Thomas looked up at the white ceiling, He knew it wasn't just his mind playing tricks on him, not anymore. Thomas closed his eyes against that sudden, painful realization. He knew he was just delaying the inevitable, that as soon as his eyes would open again the white ceiling would still be there, staring back at him. Laughing at him. He knew this but still laid there, on his back, trying to cling to the sudden need for it to all be a dream.
He heard the door open, this was not a dream, and Thomas wasn't ready.
"Tom," He squeezed his eyes closed. He really really wasn't ready. "Tom" The voice repeated her voice. "Tom," must she call him that? "We just want to make this as easy as possible for you." Thomas's eyes opened without his permission, and he was greeted again by the white ceiling, which was definitely laughing at him.
"Easy?" He asked incredulous, "What if this were you hoping to make easy?" He pulled himself up into a sitting position and wrapped his arms loosely around his knees.
"We can make you as comfortable as possible, as long as you cooperate, I kept trying to tell you, Thomas, WICKED isn't evil, we're good. Trust me and I can show you how good." WICKED is good Tom, You have to trust me. lies, it was always lies with her and it broke his heart.
"No offense Teresa but trusting you has never, ever worked out in my favor." Thomas looked at his hands, or his feet, or the white floor, anywhere but at her. He did not, did not, did not want to look at her and her sad eyes when he said this.
"That's because you never actually trusted me." She snarled with the same venom in her voice that she had in the parking lot. Thomas sat there for a moment, the silence thick between them, and then before Thomas really knew what he was doing, he was on his feet.
"Teresa I trusted you from the moment you came up in the maze, we solved it together, we got out together and dammit Teresa I trusted you, I worried about you when I couldn't find you in WICKEDs waystation. I risked everyone's lives to make sure we got you out too." Thomas was aware he was raising his voice, but he didn't care. "I trusted you even when none of the others did, and you turned us in! So don't say I never trusted you because I did. And because I did everyone around me, everyone who followed me ended up hurt or dead." Thomas turned away from her, His hands were shaking at his sides.
"Tom," She started, her voice soft again and he wondered why she didn't just pick a personality and stick with it. The back and forth was driving him crazy.
"Why are you here Teresa? Can't you send someone else in to take my blood and torment me? He asked staring at the white of the wall and wishing it were any other color.
"There's not many of us left, that's why we needed you, they're, were, dying Tom." He could feel her getting closer.
"Good," he said, cold and hard just as he felt her hand rest on his shoulder. He spun around, pushing her hand off him. She was standing so close, too close. "Why are you here?" He repeated, keeping his voice as hard as he could.
"To tell you that we're giving you one chance." She took a step back and Thomas felt like he could breathe again. "If you slip up, even once, everything is going to get bad for you." He cringed at the echoed words from the first time he found himself in this godforsaken room.
Thomas raised his eyebrows, he knew they were scared of him, just didn't realize they were scared enough to try to scare him first. Didn't matter, whatever hell they could think of, he'd been through worse, he lost Newt.
"Tom, I'm serious," Teresa said, clearly seeing the doubt in his eyes.
"Yeah okay," he said, barely getting the words out without laughing, he ran a shaky hand through his hair.
"I can't protect you this time." Thomas's head snapped up.
"Protect me, Teresa? Protect me? I'm sorry but i'm pretty sure we just agreed that all of this was your fault in the first place, so please tell me how you think that you've protected me?" if he was angry before, it had nothing on the way he felt now, like he wanted to hit something, needed to hit something.
"They wanted to kill you, I bargained to keep you alive." Thomas laughed then, hollow and humorless.
"Because being alive has really gotten me so much, and anyway, they need me, they aren't going to kill me, like you said they're all dying." Teresa looked away from him, to the floor between them.
"This is your only warning Thomas," She said, her voice turning cold, "keep that in mind." And then she walked away, the door sliding closed behind her leaving Thomas alone and surrounded and angry.
He didn't think before he turned around and laid his fist into the wall. Pain shot up his arm upon impact like needles and he did it again, and again. He couldn't tell if the roar he heard was from the blood rushing in his ears or the shout that tore through his throat. He wasn't satisfied until his knuckles painted the wall red where he hit.
