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Day 1
Thomas wakes up on the first day, and when he rolls over and sees Newt asleep next to him he thanks every single star still shining in the sky above him (because Paradise just isn’t the same without its Sun)
Day 2
It’s hard work. Minho and Gally and Brenda organise teams to go get food, teams to get wood, people to build and to create a place worth living. A place worth risking their lives over and over to find. Thomas takes no part in any of it. He feels a weariness like never before. He sits on the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea and thinks of nothing.
Day 3
“You get lazy, you get sad. Start givin’ up. Plain and simple.”
“Different life,” says Thomas.
“Same rules,” says Newt, so Thomas stands up and joins the others with an axe in his hand and callouses on his feet from two weeks in the scorch and a lifetime of running. Running from his crank father, running from the flare, running through the maze, running to stay alive. Now he doesn’t have to run anymore and he doesn’t know how to feel about it.
Somewhere in the middle of the night, Thomas finds himself hovering in the gauzy world between of sleep and waking. He glances to his left and sees Newt, fists clenched in his hair, eyes tightly shut. Slowly Thomas reaches out and gently wraps his own hand around Newt’s tightly clasped one. He tugs at Newt’s fingers, each of them individually until Newt is no longer tugging at his blonde hair. Then Thomas places Newt’s hand carefully on the cool grass and rolls over, so that he and Newt aren’t touching, but they aren’t not touching also. Thomas drifts back into dreamless sleep before he can figure out if what’s happening is real or not.
Day 4
He wakes up with Newt’s hand in his and for the first time in his life Thomas doesn’t know what to do. But that’s ok, because he’s got all the time in the world.
Day 5
All Thomas knows is surviving. He’s used to it. He’s used to fighting for his life, but now the fight is over and he’s not surviving anymore; he’s a survivor and he doesn’t know what that means.
He cries a lot more than he thought he would.
Is it over? The question paces up and down in Thomas’ mind, filling him with agitation. He wants to voice it, to be reassured that yes, it is finally over; at the same time he’s reluctant to say the magic words and plunge them into another trial of some sort. He can’t lose anybody else.
The thought always catches Thomas off guard. I can’t lose anyone else. Thomas’ breathing scratches in his throat; his heart beats wildly and he shakes, his hands clenched into fists and his nails digging into his palms.
Day 6
The first building is finished. He stands with Minho and Newt and watches as Gally turns the crude doorhandle. The door swings open, revealing a wooden interior. He remembers the pile of tools they discovered in the wood a few days previously and for a second a voice whispers, ‘convenient, no?’ but he dismisses it. WICKED had provided them with this space, this was true, but it wasn’t part of another experiment. They were free. Weren’t they?
Day 7
Thomas wakes up before dawn and he wonders briefly if he’ll ever be able to have a regular sleep in again or if he’ll be cursed with a ridiculous sleep cycle forever. He stares out at the horizon and sees a slight pink tinge peeking over what seems to be the edge of the world. Thomas stands, deciding that watching the sunrise is as good a way to start the day as any. He moves swiftly to the beach, stepping over sleeping forms littered over the grass. When he gets to the beach, he looks around and sees someone sitting at the base of a small sand dune. Thomas squints, then smiles unconsciously as he realises who it is. He walks across the cool sand, relishing how it feels on his bare feet.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” Newt says, looking up at him.
“Can I sit down?”
“’Course you bloody can,” Newt scoffs. His legs are pulled up against his chest with his arms linked around them, and he rests his chin on his knees.
“Couldn’t sleep?”
“Nah, I slept. Just woke up early and didn’t really feel like buggin’ tryin’ to get back to sleep, you know?”
Thomas nods. He gestures at the sky, now a deep pink colour as the sun rises lethargically into the sky.
“Awesome, right?”
“It’s odd,” Newt murmurs. “This sun is so much brighter than the one in the maze.”
“Warmer, too. The sun there was like some kind of bright white light. It did its job, but it was kind of cold.”
“I’m glad to be out of there.”
Thomas says nothing.
Day 8
There’s a funeral.
Thomas stands on the beach with at dusk Minho, Newt, Teresa, Brenda, Gally and a group of so-far unnamed immunes. Minho pushes the boat out onto the sea with an authority he discovered out on the Scorch. An authority that suits him well. Thomas closes his eyes and says goodbye to Chuck and Alby and all the other people he couldn’t save. Then he and Newt and Minho go and get spectacularly drunk on a deadly concoction of Gally’s invention.
Day 9
The second and third buildings are finished. They’re just as inelegant as the first, but they’re stable and for the time being they’re everything Thomas could have asked for.
It’s not home yet, but it’s getting there.
Day 10
There’s a pile of dirty cloth in a trunk in the middle of the trees. Thomas and Newt stumble upon it on one of their strange unplanned sojourns into the densely populated forest.
Neither of them say aloud what they’re thinking, but the whole thing reeks of WICKED. Later that night, Thomas and Gally are sitting by the campfire they built on their first day in Paradise.
Gally scowls. “They’d send us provisions in the maze every week. Here we just happen to stumble on a bunch of tools, exactly what we need to help with the building of a new settlement? Smells like WICKED.”
