AN: So...no euthanasia in this one. But warnings that this chapter does include: Talk and use of guns and shooting, possibly graphic descriptions of PTSD, emotional and physical trauma, quite likely unhealthy psyches, children with weapons and character death, some brief others more graphic. (For the most part its people you won't miss, but there are a couple of brief mentions about lesser canon characters. Sorry for that, but it's war).

This chapter starts immediately following the first one but spans a greater amount of time and continues after the end of the assumed events of the Death Cure (I've not read the book). The focus is on the before and after, and the canon events are really not present at all and in places knowingly diverged from.

This ending completely disregards the ending in Chapter 2. Both endings are entirely separate but also both equally 'official' in my eyes.

Which do you prefer? Why? Does one feel more realistic?

Ending the Second.

Flynn drops by their tent the following morning.

He looks weary and haunted, but with a gritted jaw that tells everyone not to question it. There's a Colt AR-15 slung over his back and his hazel eyes find Thomas between Vince, Harriet, Newt and Frypan.

"I need to shoot something," he says. "Coming?"

And he leaves.

Thomas throws a glance around the others, but Vince just shrugs like he's not sure what the sane answer is and Harriet gives a supportive if sad nod. So he gets up, squeezes Newt's shoulder and pats Fry on the back. He picks up his own gun; a battered Colt 1911 pistol and follows.

Flynn has only half waited. He's several yards down from the tent, but moving slowly. When he sees Thomas emerge, he stops to let him catch up. Then they're moving at a brisk pace, between tents, back to the factory and through the crumbling rooms to the far side where he's never been shown before.

Dale is already there. He's holding a thickset black pistol between both hands and firing rapidly down the cavernous, concrete grey room with something like desperate aggression. He doesn't stop or blink as Flynn and Thomas enter.

"Targets are spaced out," Flynn tells him shortly. He looks like he's breaking apart at the seams, held together only by sheer force of will. "We're not possessive; shoot for however many you want, wherever they are. You know how to shoot, right?"

In the Scorch, almost everyone carries a weapon, regardless of whether they can actually use it. The question doesn't offend.

Thomas nods.

"There's ammunition back there." This time he gestures to a bank of wire cages behind what's clearly their firing line. They're full of guns and boxes of ammunition in all kinds of states and bearing all kinds of brands; clearly scavenged from numerous raids. A line of boxes have been set to one side.

Flynn moves away, swinging his rifle down off his shoulder.

Thomas speaks before his brain can bite the question back.

"Why did you ask me to come?"

Flynn hesitates. Even staring at the back of his head, Thomas can practically hear him swallow hard. He throws a glance at the floor, to his side, and the tension in his profile is hard to look at. Beyond them, Dale fires another round viciously.

"Because it felt like the thing to do," he says carefully, like he's testing the words even as he says them. "Because they took her off the support this morning and I can't just sit and wait."

And suddenly, Thomas feels a lot like shooting something, too.

His gun feels alive in his hand; warm, buzzing with unreleased energy, the trigger so close to the line of his index finger against the guard. He feels the weight of the grip; a full magazine and the first bullet already chambered.

He gives Flynn a sharp, tight nod and heads to the firing line without another word.

…

He loses track of the morning.

His first magazine empties and the colt's slide locks back within what feels like seconds. Even though he felt like he was barely aiming, it was Paige's face that swam before the targets, and rage that fuelled him. She's not directly responsible for Claire – but she is at the root of everything that's happened. She has Minho and Sonya. She brainwashed Teresa – or something – he isn't clear on exactly what happened on that mountain; doesn't like to think about it.

He hadn't realised quite how much the rage and the desperation and the fear had bottled up inside until now. Not until he was standing in an open room with a gun in his hand and a go ahead to pull the trigger on his demons.

The grouping of shots is accurate enough to make Dale pause and Flynn to give him a nod that manages to impart something like respect.

They swap guns.

