Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"It has been said that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly's wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway through the world." -The Chaos Theory

Disclaimer: I do not own Maze Runner nor any of its beloved characters.

Black ooze dripped and slid down Thomas’ cheek, but Thomas paid no heed to it. He was more focused instead on trying to keep Newt’s hands from thrusting the knife into Thomas’ chest. The knife was slowly pushing in more and reached Thomas’ skin, drawing blood and a scream out of Thomas. Thomas struggled harder to push Newt’s hands away, but Thomas was no match against the inhumane strength of a cranked Newt.

“Oh hell no!”

Suddenly, Newt and his knife skidded a few feet away from Thomas. Thomas looked up only to see Brenda above him with her leg extended in front of her. She made it in time to kick the cranked Newt off of Thomas before Newt could stab Thomas fully in the heart.

“Brenda?!” Thomas wheezed out as he got to his feet. His eyes noticed the serum in her hand and hope fluttered in his chest. He turned to meet her eyes and they both nodded at each other resolutely; they were going to deliver this serum into Newt even if it killed them.

Snarls were their only warning before Newt got back to pouncing at them. He lunged at Brenda first, enraged by her kick to his side. His knife swung blindly in her direction, but Brenda backed away quickly with every step Newt took. While Newt’s attention was on Brenda, Thomas took the opportunity to step around Newt and tackle him from the side. He pinned Newt down against the floor but not without struggle. Newt’s cranked self seemed to instinctively recognize its end and bucked wildly against Thomas. His jaws snapped at him and his eyes shone black with primitive savagery, but Thomas pushed Newt’s head away from him. Brenda, not taking any more chances, plunged the serum into Newt’s leg.

Newt’s body arched from the ground, his eyes rolling backwards. Thomas quickly moved off of Newt, but Newt continued to convulse on the ground while letting out howls of pain.

“Newt!” Thomas’ eyes widen in panic and he looked to Brenda in concern. “Is this what’s supposed to happen?”

“This must be a reaction from the Flare trying to fight off the cure,” Brenda grimaced as Newt’s body shook in frenzy. Newt gave a final scream before falling unconscious, his head rolling to the side. Brenda went to check on Newt, but Thomas made no move to walk over. Instead, he stared off into the distance.

“Thomas, we have to go. It’s only a matter of minutes before Lawrence’s rebels or WCKD finds us. We need to get on the berg and leave!” Brenda yelled at Thomas, but Thomas shook his head.

“Not without the real cure. You heard Teresa. My blood is the only thing that can save Newt. That serum is only temporary. We need a permanent cure,” Thomas reminded Brenda. The sound of footsteps and panting reached his ears and he could see Minho and Gally running towards them.

“You guys take Newt back to the ship. I’ll get the cure! Meet me near the WCKD headquarters!” Thomas shouted before taking off towards WCKD.

 ~

The world faded in and out. Blood poured out of his gunshot wound, and he felt arms wrapped around his body. A voice yelled at him to keep going, but he couldn’t feel his legs. The vial of serum weighed heavily in his pocket and the need to deliver this for Newt drove him forward. And so, he forced himself to move, one foot after the other. His face singed from the fire around him and his lungs burned with every intake of smoke. He vaguely recognized that he was on the roof and his arm hung over someone’s shoulders. He stared out in the distance, but he couldn’t spot the berg anywhere.

Thomas felt himself being turned around, but an explosion erupted from the door. Thomas lost his balance and slid to the ground of the roof. He curled in pain from jostling the gaping hole in his side. Arms wrapped around him again, supporting Thomas’ weight from aggravating the wound. Thomas leaned into the comfort of the arms. His foggy brain, from the blood loss and smoke inhalation, saw a blurry image of Newt holding him. He felt tears dripping down to his face. The idea of Newt crying churned in his thoughts and he leaned up only to feel lips crashing down upon his, devouring him into a kiss.