Thomas collapsed against the wall and slid down it. He didn't realize he was sobbing, he tucked his head in his arms and tried to force himself to breathe. Hold your breath he heard a voice whisper in the back of his mind like a memory.
Thomas wasn't sure how long he sat there, it felt like days before someone, not Teressa came and wrapped up his hand, and scrubbed the wall clean. Thomas watched the process, feeling his stomach turn over as the evidence of his existence slowly disappeared. About a day after that they came to take his blood for the first time.
Soon after, Thomas stopped trying to keep track of the days that passed in a white blur. Eventually, Teresa took over bleeding him dry and he couldn't even force himself to care. The world was just spinning around him while he sat on a bed that he couldn't remember getting on and ate food that he couldn't taste. He lived most weeks dizzy and nauseous and tired, always so tired. It didn't matter how much sleep he got, his eyelids were heavy. He found himself hoping they would take too much one day, that he'd fall asleep and never wake up but he knew better than that. But it never failed, as soon as he felt so far gone he couldn't move from his bed, he'd wake up the next day and the room was still and his thoughts were clear. Those days he almost felt sane, those days were the worst, because on those days he remembered. He remembered everything that he'd left behind, everything he'd thrown away, and he remembered Newt.
Thomas drifted in and out of consciousness, trying to cling to sleep because being awake and aware was too much for him to handle.
"Tommy." this isn't real, Thomas thought when the voice reached him where he was curled in on himself. "Its okay Tommy, open your eyes." Thomas wanted to. But he knew he had to be dreaming, he had to be.
"Please baby, look at me." Thomas heard himself whimper. He felt hands on his face, turning it up. "Its okay, I'm here." Thomas's eyes fluttered open and for a moment he was staring into Newt's beautiful chocolate eyes. Thomas blinked and the eyes turned black.
"Thank you, Tommy," Newt whispered, standing a few feet in front of him, with a knife sticking out of his chest.
"Newt." Thomas breathed.
Newt fell.
Thomas lunged forward, his limbs moving on their own, and caught Newt a few feet off the ground, he cradled Newt in his lap, blood staining his hands and pants.
Thomas woke up with tears drying on his face. He untangled himself from his sheet and walked along the wall, dragging his hand along it until he came to a corner and slid down the wall.
"Thomas." Thomas was sitting in the corner farthest from the door, with a splitting headache, when Janson showed up. "I must say I've enjoyed seeing you so… broken… These last two months." Two months? Thomas thought vaguely as he picked at the skin around his fingernails, peeling the skin up until it bled and he realized what he was doing. Thomas didn't look up, he knew that when he did he'd be met with Janson's smug face. He already knew this would be different than the last few times Janson's visited him.
"I do wish though, Thomas, that you would have come to your senses sooner, maybe then fewer people would have gotten hurt." Thomas tried to ignore the words, but he tasted the slightest hint of something metallic on his tongue and he could already feel the guilt settling in his stomach. Thomas peeked up at the Ratman through his lashes and saw he was pacing the room. "At least have the decency to look at me, boy." Janson snapped. Thomas felt the corners of his mouth turn up, a sarcastic remark on the tip of his tongue. He opened his mouth, then closed it, the ghost of a smile faded because Janson was right. They'd broken him. Thomas lifted his head, obediently, to look up at Janson.
"That's better." He grinned and Thomas felt nauseous again. "As I was saying if you had sucked it up and did as you were told then maybe we wouldn't have had to use Newt." Thomas felt the lump rise in his throat and he bit down on his tongue hard, filling his mouth with the coppery taste of blood. "Did you know, by the way, that if someone were to say, resist when we tried to control them. The chip in their head would have a reaction, emitting some of the worst pain a person could live through?" Ratman stopped pacing and watched as Thomas processed that information. Thomas's stomach churned.
"Newt resisted." Thomas closed his eyes against the picture Janson was painting.
