AN: Please be warned - this chapter contains arguably brutal, graphic scenes of euthanasia of a person. Its not intended maliciously, but it isn't meant to be sunshine and daisies, either. It is a difficult topic at the best of times and while not a long scene, you should read at your own discretion.

If you want to read the overall story but would rather avoid the specifics of that moment, the scene in question is the second segment of the chapter, between these line breaks: ...x...
You can read around it if you want to. An overview of that scene is in the notes at the end for those who choose to skip it.

Ending the First.

Frypan goes early to get his knee signed off with Spence and takes Thomas with him. Nothing gets past Newt, who just nods; knows exactly why they're leaving ahead of time, and turns back to Jorge.

Newt has distanced himself over the past couple of days.

Thomas doesn't take offence. He thinks he knows why.

He knows there's something about Newt's limp that he hasn't been told, and he knows the way his friend's face changes when he's faced with a choice that means someone lives or dies. Sometimes they aren't choices at all. Thomas remembers the guarded look in his eyes when he said okay 'do it' about a WCKD syringe over Alby's body. It feels like yesterday and ten years ago all at once.

He remembers the stillness; the absoluteness in him the day he handed Winston a handgun and said goodbye.

Maybe it's to do with the limp and a choice he did or didn't make before Thomas knew him. Maybe it's nothing to do with that at all.

All he knows is that since Thomas found himself asking questions about a comatose and broken girl, Newt has steered well clear of the topic and of the Infirmary.

Newt has already had to make hard decisions. He's already had to grieve and move on. He's already had to make Alby's choice for him and facilitated Winston's.

Thomas won't ask him to go near this one.

He can't explain why he himself gravitates to it.

…x...

Thomas and Frypan are both sitting on one of the cots in the Infirmary, watching from all the way across the room when it happens.

Spence checks her heart, and whatever he hears, he shakes his head at Lili. A broken sob escapes her before she can clamp down on it. Kimmi folds into herself and Flynn's arms band around her, pulling her tightly into his body so she can fall to pieces. Jobe's face falls, eyes pinched shut and Dale just begins shaking his head, pacing in the tiny space left to him.

Spence disconnects the oxygen tube, removing it from Claire's face, pulls out the catheter and presses a band-aid to the puncture point. He sets a timer on his watch.

"Now we wait," Lili says softly.

Spence leaves them clustered around Claire's bed and comes to check Frypan's knee. It's scabbed over nicely and is still clean, if a little tender. He tells him he's good to go.

No one says a word when they stay anyway.

"Why the wait?" Frypan asks, cautiously, as though not sure his question will be welcome.

Spence checks his watch at this. "Lili wanted to give her a few minutes, just to see if her body would fight back on its own once the support was taken away. This isn't like turning off life support; she's breathing on her own, but she's also slowly shutting down because we don't have the equipment to keep up with her metabolism. That and we just don't know what's actually going on in her head and why she won't wake up."

He looks over at the group with a measure of reluctance. "If we leave her like this, she'll waste away. Starvation is one of the most painful ways to die. For all we know…she's been in pain all this time. There was only so much morphine or codeine or whatever else we could scavenge that we could justify giving her. And then we stopped anyway, just in case the drugs were keeping her under."

Clearly they weren't.

Frypan swallows hard, eyes full of shadows as he gazes at the group. Thomas bites back on his tongue, feeling that swell in his chest that he's slowly become used to over the past few days whenever this topic comes up.

Across the room, Claire is as still and silent as ever. A sharp and harsh contrast to the girl full of sunlight and laughter and cuss words in the sepia videos scattered through camp.

Already gone. Already a memory.

Spence turns for the syringe of clear fluid sitting in a battered, stainless steel dish. He offers it out to Flynn.

Kimmi, breathing in hitches and sobs, pulls away so that he can take it. Dale is there in an instant, arm around her shoulders.

"You came here together," Lili murmurs, her words only just loud enough to carry to Thomas and Frypan. "You've known her longest. Do you want to…?"

