Let Me Go
2022 Month of Writing: Day 9
Pairing: Gally x reader {Part 1 of ?}
Prompt:
Word Count: 1,390
Warning: implied character death
Author's Note: please don't steal my work. you can choose to respond to the prompt as well, but don't steal my work
There is a chance of this turning into a series of some sort after the month of writing is done, so we'll see how I'm feeling about things 😅
“You really think I’m going to let Thomas back into the Maze after what he’s done?” Gally asked Teresa. He turned to look at his fellow Gladers. “Look around you! Look at our Glade. This is the only way. And when the Grievers get what they came here for, everything goes back to the way it was.”
y/n exchanged glances with Newt and Minho. The events of the last few days were horrible, of course. No one was doubting that. But things were changing now. y/n knew their lives weren’t going to be the same, whether or not Thomas and Teresa were sacrificed.
“Are you listening to this?” Teresa asked. “Why are you all just standing there? He’s crazy.”
“Will you shut up?”
“If you stay here, the Grievers are going to come back. They’re going to come back, and they’re going to keep coming back until you are all dead.”
“Shut up!” Gally shouted. “Tie him up.” He started to walk away, but noticed that the Glader he had spoken to wasn’t moving. “Did you hear me? I said tie him up!”
The two Gladers finally moved and began to lift Thomas off the ground. y/n watched as Thomas suddenly attacked the two boys and took their weapons. Newt, Minho, and Frypan jumped into action as well, taking their weapons and joining Thomas. Frypan freed Teresa from the pole as Chuck also joined them from the side. The small group stood at the Maze entrance, facing the rest of the Gladers.
“You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?” Gally said.
“You don’t have to come with us,” Thomas said, “but we are leaving. Anyone else who wants to come, now’s your last chance.”
“Don’t listen to him, he’s just trying to scare you.”
“No, I’m not trying to scare you. You’re already scared. All right? I’m scared. But I’d rather risk my life out there then spend the rest of it in here. We don’t belong here. Okay, this place isn’t our home. We were put here. We were trapped here. At least out there, we have a choice. We can make it out of here. I know that.”
Silence fell around them. Thomas and his friends stared down Gally, but also silently pleaded with the others. y/n caught Newt and Minho staring at her.
She knew they were right. She had been here for too long and never seen any progress. And while things were bad now, there was hope. She didn’t want to die in the Glade. So having the ability to be in charge of her own fate? She knew her decision.
Slowly, people started joining them. Winston, Jeff, multiple others. y/n stepped forward as well, smiling slightly at her friends.
Suddenly, Gally grabbed her by the arm. She whirled around to look at him, shocked.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his voice low.
“Taking control of my life.”
“You go out there, you’ll die.”
“And what would you care about whether I live or not, Gally?” she asked. She glared at him. “You’ve basically hated me since I got here, saying I’m some kind of freak for being sent to a Glade full of boys. You chose every possible moment to blame me for things going wrong, called me horrible names, and treated me like absolute crap. Now you want me to stay here with you? I don’t think so. Now let go of my arm.”
“I won’t let you go out there and kill yourself.”
“That’s not your decision to make. Now let. Go.”
She ripped her arm from his grip and went to join the others. She continued to glare at Gally, even when Newt quietly checked on her to make sure she was all right. Her small rivalry with Gally was no secret in the Glade.
“Gally, it’s over,” Thomas said. “Come with us.”
Gally was quiet for a long moment. He glanced over the group.
“Good luck against the Grievers.”
y/n sighed. As much as she disliked Gally, she didn’t want him or any of the others to die. But they had limited options and limited time.
Newt tapped her shoulder and gently pulled her into the Maze. She followed Thomas and the others. She had never been in the Maze before, but knew well enough the horrors that came from within the walls.
Everything was a blur soon after.
When they got closer to the supposed exit, Grievers started attacking. They dragged away Gladers, picking them off left and right. It was only by a miracle that she wasn’t dragged off too. They were able to get the door unlocked and hurried through, leaving the Grievers behind them.
They found themselves in a dimly lit hallway, with only one clear door. On the other side, they found machines destroyed and people lying on the ground. A video message played where a woman named Ava Paige explained the Maze Trials, the Scorch, and the Flare. Behind her, people were shooting one another before she shot herself.
“Is it over?” Chuck asked.
“She said we were important,” Newt replied. “So what are we supposed to do now?”
“I don’t know,” Thomas said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“No.”
y/n turned quickly, shocked to see Gally standing on the other side of the room.
“Gally?”
“Don’t,” Teresa said, stopping Thomas from going forward. “He’s been stung.”
It was true. Gally didn’t look good. He was covered in sweat and Griever blood. He dropped a Griever stinger, a gun in his other hand. y/n exchanged a look with Minho, who also saw it.
“We can’t leave,” Gally said.
“We did,” Thomas replied. “Gally, we’re out. We’re free.”
“Free?” He sounded like he was crying. He turned to look around him. y/n noticed the darkened veins on his neck. “You think we’re free out there? No. No, there’s no escape from this place.”
He lifted the gun, immediately setting everyone on edge. Thomas raised his arms.
“Gally, listen to me. You’re not thinking straight. You’re not. And we can help you. Just put down the gun.”
Come on, Gally, y/n thought. Listen to him. Don’t do anything stupid.
“I belong to the Maze.”
“Just put down the gun.”
“We all do.”
Everything happened so fast.
Gally fired a shot.
Minho threw his spear.
People were shouting.
y/n’s feet moved without thought.
She looked on with wide eyes at the spear in Gally’s chest. The spear Minho had thrown. He gasped for breath before collapsing to his knees and then to his side. Everyone watched on in shock as their fellow Glader went still.
