Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Is this real?” Minho’s hands shake as he asks this. He doesn’t know if it’s actually his body or just an illusion pretending to palpable. The night is quiet, too quiet, and Minho imagines he can hear a Griever click somewhere in the distance.

“Yes,” Thomas assures him. There is enough space between them to fit another person. Minho wishes it would close until he could feel the other’s shoulder brush against his own, just enough to make sure that he’s actually sitting next to him.

“Prove it.”

Next thing he knows, Thomas is curling his fingers around Minho’s wrist and pulls his hand towards his own. His skin isn’t particularly cold or warm, but Minho wishes it would run hot so that he could actually feel it burn. 

Thomas pushes his fingers against the arterial vein on his arm. Minho presses down against it until he can feel Thomas’ bones under his skin and the dull feeling of his rapid pulse. Minho exhales but it still feels like he’s holding his breath.

He wishes he could inch closer to Thomas, closer and closer until he fades into his skin and crawls into his ribcage. Maybe if he could hear his heartbeat, feel his pulse, at any given time, then he would know for sure that this is real and not just another test.

The feeling of Thomas’ pulse against his fingers is just faint enough to be a fragment of his imagination. Minho isn’t sure if he can quite believe that this is happening, that he’s actually out in the physical world and not just trapped in his own head. But at least, the pulse means that - in this vision or in this world - Thomas is alive.

He’s alive and maybe for now, that can be enough. 

The air on the island feels different than anywhere Minho has been before. It’s cleaner than in the city, cooler than in the scorch and fresher than it had ever been in the glade. At the first step he takes out of the Berg, he inhales so deeply that his ribcage seems to ache with it. He gathers up the air like he needs it, like there is no way he’ll be able to take another breath.

The next inhale is just as shaky as the step he makes. His knees feel wobbly and unsure, weaker than he knows them to be. His fingers are trembling even when he clenches them to a fist. He waits for relief to wash over him, wash it all away, but it doesn’t come.

The tension in his shoulders remains, the burning behind his eyes doesn’t fade and the knot in his stomach doesn’t loosen the slightest bit.

Maybe this isn’t real, it occurs to him, when his ears still haven’t stopped ringing after a sixth inhale. Maybe I am still trapped by WICKED and this is all another trick.

He should’ve known that they would never let him escape. He is subject A7, property of WICKED, and with every step he takes away from them, they pull him two steps back into their hold.

“Minho!” A voice cuts through the air, sharp and clear. It pushes through the ringing in his ears and he hastily takes another desperate breath. “I need help.”

When he turns around, Brenda is crouching on the floor of the Berg next to Thomas’ seemingly lifeless body. His fast, shallow breaths have turned into something so slow that Minho barely notices the rise and fall of his chest. Blood stains the shirt that’s hanging off of him, more shreds of fabric than an actual piece of clothing. Someone placed his hands on his stomach and it makes him look even more dead than his pale skin and the bullet wound in his shoulder.

“The others are going to put up a tent, but I need you to help me carry him over.” He hadn’t even noticed the rest of the Immunes walk past him. Their bodies and faces had been nothing but a blur, their hopeful yet strained voices just a background noise to everything that was racing through his head.

“Minho.“ Brenda, who Minho has only ever known to be unabashedly direct and harsh, is talking to him in a slow, gentle tone. She sounds like she’s trying not to upset him and that just sends a ripple of rage through his body. “Can you please help me?”

If this wasn’t about Thomas - Thomas who is still alive but could’ve been dead, might still die - Minho might have snapped back at her. Something inside of him still urges to bare his teeth and spit out the most venomous thing his mind can come up with; bark and bite at the same time. But the sight of his best friend, the only one he has left, laying practically still on the ground, keeps his mouth shut.

He doesn’t say a single word when he kneels down on the other side of Thomas’ body, fingers hovering above his skin. Usually, Minho isn’t one to be hesitant and he’s unsure if he even knows how to be gentle, but there’s this itching feeling under his skin that reminds him what he could lose if he messed this up.

“Do you think you can pick him up?” Brenda sounds a little like Minho feels, like she’s attempting to be careful against everything in her nature, that only knows how to yell and break and fight. 