Thomas wants to ask how the camp can afford to waste the bullets, but he keeps quiet. As far as he can tell, they have more than enough considering its just raid groups that arm themselves, and it's more than likely that special allowance has been made, given what's happening in the infirmary.

Flynn shoots his 1911 and Thomas takes a Remington that Dale passes him. The assault rifle packs a punch and he feels the first recoil in the bed of his shoulder – a kind of welcome impact that's grounding – before he adjusts to the kick.

When they run through their bullet allowance, the sudden silence in the hall is ringing.

It feels like coming out of a kind of haze. Its only then that Thomas really registers the state of the targets; an assortment of foam blocks speared on iron rods, shop-front mannequins with missing limbs or faces, boards made from ply or MDF and tacked with grids or traditional bullseye circles. They were obviously damaged before he ever arrived, but the three of them shooting in tandem has left its mark. The Remington rifle has shredded up whatever it's touched, Dale has landed nearly nothing but kill shots and Flynn's tight groupings have left pieces of board and foam laying about like shrapnel.

They take their guns back; lock up the cages and leave. Back near the opening of the factory, the sun is blinding, heat rising in visible waves from the sand. It feels entirely separate; like he's been in another world.

Flynn and Thomas shake hands. Dale fist bumps him. Then the two of them are splitting off – each in different directions to cope with the rest of their day in whatever way they can. Thomas remembers Chuck – not the first time he's remembered him since what happened in the control room of the Maze – but the first time in relation to Claire, and he doesn't envy them.

Whatever peace they've gained from the therapeutic shooting won't last forever. Thomas almost wants to ask after Connor, but he decides he'd rather not know. If anything, he'll only be worse today than he was the afternoon before.

Thomas returns to his tent, a strange mix of exhilarated, exhausted and fiercely, corrosively angry. He can still feel a humming beneath his skin, like the loaded gun is still in his hand.

WCKD is responsible for this. For all of it.

The others are there. They're leaving that evening and so they're making an effort to sleep now, while the sun is high. They need to adjust back to a nocturnal clock. Frypan, Harriet, Brenda and Jorge are all out; curled or sprawled on their bed rolls but dressed with their packs in easy reach. Vince is cleaning his gun, propped against the centre support and he doesn't look up. Newt is gazing up at the rippling fabric overhead, expression somewhere between blank and serene. He glances Thomas' way.

He must see the burning in his expression, because he doesn't try to speak. He nods once and Thomas reads it for what it means.

They're ending it.

…

"Move, now!" Vince shouts, ducking under the flap into the tent. "Bags. Come on; let's go!"

Thomas jumps, scrambling to his feet, only a half second faster than Newt, who is instantly at his shoulder.

"What's going on?" Thomas asks, lifting the ratty backpack he's been using even as he speaks. The tent is full of stuffy air and golden light – it's still day time.

"WCKD. There's a hover drone headed this way. Video capture technology. It'll ID anyone. I figure you don't want to bring them down on all these people?"

No. He really doesn't.

Thomas nods tightly and then he urges Frypan ahead of himself, gets jostled along by Newt and they're running from the tent, up the homemade street and into the shadow of the factory ruin.

Lili is waiting there.

"Here," she pushes a bundle into Brenda's hands as she skids to a stop at Thomas' elbow. "It's just a few bandages, antibiotics and things; just what Spence could spare. Vince picked up some food rations and Jobe has ammo – he'll show you a route out the side."

She rests a hand on Thomas' shoulder for an instant. He feels its weight slightly less than he feels Newt and Frypan's eyes on him.

"Take care, okay?" she says, voice low and spun with steel. "You do what you set out to do; get your friends back. I hope we'll see you again, Thomas."

Not sure what he can even begin to say, he nods.

Then Jorge is tugging at his jacket, Vince is beckoning them after him, cocking a shotgun as he goes. There's no time and the questions he wants to ask – what about them, if they're spotted? Can they hide, evacuate? Do they plan to stay? Claire? What about Connor? – evaporate into the space of things left unsaid.

