegrating from fear.
Leaning closer, Gally's voice drops to a whisper, "Have you seen the Runners yet?"
"A couple."
"Have you seen Minho yet?"
Expression confused, Chuck shakes his head.
A smile creeps onto Gally's lips, "That's who's getting us out. Minho."
"How can you be so sure?" Chuck doesn't sound convinced, but isn't brave enough to truly voice it.
"He's the Running Keeper, and I'm not supposed to say this so keep it a secret—"
Chuck nods.
"—we only really need him to get us out. Every day he comes back with new information and clues, and we are so close to leaving. You hear me?" Gally doesn't believe what he's saying, not at all, but he can pretend. Besides, Chuck is far more calm now, processing what has been told to him.
"Why is this a secret?"
"Because," pulling away from the Greenie, Gally looks up at the branches above, moonlight shut out completely, "the other Runners might get jealous, and we can't have that. The Runners are the smartest, fastest and bravest amongst us, but you'd be surprised how easily their egos can get bruised."
"Are you a Runner?"
Gally freezes for a second, coldness filling his heart with bad memories that he has to choke down. "What? Oh, no… it's not my thing, I prefer it here in the Glade. And I told you, the only Runner who matters is Minho."
"I think you're scared." A small grin has worked its way onto Chuck's mouth.
The first instinct Gally has is to feel a deep sense of anger at those words. This kid doesn't know what I've been through, the things I've seen. But strangely, it doesn't come. He scoffs lightly instead, lifting himself up, "Who knows."
He goes to walk back to his hammock, Chuck pacified for the minute, but a small, "Umm… G—Ga..? Gally?" stops him. He looks over his shoulder at Chuck, who is pulling his legs up onto the hammock and curling into himself.
"Yeah?"
"I can't sleep."
Gally softly frowns, "Oh." Returning to Chuck's bedside, he looms over him, "How come?"
"I have the same nightmare every time I shut my eyes." Chuck admits, "If I sleep I go back to it."
Looking down at Chuck, Gally doesn't know what to say, his mouth opening and closing. I should've just tried to ignore him, he thinks, I'm not cut out for handling kids.
"Sorry, you probably need to sleep." Chuck whispers, looking away ashamedly. He lays on his side, back to Gally as he curls up like before.
Jaw clenching, Gally shuts his eyes for a moment, thinking. How did he soothe himself when he first got here?
Before he knows it, he's sitting on the ground by Chuck's head, back against the post his hammock is tied to, and a small tune escapes him, "Frost er úti fuglinn minn…" his brow furrows, "ég finn hvað þér er kalt.."
Gally senses Chuck shift on the hammock, but doesn't look at him.
"Nærðu engu í nefið þitt, Því nú frosið allt.." he pauses, eyes opening and narrowing on the ground before him as he tries to locate the tune, "En ef þú biður augnablik, ég ætla að flýta mér. Oð biðja hana mömmu mína, um mylsnu handa þér.."
The melody dies out, Gally feeling calm all over. He feels Chuck's eyes on the side of his face, "Is it just me.. or was that not English."
A breathy chuckle pulls itself from Gally, "Yeah."
"Well?" Chuck sits up a bit, "What was it?" and curiosity is evident in his tone.
"Go to sleep and I might tell you in the morning."
Face falling, Chuck rolls his eyes and lays back down, still smiling even though he is trying to hide it. After a moment of quiet, Gally lets out a long sigh.
"I don't know."
"..What do you mean?"
Adjusting how he is sat, Gally frowns at the ground ahead of him, "I don't know what language it is, but I understand it." He grunts, beginning to stand up, "Want another blanket?"
"Yeah." Chuck studies his face, then yawns and settles comfortably in the hammock at ease. Gally smiles down at him, then retreats for a moment to grab a spare sheet from the extras box. Jokingly, he dumps it down on Chuck's face, which makes the Greenie grin through his tiredness.