Flynn looks at it for an instant like it's a cobra; one that's already bitten him, rather than one prepared to strike; like his world is folding in on itself in his chest.

He takes it; approaches the cot; glances back at the others, who can do little more than nod. His attention turns down and Thomas gets the impression that Claire is all he can see anymore; barely breathing and so still.

Flynn's hand trembles. The tendons in his arm stand out and it's surprising the syringe doesn't shatter in his grasp. It's the first time Thomas has actually seen him cry.

The tears spill, thick and fast. His legs give out and he folds to the floor beside the cot, the syringe shaking as he tries to force himself to plunge it down.

Thomas finds his mind thrown back to a moment in the Glade; shrouded in night time, darker than anything that seems to touch the planet out here, and the way his own hand hesitated, holding a vial of blue fluid over Alby's poisoned chest.

But it was different then.

Alby would have died anyway. That vial was a chance at saving him.

This syringe means Claire is dead. Right now there's a chance. Flynn's actions won't bring them hope; they will kill whatever shreds of it are left.

His head bows close to hers, arms folding into her frame as he hugs her once, tightly, despite the lack of response. His words are too quiet to make out, but Thomas sees his lips form them.

He tries again. Fails. Can't force himself to do it. He scrambles back, shaking violently and pulling at his hair as he distances himself from the syringe which rests alongside the tattooed birds; like notes coming to rest. The end of a song.

Spence nods, compassionate even as the others tremble at watching his pain. The Doc picks it up, thumb poised.

And then he jams the needle into her chest.

It sinks right in; sickening despite the silence and lack of blood.

Flynn collapses into the side of the tent, knocking aside a table which clangs deafeningly, not loud enough to block out the cry tearing from his throat. Jobe moves in to grasp his arm and hold him together. Pointless. Kimmi screams into her hand and Dale has gone solid, his knuckles white on her shoulders. Lili crumples into the corner and her vacant stare is a horror all of its own.

Thomas is frozen. His heart pounds hard, sharp and deafening; pulse in his ears. The vertigo and nausea spiral inwards, clawing at the cage of his ribs until he feels hollow. It's like his blood is rushing the wrong way through his veins and his bones are freezing him out, as if they're made from dry ice. He finds himself being shoved away from the scene by Frypan, who's face is a mask of gritted, second-hand pain.

…x...

Newt doesn't ask when they return.

Nor does Jorge, Brenda or Harriet. Vince's jaw sets and he pours everyone a shot of whiskey from a musty bottle.

Thomas barely registers the fire that pulses down his throat.

...

When the sun has gone down, Lili and Jobe wheel out a rickety table. On it is what looks like an old projector, but it's clearly been through the wars. The casing has been pulled open and a mess of cables and frayed wires spill out like it's been gutted.

Still, it works, and Thomas guesses that was the point.

He and the Gladers sit at the flap of their borrowed tent as the community around them gathers near the shelter of the factory. A grey sheet has been draped over the opening of the blown out wall and videos play onto it.

The projector is temperamental at best; the picture shudders routinely, and that's without the buffeting of the sheet in the breeze. But the jerry-rigged speakers, sitting in the sand at odd angles, have a firmer grip on life, and the sound comes through steadily.

Claire didn't like being on camera, Lili said, but there were a good handful of video snippets anyway. Flynn had been recording their journey before they found Lili's camp, and there were more after then.

In most of them she's telling people to turn off the camera and get on with their jobs. Often she's swearing at Flynn or Dale. She was hardened by life; practical, brutally honest, somewhat trigger happy and a touch reckless. But she laughed, and she made the people around her laugh.

The people who had stayed to watch were still; faces stained with tear tracks but smiling in that detached, far off way.

Thomas spots Connor. He's curled into his mother, eyes huge and shaking with the force of his sobbing. He's too young for this. But the Scorch doesn't allow for a childhood; it doesn't discriminate and it was only going to be so long before he would have to survive his first loss.

Thomas feels for him, all the same.

The last video flares to life.

Someone holds the camera in the back of the now familiar roll bar Jeep. It's held low, just peering from behind a seat. Jobe is on the right, arms folded and an expression of stern annoyance on his face.

