Chapter Text
Screams and cries filled the air, bullets flying and obstructing the vision of anyone trying to do anything: fight back, find allies, or just escape with their lives. His clothes were soaked with blood, he didn’t know nor want to know who’s, and his lungs were filled with smoke.
At this point, Thomas had given up looking for anyone specific, they were likely dead anyways, and just wanted to find a way to escape the chaos. He didn’t know how things escalated so fast, all he knew was that he was bleeding out somewhere and that he needed to flee to patch his wounds.
He eventually found his way out, but before he was fully free from the madness something nearly tripped him. He looked down only to be horrified to find Henry laying in his own blood, eyes closed but with a smug grin, like he got whatever it was that he wanted. Thomas quickly dragged the man away, planning to help him if he were alive and bury him if not.
Thomas checked his pulse only to find that not only had Henry’s body gone cold, but it was still twitching despite not breathing nor having a beating heart.
Before he had the chance to investigate, he heard a sound in the trees behind him. Thomas turns but sees nothing before he feels a hand grabbing his arm. He looks back to see Henry looking up at him, a blank expression on his face with his eyes seemingly unfocused despite looking right at him.
“Hen? You're alive?” Thomas carefully asked, unsure of how to react to the still deathly cold man.
“…” Henry looked away for a moment, an indiscernible emotion briefly passing through his face, before he looked back at Thomas, eyes slightly more focused than before.
Thomas debated seeing if the silent man’s heart had managed to start itself, but ultimately decided that if he was up and at least somewhat conscious, he was probably ok. He stood, and offered a hand to Henry who carefully stood, and nearly fell if Thomas hadn’t immediately caught him.
The two proceed to make their way as far from the madness as they could. What had started as a small clash between the two Toppat factions had only gotten to this point as two unsynchronized raids from the government and the Wall respectively chose to occur at the same time. This was only worsened by the rocket’s explosion, causing everyone to struggle to see those who they fought alongside and those who they fought against.
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They made it back to where Henry’s Loyalists had set up operations and began treating their wounds. Henry had a few bullets still in his leg, as well as a fairly bad slash down most of his arm and Thomas had taken only a few shots to one arm and some fairly mild cuts on him but was overall fine. The whole time, Henry was still acting odd and still seemed like a walking corpse.
“Are you okay? Did something happen?” Thomas asked, deciding that Henry probably had no explanation as to why he was a dead man walking.
…Apparently, he also had no good answer to the question asked… or any answers at all for that matter. Lovely.
Henry was almost always talkative with Thomas, fully trusting him to not judge his crazy ideas and random off topic thoughts, which was part of why Thomas loved him. To see him revert back to how he was back at the beginning was soul crushing.
Thomas sat next to Henry, deciding that even if he didn’t want to talk, he still wanted to at least make sure that he knew that he was there for him if he needed anything.
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Henry was floating. Everything is gray and he’s floating.
Something tells him that he’s not supposed to be here.
He sees a distant figure.
He decides to make his way in its direction.
It doesn’t look human.