“Stupid question,” he disregards her, “Where do you need me to get him?”

“Over there.” The edge in her voice is sharper now, satisfyingly so. She points to a small, white tent that a group of people, consisting Aris and Frypan, have already managed to put up. “Can you do that?”

The tent is close enough to the Berg that Minho can easily reach it but far enough away that Thomas won’t have to rest right next to it. A few of the others that still look pretty banged up are being ushered into it, followed by the four people from the Right Arm who already helped patch up some of them during their flight. It might be the most pathetic med station Minho has ever seen and he lived two years in the Glade, a place ran by teenage boys.

“Of course I can.” Despite the confidence he tries to lace in his words, Minho’s hands remain just a few inches over Thomas’ body. A tiny, irrational part of his brain tells him that he’s going to break all of his bones the second his hands even touch Thomas. He swallows it down, inches his hands under Thomas and picks him up as carefully as possible.

The sound that Thomas makes when Minho gets up is so pained and so pitiful that it tears right through his chest. A part of him wants to just let go and leave. Run so far away that he can’t hear Thomas’ arduous breathing or see the blood he’s still covered in.

But Minho, no matter how much he wants to, doesn’t run. He catches Brenda in the corner of his eye, nervously following behind them and stopping herself just before she can reach out to help. With her dogging his footsteps, and Aris and Frypan closely watching his every move from where their standing, his skin burns and itches and, honestly, being struck by lightning was a more pleasant feeling than having everyone watch him like he was about to just break down. As if he hadn’t been their leader for the entire way through the scorch. As if he couldn’t take care of himself, even less of Thomas.

Aris steps aside to let him pass through, staring intently at the body in his arms. Thomas is heavy, more so because of his unconsciousness, and Minho is exhausted. He grits his teeth together, throwing Aris a last, warning glare, and steps into the tent. 

Thomas groans, his eyes fluttering. Minho holds his breath. Whether he does it, because he hopes Thomas will wake up, or because he wishes he wouldn’t, he can’t tell.

“You can put him down here.” A woman with dark hair and the cleanest clothes out of their entire group, pats down on a wild arrangement of blankets and other bits of fabric that have been arranged on top of the grass and dirt. 

Minho’s arms strain, his legs ache and his back isn’t any better off, but he can’t help hesitate a second. His gaze flicks from the woman to the improvised bed and over the other people trying to make use of the limited space in the tent. He knows that they’re safe, that WICKED can’t reach them here, but something inside of him still can’t let himself hand Thomas over to her.

“It’s okay,” Brenda tells him from behind. She sounds more snide than she does reassuring, but for some reason that is exactly what convinces him. “She’ll help him.”

The woman smiles, clearly tired but willing to help. 

It’s no use to argue about it and even less to further think about the ‘what if’s. If this is still WICKED, then they are doomed either way. Careful - so careful that his entire body aches with the effort of it - Minho lays his best friend down on the ground. He winces when Thomas does, the wound on his shoulder suddenly seeming even bloodier than before.

“We should leave,” Brenda chimes in yet again, “There isn’t enough space.”

The woman nods, her hands already all over Thomas’ wound, checking the poorly done stitches. Minho is still clinging on to the rest of the other’s clothes, half kneeling on the ground while the world around him continues to spin way too fast. It’s only when Brenda pulls at his shoulder, that he can bring himself to let go and stand up.

He’s having a horrible deja vu, watching himself let go of Newt in the midst of fire and chaos, after being practically spat at to just get out of his sight, knowing that it would be the last time they would see each other. The memory clogs his lungs and his chest. For a moment, there’s nothing more that he wants than to grab Thomas and just run away from all of these people, who he doesn’t know well enough to trust.

He tears himself out of it, like he always does. He’s supposed to be a leader and not a runner. It doesn’t keep him from glaring at the woman, hands clenched to shaky fists.

“If you do anything to him,” he hisses, “I’ll make you regret it.”

She smiles at him again. It’s wobbly at best and sad at worst. Her eyes are glassy like she might start crying and Minho curses the part of him that feels guilty for threatening her like this.

“I just want to help,” she emphasizes.

