Thomas (formerlywicked) wrote in onewaythreads, @ 2018-02-02 19:41:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, brenda, thomas |
Who: Thomas and Brenda
Where: Their new Apt
When: 1/29
What: Awkwardly waking up in the same bed.
Status: Complete
When Thomas had woken up and gotten the invitation to Preya, he really didn’t have to think about it. There was no hesitation. He had saved Minho and taken down Wicked. But losing Newt and Teresa in the process still weighed heavily on him and he needed to get away. Just for a little while. What he did not expect was to black out again and wake up in a whole new place. He sat up on the bed, carefully, and tried to wake up more when he realized that he wasn’t the only one there. He slowly looked to his left and saw Brenda laying there, passed out. What was she doing here? Had she gotten the invitation, too? There was only one way to find out. He reached over and lightly shook her. * Brenda hadn’t been able to face a world where she would watch her friends die after losing Newt to the Flare. She couldn’t even think about losing Jorge. Thomas didn’t even bear think about. So she had accepted the invitation she’d been given and went away. Brenda had no idea what kind of world she was going to, but it had to be better than the one she grew up in. She didn’t remember closing her eyes, and she wasn’t aware of her change of location. All she became aware of was someone gently shaking her shoulder. Brenda jerked away before she was even really awake, then blinked when she saw who she’d been sleeping next to. “Thomas!” This wasn’t supposed to happen! “You aren’t supposed to be here!” * When Brenda jerked away, Thomas quickly moved his hand away from her. He didn’t want to freak her out anymore than he obviously had. “I’m not supposed to be here?” he questioned. “You’re not supposed to be here. Why are you here?” He knew why he was there, but why did Brenda get the invitation and why did she accept it? * “I asked you first,” Brenda returned quickly. A confused frown creased her brows and made her lower lip stick out a little bit. She looked around the room they were in. It looked for all the world like what normal bedrooms were rumored to look like. No one outside the City had one, of course. Brenda certainly didn’t remember the one from her childhood. “Is this Preya?” She went into motion moving quickly for the closest window. She wanted to see where they were. * Thomas knew he wasn’t going to get an answer out of Brenda, so he might as well answer the question first. “I needed to get away for awhile.” It was half of the truth and hopefully it would get Brenda to say why she was there as well. He took a look around the room. It was clean and nothing was falling apart. They were definitely not home anymore, so this had to be Preya. “I think so,” he replied as he started to get up off of the bed. It still hurt a bit from when he was shot, but he could learn to ignore it as he made his way over to the window and looked out. “We’re definitely not at home anymore.” * Brenda glanced over her shoulder at Thomas for his answer, but if he thought it would prompt her to answer he was deluding himself. She just looked back out the window with a slight expression of awe on her face. “They have electricity,” she said. Movement on the street caught her attention. “Are they...walking a dog?” ** Okay, that didn’t work. All he got out of that was a look, which wasn’t exactly what he was looking for here. He wanted to know why Brenda was here, but it seemed like she didn’t want to share that information with him. Instead, he turned his attention back to the world outside of their window. “Looks like it.” Was this how things were before the flare? No virus. No Cranks. Nothing falling apart. And no Wicked. “This almost seems unreal.” * She lifted her hands to press her palms against the glass. It was unbroken, not cracked, no bullet holes. Secure. Weird. Anxiety made her breathing quicken and made her frown more. “How are we supposed to know this isn’t some Wicked mind fuck?” What if they’d made a mistake and were actually prisoners? Experiments? Shit! * The thought had crossed his mind. And it seemed like Brenda was reading his mind. Was this actually real or was this some messed up Wicked experiment? It couldn’t be, right? Wicked is gone. He saw both Ava Paige and Janson die. He saw the building go down…with Teresa still on the rooftop. He shook his head a little as if that was supposed to get the image out of his head. “It can’t be Wicked…” * To her knowledge, Wicked was still up and running. Granted, everything in the City was in chaos with the riots happening, but Brenda had left before any of what Thomas remembered happened. “How do you know?” she asked, her voice gone