They leave behind the camp in bright sunlight, quickly, quietly and with no warning at all.

…

Days pass.

The days bleed into weeks, which pour into months.

The world doesn't know seasons anymore, and no one seems to even know where to find a calendar, let alone live by one, so there's no way of knowing the date.

They travel constantly. Living as a nomad is hard in any life, but especially so in the Scorch. Sometimes there are sand dunes and they sink in to their knees with each step. Sometimes there are vast salt flats that burn through the soles of their boots. The horizon is never-ending; blue sky that shimmers with blazing heat and mirages up ahead, no matter how far they walk.

They destroy WCKD.

They walk away from the rubble and debris; smoke billowing into the sky, black and thick enough to choke. The ground is still on fire and the spilled blood bakes dry.

That's another story.

Teresa loses her life in the fallout. Thomas thinks he misses her; but its grief in a detached way. He misses who she might have been to him in another life; before the Swipe. The girl he knew betrayed him, and even now she's gone, he doesn't know how to see them as the same person.

Newt gets infected.

Thomas thinks for two solid days that his world has imploded all over again.

He forgets to eat; can't make himself sleep; isn't sure how he's meant to survive this.

Newt tries to leave. Frypan screams at him for two hours. Newt screams back. Brenda yells at them both; showing off her own brutal bite mark as she does. Thomas feels sick with relief as he remembers enzymes and injections and how his blood saved her life.

Newt stays.

It's Vince, of all people, who helps Thomas to harvest the enzyme from his own donated blood when they raid a clinic one night.

Sonya isn't the same.

She's alive, and she's still in there, and on the good days she's fine. On the bad days her mind goes somewhere she can't be reached. Harriet has to hold her tightly as she trembles and cries from the nightmares that follow her into waking hours. It wouldn't be so bad, but these demons are things she has already really lived through.

Aris never made it out, and Sonya never said as much, but Thomas thinks she saw what happened to him.

She fights off going to sleep so hard that she passes out randomly. But she wants to get better; doesn't want to give up, so she fights back, a day at a time. She can't sleep alone; hasn't touched a gun since they found her, but she's working her way back to living.

Minho was always one of the strongest people Thomas had ever known.

He sleeps, restless but solid for two straight days when they escape, fingers curled around the grip of a Glock handgun.

He tells Thomas, Newt and Frypan what he went through just hours after waking up. He talks about the dormitories, full of boys and girls, all immune. He talks about the testing – being hooked up to everything from polygraphs to electric chairs. He tells them about them being moved around in groups like cattle, from the labs to the mess halls to their bunks. He tells them how the guards would take one boy a night; their screams filling the halls, wild kicks futile, and how they were never heard from again.

He talks about breaking out with another boy – a stranger – one night to follow the guards. He saw them harvesting blue fluid, direct from their brains with eerie tubes and machines before he was thrown into a tiny box of a room as punishment. The tale gives Thomas flashbacks to more than a year before when he witnessed the same thing with Aris. He doesn't know what would have happened if they'd been found then – would Janson have tried to explain it away? Or just shut them in a box?

They gave up all pretences after the fire fight in the Mountains all those months ago. WCKD wanted their antibodies, and they no longer cared about keeping that quiet or providing a false sense of security.

Minho tells them that he suspects Teresa tampered with files to keep his turn from arriving day after day.

There are shadows in his eyes that don't quite fade. Unlike Sonya, he's rarely without a gun, and he's quick with it, too; a near perfect shot; lethal. If he feels safer holding it, Thomas isn't going to take that away from him. He gets tired quicker than he used to, and there are tremors in his arms when exhaustion sets in.

He spends weeks being angry at himself for this; for feeling weak.

Frypan screams at him, too. They let him know he isn't in a box on his own anymore.

Like Sonya, he wants to get back to who he used to be, and it seems the screaming works, because he turns his anger into determination. He starts fighting for those pieces of himself that he lost.

