Disclaimer: The 'Maze Runner' franchise was written by James Dashner and published by Delacorte Press (an imprint of Random House). The subsequent movies were produced and distributed by Gotham Group, Temple Hill Entertainment, TSG Entertainment and 20th Century Fox. All recognizable properties (ie: characters, settings and plot) are owned by the above listed persons/entities.
There were no financial gains intended or accepted by myself in the writing of this fanfiction.
Notes: This is set in the movie!verse. With occasional vague allusions to the books.
Two reasons:
1) I read the books once each when they first came out and enjoyed them; however, I can own up to the fact that I am in no way enough immersed into them after one reading a decade ago to base a fic off of the intricacies of the plot.
2) The movies are visually stimulating for the purpose of a fanfiction.
It's also been a LONG time since I've written something. There's a reason this is a one shot. I needed to dip a toe back into the water - so to speak.
When all was said and done - it was worth it in the end.
It had to be.
That didn't mean it didn't still hurt. That Thomas didn't still grieve. Especially since it was the kind of grief that never really goes away (no matter how much time passes). That kind of grief that will still randomly hit straight in the gut with a crippling blow sending a person right back to the beginning - even though they just spent a whole day functioning just fine - all because something caught out of the corner of their eye...or a friend told a story they didn't realize they weren't ready to hear...or even just some stranger making a hauntingly familiar gesture.
It's the kind of grief that echoes in the back of the mind with constant screams of "What if I had...?" and "Why didn't I say...?".
But it was worth it.
Because it had to be.
One day he might finally convince himself.
Thomas was pondering life's mysteries in his morning coffee, still having not quite shaken off dreams that felt more real than his usual waking hours, when he overheard someone talking at the next table, "Just heard we're doing a big bonfire next week for the first anniversary."
He honestly had no idea who the person was (and he knew that was on him more than anything else since it wasn't that difficult to learn the names of maybe two hundred people when you're living on a island) and he didn't honestly care.
They had just, inadvertently, become the person he hated most on the entire island.
With a deep frown he looked up, and across the table at Minho, and just asked outright, "Has it actually been a year?"
"Just about," was the cautious, and fairly awkward, response he received from the other boy.
And with that simple response - nothing made sense anymore. He was underwater. He was flying far above the mountain cliffs. He was back in The Box. He was back in that dark plaza surrounded by burning buildings.
"Oh," he muttered and simply stood up and walked away.
Not even fifteen minutes later he was back in his hut, the one he had built for himself a near half hour walk down the beach from the rest of the camp, sweaty and out of breath from running and curled up in his bed with the covers thrown over his head.
It was apparently going to be one of those days.
Because a year had passed.
Newt had officially been dead for longer then Thomas had known him. And while he knew in the deepest depths of his subconscious memory - simple biology that not even WICKED had the ability to truly touch - that technically that wasn't true (flashes of corridors and a storage room and childish laughter resonated in his sleep sometimes) it didn't matter. Not in any way that really counted.
Because words spoken with quiet assurance ran through his head whenever he tried to force those brief flashes to the forefront of his mind, "...the people we were before the maze - they don't even exist anymore…"
"It was worth it," Thomas mumbled under his breath, deep in his blankets, like a mantra. "It was worth it."
They got Minho back. They took down WICKED. They saved all those other immune children.
Newt would think it was more than worth it.
And yet, no matter how often he reminded himself of that, it never mattered.
Not really.
Because, in the end, Newt...the boy he could (at least privately) acknowledge he had fallen in love with in the Scorch (...when he was a pre-teen in the halls of WICKED...)...his most trusted partner….his best fucking friend...was still dead.
And he hated himself for it.
Because it was his fault.
No one else blamed him...they claimed. But they also always made sure to explain how insane that night was...how no one was thinking clearly.
Though, he was honestly never entirely certain about Minho after that night.
He could easily remember the fleeting expression of pure rage that had crossed the former Runner's face, a few days after the first bonfire, once the entire evening prior to his rescue had been recounted to Minho.
How the other teen had gone near grey after Thomas had haltingly explained Teresa's repeated mentions of Thomas' blood and Brenda's continued good health. How he had stared Thomas in the eye and simply said in a painfully quiet voice, "I hated her...I hated her more than you ever have or will and I still would have listened. If only for that one small chance. Hell, I would have listened to Ava fucking Paige in that situation."
They had never spoken of it since.
They had never spoken of him since.
He hated himself for that too. It was his fault that the brightest of them all had become a taboo among their friends. Even Sonya, who he barely knew, wouldn't look him in the eye and avoided him like the plague...and no one would explain to him why.
It was his fault.
So, he spent his days by himself in exile so that they could be happy.
Thomas honestly never thought he'd miss any of Alby's rules - no freeloaders regularly came to his mind. But for some reason Thomas was allowed to spend his days sleeping in his hut, walking the beach or through the forest or running the mountain trails until he exhausted himself to sleep more. He didn't understand the special treatment; yet, didn't care enough to question it.
He felt his friends (were they really still?) stares constantly, twice a day, when he forced himself to eat breakfast and dinner. He responded to awkward small talk with routine responses designed for the sole purpose of getting any attention off of himself until he could leave. And ignored the pain that struck when he heard their conversations become louder and more enthusiastic after he had.
