Chapter Text
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Chapter 5.
It takes hours for the Right Arm to deal with all the attackers, Cranks included. By then Vince, Mary and several more members have arrived on a berg from the Last City.
Through it all, Newt refuses to allow Thomas out of his line of sight. Something the brunette seems to find funny and annoying by turns.
“I still cannot believe people would do something like this,” Mary murmurs quietly, as she and the others stand watching the burning corpses of their attackers.
“What, try to destroy everything?” Minho scoffs. “It’s what some seem to excel at!”
“The plan makes no sense, though,” Brenda points out. “I mean, it would have been one thing for them to attack. But why bring the Cranks?”
“It makes a lot of sense, actually,” Thomas offers. “It’s all about the Cure, yes? About how it shouldn’t exist. Or maybe just that it’s all pointless because there will never be enough. I mean, just think about it. What would things look like, if they’d succeeded? Those people would have either destroyed or stolen all doses of the Cure we have here. With the Cranks around, I have no doubt every non-immune in this base would have ended up infected. And then… then it’s when things would have gotten truly interesting.” Thomas looks at each of them seriously, willing them to understand the importance of what he’s saying. “Because if there hasn’t been a lot of demand for the Cure in other locations, then we might have been able to get enough doses for everyone. But chances were, there just wouldn’t have been enough. And since my most recent donation was less than a month ago…”
“We would be without doses, and without any way of getting more for at least four weeks,” Vince mutters, brow furrowed.
“Less if you were willing to have me donate more frequently, but—” Thomas begins.
“No,” Mary cuts him off almost before he finishes speaking. “That would be dangerous.”
Thomas just shrugs, as if he was already expecting someone to say something like that.
“And with that, they’d have won,” he says in an almost theatrical tone. “Proving, once and for all, that we’re not as ready for things as we claim to be.”
“But they didn’t win,” Brenda points out, almost petulantly. “We did.”
More than one person starts shaking their heads even before she’s finished speaking.
“Did we?” Thomas asks. “Or did we just not lose… yet?”
“This group might have been the first, they won’t be the last,” Newt murmurs in understanding.
“We need to be ready before there’s another attack,” Thomas confirms.
And truly, it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.
xXx
In the end it’s until the evening, after the bodies have been burned, perimeters secured and everyone is mostly certain that they’re all safe, that the group comes together again, and they finally address the elephant in the room.
“You remember,” Newt states, looking straight at Thomas and it’s not a question.
For a moment, it looks like either Vince or Mary are going to ask what’s going on, but when Newt continues speaking, they go from confused to shocked.
“You called me by my name, you called me Newt and…” He trails off.
“And you called me Tommy,” Thomas points out with a wide smile.
“You remember,” Newt reiterates.
“Yes,” Thomas nods calmly.
“You never told us,” Newt blurts out.
“You never asked,” Thomas rolls his eyes at him. “Really, people, why is this a thing? A thing that matters, that bothers you? I don’t get it.”
“You were Swiped,” Brenda points out.
“I know, I was there.” Thomas states, deadpan.
“You never asked for help to remember,” she doesn’t know how else to explain their confusion.
“Because I never needed any help!” Thomas truly doesn’t understand why they’re making such a big deal out of it.
“When did you remember?” Jorge asks, curious.
“A few weeks after it happened, I suppose?” Thomas shrugs. “Not long after the transfer to the Last City.”
“So you knew what had happened,” Newt realizes. “What they’d done to you. I didn’t think they’d have admitted to it.”
“Of course no one told me,” Thomas scoffs. “I didn’t need anyone to tell me, it was obvious enough. Really, an ‘accident’ so bad that we lose Maze A? So bad that I end up in the infirmary for two weeks? So bad that I have no memory about any of it? And yet not so bad, because Teresa didn’t have so much as a scratch on her!”
Really, Teresa, Ava and everyone else had to have believed him stupid. To have thought he wouldn’t question their story. The way things just didn’t fit.
“So you knew everything,” Brenda breathes out in realization.
“I knew enough,” Thomas states. “And extrapolated the rest from there. My missing memories… they were too specific for the loss of them to have truly been caused by any kind of accident. Which made it obvious I had been Swiped. The injuries also, they were… too methodical, too specific to have been caused by any kind of accident, or even a fight. Which made it obvious I’d been tortured. I couldn’t know why exactly, but considering what I knew of myself, the most likely cause was that I had finally had the guts to do something about WCKD’s penchant for killing immunes and got found out.”