…

They've been working their way across the Scorch; travel by night, camp by day, for three months, or four, before they get to the part of their story that involves Lili's camp.

Sonya, Minho and the few others that made it out and stuck with them listen quietly, days in a row, as Jorge talks about receiving the transmission and the journey then the factory and the tents. Vince talks about Lili and Jobe. Frypan talks about the Mess hall.

Thomas can't bring himself to talk about Claire at first.

She died months ago.

He still carries the memories; faded with time, blurring at the edges, but there; persisting. The washed out blonde spill of hair on the cot; how lost Flynn had looked, holding her still hand and the way a tiny child holding a plywood sword had planted himself in front of her like he could ward off the Reaper himself.

They rushed away from the camp the day Lili had decided to let her go. They were long gone before it happened.

In the end it didn't much matter that he didn't really know her. She was right, in that video she had left – her own 'if you're watching this' letter – this was their world; a screwed up one that was barely hanging on. The needlessness of her loss was just one more spark to the fire that drove him back to WCKD.

She had been a lesson in grief. There would always be someone else who died too young, too soon, and it would always be the people left behind who had to live with their ghosts.

…

Thomas does tell Minho about her though.

It's the day that Vince suggests they go back. Safety in numbers, not to mention an open invite and job roles that would keep them occupied; make them useful. It may not be forever, but it was a start, and better than living like this.

So they actually dig out a compass and plan a course. And when they start a campfire at dawn in the shade of a crumbled building, Thomas tells Minho everything.

About this stranger who died long before her body was gone, but lingered long after it burned away.

…

The days that long started to roll together seem to come back into focus when they decide they're aiming for something.

Weeks that used to pass in a messy blur of PTSD and exhaustion - Minho, checking his gun was under the pillow, and Sonya screaming herself from sleep - have structure again.

They walk at night. They're careful to keep to less populated areas, but when they run into Crank Nests – and they do – they fight at each other's backs and no one gets left behind.

They eat at dawn and dusk. They set fires in hollows in the ground and make sure to kick sand over them when they move on.

They sleep in shifts; groups at a time; never in the open.

It is exactly sixteen days from when they decide to return, to the evening they crest one of the dunes and there it is.

The factory; crumbled at an angle in the sand and the cluster of mismatched tents and tarps down one side of it. Lanterns and flashlights shine out like tiny fireflies across the distance.

Nowhere has ever felt like home, but this place may not be far off.

…

The quiet is chilling.

It speaks of things too terrible to think of.

The tents flap in the wind and grit sweeps up between them. The desert is reaching into the ruin of the factory, seeking to claim it back while there is no one to stop it. The paths worn thin from sand by regular walking have been buried again, any footprints long gone.

"Check the tents," Vince says tensely, cocking his shotgun. "Be quick, be quiet. If the cranks came through this place then there may be some left. But watch who you shoot. Move."

Thomas swings his own gun down from his shoulder. It's an M16 semi automatic military assault rifle, heavy, the black casing glinting under the sun. He took it from the corpse of a WCKD soldier just moments before finding Minho. The bullets are very real – entirely unlike the pulse blasts or electrified ammunition that the guards carried when they first escaped. Just another clue they'd stopped pretending.

Newt raises his own rifle, an AMD-65 that oddly suits him, gives him a terse nod, and they move away as the group splits up.

There's a torn hole in the back of the first tent and it's full of sand. There's no one there, and nothing left in the wreck that's worth taking with them.

The second tent looks like someone grabbed what they could and ran; there's only a few scattered possessions left, knocked like skittles on the floor.

The third, fourth, fifth and sixth tents are no better. The eighth is entirely collapsed.

In the ninth tent, a Crank, far past the Gone, looks up over the greying body of someone very dead and screams at them.

It's a warbling, insane cry; torn out of a voice box that's been rotting away.

Thomas shoots him point blank.