The lights from the berg washed over them, breaking them apart. Thomas’ mind was in a daze, blurring his vision once more. He barely felt the movement of his body being dragged to the edge of the rooftop, until he felt the wind from the ship’s engine blasting his face. Hands were stretched out a few feet away from him.

“REACH!!”

The hands cried for him, but Thomas was too tired. His body felt too numb, and all he wanted to do was stay here with Newt. Suddenly, his body was lifted into the air as he felt arms from around thrusting him into the air. He hit the platform of the berg and was pulled up by the hands. Quickly, he turned around to face Newt, but all he saw was Teresa: Teresa standing alone on a collapsing rooftop.

“Teresa!” Thomas’ world turned clear again. He could see Teresa with tears in her eyes. Staring into her eyes, she gave him one soft smile before falling down along the crumbling rooftop. Her body fell limply through the air until smoke and debris obscured her from his vision. Even though she had betrayed them, she didn’t deserve to die like this.

Thomas stared blankly. Another person had lost their life too early to save him—the memory of Chuck’s face flashed before his eyes. Thomas let a tear slip from his eyes. He felt hands pushing his body to roll over and reaching to lift his shirt up. Blood was smeared all over his torso, and Thomas found himself fading in and out of consciousness. He suddenly remembered the last thing Teresa gave him. With a trembling hand, he reached into his pocket and shoved the serum into one of the hands.

“Newt…” Thomas whispered before succumbing into the darkness.

~

The next time Thomas woke up was to the sight of Newt sitting by his bed, a book in hand. The black veins from before had receded from his skin, leaving a bit of a scar that would surely fade over time. Thomas made a move to sit up, but the wound in his stomach reminded him why moving was a very bad idea. He let out a groan instead, catching Newt's attention.

Newt leaned closer, amusement and gratitude dancing in his warm brown eyes and a scolding ready to be unleashed. Thomas was too caught up in sheer relief and ididitwemadeitNewt'snormal- that he reached up a hand and pulled Newt down to crush his lips against his. Newt, surprised, kissed back with a little too much force and fell onto Thomas' chest, breaking the kiss. They both stared at each other in shock before breaking into laughter. Before Newt could push himself off Thomas' chest, Minho came running in and hollering about how there better not be a group hug without him and jumped onto Newt's back thus crushing both Thomas and Newt and bringing them to a higher level of laughter.

If their hands held each other a little tighter than normal and if their eyes were wetter than usual, no one said a thing.

Chapter Text

Some choices are easy. Some stay with you forever. - Merlin (from the BBC Merlin show)

Meanwhile in another universe:

“What the fuck is this?”

There was a cold fury and an underlying current of accusation in the voice. But Thomas could only stare numbly down at the crumpled note in Minho’s tightly clenched fist, the words kill me visible but the rest of the message lost in his hand. Thomas knew he should’ve gotten rid of that note ages ago before Minho found it, but this was the last thing Newt gave him before he—

A fist flew into Thomas’ face, and Thomas found himself sprawled across the ground. He numbly looked up at a furious Minho. 

“Thomas. Did you really think you could hide this from me?”

When Thomas failed to respond, Minho gripped the note harder, the soft sound of crumpling paper echoing in the dead silence between the two of them.

“You know,” Minho began cooly, “Before you came along, no , before the gladers became gladers, it was just me, Alby, and Newt. Before anything and anyone, we had each other’s back first and eventually, we brought the Glade up and running. But between the three of us, Newt and Alby were always the sensible ones, the ones who could work with people the best, the best out of all of us. They were true leaders, calm and collected. I’m just the dumb shank willing to throw himself into the unknown first. And between the three of us, I always figured I’d be the first one dead. I n-never thought I’d be the only one to make it, the only one alive, the only one left behind in this damn world,” Minho’s voice cracking at the end, eyes lost in memory.

“Minho…” Thomas starts. 