Everyone just… blinks, at the way Thomas manages to so accurately put everything together.
“I made arrangements then,” Thomas continues. “Got my hands on some of the Griever poison, as I knew it was the easiest method. I was believed to still be recovering from everything, so it wasn’t hard, when I fell unconscious and was seemingly ill for a few days, for people to believe that it was just part of the same.”
“You didn’t tell Teresa,” Newt murmurs, thoughtfully.
“No, why would I have?” Thomas asks in return. “She’d already betrayed me once.”
“What?!” No one was expecting that admission.
“Giving the Right Arm the coordinates to everything was not Plan A, you know?” Thomas asks in an almost conversational tone. “My original plan involved going into the Maze myself, with my memories intact, and helping everyone out. I talked about it with Teresa, as I knew I’d need her help to convince Ava it was a good idea. I even shared the proposal with Aris and Rachel. The other Favorites, our counterparts in Maze B.”
“Aris and Rachel?” Vince repeats. “I’m not aware of anyone with those names.”
“You wouldn’t be, they’re both dead,” Thomas states, evenly. “They agreed with my plan. Not just regarding getting everyone out of the Mazes. But we also planned to ensure that Stage 2 would never take place. We wanted to bring an end to the Trials. Teresa disagreed. She… believed too much in WCKD, in the search for a Cure. She agreed that it should be done, no matter the cost. That no sacrifice would ever be too great. She betrayed us, and told Ava about our real intentions.” He shakes his head, closing his eyes briefly. “I only found out when Aris sent me one last encrypted message. Warning me. He told me that Rachel had just been Swiped and sent into the Maze. And that Janson was after him, and he had no doubt that he would be following.”
“This was Maze B, yes?” Mary asks. “We did go after Maze B, didn’t we?”
“We did, but things didn’t go well,” Vince shakes his head. “WCKD arrived, almost before we did. We only managed to get a handful of girls out of there. WCKD got a handful more and the rest… they died in the confrontation.”
So many innocent lives lost…
“They’re the ones we found in that facility in the Scorch, aren’t they?” Jorge asks, somber.
The facility in the Scorch, Janson’s facility. One of the places they’d taken the longest to mount an attack against, precisely because they were so unsure what the results would be. That they’d be able to pull it off, that the reward would be worth it. By the time they got around to it, the immunes there had already been undergoing harvesting for so long, there was nothing that could be done for them.
“You were planning on coming into our Maze?” Newt asks Thomas directly, not quite able to believe it. “You were coming after us?”
“After you Newt, always you,” Thomas confirms. “And of course I was.” He chuckles without mirth. “At least, that was the plan, until Teresa decided to turn on us. When Aris told me what was happening on their end, I went looking for her. You know, I actually thought Ava had turned on all four of us. I wanted to warn her… and then when I went to talk to her… The moment I started talking, I saw her face, and I knew… I knew that it hadn’t been Ava, that it was her. She betrayed us. That’s also when I knew my original plan was never going to work.”
“But they were already coming after you…” Brenda doesn’t understand, when did he even have the time to do anything?
“There was a failsafe,” Thomas explains with a small smile. “All I had to do was enter a command in a computer, any computer, connected to the same net as my own, and it released my final message to the Right Arm. The encrypted file carrying the names, codes and coordinates of every WCKD location on the planet.”
Hearing Thomas talk about that, about Teresa betraying him. Newt wonders if perhaps she came to regret it, eventually. If perhaps that was why she decided to do what she did, seeking that deal with the Right Arm. A deal for information on their Source: Stephen, in exchange for the Right Arm having mercy on Thomas. She hadn’t told them that the two were one and the same, and she had to have known, but maybe she didn’t think they’d have believed it, or that they’d have taken her seriously.
She couldn’t have known about the things that Newt himself remembered. All the memories the Flare returned to him. Not only of his parents, his sister, but also of his friends, from before the Maze, the memories of Tommy… His Tommy …
Newt supposes it doesn’t matter anymore. What’s done is done. The past is gone, nothing more than memory (and for some it’s not even that). The future… life is so uncertain, there’s no guarantee they will even live to see it. All they have, all that matters, is the present.
“Stephen…” Mary calls, quiet, hesitant.
All eyes turn to Thomas instantly, so everyone bears witness to the rather visceral reaction the young man has to the sound of that name. As his entire body flinches, like he’s just been electrocuted.
