𝐃𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐈𝐀 - TMR, Gally ² / ³

𝟢𝟤𝟢，𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐬, 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐬, 𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐬

"No. Just leave her."

"We're taking Teresa tonight. There's no time for all this shit."

"Leave her."

"What is even is it that she's doing?"

Gally shrugs. "I don't know. Let her be."

They continue watching Joan wander around. She looks under the couch and tables, in the fridge and in dressers, behind things— everywhere.

"Are you looking for something?" Asks Vince.

"Something like it," she murmurs, and continues. "I just hope that I never find it."

"Then why bother looking?"

"To make sure it's not here."

Brenda's head tilts to the side. "What is?"

Finally, the girl looks up, forehead sweaty, strands of hair sticking to it, just like Gally always mentions. "Cranks," she explains, and then goes back to looking.

"Joan, Cranks won't sneak into this building and they especially won't crawl under the couch."

"They might."

Vince rubs his eyelids with a thumb and index finger, sighing. "We promise that if there would be Cranks, we'd tell you."

Her mouth opens to speak, but then she closes it again, eyes not daring to go Newt, whom she had heard yelling to Thomas yesterday. It's obvious.

She hates it. She hates her stupid fear of these stupid creatures. She hates the stupid virus. She doesn't hate Newt— she can't, even with the way he has been acting lately. She does hate that he has the stupid virus. And mostly, she hates that she might be afraid of him, her past friend, in the future. Frightened, even.

"But it makes sense, right?" A pause, in which she stops moving. "I feel like I did that as a kid. If something frightened me, I looked in my closet, under my bed, and basically everywhere in my room before I went to sleep."

"True. You did that," Vince confirms, but no one else confirms that they did it. Must be because they don't remember.

After a few more minutes, she finishes looking. Still unsatisfied, as if things could be watching her any moment, she sits down on the couch.

"I wanna talk," Thomas then says. "In private. To Joan."

Surprised, she looks up. "We can talk here, too."

"Not with Gally giving me death glares all the time."

With a shrug, she follows him into the room he got assigned. It's no different from Gally's, though he has a few things on his desk. A wooden figure, a few papers, messy sheets from obvious twisting and turning (or maybe fun he had with Newt), and clothes all over the floor.

"Sorry for the mess," he apologizes. "Never really had time to settle in completely and didn't bother to clean up."

Awkwardly, she stays rooted to the floor. "It's alright. What's that?" Her finger moves to the wooden figure. "I recognize it."

"Oh. That's Chuck's." Thomas picks the thing up. Once he holds it up, she nods; the figure is a mini Chuck, very well made. "He gave me this before he headed to the Safe Haven with the others."

"The others," she breathes. "Are Joe and Alfred alive?"

It's been so long since she has seen those two. Her Tool-Makers.

"Yeah," he says. "Everyone who came with us to the Maze is alive. Well— almost everyone."

She looks down, nodding again.