tight. She wouldn’t let her mounting fear show. She was tough, too tough to be a scared little girl. * Now Thomas was confused. Why it did seem like Brenda had no idea what had happened? She was there. She saw the building go down. “Because Wicked is gone. Remember? We saw the building collapse…” He moved away from the window and sat down on the edge of the bed. He needed a moment. * “What building?” She tore her eyes from the outside to look back at Thomas. “What do you mean, gone?” She blinked as the ramifications of that set in. Then she went a bit pale as she reached out for the nearest chair. Oh god. She screwed up. She really, really screwed up! * Why didn’t Brenda seem to remember anything that he was telling her? Thomas didn’t like this at all. He watched her and waited for her to sit down. “The riot…they attacked the building, it went up in flames and then it finally collapsed. Why don’t you remember any of this? You were there.” * Brenda had to sit down at this point as she gaped at Thomas. Her brown eyes were wide and her brows were down. They won. They actually won, and Brenda had given up hope. She caved. Hadn’t stayed the course. Fuck! “I wasn’t there,” she said in a hushed tone. “I wasn’t there, Thomas.” * “But you were!” What in the hell was going on? He might have been losing a lot of blood at the time, but he remembered seeing Brenda on the berg with the others. This was totally confusing and he didn’t understand what was going on. Why did he remember and she couldn’t? “You helped save me.” He would have said more, but he stopped. Instead, he asked, “What’s the last thing that you remember?” * Ok getting yelled at snapped her out of her shock. That normal scowl of hers came back and her hand tightened on the back of the chair she was sitting on. “No I wasn’t!” she barked back. God! He could be so freaking stubborn! Brenda sighed as she pushed her fingers back through her hair. She didn’t want to talk about her last memory. It was too close to that question she didn’t want to answer. “...Newt.” * Thomas didn’t really mean to yell, but it was frustrating. And, yes, he was stubborn. Especially when he knew that he was right about something. “You were!” He wasn’t making it up. He hadn’t imagined it. He was sure of it. Just hearing his name, made Thomas look away and look down at the ground. He couldn’t save him. He tried, but failed. “So much more happened after that…” * Brenda looked away as well. She wasn’t proud of her decision, but she stood by it. She just wished Jorge knew she was safe and alive. He was probably slitting throats trying to find out where she’d gone. “Apparently,” she said in a flat tone. * “I’m going to look around.” It was pretty obvious that neither one of them wanted to talk about what happened, so why push it? He got up too fast and the pain from where he was shot let him know he had done so. He quickly put his hand to his stomach and tried to push past it before he started to head out of the bedroom. * That wasn’t right at all. Brenda lurched to her feet, recognizing someone with an injury when she saw it. Hell, she’d seen it often enough back home. The fact that it was Thomas that was hurt made it even more immediate to her, so she rushed right to his side, making him sit back down. “What happened to you?” * Thomas didn’t get very far. Not when Brenda blocked his way and practically made his sit back down. He was about to say that she knew what happened to him, but then he remembered what she had said. “Janson shot me,” he told her as he grabbed the hem of his shirt and lifted it enough to show her that he wasn’t lying. * That asshole. Brenda had enough reason to want to punch Janson in the neck. Now she had one more. She sucked in a quiet breath when she saw the blood stained bandage. At least someone had patched him up before he came here. “Let me have a look,” she insisted, one hand still on his shoulder in a hint he should lay back on the bed. “Want to make sure some idiot didn’t screw this up.” * Thomas noticed the look cross Brenda’s face. He was pretty sure if Jason were around, she would be attacking him right about now. Good thing that he wasn’t. Even though he wouldn’t have minded seeing Brenda go at him. The guy deserved it. He leaned back since there was no point in fighting Brenda. She wanted to see, so he might as well let her have a look. He didn’t really want to look. He didn’t need to look. He felt it. That was enough for him. “And you would be able to tell…how?” he asked as he looked away from the ceiling and over at Brenda. * She gave a derisive snort as her eyes flickered to Thomas’ face, but they went back to the bandage quickly enough so she herself didn’t screw up removing the cotton pad. “If what you said is true there’s only a few people