Because, it was worth it.
The Safe Haven had lasted for, apparently, a year. WICKED, if they had somehow survived, hadn't found them. And most importantly, Newt's friends were safe and happy.
And as Thomas fell asleep in the dark hut, the mid-morning sun blocked by black fabric he had found, he prayed with his hands wrapped tightly around a necklace (as he had every time he fell asleep since he jumped into that berg) to just simply not wake up.
The afternoon following the anniversary bonfire Sonya cautiously approached Thomas' hut. He had missed breakfast, which was a break in routine that scared her. She had spent the last year watching her brother's best friend spiralling out of control in a self-imposed exile that his friends hadn't allowed her to break down no matter how much she tried.
No matter how much she hated it.
She could easily recall, with her returned memories, the night before they left for their Mazes how her brother had reminded her that their good-bye was only possible because of "Tommy".
Even at fourteen she had seen through that statement. She could see what the brunette had meant to her brother.
"You can't tell him," Minho had almost screamed at her when she approached them about telling Thomas about her memories. "It'll kill him. Hell try to avoid him for a while...you look too much like him."
"You might as well hand him a gun yourself if you explain," Gally had added quietly.
"He just needs time," Frypan had insisted. "Thomas is strong."
Brenda and Harriet had been the only ones who had even slightly agreed with the blonde girl. Only to be shut down by the boys who claimed they knew Thomas better.
Yet, they too didn't do anything.
Because they didn't know what to do.
Instead they cautiously pretended everything was fine. Allowed him his solitude. Awkwardly interacted at meals...and then burst into debate over how they were going to pull him out and back into the real world the second he left the table.
So instead, she had watched over him from afar as she imagined Newt would have wanted her to. She monitored from afar that he ate at least two meals a day. She meticulously counted every narcotic in the med-shack whenever she came back on duty and double checked the inventory when something was missing. She clocked his exposed skin for any unnecessary bruises or cuts.
But she couldn't talk to him. She was still too shattered herself from everything they had all been through - to just simply tell him how badly she knows he tried to save Newt (and how grateful she was for it).
She just couldn't push past her own grief to share his...and caved to the insistence of other emotionally stunted teenagers that they knew best.
Even if she knew in her gut that none of them knew what they were doing now that they were out of the Maze. None of them knew how to cope in the real world. Not really. The Maze prepares you for death...but in a strangely protective bubble.
You lose friends, you rage over it and you move onto the next thing with other traumatized teenagers too quick to truly process.
And, as a result, none of them really trusted any adults to help. Because in their short memories they never had adults to help them before now.
So when she heard Vince or Jorge ask them how Thomas was...how any of them were...she smiled along and gave routine responses of, "great" and "just fine...today's a good day." She brushed off their skeptical looks and just stared blandly back until they sighed and gave up for the moment.
She thinks they all forgot that Thomas had only been in the Maze for a few days. He never learned how they did.
And now he had missed a meal...the first in a year...and that was against the rules she had allowed herself in her own mind.
"Thomas?" Sonya called quietly as she stepped past his curtained doorway and looked around the nearly empty living space.
It didn't her take long to find him on the cot.
She never wondered why she wasn't more surprised when she reached over to shake him awake and found him ice cold.
She was only surprised it had taken this long.
Sonya let her gaze land on the one other piece of furniture in the small room; a crudely crafted table that held a small glass beaker of brackish pulpy liquid placed over a since turned off small propane burner, a syringe, a pestle and mortar….and a mix of Nightshade and Angel's Trumpet plants that had been ripped into pieces and missing their seed pods.
She suddenly recalled hearing Brenda joking with Thomas about picking flowers on his walks and had to grab the table as her legs almost collapsed underneath her. Because, Brenda who grew up in the Scorch wouldn't have recognized a poisonous flower if it was thrown in her face.
And despite knowing they were all over the island it was the one thing Sonya had never considered. Because in that moment she also acknowledged to herself that all the things she had been doing as she "watched over him" were more about the "how" he would...and less about stopping it.
"So...you made a real grief serum," Sonya whispered almost ironically as she tried to order her scattered thoughts before she straightened herself up and sadly looked over the contents on the table one more time as a wave of regret washed over her before walking across the small room and back to the bed once more.
With gentle movements (born from being a caretaker to girls, if not younger, then at least more soft then she had ever been in her life) she pulled the blanket up over Thomas shoulder and stroked his hair back from his forehead before laying a gentle kiss on it.
"Sleep well Tommy and say hello to him for me."
She then quietly left the hut and walked out onto the sand as she slowly made her way back towards the main settlement.
She knew she had to let people know as soon as she got back, but for the half hour or so it would take to get there she allowed her gaze to sweep over the ocean, the breeze to dry the quiet tears she shed and imagined she could hear two laughs echoing around her as she had heard the night she had 'first' met two boys who had shaped each other so completely years earlier then they even knew.
It was a quiet acceptance that settled over the young woman as she walked into the encampment and approached Vince to break the news that Thomas' body had finally followed where his mind and soul had fled a year earlier.
Note: A result of the flu + Maze Runner marathon on tv + aggravation over completely avoidable deaths (that only happened in the movie b/c of course that the one thing they really kept canon to the books - despite going off on hair brained left hand turns for the majority of the rest of it).
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