“Thomas/Tommy…?” Brenda and Newt call at the same time, worried.
“I’d rather… not answer to that name, if it’s all the same to you, Mary,” Thomas says quietly.
“But… but that’s the name you gave me…” Mary murmurs in a stilted tone that makes it clear she doesn’t understand.
“I know,” Thomas nods, then exhales before explaining. “That’s the name my mother gave me. The name WCKD took from me, by force. It’s… not a name I’d choose to be known by, even today.”
“Why use it with us, then?” Vince doesn’t understand.
“I needed to be able to give you a name,” Thomas explains. “A name that meant something. But one that WCKD wouldn’t connect to me, not immediately. And I suppose… I suppose choosing… that name, was a way of saying fuck you to those who forced me to give that very name up. By turning it into the name of the person who helped engineer their fall.”
It was wonderful, almost poetic, really.
“You prefer Thomas, then?” Jorge wants to confirm.
“It’s who I am,” Thomas shrugs. “It’s who I’ve been since I was five years old.”
All he remembers of being Stephen is a father who had to work all day, a mother who loved him very much and… pain. So much pain, endless pain as he was forced to give that very name up. As he was forced to become Thomas Paige instead. He’s dropped the Paige from his name now, though. He doesn’t want to have any more connection to that woman, not ever again.
In any case, Stephen existed in another world. Before it was Scorched, before the Flare decimated it all and WCKD tore most of what remained while lying that they were going to save everyone…
He’s Thomas now. And that’s enough.
xXx
“Tommy…?”
Thomas lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding when he hears that voice, Newt’s voice, calling to him, and by that name. He’s been waiting, ever since the impromptu meeting came to an end. He’s been waiting, wondering if the blonde would come… or not.
Of all the things Thomas imagined might come to pass, back on that day, that heartbreaking day when he was forced to stand and watch as his best friend was placed inside that machine, as his body was drowned and his mind was wiped clean, as all the memories, the past the two of them had shared was erased… Thomas never thought the day might come when the two of them might come face to face again, with all the weight (the pain, the grief, the hope, the rage, the joy…) of those memories back.
“Hello, Newt,” he greets the blonde.
“You remember me,” Newt murmurs, somewhat unnecessarily.
“As do you,” Thomas points out.
For what feels like a long time, none of them say a word. The two just stare at each other. Newt in curiosity. He keeps looking at this older version of his old friend, it’s easy to see the lonely child in him, in the shadows in his eyes; and yet there’s also more. A man tempered by the fire of a war he was forced to fight alone, first as a lone spy, with no support and no back-up and then as the one left behind, as a prisoner in all but name. And still he found a way to not only survive against all odds, but he even managed to make it back to Newt.
For Thomas, it’s perhaps a bit easier, seeing Newt, knowing him. And still there’s a sense of wonder there. Because this Newt isn’t behind a screen, or trapped at the center of an incredibly dangerous Maze. He’s out, he’s free, he’s Cured… and all three things are in no small part thanks to him.
“Is it true?” Newt blurts out unexpectedly.
“Is what true?” Thomas asks in return.
To be honest, there are quite a few questions he imagines Newt wanting to ask him. Though at the same time, most of the questions people have been known to ask, are ones Newt would already know the answer to. Everything from Thomas’ history with WCKD, his work on the Maze, to his time in the Last City. The brunette doesn’t think he has many secrets left, if any at all.
“Did you…” Newt hesitates, nervous. “The things you did… turning on WCKD, spying on them for the Right Arm… everything. Did you… was it… for me?”
There’s so much emotion in his chocolate eyes when Thomas looks at him, and he can only imagine what might be showing in his own amber ones. Though in the end, there’s only one answer Thomas can possibly give. It might be too simple, nowhere near enough to convey the wealth of feeling and thought and so much more. Yet that doesn’t make it any less true:
“Yes.”
It doesn’t make everything right. Doesn’t make everything perfect. But it’s a start. A start at a future that promises to be much, much better than their past, both shared and apart.
xXx
Thomas feels no surprise at all when, the next time he must donate blood, instead of Emil, Mary is the one waiting for him at the infirmary.
She says nothing while setting up. Signaling for Thomas to sit on the most comfortable chair they have, and then working on inserting the cannula into his arm and setting up the bag that will be filled with blood soon enough.
“Everything good?” Mary asks once everything’s been set up.
“Yeah,” Thomas nods.