Claire stands before him, smiling serenely, rifle slung across her shoulder and sunshine blonde hair being tugged from its braid by the wind, which can be heard howling through the speakers.

"I'll consider it," Jobe is saying.

Claire snorts in clear derision. "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realise you were taking applications. Do I have a lot of competition for the job?"

The person holding the camera – Dale, it sounds like – sniggers.

"Yeah right," comes Kimmi's mutter. "No one's wanted to join a raid team for months."

"I'll make you a deal," Claire says, lightly, amused, when Jobe doesn't respond and his face gets darker. "You let me swear as much as I Goddamn like – Its not like I have a mother to kiss with this mouth – you let me fix that engine, because heck knows you haven't done a stellar job, and you don't tell me how I do and do not live my life. That goes for whether I brush my teeth in a way you don't approve of, or whether I choose to blow myself up for no other reason than I want to make a loud bang."

Recorded Jobe's expression twists. His arms are crossed as tightly as ever, but it looks like he dearly wants to smile. A few people in the camp chuckle and Dale nudges Jobe himself.

"She was a pain in my ass," he says, fondly.

"And what do I get out of this deal?" The Jobe in the video asks.

Claire smiles, shrugs. "Me," she replies. A laugh goes around camp; a wave that quickly dies out. "I'm a good shot, I'm good with a blade, I'm faster than you and, frankly, I don't knit, or cook so I'm wasted back at camp."

"Humble, aren't you?" Jobe asks ironically.

"No. Honest," she replies.

"You're a loose canon," he shoots back.

"Only a little," she quips. "I might grow out of it." But her expression changes, becomes something serious. "I don't have a death wish," she says flatly. "And you need me. If you think you don't; I'll go."

There's a beat.

Jobe's posture relaxes and his arms unwind to rest on his hips instead. "Fine. But-"

"Get to the buts later," Claire says. "Move over; if I don't fix your engine right now I'm going to get cranky."

The projector stops ticking and they're left looking at a blank, slate grey sheet.

Some of the leftover crowd cheer, some are still laughing weakly. A couple just walk away and the rest raise their drinks – a mismatch of tumblers, tins, jars, canteens and chipped mugs – in a toast.

…

The Jeep is gone less than an hour later.

Jobe, Flynn, Kimmi and Dale aren't due back for a while. They spent the most time with Claire; when they weren't out on raids that lasted days or weeks, they were hanging out together at the camp. Even if Flynn found Kimmi here, Thomas remembers how lost he looked, sitting beside that cot, holding the pale hand between his own, and he knows that's not something you can just walk away from. A piece of him died when they killed Claire.

Jobe, Kimmi and Dale will be back. Flynn may not return at all.

No one talks about the modest pyre that was lit late at night and still burns the following morning, smoke pluming into the air and ash swirling into the tents.

There's no room for anything fancy; no time to really mourn.

The dead are burned and the living have to keep going.

Lili waves them off in the same place they met her; next to that huge, broken wall that opens onto the sand dunes, and then turns her attention to clearing up after the wake. She collects bottles, uprights stools and hands out consoling words to the people who approach. She does it all looking like she'll shatter if someone touches her wrong.

She's probably exhausted but Thomas wouldn't be surprised if she were afraid to sleep.

Claire was loved here.

He wonders just how long, in this broken, scorched world, the ghost of a dead girl can linger in the people she left behind.

-End-

AN: So for those of you who didn't want to read the exact scene of Claire's death, the gist of it is:
The camp could no longer support her comatose state. The medication/assistance they had was removed and she was given time to see if she would come around on her own. She didn't. The Doc prepared an injection to let her slip away painlessly and quickly. Flynn - as her oldest friend - was given the opportunity but couldn't go through with it so Doc carried it out. The story then picks up with Thomas and Frypan returning to the group and the rest of the chapter proceeds.

There is one more chapter to come - the other intended ending, and vastly different - and it will be posted tomorrow. Thank you to all those who gave this a chance and want to see it through.