Chuck fights the blanket away from his eyes and holds it up, letting the fabric slowly fall back down onto him.
"I'm surprised you guys haven't built a pillow fort, or something." Chuck adds, rolling the blanket around his arms and nestling in to the warmth it brings.
Gally huffs, "How do you know we haven't?"
Silence fills the Glade at last, aside of course the dappled snores here and there through the sleeping site. Chuck's eyes have fallen shut, lips parted slightly as if sleep took him mid-sentence. Sighing, Gally reaches over and turns off the oil lamp. However, when he looks down and sees the extras box still overflowing with blankets and one or two spare hammocks, his smile falters.
No one here has ever made a pillow fort. They've never even thought of it. Gally's been too busy putting together actual huts and shelters to take a moment and imagine something so childish.
With no one else awake, he stares at the box for another minute, then snatches up a couple blankets. This is stupid, he internally curses, but a small, fractured piece of his soul within feels excited.
He cannot remember his pre-Glade self, no one ever does, but Gally feels a tad closer to the little boy from back then as he hooks one corner of the blanket to the tree holding up the head of his hammock, and another corner to a different trunk. After laying the second blanket on the floor beneath his makeshift roof, he sits there under the pretend shelter, knees pulled up to his chest as if he's waiting for something to happen.
Nothing does.
No one stirs. Time doesn't pass any quicker. He sits alone with his thoughts and the foolish hope that one day, just maybe, it will be okay to be a kid again.
"Boo."
Gally jumps, whipping around to face the person behind him. "You." He scowls at Minho, who somehow crept over without a sound and is crouched at the side of Gally's 'fort.'
"May I come in?" Minho manages a smile, looking Gally up and down. Gally's too tired to yell shuck off in his face so just groans, looking away from him. Taking this as an invitation to get comfortable, Minho crawls forward, bumping into Gally and plonking himself down almost on top of him.
"Do you mind?"
"I heard you singing," Minho elbows him, always a little too rough with everyone, "nice voice ya got."
"That was barely singing. It's just some old lullaby."
Grass rustles around them, the blanket hanging over their heads rippling. Gally feels Minho's arm from the shoulder down to the wrist pressing against him and doesn't say a word, instead enjoying the scrap of warmth it gives him.
Gally assumed that all pillow forts were supposed to be cosy, which is another reason why he hasn't booted Minho away yet. At least with company, Gally feels less cold, and less silly.
"Not much of a fort, is this?" Minho mumbles, "Could do with more blankets. Pillows too."
"Just how long were you listening in on that conversation for?"
"Long enough."
If Gally is honest with himself, the Glade is quite decrepit. All around them, gloomy shadows leak across the ground and hold sleeping Gladers for ransom in the smothering darkness. A ragged spiderweb of ropes hold everything together, fraying more and more every day. Not enough to cause danger, but enough to notice with a keen eye.
Someone decided to hang around netting and old sheets around to block out rain one day, and no one has bothered to take down the temporary shields since. The breeze shifts them, moving them like long-gone ghosts sailing through the air. Minho breaks the quiet, pulling at a loose thread on the blanket their sat upon, "What's it about?"
Pulling his eyes away from the scenery, Gally looks at Minho, "Huh?"
Minho folds his hands in his lap after studying the string he evicted from the blanket closely, "The lullaby. What's it about?"
Sitting forward, Gally smiles, "You really wanna know?" and his words drag out, unsure.
"Uh-huh."
"It's about.." Gally tilts his face to look directly at Minho, "a little boy feeding a bird."
"…Seriously? That's it?" Face contorting into a frown, Minho stares at Gally's eyes feeling let down.
"Cute, right?"
Minho doesn't respond to that, but if he did, it would be either a straightforward no not really or something sarcastic.
Suddenly, there's a faint growl overhead, both the boys sitting up a bit straighter. All the hairs on Gally's arms stand up, picturing the pain of being stung by a Griever— Yet, the growl repeats, and a drizzle of rain starts to patter down onto the grass behind them. Gally sighs. Not a Griever call. Just a storm.