The emaciated form crumples backwards silently, a splatter of blackened, poisoned blood already clotting on the sagging canvas wall behind him. The semi automatic doesn't pull punches. So close up, the bullet shredded the man's skull; bone fragment and brain matter thick in the sand.

Thomas' heart thunders in his chest and his breaths come short and sharp, adrenaline spiking like needles rushing in his bloodstream. Newt stands at his shoulder; his own rifle still raised. Thomas was just a fraction faster; didn't want Newt to have to shoot a man who could easily have been himself, if things were different.

They stand over the bodies, unsure how this became their life.

The barrel of a gun presses into the space between his shoulder blades.

He stops breathing, lets his fingers loosen on the grip of his rifle. His blood suddenly feels like ice water. His jacket is thick and rough, but he still imagines he can feel the sight leaving a perfect imprint in his skin.

"You just shot Gary."

It's said lightly; carelessly. It might be called teasing, but there's no humour or irony in it. The words are casual; even the tone, but Thomas still gets the distinct impression she's saying 'there isn't a good enough reason why I shouldn't shoot you, too'.

And Thomas recognises that voice, although he knows he's never actually heard it from the source before.

He slowly tries to turn.

The barrel presses into his spine harder; a warning. Instead, he drops his gun and holds out his hands. Newt is fixed next to him. He sets his gun down, too.

"Is Lili alive?" Thomas asks.

Nothing moves for a beat, but he feels the ripple of hesitation like its something tangible in the air. The moment balances on a fine edge.

The gun draws back.

Thomas turns.

She's slim, even a little underweight, which is usual in this world but she holds the Winchester rifle with steady hands and stands in desert gear; close fitting clothes and boots the colour of sand. Her skin is tinted golden from hours in the Scorch; the blonde hair the colour of sunlight, spilling in loose waves and tangling with the long scarf draped around her neck.

The blue eyes are startling in the stagnant air of the tent.

There are broken music bars and the silhouettes of lost birds tattooed along the tendons of her wrist, visible beneath her torn and threadbare sleeve.

There's a beauty to her here, now that she's so very alive, that was washed out and faded all those months ago when all he knew was her ghost.

Very clearly, she didn't die that day.

"Claire?"

Thomas doesn't realise he's spoken for an instant, and then her eyes flash – surprise, alarm, impulse. The gun snatches back up. The sight levels between his eyes and her finger curls around the trigger with purpose, but she doesn't squeeze.

The flap of the tent is thrown inward.

All eyes turn to it and Thomas almost sinks to his knees – it might be relief – when he recognises the boy who storms inside, his own gun held down to the ground and his hazel eyes already levelled on Claire's. Light brown hair, longer than when Thomas last saw it, stubble on his jaw and the faded scar over the bridge of his nose.

"Stand down," Flynn says. "They're okay."

Claire gives Thomas a reproachful look, the gun steady for a moment longer, before she lowers it and turns away.

"Who the fuck are they?"

Flynn half smiles and meets Thomas' eyes. "Allies."

…

"You actually made it?" Flynn asks, as they duck out of the tent. "Is it…" he looks past them, up the remains of their makeshift street, like he'll be able to see WCKD in smoke just beyond, or Ava Paige being walked along in chains as a prisoner of war.

Like he'll be able to see anything more than the open, empty desert that is all that remains of Earth.

"Is it done?"

Thomas nods. "It's done."

In the end, he hadn't killed Ava Paige himself, though not for lack of commitment.

Janson had killed Mary a year before – cold and careless on that mountain where she died in Vince's arms – but Thomas shot him when a gun fight broke out by one of the labs. Lots of people had fallen by then, and it had been an act of survival, but Thomas still felt like he'd taken revenge from someone else's hands when the tall man crumpled to the floor, blood, bone and soft tissue on the wall behind him. So when they broke into Ava's office, Thomas stood back and handed Vince the gun.

