Erratic // Thomas+Female OC & Newt+Male OC

Chapter Seventy-One : What it Means to be a Buck

THE SAFE HAVEN

DAY 36 AFTER WICKED FELL

00.36 HOURS

Buck

I'm sitting on a fallen over log next to Gally while the others are standing around the fire telling stories. Charlie went to sleep already, taking his drawings with him. He felt bad as if he wasn't allowed to leave me alone now that I was back, but I assured him that I was okay. Now it's just me and Gally.

We both have drinks in our hands but we aren't really drinking it, just holding. I turn my head to look at him but his eyes were lost in the bright orange flames. He had something on his mind, I could tell.

"You alright?" I asked him and he snapped out of it, turning his head to look at me.

"Me? Oh, yeah, all good." He told me and I nodded. "I was just thinking about how I was going to build the huts, nothing interesting."

"Got ya." I said and then let my mind rest on it for a moment. "Hey, uh, I just wanted to thank you."

"Me?" He asked with a confused expression but I nodded. "Look, that whole Crank thing was just business."

"Yeah right." I said sarcastically, making Gally laugh lightly. "Look, I said thank you, just take it."

"Well, your welcome." He said with a smile, finally taking a sip of his drink.

"Sorry I fucked up your arm."

"Sorry I almost shot you."

"I'm also sorry about Lawrence." I brought up and Gally took a sharp breath.

"I guess I should have guessed he would pull something like that." Gally told me with a shrug. "Oh well."

Lawrence believed in Gally, he liked Gally, I could tell. But he liked his cause more. Gally wanted to get rid of WICKED but not at the price of hundreds of innocent lives that had nothing to do with their enemy. Sometimes, we can't always get what we want. Sometimes things have to get messy.

"You got a good kid too." Gally then mentioned, changing the subject.

"What?" I asked him and Gally looked back to Charlie's tent before looking back to me.

"Lee's a good kid." Gally reiterated. "I tried to avoid him for his sake and mine, but he kept persisting. I thought he would want to rip my lungs out for what I did to Chuck."

"Not in his character." I commented and he nodded with a laugh.

"No, apparently not." Gally responded. "Maybe that's because I wanted to kill myself for what I did."

We all know now that Gally never wanted to hurt anyone, and what happened to Chuck was not his fault. I think the only person who didn't know was Gally. He spent the last six months probably hating himself and wishing that someone would kill him just to even the score. But he was a kid too.

"So what did he say?" I asked him.

"Well, it was night time, the fire was roaring and people were carving names into the rock." Gally explained to me. "And he asked me to put Chuck's name on the rock with him. I told him that I didn't deserve it, he said that was a stupid thing to say, and the next thing I knew he was dragging my ass over."

"He's a good one." I said while taking a swift sip of the bitter drink.

"He told me that it wasn't my fault and all that hippy bullshit." He laughed. "He then told me that all the spots on the bottom of the rock were filled up so he needed help to reach high enough to carve the freaking name."