who would have been on hand to get the bullet out and patch you up. Most of them I wouldn’t trust with a scraped knee.” You could only remove medical tape so slowly before you had to just give it a rip. Especially where body hair was involved. Ahem. Then came lifting the bandage from the wound. This part you couldn’t just rip or it would undo whatever healing had been done. Of course, part of her reason for doing this was to judge how long ago he’d been shot. It would give her an idea of how much time between what she remembers and what Thomas remembers there was. Brenda grimaced when she got a look at him. “It’s gonna scar shitty,” she surmised, but it was done as well as it could be for in the field and on the run. It could have been done a lot worse. “It’s clean though.” * “Not like I had much of a choice.” He wasn’t even sure who fixed him. He had passed out not long after watching Teresa fall. He didn’t want to focus on that. He didn’t want to think about it, so he looked at Brenda. She was pulling the tape from the bandage so slowly. He was about to tell her to just rip it off already because the slowness was almost torturous. Mostly he wanted to know how bad it was without having to look himself. The look on her face would tell him exactly what he needed to know. When she grimaced, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to know how bad it look, but then she said what she said. “I don’t care.” It was a battle scar. It would just go along with the others. “So, I’m good then.” Or as good as he possibly could be for getting shot not that long ago. “Are you going to keep staring at it or are you going to put the bandage back on?” * That grimace was turned up to Thomas then she ripped the bandage and tape the rest of the way off. “You need a new one,” she pronounced as she stood up then walked away. “Stay here. There’s got to be something more to this place than a bedroom.” Even if Thomas made a grab for her Brenda was quicker than he was right now. She disappeared out the only door that could be an exit. A moment later… “This place is huge!” Brenda’s voice came with a slight echo in the hallway outside the room. “There’s even more actual furniture without a stain on it!” A few moments later the sound of running water could be heard. “Hot water works!” The water turned off leaving silence for a few minutes, then Brenda returned to the room. She had boxes, tape and a bottle in her arms. “The shower doubles as a bathtub so I know what I’m doing first,” she said as she reached the bed. The stuff she brought was placed on the bed where she could reach them as needed. First she opened the bottle. “This might sting, but it’s an antiseptic.” Then before he could protest Brenda poured some of the witch hazel she found over the wound. * Thomas sucked in a quick breath when Brenda ripped the bandaged off. She could have given him a warning before doing that. “Brenda, wait!” He did try to grab her, but she was quicker and she was already making her way out of the room. It was one thing when he was wanted to leave the bedroom, but it was another when she did it on her own. Who knew what or who could be waiting for them outside the bedroom door. He propped himself up on his elbows and stared at the doorway as he tried to listen to Brenda’s movements. “How huge?” he called out. Maybe he should try to get up and look for himself. He was becoming more and more curious the more she said. He was about to say screw it, get up and have a look himself, but that was when Brenda finally returned, supplies in her hands. “I was starting to think you got lost out there,” he teased a little bit. “Having a bath?” he asked, watching as she set the items down on the bed. He lay back down on the bed and waited for Brenda to get started. The witch hazel stung a bit and it made him scrunch up his face because of it. It could be worse. He has felt worse. But he really hoped that Brenda would clean his wound quickly because it was not fun. “Are you done yet?” * “There’s a whole other bedroom, a living room with a dining table a chairs near a kitchen.” To them this would be luxury accomodations. Looking outside the window had revealed a world covered in snow, but apparently this place had working heat because it wasn’t freezing. “Don’t be such a big baby,” she chided as she smeared some kind of ointment onto a clean bandage. “You’re worse than Jorge.” Taping the bandage back in place was a lot less abrupt than when she’d taken it off. “There.” She began gathering the things back up to put away. * From just the things that Brenda was saying the place sounded far too nice. Were they actually meant to stay there or was it just a temporary place for them before they get whisked off to another? “I’m not being a baby,” he told