Either way, she is dead and WCKD is gone. All that's left is learning to live in the fallout.

Flynn nods at the news and Claire steps up, inserting herself into the gap between him and Thomas. She's no longer guarded and blazing; she trusts Flynn's judgement when he calls them allies without hesitation or clarification. "So you're the group that showed up at the Fort when I was knocking on Heaven's door?"

Flynn snorts. "Like you'd go to heaven."

She shrugs it off, easy, smiling into the sun. "Better not to die."

"This is them. Thomas and Newt," Flynn confirms, gesturing to each of them. "Dale saw the girl – Brenda? – head the other way."

"Sorry I almost shot you," Claire says, and though Thomas is pretty sure she is sorry, she just tosses the words out with a small shrug.

"Who was Gary?" Thomas finds himself asking.

Flynn grimaces just slightly and Claire glances back where they came from, something sad and yet already distant flickering briefly through her eyes. "Part of Lili's construction team. Lost his kid a couple of years back."

It's a little harsh, the fact that this man Thomas shot – his life for theirs – is reduced to this, but it's not surprising either.

"What about you?" Thomas says instead of pushing that topic. He's watching Claire; the way she keeps pace with them easily despite the deep sand as they trudge back towards the broken factory. The Winchester is slung over her back, traps the shredded cloth of her scarf beneath the shining barrel. She's not very tall but the loss of weight aside she looks healthy. If he didn't know for a fact she had been so close to leaving the world, he never would have guessed it. "When we left they were saying…How did you…?"

"Wake up?" she finishes, unflinching. Her eyes are sharp; bluer than the sky. "I don't know."

"Doc took her off the oxygen and drip," Flynn supplies. "Lili wanted to give her some time to see if she'd come around on her own. We don't really know what happened, just that she sort of seized and when it was over, she was responsive. She didn't really wake up for another few hours, but she wasn't a 3 on the Coma Scale so there was reason to hope."

"I slept a lot, the first few days," Claire takes over. "Needed help eating, moving around or getting dressed. I couldn't lift a gun for a while; my hands shook after just half an hour of work and my legs wouldn't support me from one side of camp to the other. Moving around in the Jeep made me nauseous. My chest felt tight whenever I was in the sun and my head would buzz whenever it got quiet. I was almost always hungry but felt ill after two bites. It took a month for my appetite to level out again.

"I only have fragments of what happened. I remember going into the building, I remember jumping into darkness and I remember my hands on the fire door – slamming it closed between me and Flynn. For nights I woke up freaking out, reliving things I didn't remember – just impressions. Screams, white noise, phantom pain and burning under my skin. I still don't remember everything – I don't know if I want to."

She has PTSD.

Not unlike Minho or Sonya or any of the others they rescued from WCKD.

"I didn't have any memory of Connor at first," Claire continues, slightly softer. "It took weeks for memories of that day to start coming back. Flynn told me who he was, and I never told him I didn't recognise him. "

"And now?"

It's Newt who asks.

Thomas' gaze jumps over to him, slightly surprised. His friend looks trapped somewhere between sympathy, hope and desolation. It's an odd combination and Thomas is instantly reminded of the day, months ago, when Newt broke down and told them about how he got his limp.

The circumstances are different. Despite the fact that Newt regretted it seconds later, he had jumped with the sole purpose of trying to take his own life. And yet, maybe he sees something of what he went through in Claire. After all, he would have dealt with a similar kind of recuperation in the Glade; learning to use his leg again, put weight on it, manage menial tasks and reintegrate into a world he nearly left.

Claire looks over at him, considering, and though she can't possibly know Newt's own past, she replies with a gravity borne of understanding. "Now he's learning everything he can so he can join the raid groups when he's sixteen. He fired a Sig yesterday for the first time and was inches off what we deem a lethal shot."

Newt's eyes shutter. Thomas' steps falter and he wheels on her in surprise. "He fired a gun? He's six years old."