He cannot help but notice that she’s not even looking at him. And he knows why. It’s the same reason why Vince will often look at him, why he’s more than once looked like he’d like to approach Thomas, yet he never does.
The minutes pass, and soon enough the blood bag is full. Mary pulls the cannula out, placing a small band-aid on the inside of Thomas’s elbow before handing him a bottle with apple juice and a cookie to help up his sugar levels, to keep him from fainting or something after the donation.
While Thomas is having his snack, Mary takes the bag to the other side of the room, where she has everything set up to filter and process the blood to get the serum. It’s normal procedure. Mostly because it’s far easier to store and transport that way. Also, so Thomas can see that his blood is being used for the purpose he agreed to.
Once the serum is fully purified, it will be stored in vials and packed into boxes for transport to the various Right Arm’s outposts. Once there, small amounts of Thomas’ serum will be added to doses of serum from the other volunteers to create full doses of the Cure. This will allow them to get the greatest amount of doses of Cure possible and not waste even one milliliter; it also allows them to keep using the serum obtained from the other volunteers.
“Finished,” Mary announces. “Ready to go?”
“Yeah,” Thomas nods.
She’s talking to him, and yet she still won’t look at him. Thomas has been waiting. And yet he can see now that she won’t be taking that first step. So he decides, why not? He walks towards the door, stopping just before stepping out and turning to her.
“I forgive you,” he tells her softly.
Thomas leaves then, so he doesn’t get to see Mary’s visceral reaction to his words, as she inhales sharply and spins around in time to see him walk away.
It’s impossible to know how long it might take for either Mary or Vince to be ready to talk to Thomas. To apologize for what they will forever see as their worst mistake: abandoning the young man they owe so much to, leaving him to be tortured, to die… And yet, that’s not how Thomas sees it.
He wouldn’t say that he’s never blamed them. In fact, there was a time when he very much did, when he hated that they didn’t even try to save him, wondered why it was that they were so willing to take risks for everyone else but him.
In the end, the risks Thomas took, he chose to take them. And it wasn’t for the Right Arm. There was a person, a single individual, whom Thomas felt so much for… he would have done anything to save him. So how could Thomas be angry that they saved him in the end? He knew from the start that the cost of acting, of betraying WCKD, for Newt, might be his life. And he still made the choices he did knowing that.
Thomas doesn’t regret it. He doesn’t regret choosing Newt over WCKD. Doesn’t regret going to the Right Arm. Doesn’t regret giving them everything. He wouldn’t have regretted it even if he’d died. He certainly cannot regret having lived instead. It’s given him so many opportunities he thought he’d never have. The chance to be free of WCKD, to have a life of his own. The chance to be with Newt again…
“Tommy…”
A smile begins to form on Thomas’s lips even before the word has been fully pronounced. He just cannot help it. Newt is the kind of person who just… he’s capable of making Thomas smile, make him happy by his presence alone.
They’ve only just started a relationship. The one they were too young and too… committed to other things, to begin when they knew each other last, before the Maze. It’s been understandably hard, and yet at the same time, unbelievably easy.
They’re not the same people they were before. They’ve been through too much. Thomas’s years of spying while inside WCKD, Newt’s years in the Maze, plus his year of being part of the Right Arm and working against WCKD. And yet, at the same time, they’re still the two boys who’d meet in a maintenance closet in the middle of the night, to imagine what a better world might be like; who dreamed of a place where they might one day go to, to live, to be at peace, and free…
And now they have that. All of it and more.
Even in his wildest dreams, back when he first made the choice that would change his life, would change so many lives so absolutely, Thomas never imagined there would come a day when he’d have the chance to just… just love Newt, be with him. And yet he does now. He never planned for it, never expected it, and yet Newt still chose to give him a chance. Thomas would be an idiot not to take it.
“Everything alright, Tommy?” Newt asks him quietly as his arms embrace the slightly shorter man, chin settled on his shoulder.
It’s funny because, at first sight Thomas would seem to be the bigger of the two. And he certainly has wider shoulders; but he’s also just slightly shorter and tends to move with more of a slouch, compared to Newt’s straighter posture and predatory grace.
“You know everything’s perfect as long as you’re here, Newt,” Thomas assures him, twisting his head just enough to place a kiss on the corner of the blonde’s mouth.
Behind them, they can both hear Minho and Brenda dramatically comment on their choice of words, complaining about cheesiness and PDA and, who-knows-what-else! Thomas and Newt don’t care. They’re together, they’re happy. Nothing else matters.