“Shut the fuck up. Who said you could talk?” Minho’s anger blazing again. “I knew Newt longer than you ever did. So how dare you—,” Minho waved the fist with Newt’s note inside, having instantly recognized Newt’s handwriting from their years of mapping the Maze, “not show me this. How dare you try to hide this from me! Did you really go through with this?! Huh?! Tell me Thomas. DID YOU KILL NEWT?!”

“I DID!” Thomas roared out, guilt and shame churning his stomach. “But Minho, you know there wasn’t anything we could do. Newt had the Flare, he was becoming a Crank, and there isn’t any cure.” 

“SINCE WHEN DID YOU GIVE UP?! I thought you were better than this. When you ran into the maze, my first impression of you was a complete shuckface idiot looking for a deathwish, but you proved yourself to be braver than I could ever be. That night, when I thought this was the end, YOU saved not just yourself, but my ass and Alby’s on top of that. You were our hope, the kind of guy we would’ve followed to hell and back. Everyone believed in you. I believed in you. Newt believed in you.” Minho’s voice rose higher. “We survived the maze, that goddamn Scorch, and got out of WICKED. We survived it all! So when it mattered the most why didn’t you try harder and save Newt!? WHY’D YOU KILL HIM?!!”

Thomas grew angry at Minho’s accusations and stood up. “It was Newt’s dying wish you asshole. He looked me right in the eyes and pleaded with me to just end his pain. I couldn’t— I couldn’t— I couldn’t say no. ”

Minho’s eyes hardened, his voice seething. “If I were there, I would’ve dragged Newt back, kicking and screaming. You know why? Because true friends don’t give up on each other. Because true friends don’t call it a day and shoot the other in the head. Because true friends don’t hide murder behind their smile and pretend everything’s fine.” Minho threw the note at Thomas, the frail piece of paper almost flying away before Thomas scrambled to catch it and in the process tripped over his feet and fell on the ground again.

Minho began to leave. Taking a few steps, he turned back to Thomas with a sneer, “Live knowing you have Newt’s blood on your hands.”

As Minho walked away, Thomas laid on the dirt with Newt’s crumpled note in his trembling hands and his heart aching. 

Kill me. If you’ve ever been my friend, kill me. was still legible on the note.

Author Note:

Yeah….. I’m sorry if anyone thought this was a real update. *dodges tomatoes*

So recently I stumbled across this old fic of mine that has just been hiding in my google drive. After reading over what I wrote here and on my draft, I momentarily died at my horrible writing. (How do fanfic writers make writing look easy?? I have nearly 20 pages of just trashy writing. Clearly, I have underestimated the process. Kudos to you writers!!) The point is! This story has been and will be abandoned for a very long time. I just wanted to make this announcement in case anyone was still waiting for any updates before I delete this work (or something idk).

However, I have always hated coming back to a fanfic and seeing an author’s note instead of a new update, so I dusted off what might’ve been an important scene for chapter 2 and polished it. (it probably sucks tho). And before you put my head on a spike for having Minho be kinda OCC hear me out!!

I always thought that if Minho finds out about the note and Thomas’ decision of keeping his mouth shut, Minho would explode. I mean!! Minho and Newt weren’t just friends but brothers and they lived together for 3 YEARS. He deserves to know what happened to Newt in the end, and I think it was unfair of Thomas to conceal this knowledge. 

And in this short piece, I also thought it was fitting for Minho to irrationally attack Thomas. While it’s true Thomas didn’t do anything wrong, grief can make people lash out. And Minho, blinded by his grief for Newt and anger at this new knowledge, would end up wholeheartedly blaming Thomas for everything. And Minho’s the stubborn and emotional guy. Newt had to subtly give the note to Thomas because he knew Minho was in denial and couldn’t accept the fact that Newt was dying, and Minho would definitely not be on board with killing Newt. But the true source of his anger wasn’t because Thomas killed Newt (although maybe a little angry that Newt and Thomas had this note thing going on behind his back), but because Minho wasn’t there , and Minho was, in reality, angry at himself. But Minho mistakes the anger for Thomas every time he sees Thomas so Minho goes out of his way to avoid Thomas. Thus, when the other Thomas comes into this universe, I thought it’ll be hilarious for him to be genuinely confused why Minho wasn’t talking to him anymore. Eventually, I wanted to include a mini character arc where Minho learns to let go of this misguided anger and forgive probably via other Thomas smack talk or something idk.