Thomas’ insides feel like ice. “Yeah, but WICKED’s never tried to hide the fact that they were interfering with our lives before. I mean, they wrote World In Catastrophe etc., etc., all over the walls of the maze. And there were the beetle blades. How would they monitor us?”
Gally’s impatient expression jars Thomas. Of course; it was WICKED. They surely had less obvious ways of surveying them.
“No.” Thomas shakes his head. “No. We destroyed their headquarters. No way.”
“Whatever you say, Thomas,” Gally says. Thomas stays awake lying next to Newt and staring up at the sky until it lightens again with the sun’s rays.
Day 11
Thomas is assigned a room with Newt in one of the completed buildings. It happened mostly by accident. Minho and Gally had been working out who sleeps where and Newt and Thomas had been standing side by side. Newt had been teaching Thomas how to skip stones, a skill he seemed to have picked up from nowhere.
“You guys have a problem with sharing a room?” Minho had asked. Thomas had shaken his head. Newt had flung a stone onto the water and watched as it skipped once, twice, three times then sank down into the sea.
“Nope,” he’d said. And that was that.
They’d strung up two large hammocks in the room on nails Gally had hammered into the wall, and when they’d been done it looked almost like they were on a ship.
Thomas hoped that wherever they were it sailing was far away.
Day 12
Minho punches a hole through the wall connecting his and Frypan’s room to Newt’s and Thomas’. When Thomas knocks on the door to find out what happened, Frypan beckons him and Newt in. Minho is pacing up and down in the room when they step inside. He turns on them, yelling and throwing what few possessions he has, and though Thomas is almost hit several times by flying objects, he’s never once afraid. Because this is Minho, Minho, and Minho would never hurt him.
He and Newt stay until Minho’s voice grows hoarse and his arms grow tired and they sit silently in the middle of the floor with him because they know. They know. Minho asks,
“You guys know where Teresa or Brenda are?”
Newt shakes his head. Minho stands and disappears without a goodbye. Neither of them know why, but it doesn’t matter because when Minho and Teresa walk together into the huge, wall-less hall being used as an eating place, they’re both wearing shit-eating grins and holding hands.
Day 13
Newt has nightmares. Thomas hears him at night, shaking and crying, mumbling snatches of dream-fogged conversation. It’s only when he lets out a strangled scream that Thomas leaps out of his own hammock, tripping over it in his haste to reach Newt.
He pulls the thick hammock open wider and slides onto it, pulling Newt to him without a second thought. Newt doesn’t wake up as Thomas rubs his hand up and down his back, but he does seem to still slightly, and that’s good enough for Thomas. He accidentally falls asleep there, Newt’s forehead pressed against his chest.
Day 14
Newt doesn’t mention the fact that he woke up with Thomas’ arm under his cheek, and Thomas doesn’t either.
That night, when Thomas is woken by Newt’s heavy sobs he barely hesitates before climbing into the other’s hammock.
Day 15
“Minho, Brenda and Teresa seem to be caught in a massive fight,” Thomas says to Newt as they watch the three bickering back and forth.
“You say that like its bloody unusual,” Newt says. Thomas grins. When Minho comes over in a huff and complains about Brenda and Teresa and how they’re ganging up on him, Thomas feels strangely comforted. As though the fact that they’re fighting like regular teenagers means that everything is ok. Everything is finished, and they’re ready to grow up the normal way.
“Can you tell Thomas to stop being a shank and laughing at me,” Minho says to Newt, gesturing to Thomas’ smile.
“Tommy, stop being a shank.”
“Impossible,” Thomas says. Later that evening they find Minho, Brenda and Teresa in some interesting three-way-kiss and Thomas and Newt walk away very quickly and very quietly.
Day 16
Newt laughs, full mouth, his eyes closed and his arms clutching his sides and Thomas pauses. He stops. He looks at Newt, and feels his chest lurch.
“Oh klunk,” he mutters.
Day 17
He tells Teresa. She shoves him, yelling,
“You only just figured it out?”
“What about you and Brenda and Minho?” Thomas counters. Teresa laughs.
“Takes the end of the world to know what you want, Tom.”
Thomas thinks about that statement for a very long time.
Day 18
When Thomas and Newt retire to their room that evening, Newt pauses and looks at Thomas.
“Wait,” he says. Then he shifts over in the hammock and rolls onto his side. Thomas doesn’t say anything as he settles himself beside Newt. Thomas wraps his arm around Newt and Newt grabs his hand and threads his own fingers through it.
As they lie there in the dark, Thomas’ heart whirs in his throat. Oh, he thinks. Right. This is what I wanted.
Day 19
“I have to tell you something.”
“I have to tell you somethin’ as well.”
Thomas bites his lip, looks everywhere but at Newt’s face.
“I think…” he takes a deep breath, then turns to face Newt, who looks like he’s struggling not to smile. “Don’t laugh at me!” Thomas moans, reaching out and cupping Newt’s face in his hands.
“I’m not laughing at you, Tommy,” Newt says, his eyes crinkling, “I’m just—“
Thomas leans in and kisses him.
Day 20
“I didn’t save the world, but I also kind of did. I mean, you’re my world.”
Newt pushes Thomas over into the water they’re standing in. Thomas goes down laughing.