Teresa

Maze Runner: The Death Cure Alternate Ending

He remembered nothing but fire.

Fire and heat and the acid tang of his own blood staining the air, mingling with the pungent scents of smoke and sweat and scorching metal.

Teresa.

Falling.

Falling in the last paroxysm of WCKD's burning building, a white face in a storm of gray.

Reaching out.

Calling.

Tom…

Thomas snapped awake, his breath still coming in short gasps as if the suffocating air from the inferno still poured into his lungs. The first thing he noticed was that he was lying on a rough wooden cot with canvas bedcovers. The air was stiflingly warm, but somehow not unpleasant. He was alive. How was he still alive?

Tom.

Thomas whipped his head around, the sudden effort making him dizzy, not even sure if what he had heard was in his own ears or just trailing thoughts.

Teresa?

There was no reply. He should have remembered. Teresa was dead. He had watched her die, watched her fall into the scorching wreckage of WCKD.

Tom. The presence was so faint he could have easily dismissed it as the distant buzzing of a fly. But something was buzzing. The whir of helicopter blades made him raise his head. At first he thought they were just echoes, lingering white noise from the hell he'd endured (hours? days?) before, bleeding out on the flight deck of the Berg and slowly losing consciousness while his friends' shouts rang in his ears like fading alarms. But the hum of the propellers became steadily louder and now he could see sand being stirred across the doorway of the little hut he was in.

Lowering his legs to the floor, Thomas winced and put a hand to his ribs, remembering the gun wound that had almost killed him. He wondered if the bullet was still there, slowly poisoning his blood from the inside out, or if they'd been able to remove it while he was unconscious. No time to think about that now.

It was so bright outside the hut that for a moment he truly believed he was back in The Scorch with the rest of the Gladers. Slowly his eyes adjusted to a very different scene. A beach. Blue water stretching out as far as he could see.

And a Berg slowly touching down on the shore not far away.

Thomas stumbled towards the helicopter, shielding his eyes against the unwelcome glare of the sun and sand being whipped into his stinging eyes. Someone was coming out of the chopper's back hatch. It was a familiar broad-shouldered figure with spiky black hair.

"Minho," Thomas breathed, his throat dry and scratchy from not being used for who knew how long. Seeing his friend safe after how much they'd gone through to rescue him felt like the best thing in the world.

Minho walked toward him, extending a hand for Thomas to catch.

"Glad to see you're still alive Greenie."

That familiar condescending title, but his voice was gentle. Raising his shoulder to be heard over the slackening whir of the helicopter blades, Minho glanced over his shoulder then clapped Thomas on the back and turned to watch another figure emerging from the chopper. "We went back to the Last City. Nothing there but rubble and ash. Except for this."

Confused, Thomas watched as someone emerged weighed down with something in their arms. He realized the individual was Gally. Thomas started forward, his voice still thin from disuse.

"Gally? What's going on –"

He stopped. Because Gally was carrying a person.

And the person he was carrying was Teresa.

Thomas, frozen in place, couldn't move until Gally met him at the end of the ramp. The big guy met his eyes with a grave expression.

Teresa hung limply in his arms. Thomas was afraid to look at her. Her hair was frizzy and scorched at the ends, half her face and most of her clothing covered in soot. Parts of her white skin were burned so badly they appeared black in the bright sun.

But something was there, just brushing the tip of his awareness.

Thomas didn't need to hear Gally's next words to know.

He reached out, and she was there, her presence only touching the tip of his mind just like it had when they'd been able to communicate telepathically before WCKD took that ability away from them. He wondered dimly how it still worked.

He looked up at Gally, breathless.

"She's-"

"She's barely alive Thomas. Don't get your hopes up, " Gally warned.

He shouldered past Thomas toward the rest of the camp, one of Teresa's arms swinging lifelessly from his grasp as he walked.

"Medjacks! Can we get some medjacks over here?"

Thomas hurried after him.

Teresa was falling.

There was fire. A haze of ash and smoke.

And she knew in that moment she was going to die.

Staring back at her out of the disappearing Berg was Thomas. He was alive. That was all that mattered to her. Not the survival of the human race anymore. Not the cure to The Flare.

Just Tom. Alive.

She closed her eyes and knew nothing more.

Teresa?

Somehow she awoke. Her vision was blurry and something swam before her eyes.

A figure. It took a long time, but slowly the pieces reassembled themselves.

Thomas. Looking down at her.

Her heart gave a huge bound. He made it! She wanted to hug him, tried, and immediately pain assaulted her entire body. She gasped, and Thomas extended a hand to touch her shoulder.

"Hey, hey, don't try to move. It's okay. You're okay." His voice was gentle, and as she watched, his mouth broke into the first smile she had seen from him in ages.

"We have got to stop meeting like this."

Teresa wanted to laugh but all she could manage was a hiccupy sort of wheeze.

"Sorry," she whispered, her tongue feeling furry inside her mouth. "Let's both try not to die for a while, shall we?" She tried what she hoped looked like a demure expression, but the effort sent her to coughing. Thomas slid a hand behind her shoulders and gently raised her up so she could breathe better.

"Tom?" Teresa croaked.

"What is it?" Thomas asked, leaning forward. His brown gaze was kind like it always had been, ever since she first met him. Teresa smiled for the first time in a long time. She met his eyes and knew in that instant that somehow, somehow, he had forgiven her. She felt it inside him. Maybe not completely but just a little. Enough for them to begin building what she hoped could be a friendship again.

And maybe… something more this time? She reached out with her mind.

Everything is going to change, Tom.

But this time, she meant it. Not in a WCKD way, but in a future way, some path she hadn't even allowed herself to glimpse yet.

Thomas looked at her for a long time and then gently, gently, pulled her into a hug.