Claire's expression is flat, unashamed and fierce. "Seven. And better late than never."

She's daring him to argue.

Thomas considers it for a beat.

His memories of Connor have stayed with him; that young boy with sun-bronzed skin and dark hair who held a toy sword like he imagined a hero should, not like someone who'd ever carried a real weapon and intended to use it. He remembers the determination with which he'd guarded a stranger's body, the reverence with which he'd held the grainy footage of her. He's sorry for the childhood that boy never had. He doesn't think he'd have the strength to put a firearm into hands so young, but who's really to say what's right or wrong anymore? Besides, weren't some children taught to shoot young long before the Sun Flares if they lived in the wilderness anyway?

They were going to euthanize Claire; isn't handing a child a gun, teaching him to use it in the hopes it'll one day save his life wildly preferable in comparison?

What place do ethics like this have in the broken, scorched remains of this world?

Thomas doesn't argue.

He nods, tersely, once, and Claire returns it, like she realises he's concluded the same thing she has.

Flynn lets out a breath next to them. It's a quiet exhalation, but Thomas realises their conversation has been weighted since it turned to the time of the coma. They shake themselves from the shadow of it.

Thomas almost wants to tell her he's glad she survived - mostly for Flynn and Dale and Lili and everyone else she would have left in broken pieces. But it feels like a redundant thing. Instead, he glances across to her rifle again, and vaguely remembers her recorded voice. He nods to it. "Flynn didn't get your rifle, then," he comments, not a question so much as a dry, tentative statement.

But she laughs. Its a sound he didn't expect; genuine, free. Her shoulders curve and the mirth reaches into her eyes as she looks up at him - he's almost a head taller than her - and she's patting the gun strap as she quiets herself down.

"Not a chance," she says. "Have you seen him shoot? Nope, she's staying with me for a long time yet."

Thomas can't help the smile that tugs his mouth in reply. It feels foregin - smiling - even now, after everything's over. They've lost so much. And yet this girl nearly lost her life and she laughs like its easy. Maybe its a defence mechanism - he can't tell; doesn't know her nearly enough. But he didn't expect it. The girl in all those grainy videos was different; not cold but armoured somehow, like she was steel underneath the skin and bone; had to be. The real one, walking with him, Newt and Flynn is softer, warmer, damaged, maybe. Who of them isn't? And yet she's a kind of reassurance; that if she can come back from what she did, then Minho and Sonya and the others - they can make it back, too.

For the first time in a long time, it doesn't feel dangerous to have hope.

Thomas shares a glance with Newt, sees the brightness in his brown eyes that isn't madness or fear and the second smile comes easier.

Flynn, entirely unoffended on Claire's other side, raises a hand, fingers to his mouth, and whistles.

The noise is piercing. It cuts through the howl of wind and roar of swirling sand.

Another whistle answers him; two sharp notes, the last lilting upward at the end.

Flynn jerks his head. "To the wall," he says, shifting direction. "Everyone else is there."

…

The others have been rounded up.

They all look battered and world-weary. The few of them that are left of the WCKD victims, the handful that braved the scorch to get them back, and the team of Raiders from Lili's camp.

Vince shakes Jobe's hand when he appears, but Sonya flinches at the sight of him and Harriet grasps at her wrist, as though by reflex alone. Behind her, Thomas sees the way Minho's hand twitches, a craving to reach for the gun that he keeps, pressed into the small of his back.

Brenda, arms folded tight and expression exasperated more than anything, stands with a hip cocked. Kimmi is beside her, wrist slung over the butt of the shotgun that balances across her shoulders. Jorge sits on a sand-blasted wooden crate in his thick coat, idly scratching his beard. Frypan and Dale are both holding machetes loosely in their dominant hands.

"You lived," Jobe says to Thomas, in place of a greeting, when Flynn and Claire lead them up to the group. He doesn't sound surprised, and yet there is something like marvel in his voice.