Turning around, Minho sits in a position that is surely not comfortable and watches as the rain builds. "You can speak a second language?" Is what leaves his mouth next.
"Probably." Gally pauses, then turns around as well, mimicking Minho and fixing his eyes onto the droplets of water glinting in the darkness. Minho nods, slow.
"Say something."
"…Like what."
"Anything."
Another churn of thunder from the skies echoes across the Glade, but Gally is too concentrated to feel anxiety anymore. Tasting the words in his mouth before he says them, he looks down at his lap, "Ég heiti Gally." Minho smirks at him, nodding for him to continue. "Mér líkar ekki við storma, em mér líkar við þig, held ég."
"Cool." Minho stares at the side of Gally's face, "Translate?"
"How about no."
"Aw, what?"
Gally laughs under his breath, meeting Minho's eyes, "Hey, shouldn't you be asleep?"
"I reckon I can get in another.. twenty minutes awake. That gives me a good five hours to rest up." Checking his watch, Minho shrugs, using the corner of his shirt to polish the shiny clock-face.
"No," Gally starts to stand, then remembers the blanket hanging over him and yanks the side of it, pulling it loose and watching it fall down and cover Minho, "go to bed."
Bunching up the blanket, Minho tosses it aside, "If I told you I have nightmares, would you sing to me too?"
"Absolutely not."
Rain hammers against the cracked window, cold spray breaking inside and leaving a damp trail down the wall, before forming a puddle on the stone floor by the foot of Gally's mattress. Gally is wide awake, still half dressed from the.. customer he received less than an hour ago.
The broken clock on the ground beside his empty closet still reads seven o'clock in the morning. Gally is too disoriented to figure out what time it actually is.
He is shaken up. From the moment he left the Glade, he has been living in a constant state of fear on this hellish planet, but today it has crystallised within him, sharp shards of pain shooting through his chest with every breath he dares to take. Since his wits came back to him, he has been hysterically muttering this old lullaby that no longer makes any sense to him.
"Frost er úti fuglinn minn—" he starts again, but his voice breaks, shoulders shaking pitifully as he buries his face into his knees. He is curled up, back against the frozen wall.
Thunder roars outside, growling down at the Outskirts. Gally wonders if it's God inflicting punishment on those who reason against him.
With weak hands, he pulls his pillow to his chest and holds it as tight as he can, muffling his cries as he seeks out touch that is soft, gentle. It takes a while, but his breathing steadies, the pain from his lung subsiding just enough to become bearable. Removing his face from the pillow, he looks upward, eyes focusing on the cracked plaster above his head.
The claw-like markings that split the old paint above remind Gally of the scars on his back from the Changing. He has stared at these patterns many times, mostly because he'd rather study the miniature ravines and flakes than the blurry faces of men who grip his flesh until it bruises and bleeds.
A sob creeps up Gally's throat again, and he grabs the bunched up sheet beside him and tugs it over his head, ignoring the stains and moth holes it holds. Light flashes through his window but the blanket blocks it out, allowing Gally to sit alone with his thoughts.
He remembers a time where he was free to hang a blanket from mast to mast, free to cower beneath it and play pretend, in a world where he could afford to be scared of storms. Lightning flashes outside, followed closely by thunder rolling over Gally's room. Gally doesn't flinch.
And he tells himself he is brave, he tries to push his mind into believing he can always make a new fort to rule as king. But he sits alone in the dark with a sheet that, if Gally's imaginative enough, could serve as a ticket to finding freedom.. if he ties a noose tight enough.
He sits alone in the dark. For the first time, being alone in this room isn't a relief. It's a shucked-up curse. He is nothing but a body waiting to be used and discarded, and the loneliness he has carried with him since as long as he can remember is heavier than ever before. It's a fitting fate for a murderer, he tells himself.
With no Chuck to console, and no Minho to invade his fort, Gally waits for morning to come again.