her with a slight roll of his eyes. “I don’t know if I should believe you or not.” Thank god she was done, though. Now he could sit up again, carefully. “Thanks…” He stood up and started to walk out of the bedroom. He wanted to see what Brenda had seen. And she had been right, the place was huge. And pretty nice looking. “Are we actually supposed to be here?” It almost felt wrong. * Brenda followed, watching Thomas for his reactions because honestly she couldn’t believe what they found themselves in. While he went further into this place, she skewed off to put the medic supplies back where she found them. “I guess so?” she said with doubt in her voice as she joined him once more. “We either died and went to some kind of heaven, we’re still dreaming or this is for real.” Brenda looked up at Thomas as if expecting him to decide which it was. * Thomas slowly explored their supposed new place. It felt odd seeing everything the way that it was. He was so used to the way things were back at home. It still felt like somebody might come through the front door and take them away. They were never this lucky. “You sound as unsure as I feel,” he said as he glanced her way. “We didn’t die. If we had, I doubt I would have this,” he told her as he pointed towards his stomach where he had been shot. “So, we’re either dreaming the same dream or we did get those letters and this place is actually real.” Which one it was, he still wasn’t quite sure. * “Okay, point,” Brenda said. She caught her lower lip between her teeth then decided to move around a little. She was almost afraid to touch anything. Everything was so clean. “I feel like I’m going to smudge something.” Something occurred to her and again she was suddenly in motion, this time for the kitchen. Brenda got to the fridge then hesitated. Her hand hovered over the handle as she glanced to Thomas. Then she swallowed and pulled open the fridge as if expecting a killer crank clown might jump out at her. “Ho-lee-shit…” * Brenda wasn’t the only one feeling that way. Thomas felt like if he touched something he might mess it up or break it, which was ridiculous. He started to walk around, look at the different things, but he stopped when he caught Brenda starting to head into the kitchen. He started to follow her, wondering what she was going to do next. “We should go outside at some point.” He was just curious about what was going out there as he was about this place they had woken up in. * Brenda’s eyes were wide as she stared into the fridge. Outside was ignored. Outside could blow up right now and only the fridge would matter to her. “Thomas, look,” she said in a hushed voice. “Those are eggs. And milk. Real milk!” A mystified smile listed her lips as she looked back at Thomas. “Butter. Syrup. Sliced meat. Cheese. We would kill for this stuff back home!” Then something occurred to her and she frowned. “Suppose it’s poisoned?” * Thomas finally walked over and peered into the fridge. There was so much food in it. More than he had ever seen. He probably looked just as wide-eyed as Brenda right now. He seriously wanted to reach in, grab something and eat it. He couldn’t remember the last time he actually ate. He was kind of busy saving people and bringing down Wicked. He started to reach out to grab something. He didn’t care what, but he stopped when Brenda asked that question. He quickly pulled his hand away and looked at her. “Why would they bring us here and then poison us? That doesn’t make any sense.” * “I don’t know,” Brenda answered in slight exasperation. Thomas had a point, but fighting for survival for almost all of her life made her very wary of things, especially when they seemed too good to be true. Still, this was supposed to be a better place. “We could try something and die together.” She looked up at Thomas with lifted brows. * Thomas really hoped that Brenda was wrong. The food looked far too good to just stare at it. He wanted to eat it. But he did understand why Brenda was being cautious. One had to be while living out in the Scorch. “Let’s do it.” If this was a dream, maybe they would wake up. If they die, well, nothing they could really do about that. He was already reaching in and grabbing this and that and setting it on the counter. He wasn’t quite sure what he wanted to try first. It all looked so tempting. * That was all she needed to hear. “I want eggs,” she declared then reached in to grab the carton. Brenda had an excited grin on her face that nobody had seen before. There really was no reason for her to be this hopeful back home, and they certainly didn’t have eggs. She wriggled around Thomas to make for the stove she’d seen. “See if there’s bacon!” Brenda suggested as she went in search of something to cook the eggs in. * Once Brenda was