Janson laughed a sick sound that twisted around Thomas and filled the room like there were hundreds of him. It reminded Thomas of someone else, something else Something wicked something… Stop, stop Stop Thomas wanted to beg. Beg Janson, beg his own mind, but the words wouldn't come and Thomas was stuck imagining Newt in pain, because of him.
"Would you like to know how long he resisted?" It was all Thomas could do not to clamp his hands over his ears and start yelling because he did not did not did not want to know. Thomas dropped his head to his knees.
"I said look at me, boy" Janson yelled, and Thomas's head was being pulled up, painfully, by his hair, until all Thomas could see was Janson, glaring at him. "Weeks." Janson spat in Thomas' face, before letting him go.
"Stop.' Thomas managed to choke out. His voice rough and cracked, barely even a whisper.
"He fought it so hard, oh, the way he screamed." Thomas felt the room around him fall away. The white replaced with darkness. "Did you know we kept him in this room right here?" Jansons' voice came out muffled like he was talking through a wall and he looked so far away. He was all Thomas could see.
"Stop." Thomas almost didn't recognize his own voice, it sounded different, hollow.
"Of course we didn't let him have a bed or food most days, it was easier to get him a bit more under control when he was malnourished and sleep deprived," Janson ignored him and Thomas felt his body moving without his permission. Was he standing up?
"By the end of course, when he wouldn't stop, we had to infect him again just to take over control." Thomas was moving, he was sure of it, Janson was getting closer and closer but he was numb. The darkness was folding around him, embracing him, surrounding him, drowning him.
He was hitting Janson, Thomas realized, as his fist connected with his face. He didn't remember deciding to hit Janson but he was grateful when he felt his fist connect. He kept hitting him. Even when the door slid open he kept hitting him, when a guard grabbed his arm he easily shook him off and kept hitting Janson. Thomas didn't know how many guards it took to get him to stop, he didn't really remember stopping only that now he was on his back and the darkness was fading, receding, and letting the white bleed back into the walls, and the ceiling that was laughing at him.
"When is a door not a door?" So maybe it wasn't the ceiling and the walls that were laughing at him, Thomas thought as he opened his eyes slowly, not that it mattered if his eyes were open or not. It was disconcerting how in this place he was essentially blind. Thomas vaguely remembered being afraid of being blind. Afraid of not being able to see and he found this funny because it was just so trivial. The fear of the dark? Of being blinded? How many times did Thomas wish to gouge out his own eyes while watching them torture Newt? The dark was nothing compared to that.
"When is a door not a door?" The voice asked again, in the voice that sounded almost like his own only colder, hollow even.
"When is a door not a door?" Thomas didn't know. To be fair, Thomas didn't know a whole lot. Like whether this place was real or just something his subconscious created. He also didn't know if he was crazy or not, really the signs were all there. He didn't know if he'd ever see Newt again. Actually, that was a lie, he knew that. He knew he'd never get that chance.
"When is a door not a door?"
"Who are you?" Thomas tried asking the empty space around where he was still laying.
"When is a door not a door?" Thomas groaned.
"I don't know."
"When is a door not a door, Stiles?" Thomas didn't even notice the use of his old name because he knew this voice. He knew it and he couldn't place it.
"When is a door not a door?" he'd heard it in a basement somewhere, he was hurt and he woke up in a basement? The thing looked like its head was wrapped in some sort of bandages and its teeth were black. Thomas remembered what it looked like what it really looked like.
"When is a door not a door Stiles?" The voice got louder and he could hear loud noises all around him. Like a machine was surrounding him.
"When is a door not a door?" It yelled. And he was looking at it standing in front of him and it was flickering between looking like him and a monster with black teeth.
"When is a door not a door?"
When it's ajar, Thomas thought as the image faded into the black he was used to, the images didn't make sense and he was tired. He didn't say it out loud but the voice didn't ask again, and Thomas wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. The void fell into silence around him and he was so so tired. He tried to wonder how he could be tired if this was supposed to be a dream. He felt the darkness pressing into him.
Thomas grew cold almost instantly as something was thrown over him. His entire body was shaking and he worked to breathe, to suck air into his lungs, but all he could manage was a gasp of shock, and then he opened his eyes.