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“T-This… was your room, Stephen…” The woman says, as she sways on her feet. Thomas dips his head in exhaustion and in the slightest bit of dejection from hearing her say his real name. She steps deeper into the room and turns to look at Thomas again. Or well… Stephen according to her.
“I’m sorry, T-Thomas… right? You prefer Thomas?” She asks. Thomas shrugs, too tired to argue against anything. She smiles, but as soon as it’s there, it’s dissolved from her face. She claps her hands together and opens her palm towards the bed. “If you… if you’d like you can sleep here or… or you can sleep closer to your friend? Where-where ever you feel comfortable, T-Thomas.” She says, continuing to trip on his name. He nods and looks around the room, breathing in the weird smells of his life before The Flare. Before WICKED. The house shook compactly, causing small noises of things clattering together to form from around the room.
“The storm.” She says, causing Thomas to look up at her. He nods again, slowly making his way around the room. He brushes his fingers across the stuff that stays on his desk but his eyes land on an experiment he remembers as Newton’s Cradle. The spheres on the strings shook and then calmed as the house stopped shaking. Thomas touched the cold spheres and pulled the end one back, only a short distance, then let it go and watched as the little balls bounced, his eyes moving from one ball to the other. A pained expression crossed his face as one slowly stopped and the other still quietly bounced against the one beside it and all he could think about was Newt. It was his cradle after all, according to the names WICKED had given them.
“Thomas…” The woman says quietly, stepping towards him. He hadn’t even realized tears were streaming down his face and that his shoulders were shaking along with the rest of the swaying objects in the room. Sudden embarrassment washed over him as he quickly wiped them away, worried about how dumb he probably looked. He shook his head and picked up the cradle, clutching it tightly in his grip then throwing it across the room, making it hit against the wall across from him. The woman lets out a small shriek as it hits the wall and Thomas steps back, balling up his fists.
“I-I’m sorry.” He says quickly, coming to realization on what he just did. Broken sobs start escaping his throat as images and memories of Newt keep clouding his mind. “I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry, I-I didn’t mean it, I-I…” He stutters, shaking his head and staring down at the floor.
“It’s okay! Thomas, it’s okay, I’m sorry I yelled.” She says, rushing towards him and rubbing gentle hands across his shoulders. “You’re okay…” She says and a commotion erupts from down the hall. Thomas looks up through blurry eyes and sees Minho rushing through the door and stopping at the doorway to look at the wall across from Thomas. A man runs after him, wearing the same shade of blue as the woman.
“He’s stronger than he looks!” The man says, slightly out of breath. Thomas struggles to breathe properly as the tears keep flowing from his eyes. The woman steps back and Minho rushes towards him and grips his shoulder.
“Shuck it, Thomas.” Minho breathes, trying to meet his gaze but Thomas refuses it. Thomas leans against the wall beside the desk and slides down it, dropping his head in his hands when his butt touches the floor. Minho’s body heat stays with him and presses against his own, not speaking because even Minho, the most arrogant shank Thomas knows, knows that words wouldn’t help Thomas at all. There was nothing anyone could say to make anything that has happened even the slightest bit okay. Newt was dead, one of the only people he could even remotely call a friend, after everything that had happened to the gladers, and it was all because of Thomas. His raspy sobs were now hysterical cries as he thought of every soul that had died in the process; all the chaos he created. He thought of Teresa, he thought of Chuck. And most definitely he thought of Newt. Minho softly patted his shoulders and hushed him. Thomas hadn’t cried like this in a long time, he hadn’t even cried like this when he told Minho what had happened to Newt, he hadn’t even cried when the rescue crew told them that most of their families had been killed a long time ago and he didn’t cry when he saw all the images of the dead kids. This was the first time; but he knew it wouldn’t be the last.