Not only that, I had so many other things planned for this fanfiction. TT ^ TT

1. I wanted to point out that “the two universes” were actually going to be the book universe and the movie universe (except with the changed ending that Newt actually survived.) I wanted to give readers who haven’t seen the movie or read the novels to really understand the differences in the two adaptations. I also thought it was going to be hilarious when Thomas mentions something from his universe and everyone likes what?? Eventually both sides will realize that there’s two universes and try to figure something out to switch them back. (Although I’d probably be letting everyone look the same bc i don’t even want to bother having to go through the movie and novels and describe what they look like)

1. I even came up with an elaborate explanation for how they switched in the first place. Once again I don’t remember the novel that much but there was a scene where Thomas gets captured by WICKED and he was about to get his brain extracted or something. I changed it so that WICKED was instead planning on a dimension transition using Thomas. Out of the candidates, Thomas showed the most resilience and intellect and if anyone can survive a dimensional jump into an unknown world it’ll be him. They wanted Thomas to travel to a world where a cure already exists and bring the knowledge back to their world. However, following the novel, Thomas instead escapes before the experiment could start. But then I thought, what if Brenda wasn’t the only WICKED employee to live in Paradise. So a group of them will rebuild the machinery and experiment and kidnap Thomas in the dead of night to switch him. However, they also don’t want to be exposed as being part of WICKED in case the residents want to kill them, so after the experiment they dump Thomas right back in his bed. They’ll probably observe this new (movie) Thomas from afar to see if the experiment works and he has knowledge to the cure.

1. In the movie universe, I think all the characters are much closer and friendlier with each other than the book universe. They’ll be the first one to notice the difference in Thomas (except Newt because he’ll be too worried and concerned by how broken Thomas suddenly became and how Thomas really wants to glue himself to Newt’s side 24/7). Gally’s probably the first to really notice because for some reason I find movie Gally to be more badass than book Gally. Listen. This guy took a SPEAR to the CHEST and SURVIVED. WICKD didnt bother saving him like in the novel, so that means this guy had to solo live through the pain and on the streets for months until Thomas and friends came into the city. Because of this, Gally is probably more observant and wary of people's behaviors than anyone in the group.

1. What I really really wanted to achieve was book Thomas getting over Newt’s death. I mean, what better way to get closure over Newt’s death than by Newt himself am I right?? And I think the more time book Thomas spends in the movie universe, the more he realizes that these people aren’t his people. That this Newt wasn’t his Newt… and that his Newt was never gonna come back. And before Thomas loses himself into grief, I wanted movie Newt to go in and be like “listen I know I’m not your Newt. But I’m probably the one who knows what that Newt was thinking and feeling before the end, and let me tell you, if he were sitting here next to ya Tommy, he would be thanking you” and all the good feels :D

In the end, what made writing this so damn difficult is that I suck at writing Thomas. Like 100% he was so difficult for me to write and he was constantly out of character. Especially when I wanted to make his grief like a really big issue for book Thomas, but it just made him seem like an angsty middle schooler who can’t stop whining. I got SO frustrated. UGH. Not to mention, I had to write TWO versions of Thomas along with two versions of everyone else. I just wanted to throw my laptop across the room.

Once again, I apologize for giving up on this fanfic. If anyone wants to use this idea from me, by all means go ahead. In the meantime, I hope you all stay healthy and safe.