Thomas nods, a little too preoccupied once more with the ravaged remains of this pocket of civilisation. He's seen it enough; he knows what happened. "You were attacked."

Jobe nods sadly back, and says without further prompting, "Cranks. A large group of them. It was like a plague."

The grief burns for an instant, but Thomas is too wrung dry to mourn for long. "I'm sorry," he offers uselessly.

Jobe accepts that all the same and asks, searching, "What do you plan now, Thomas?"

Thomas' eyes dart across his friends. Vince holds a breath in his chest visibly and nods once. Jorge tips his head; Brenda raises an eyebrow. Frypan and Newt look at him, patient and waiting. Minho's expression is fierce but solid and Sonya's eyes spark with steel, her hand tight on Harriet's.

Thomas turns back to Jobe. "We figured you could use us."

A bright smile breaks across the man's face.

"Lili's emergency plans were able to save and relocate most of the camp," he says. "We lost many, but more made it out. Supplies are low and we're rebuilding. There has been more talk of travel – a place called Paradise, where there is no Flare." His gaze turns out, catches Vince's. "We can definitely use you, Friends."

Claire rocks her shoulder into Thomas' as she moves around him, throws him a smile as she goes. "This one's a good shot," she tells Jobe.

"We know. You're the one who slept through their first stay," Flynn points out, following her. "Gary's DOA," he adds to Jobe. "Want us to ride ahead and let Lili know?"

Jobe nods. "Tell them to prepare food and tents."

Thomas watches as Flynn and Claire move for a familiar looking, sand-blasted Jeep, sitting behind the line of ruined tents, almost lost in the haze of heat rippling up from the ground. They walk together, heads tilted close. The ease between them speaks of something kindred; family.

Jobe levels his gaze on Thomas, who meets him solidly. He smiles again; bright, like the sun and whistles. The noise cracks through the air. Heads turn all around and the group clusters. A ripple of energy pulses outwards.

"Let us take you to the survivors. Move out!"

-End-

AN: As mentioned briefly at the very start, this was about story writing tools. A small note on that:
There is something in writing called a posthumous character. This is a person who is absent (usually dead, hence the word) from when a story begins, and everything you learn or know about them during the story, is second-hand. You never get to see this person doing, saying or thinking things in the present. Instead you come to know them entirely through what other people say about or remember of them, through flashbacks, letters, videos or whatever else they may have left behind. As many people probably know, this isn't usually an unbiased, open look at a person. People remember the parts they want to. They remember the people they've lost in shades. This is something I wanted to play with.

Everything you learn about Claire in the first two chapters of this story is from the things and the people she left behind. Thomas never meets her for himself.

I just really felt like this was something I wanted to explore, not only personally, as it's a tool I'm fascinated by, but also because I feel like this is a world where this would be quite prevalent. The scorch is no easy place to thrive, and there are going to be thousands more stories like Claire's out there – people left behind to grieve and newcomers who only learn about them in stories from the living. The world Dashner created fascinates me, and it's far bigger than Just Thomas, Newt, Minho, and WCKD. I wanted to venture into that. Its a story that wasn't meant to necessarily be easy to read (perhaps I should be worried about how easy it was to write). Thomas seemed the right person to tell it, though.

But there are two endings, which I think were an in-built part of this. It asks more questions than if I were to simply give you a finite conclusion. I wanted to ask questions about the world; how it operates, what becomes of people, morals and the human condition when the worst happens? I also wanted the juxtaposition of the things Thomas comes to know about Claire from others, placed next to the first-hand opinions he can form when he meets her himself.

In one, Claire dies. In one, she lives. In both, people suffer and struggle. I feel like generally the second would be the happier – the preferred – ending. I wanted to write that for me, and for her. But mostly, I'm really keen to know which my readers actually prefer. And why.

Thank you to anyone who has taken the time to read this story, and read it this far.

Eventually I'm sure I'll write a Maze Runner fanfic that isn't all darkness and kicked puppies :)