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Paradise (Noun): An ideal or idyllic place or state.
Regardless of how many times people tell Thomas that they have officially arrived in Paradise, that everything is exactly as it should be. This is the world put right. But it occurs to him that he has lived with the world being wrong that it being right doesn’t feel like it should.
Besides, if ‘right’ required as much suffering and loss as getting to this place did, then he’s not entirely sure he wants to be right, or live in any place claiming to be as much. At first there was a kind of euphoria, an adrenalin rush that sustained them all for a few days, the thrill of finally being out of the clutches of WICKED. Safety.
Whatever the hell that meant.
That wore off too quickly. Or maybe not quickly enough. It doesn’t matter anymore. At least when he was lost in the Maze, at least back in the Glade there was hope that things could get better. But this was the end, this was their destination. This was as good as it got.
Thomas hadn’t spoken to Minho in a week, Brenda in even longer. He did what he was expected to do as best he could, given the aching sadness and utter exhaustion that seemed to be weighing down his bones, and he did it as quietly and quickly as he could. With each passing day, he grew a little more convinced that soon was coming the moment in which Minho would finally lose it and call him out on the utter klunk he was pulling.
Their leader was not a patient guy, or the kind of person to let someone wallow in their own self pity. But Minho didn’t know the extent of it all—they’d lost people, and everyone was suffering for it. And if it had been just that, maybe Thomas could’ve found it in himself to talk to the guy about it—after all, the lot of them were becoming experts in bonding through trauma. All they had these days was trauma.
But at the root of it all was the simple fact. A little white lie that he’d told because at the time, the truth hadn’t been something he could handle. He couldn’t deal with it himself, much less bring himself to tell anyone else about it.
He’d lied about Newt.
As far as Minho was concerned, none of them had seen him since the Crank Palace. As far as Minho was concerned, Newt was still out there—not quite the person they had once known, but alive none the less. And with that, the knowledge that Newt was alive, there was hope. Not much hope, but enough to sustain them. After all, hope was what a Runner dealt in, and Minho was still the Keeper.
Regardless, he wasn’t all that surprised when Minho finally cracked and slammed him up against a wall, jerking him around by the collar of his shirt. Maybe it was a good thing that everyone around them knew better than to try and intervene—they knew better than to stay, quickly scampering away, probably to spread the news that something was transpiring. It was a small community—word travelled fast about everything, however small. And it might just be the last straw if they all knew about this.
“What the shuckin’ hell is your problem, Greenie?” The Keeper hissed through clenched teeth, his eyes flickering between Thomas’s gaze and his hands at the boy’s collar—like he wasn’t quite sure he was done throwing him around yet. “I got enough klunk to deal with without you goin’ all weird on me—so what the hell is it, huh, Thomas? What the hell is it?” And when he got no response, Thomas was slammed up against the wall yet again. “Now you’re not even gonna say word one to me? Is that it? What’d I ever do to deserve this from you?”
And it finally clicked. Underneath the rage—and there was a lot of rage—Minho was upset. Distraught even. Thomas supposed, in his own endless state of self pity, that he hadn’t really thought about how anyone else was dealing with the end of their trials.
“I…” And Thomas couldn’t even managed a single sentence for one of the only friends he had left.
“You what, Tommy?”
Please, Tommy, Please.
“—I killed him.”
He wants to take it back the moment he says it. In fact, he’s half way through saying it and he wishes he hadn’t, but he can’t stop himself. And then it’s out there and he can’t take it back. It’s out there, and now he has to explain. He owes Minho that much, he’s owed him the truth for a while now.
The look on the Keeper’s face is confusion, then more rage, then more confusion, before finally settling on an expression that is equal parts anger and concern. “You killed who?”
“Newt. He’s dead.” And Thomas hates himself more and more with every word but they keep coming, they just keep coming. “We were…I saw him. A whole lotta Cranks had escaped and he was there and he asked me to, he kept, he kept saying, kept telling me, and I—“
The concern, the anger, they’re gone. It’s been replaced with what can only be described as utter resignation, as though this may have been Minho’s last straw. He takes a step away from Thomas, the hands that were so violently holding him by his shirt let go and fall to their owner’s sides. “—Newt’s…dead.”
Thomas nods, but doesn’t say another word. He’s done enough damage with words already.
“That…idiot. That bugging shank. He knew, he damn well knew!”
“Knew what…?”
“That I wouldn’t do it.”
And there’s two years of memories that Thomas hasn’t got between Minho and Newt that he can’t even begin to fathom—he doesn’t know. Thomas wasn’t there in the beginning, he doesn’t know what it was like, those first two years in the Maze. But he does know, now, that Minho knew exactly how Newt had gotten his limp, he knew exactly what had stopped him from continuing on as a Runner. Just like he knows that after that, there was no way in hell Minho could have done what Thomas had done. There was no way he could have Newt’s blood on his hands.
There aren’t any more words exchanged between the two of them. Minho slumps to the ground, back against the wall, knees pressed up against his chest, staring out ahead of him at absolutely nothing. Thomas just sits down next to him, their shoulders pressed together and stares as well. He feels simultaneously infinitely better for having finally told the truth about what had happened to his best friend, and unfathomably worse for having burdened one of his last remaining friends with such a gruesome secret, snatching away a last glimmer of hope that he had no right to.
And when the numbness that had once overcome Thomas finally wears off, and tears begin to fall, Thomas wraps an arm around his friend’s shoulders and for both of their sake, pretends not to noticed the tears dampening the shoulder of his shirt.