out of the way, Thomas really started to go through the fridge. Only stopped to look over at her for a moment when she asked if there was any bacon. He checked a few places, opened up one of the drawers and found what he had been looking for her. “Here,” he said as he grabbed it and handed it to Brenda. “Do you want me to grab anything else?” He was already looking through the drawers by the time he asked. So much food. And this was only the fridge. They hadn’t even checked the pantry yet. * “Nope,” she said as she found some pans to us. “Wait. Butter, I guess so the eggs don’t stick.” Not that she really knew how to cook eggs or bacon. Brenda knew academically since Jorge used to tell her stories. How hard could it be, right? Besides, to her even burnt eggs were going to take great. * Thomas grabbed the butter and set it on the counter next to the other stuff that was now sitting there. He shut the fridge door and now his full attention was on Brenda. “Do you even know how to cook?” He was pretty sure that he had no idea how to cook. But he didn’t know if Brenda knew how to or not. This would be the perfect time for Frypan to be around. “You’re not going to burn the place down, are you?” It was a valid question. * Brenda gave Thomas a look that was a combination of indignation and offense. “No, I’m not going to burn the place down!” The eggs, maybe, but not this perfectly awesome place. “Shut up and sit down if you want any.” Five minutes into it she realized her mistake. She had tried to cook the eggs and the bacon at the same time, and now she was having to jump back and forth to try to keep things from burning. It was getting messy and the snapping hot grease kept hitting her skin. “Son of a bitch!” * “Okay,” was all Thomas said before he took a seat and watched as Brenda attempted to cook both the eggs and the bacon. It was kind of entertaining because it was pretty obvious that she had no idea what in the hell she was doing. When she cursed, he snickered. “How’s it coming over there?” He knew exactly how it was coming, but he was kind of teasing her. “You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?” * “You know,” Brenda said in a slightly testy voice. “If you think you can do any better you’re welcome to take over, smartass.” She jerked her hand back from the bacon pan. “Ow! Shit!” She got a good splatter of bacon grease that time. She shook her hand out before sucking on the burn and pulling the pan off the burner. * Thomas shook his head. “I would never dream of taking over. You look like you’re having so much fun over there. I wouldn’t want to rob you of it.” He knew he wouldn’t do any better. He’d probably do much worse. Something might actually catch on fire if he tried. He was sure of it. He did stand up and walk over to the stove. The bacon didn’t look all that done and the eggs…he wasn’t even going to comment. “I think you need to practice more.” * Brenda managed to get everything onto a couple of plates then put the plates on the small kitchen table. She looked at the results of her efforts with skepticism. The eggs were scorched on the edges. The bacon was floppy on one end, over crispy on the other. She looked at Thomas then gestured at “breakfast”. “Well,” she said. “Eat it.” * Thomas went back to the small table and sat down. He didn’t take a bite of the food. Mostly he just kept staring down at it, wondering if he should even try to eat it. He looked up and over at Brenda when she said to eat it. “You first.” He poked at the bacon, thinking maybe he’ll try that after the eggs. * Brenda sat down in the other chair and stared at the food while she held up her chin with her hand. Long moments of silence passed until she sighed. “It looks like something crawled out from under Jorge’s truck.” Her eyes went to Thomas as she tried to keep a straight face then failed, a snort of amusement escaping her. * Thomas didn’t want to say anything, but Brenda was right. It was pretty bad looking. And it was even worse because Brenda wasn’t even attempting to eat her own cooking. So, why would he want to do it!? He looked up from his place a small smile starting to show. “At least you tried?” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. “Should we look for something else to eat?” * The eggs were poked with a fork as Brenda wrinkled her nose before she sighed again. “Definitely,” she declared then got up from the table. The cupboards were her next target and she began opening them one by one until she found something. “Cap’n Crunch?” It sounded familiar. “Some kind of cereal?” * Thomas pushed the plate away and then turned in his seat so that he could watch Brenda look through the cupboards. Hopefully she found something that didn’t require cooking. He didn’t want to see what else she could ruin. And he wasn’t going to try anything at the moment either. “Let’s eat it. At least we know that won’t kill us,” he told her as he stood up and grabbed a couple of bowls and spoons. * Brenda poured the cereal into the bowls then poured milk over hers. Thomas could pour his own milk. Otherwise he might accuse her of ruining it by pouring too much milk in it. She sat down, poked at the cereal with her spoon then took an experimental bite. Her eyes went to Thomas as she chewed then her eyes widened. “Oh muh guh,” she said with her mouthful then waited until after she swallowed to speak. “This is awesome!” She eagerly took another spoonful. Then another. And another. Until suddenly… “Oh my god!” This exclamation was not elated. “My mouth! I feel like it’s being sliced to ribbons!” She grabbed the box to look at the happy pirate captain on the front. “Who makes this?!” * Thomas would not tease her for that, but he was fine with grabbing the milk and pouring however much that he wanted into the bowl. He put the milk back in the fridge before grabbing his bowl and sitting back down at the table. He watched Brenda at first. So, who was going to take the first bite? Would she do it or would he have to do it. It looked like she was going to do it. And when she didn’t spit it back out, he took a bite of his own. It wasn’t bad. It could be worse. He slowly ate his even though Brenda seemed to have inhaled her. “Maybe you shouldn’t have eaten it so quickly,” he pointed out before taking another bite of his own cereal. “Why? Are you going to contact them? Let them know you inhaled it and cut up your mouth while doing so?” * “Hey, I’m starving and this is the first food we’ve found that didn’t have a little extra protein in it, if you know what I mean.” Brenda swatted at Thomas. Seriously. If you only found a bug or two instead of having to fight grubs off whatever food you could scrounge you were doing good. “Slicing my mouth to shreds or not, this is really good.” She chuckled. * Thomas knew exactly what she meant. You were lucky if you found something to eat without a little something extra in it. “We found a lot…you just didn’t know how to make it,” he pointed out as he glanced over at the plates of food that still had the ruined eggs and half cooked bacon on them. “It’s okay.” It was eatable. That’s all that mattered to him at he moment. “I’m going outside after we’re done.” He still wanted to see the outside world and not through a window. They could only see so much from there. He wanted to get out there and see more of it for himself. * “Neither did you,” Brenda pointed out right back. Her lips pulled to one side. They were seriously going to have to learn how to cook or all this food was going to go bad. “Next time you do it if you’re going to criticize.” There wasn’t much cereal left in her bowl for as fast as she attacked it. Going out was just as tempting as that tub. “Want company?” she offered. Might as well leave it up to him. * “I never claimed that I did,” he pointed out once again. He knew he couldn’t cook. If he did, he sure as hell didn’t remember. “Okay, next time I’ll try my hand at it.” It was only fair, right? She tried and failed. Now it could be his turn to try and probably fail right along with her. Just not right now. There was no point in wasting the food. He thought about her question for a moment. Did he want her to tag along? Maybe he could take those few minutes to let everything sink in without Brenda watching him. But did he really want to go out into the unknown alone? Not really. “Yeah, I do.” * That kind of surprised Brenda. She had expected him to say no, that he was fine then give her a look like he was a big boy who could take care of himself. She knew him well enough to know that if he was asking then he wasn’t doing as well as he was pretending. She smiled as she got up from her chair to go wrap her arms around Thomas’ shoulders from behind. A genial and quick kiss was placed to the back of his head. “All right. I want to see this snow up close anyway.” * Yes, he was trying to hide how he really felt inside. He didn’t want to deal with it right now. Not when he and Brenda needed to deal with all this newness in a whole new place. His feelings could be dealt with later on. He finally finished off his cereal, freezing for a moment when Brenda wrapped her arms around him and then kissed the back of his head. The hugging from her he was kind of used to. The kiss, that was new. And something he didn’t want to over think. If he started, he would start thinking about other stuff and he just did not want to do that. “Let’s go check it out,” he said as he stood up and started for the door. No reason to waste time. It was time to go out there and see their new world. |