He feels sick. The tent is spinning, pictures flashing and memories melting into one, horrifying, bloody mess. Nausea climbs up his throat and he stumbles out of the white room, well aware that he must look just as pathetic as he feels.

Minho doesn’t know what he expected to happen once they would reach the safe haven. But he did think that it would feel different, that he would be different.

But nothing changes.

His clothes are still dirty, covered in dust, blood and dirt. His hair is messy, drenched in sweat and his shoes are practically falling apart.

But even when he takes off his clothes and washes the dirt off of him, there are still the burn marks, the scars and the endless heaviness on his shoulders.

He inhales and exhales. But somehow, Minho is still holding his breath.

The nightmare is heavy and cold under his skin when Minho stumbles out of the tent. His heart is racing, pounding furiously against his ribcage, and everything around him blurs into a mess of black and orange. It’s close enough to the burning city and the endless corridor WICKED put him in, that it only makes his heart beat faster.

As usual, all Minho wants to do is run. It’s the same every time he wakes up. The feeling claws itself into his skin and his heart, sharp and cruel, and it urges him to just move. Keep moving, keep running, keep living.

With how often this has happened before and how familiar the feeling is to him now, it should be easy to resist, but it feels almost impossible. His body moves without a thought. The tents, the trees and the lamps are still spinning and blurring together, but his feet are sure and fast and they carry him out of their little improvised village and towards the shore.

Stones and twigs digs into his bare feet and the sand feels even worse. It rubs against his skin - cold, wet and harsh -  but it doesn’t stop him from running.

Minho runs and runs until his feet catch on the skiddy sand and he trips right over. Tiny stones bore into the palms of his hands and his knees. Dust stirs up and into his face and he starts coughing almost violently.

He’s heaving on the beach, spit and sand falling from his lips. His chest aches and his lungs burn. It hurts but he more than welcomes the pain. It’s familiar and it cuts sharp enough to tear through the visions of Grievers, Cranks and the corpses of his friends. 

When he doesn’t feel like he’s choking on his own blood and spit anymore, Minho rolls around on his back. His arms strain from holding his body up and he is almost certain, he pulled a muscle.

Somewhere in the distance he can see the silhouette of white tents and the light from small lamps that hang all over the place. It should feel safe to know that it’s still so close, that he only needs to walk for a bit to get back to the safe haven, his supposed home. But Minho doesn’t feel anything except for the hollow twinge in his chest and the terror bubbling in his veins.

He closes his eyes. He doesn’t fall asleep, he just lays there for the rest of the night. 

In the entire time they're at the safe haven, Minho can’t bring himself to visit Thomas once. Brenda goes to see him. So do Aris, Frypan and even Sonya and Harriet. Minho never once goes. 

He helps set up the tents, helps find materials for what will become a cabin, helps collect food, helps mapping out the place and get an idea of where they even got themselves. 

When everyone else retreats, he runs. He runs and pretends like the sound of waves crashing against the shore doesn’t remind me of gunfire and explosions. He runs and runs until he’s so exhausted that he falls asleep the second he lays down, too spent to think about Thomas, or worse, Newt.

“Do you ever sleep?” Harriet asks him one night when he comes back to the tents. She sounds like she’s making fun of him, but there’s a worried undertone to her words. The concern feels more cruel than any insult that she could have hurled at him.

It cuts when Frypan places an extra bowl of food in front of him, when Brenda carefully tells him that she visited Thomas and that he seems to be getting better, and when even Aris, who Minho still cannot stand, tells him that maybe he should sit out on one day of exploring the place. They tiptoe around him like they’re afraid he will just fall over and die, the second they look away from him. It’s unsettling and it itches in his entire body.

On some days, Minho thinks he might have to tear the skin off of his bones to get it to stop. On others, he thinks it might be enough if he convinces everyone else to get off his back. On most days, he thinks it might go away, when Thomas wakes up. 

It has been two weeks ever since they escaped WICKED and found the safe haven. According to Brenda, Aris and the woman in the tent, Gwen, Thomas wakes up every now and then but falls back asleep just as quickly. He’s definitely in stable condition, they assure him, but it seems like he’s taking a while to get back into full consciousness.

Every day since they arrived, Minho eyes that white tent in every moment he gives himself to breathe. He waits for the fabric to part and Thomas to step out, confused but healthy. It doesn’t happen. Every day Minho considers if he should just step in, wake Thomas up himself, or at least make sure that he really is still alive. And every day, Minho just turns around and occupies himself with any task that he can give himself.

It has been two weeks ever since they came here and Minho finds himself staring at the tent again. He’s sitting at the stairs of the cabin in progress - that is actually starting to look like it could become a stable building - and gazes over to where Thomas is still resting. He is on a forced break, designated by Jorge and Harriet. Gally, Brenda and Frypan are sitting with him, deep in a conversation that Minho can’t get himself to focus on. 

Brenda laughs loudly at something that Fry says and as if on cue, the entry to the tent moves. It might have been the wind or it might have been someone moving on inside, but Minho’s entire body seems to tense up. For what seems like the first time in his life, his instinct isn’t to run but to be completely still. He holds his breath, afraid that if he moves even the tiniest bit, he could disrupt what’s happening.

The fabric of the entry is pushed aside and Minho can catch a glimpse of the inside of the tent. He can see the few hammocks they managed to put up in there, the boxes with bandaids they found in the Berg and the group of their health experts sitting between it all. But, most importantly, he sees Thomas.

His best friend, the only one he has left, is slowly stepping out of the tent. He blinks against the sun, putting up a hand to shield his eyes from the light. Minho’s heart races. He doesn’t know if this is real, if this is really his Thomas all alive and well, but he hopes it more than anything. He still doesn’t get up, still doesn’t move.

Thomas’ steps towards their camp are careful and slow. He looks like he’s still unsteady on his feet and after two weeks of practically not moving, Minho can guess why. He feels skittish, his legs and arms burning with energy and the urge to just move, but he can’t even seem to get up.

Then, Thomas catches his eye. As soon as he sees Minho, something in his gaze changes. His eyes soften and glaze over. He looks exhausted, even more tired than Minho feels, and the smile that he gives Minho is weaker than he has ever seen on his friend. Minho tries to smile back, but he knows that it looks just as wrong.

But, even though Minho doesn’t believe Thomas’ or his own smile, there is something reassuring about the way that Thomas looks at him then. It makes at least some of the shattered pieces inside of Minho click into place, because he finally, finally, feels like someone understands him.

Sure, the others had experienced most of it, too. They had been in the maze as well, had forced themselves through the scorch and lived through all that WICKED had done to them. They had lost Newt, too. But no one had looked at Minho this way in the past two weeks. No one had looked at him like they truly saw him, truly understood what he had seen and how he felt.

It’s this feeling that finally pulls him on his feet. The storm of thoughts, that had been tearing through his mind for the past two weeks, finally fades into the background and the endless hole in his chest closes up just an inch. Minho is sure that the others have seen Thomas as well, but he still rushes to get to him first.

As they stand in front of each other, Minho notices that he has no idea what he wants to say. He’s usually not one for heartfelt words, too terrified to reach inside of himself and lay bare what he might find there. But he can’t find it in himself to make a joke either. He has nothing he can say and neither, it seems, has Thomas.

So, they don’t speak.

Minho doesn’t know if he is the one who pulls Thomas in or if it happens the other way around. One of them moves and the next thing he knows is that he can feel Thomas. He can feel his hands press into his back, can feel the curve of Thomas’ spine under his palms, his heart pressed against his own and his cheek right next to his.

Minho just wants to cry, but his eyes are completely dry, so he just digs his fingers into Thomas’ shirt. 

I’m glad to have you back, he thinks but doesn’t say, I’m glad that you’re alive.

It all feels like a dream. The bright lights of the bonfire, reminiscent of the glade, and Thomas sitting next to him, near silent but still there. After all that happened, Minho can barely get himself to believe that this might be real.

He wants to reach out for Thomas’ hand, hold it in his own so tight that he might break it, but Thomas has folded them in his lap, holding onto his own fingers like they’re a lifeline. And even if he hadn’t, Minho knows he would not reach for them. That’s just not how they are.

Brenda pulls them all in a conversation, filled with banter and snide remarks at Minho. It feels good that she’s finally mean to him again. He prefers this version of her over the one that can barely seem to open her mouth around him. Frypan hugs Thomas a dozen times and even Gally lets a content grin show every now and then.

Everyone and their mother comes over to introduce themselves to Thomas. Minho supposes they feel obligated to, considering that he was the one to get them there. Thomas doesn’t seem particularly interested, but he shakes their hands, lets them hug him and answers their questions, until Minho opens his mouth to say something that tears Thomas’ attention away from the strangers and back to him. All of them leave not soon after.

The night feels almost endless and maybe that is what makes Minho doubt the realness of it all. One after the other, almost everyone falls asleep. Either they cuddle up around the fire or disappear in one of the tents filled with hammocks and makeshift beds. Even when everyone is asleep, when only the few people keeping watch are still standing, Minho and Thomas sit at the fire.

The sky is still dark and the fire still burns hot and Minho wonders what time it is. If time even matters at all. He glances over at Thomas. The empty space of another person lingers between them and Minho aches.

“How have you been?” Thomas asks and it’s a stupid question but Minho has missed all of his stupid questions.

“Fantastic,” he replies, sarcastic nonetheless, “After nearly dying and thinking you were going to die, I was really having a great time.”

“Oh, shut up.” Thomas nudges him with his elbow and Minho grins. It doesn’t spark the same playful excitement inside of him as it used to, but it feels like something at least. After two years in the glade and all they went through in the scorch, Minho didn’t think that he could ever feel worse, but since they got to the safe haven, he’s continuously being proven wrong.

“But I’m not the one who’s practically been in a coma,” he deflects, turning to Thomas, “Are you still on the verge of death?”

The response takes a while and Minho realizes far too late that the wording is practically an invitation to remember all the people they lost. He wonders if Thomas’ unfocused gaze is due to the memory of Teresa being buried underneath rubble and smoke, or because he too can’t help think about what might have happened to Newt after they left him behind.

“I’m better.” Those are the words that Thomas says, when he finally breaks through the silence. They sound uncomfortably earnest. “But I’m not good yet.”

He looks dejected, his shoulders slumped and his eyes focused on his hands. Minho can’t help think of the skinny, curious boy that arrived in the glade and that seems to have been almost completely washed away by grief. 

He swallows thickly.

Minho wants to make a joke, a snide comment to cut away all the heaviness that surrounds them. But he knows that Thomas might not appreciate that now. Usually, Minho’s mouth moves before his mind has properly caught up, but this time, he takes a second to swallow down all the mean, unserious things that climb up his throat.

“I don’t think it’ll be good for a while,” Thomas adds on, eyes glassy and his voice barely more than a croak.

“Yeah.” 

There’s nothing more that Minho can think to say. Thomas has always been the brave one out of the two of them, facing everything head on instead of running away from it. Most of the time when Minho fights it is just another way of running away. He’s not good at looking his fears in the eye. He doesn’t think that it helped to have them stare at him for hours on hours, when he could do nothing about it. 

“Do you think that WICKED really can’t find us here?” Thomas finally looks up. He lets his eyes roam over the camp and the beach, gaze wandering over the sleeping bodies of their friends and the mess of tents and half-built cabins. Minho can’t tell if he sounds hopeful or hopeless. He hopes it’s the former. If Thomas gives up hope, then Minho doesn’t know how he could ever be able to hold onto it.

“I think they’re probably all dead by now.” It comes out even grimmer than he thought it. “And if they aren’t, then I hope they will be soon.”

Thomas doesn’t say anything to that. He just looks straight forward into the distance. Minho ponders on whether it’s because he wants to find out what lays behind the trees, full of questions as he used to be, or if he’s trying to make out a WICKED Berg somewhere in the horizon. He wishes he could reach into Thomas’ head and pull out the entirety of the complex structure that his brain is made of. 

For a moment, he envies Teresa and Aris for having been able to talk to Thomas in his head, closer than Minho could ever be to him, but he swallows it down, bitter as it is.

They stay sitting like this for what might have been half the night or just a few more minutes. Thomas doesn’t look at Minho again, just staring ahead with a gaze that promises that he’s further in his head than he is in the real world. