𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐞. (newtmas au)

part one.

Running.

Thomas was running faster than he had ever ran before and he wasn't one hundred percent sure why. The only valid reason he knew why he was running was because a feeling told him so, a feeling in his mind so prominent and piercing that it had to mean something, a feeling that someone or something was angry, and going to get him. So he ran, he ran in the pouring rain with the thudding water pelting down onto his black t-shirt making it stick to his body. Thomas focused on the placement of his feet; the spacing of his breaths and the rapid movements of his now-throbbing arms back and forth to make him run faster. He wasn't imagining it, there was definitely someone, or something, coming after him- coming for him.

The brown haired boy didn't know where he was running, or for how long this painful chase would continue but the piercing instinct in his brain didn't die down, it still stayed clear, like a message being printed on the inside of his head that he needed to keep running, and perhaps the fear that feeling instilled was what kept the adrenaline pumping and Thomas' endurance because he knew for a fact that he had been running for what seemed like hours.

Surrounding him on either side were tall buildings with many illuminated windows, he must've been in a city or something of the sort, perhaps a very large town. But that was beside the point, all Thomas had to do was run in whatever direction his instinct told him to until it went away. This was normal- usual. He flashed his head around to see if he could catch even the smallest glimpse of whatever was after him, in the dark he saw nothing, nothing except what looked like a snaking, winding black mist - or smoke- in the distance. The boy took no notice of the unusual structure and faced forwards again only to be knocked to the floor with a hideous crunch of his back against a wall by an excruciating pain in his thigh.

Momentarily falling in and out of consciousness, he saw figures, two boys, one was far shorter than the other though so perhaps it was a boy and a girl with short hair. However, the last thing he remembered seeing before falling into a somber of black abyss was an amber flame.

"rise and shine sleepy head."

Thomas barely heard the sentence, the unknown persons voice was muffled by the ringing that was digging into his eardrums, deeper and deeper by the second. The only thing that he knew was the searing pain in his thigh, or at least he thought it was his thigh, in all honesty his entire body felt like it was bursting into flames. His eyes were still closed and he knew that opening them would be an effort, an effort he didn't know was worth doing.

"Minho what the fuck you didn't need to burn him."

That voice was a girl's, different to the raspy voice he had heard before. Thomas assumed the voice who had told him to get up belonged to 'Minho' but he couldn't be sure until he opened his eyes. Lifting his head up with whatever power he still had left in his body, he wrenched open his lead-heavy eyelids; only to reveal a blurred world around him. He frantically blinked again and again until the task became almost natural once more and until his surroundings almost became clear. The weaker boy coughed slightly and let the only question that his mind could muster into words, in a quiet, coarse voice.

"Where am I?"

He continued to blink until two figures came into clearer view, standing in front of him with her arms crossed was a girl with strawberry blonde hair tied loosely into two french braids which fell down to the chest of a pair of blue denim dungarees and a multi-coloured striped sweater. To the girls left stood a tall, muscular boy who looked a similar age to Thomas himself, he noticed that he had impossibly perfect hair, brushed to the left. Looking at the other boy's hair made him think of what a state his own must be and he went to lift his hands up to fix it until his wrists wouldn't move from a binding of dirty-looking rope. Thomas picked up his voice this time and asked again.