At almost the same moment, y/n felt a burning in her side. She winced and lifted her hand to the sensation. When she pulled it away, she saw blood.
“y/n?” Newt said. At the same time, she faintly heard Chuck say Thomas’s name.
The two fell at nearly the same time. Minho was fast enough to catch her before she roughly hit the ground. She gasped in pain.
Everything was blurring around her. She could only barely make out the voices above her. She knew she was shot. She knew Chuck had also been hit. She was losing a lot of blood and was fighting for consciousness at this point. She could hear her friends begging her to hold on.
She barely managed to lift her hand. She felt someone grab it, which made her sob a little bit. She didn’t realize she had been crying.
“Hang on, y/n,” she heard them say. There was desperation in their voice. She could hear people crying, but couldn’t tell who. “Just hang on! We’ll get you out.”
She shook her head. Her vision was fading too fast. She wasn’t able to respond.
Through the growing fog, she could hear shouts. They couldn’t tell where they were coming from, if they were close or far.
The hand that was holding tightly to hers was ripped away, making her gasp softly. Her hand fell to the ground. The shouts became more distorted until they slowly disappeared.
y/n whimpered in pain.
This is it, she thought. I’m going to die alone.
She couldn’t fight it any more. She let go of whatever strength she was pulling from and surrendered to the darkness.
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Stages of grief
I've been trying to work myself through the grief process. I'm doing it alone for the most part, so I keep finding myself in the dark place more often than not. I googled the stages of grief.
denial
anger
bargaining
depression
acceptance
I cycle through these stages, sometimes daily.
Lately I've found myself staying angry.
My God I'm so angry.
I'm angry at myself for being so selfish that I didn't do more to help my brother.
I'm angry at my parents for not listening to me when I said take him to another hospital and I'm angry at them for making me have to go through this alone.
I'm angry at his fiance for letting this happen to him. And now for moving on so fucking fast. We JUST made it through his one year and she's already dating someone!?
I'm angry at my extended family for being absolutely disgusting humans, though they always have been so it's no surprise.
I'm angry at my brother for not fighting harder. For giving up. For leaving me here to do this on my own.
I'm angry at God for doing this to our family. People tell me "God only takes those that he needs in heaven" but why. Why tf do you need him in heaven!? We needed people like him HERE. Good people. Good men.
I'm just so angry.
I don't know how to handle my anger.
My dad taught me to lash out when I'm angry.
My mom taught me to just be quiet when I'm angry.
All I want to do is yell and scream
And cry
I want to call my brother and yell at him.
I don't know what to do.
I don't know how to get through this.
I don't know how to survive.
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‘Late Writings’ Readings
‘The Man in White’ Readings Blog Draft
Something many in class noted about Twain’s writings on his daughter Jean’s death is the intensity of his mourning. And I agree, though something that stands out to me is that a lot of his writing here reads a bit like he is trying to escape his internality, and I wonder if as he writes he has not yet felt the full blunt of grief. I wonder in part just because it is so difficult to write at volume in severe grief, and also because the later entries closer to Jean’s funeral are significantly shorter, as though he is beginning to lose his capacity for writing, perhaps giving into grief.
I noticed a pattern of Twain looking backward or looking to his environment to process the moment. We get good accounts of literal events, what other people around him have done, what Jean’s dog does, what his environment meant to Jean and means to him. The details here don’t dwell so much on Twain’s internality, which I suspect he was still processing.
But I’d like note two passages where we do get some beautiful language and interesting ideas which might also point at Twain’s more internal thoughts.
Susy died in the house we built in Hartford. Mrs. Clemens would never enter it again. But it made the house dearer to me. I have entered it once since, when it was tenantless and silent and forlorn, but to me it was a holy place and beautiful. It seemed to me that the spirits of the dead were all about me, and would speak to me and welcome me if they could: Livy, and Susy, and George, and Henry Robinson, and Charles Dudley Warner.
I find it fascinating that here Twain describes the ‘tenantless, silent, forlorn’ as “a holy place and beautiful.” This somewhat reminds me of ideas in No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger where Satan describes himself and the protagonists as only thoughts that are forlorn, among other traits. We also see temporality and space altered in No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger that recall a similar kinds of notion of communing with spirits. What’s interesting though is that Twain here describes these things as beautiful and desirable, but August in No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger seems unsettled and disturbed by many of the same things.
Last night I went to Jean's room at intervals, and turned back the sheet and looked at the peaceful face, and kissed the cold brow, and remembered that heartbreaking night in Florence so long ago, in that cavernous and silent vast villa, when I crept downstairs so many times, and turned back a sheet and looked at a face just like this one—Jean's mother's face—and kissed a brow that was just like this one. And last night I saw again what I had seen then—that strange and lovely miracle—the sweet, soft contours of early maidenhood restored by the gracious hand of death! When Jean's mother lay dead, all trace of care, and trouble, and suffering, and the corroding years had vanished out of the face, and I was looking again upon it as I had known and worshipped it in its young bloom and beauty a whole generation before.
I find this passage fascinating and beautiful. I can’t recall anyone describing death quite this way. Twain here definitely reads as someone who has thought about death for a long time. The notion of death as a restoration of youth and beauty, not in the afterlife, ideation, or spirit, but literally represented in the corpse indicates a profound acceptance and even comfort with death. And Twain is experienced with death, enough that he connects Jean’s to Olivia’s death by restoration and beauty. His mourning, at least in this passage, finds an admirable tone that accepts death without turning to denial nor despair—a feat many find difficult in the wake of losing a deeply loved one.
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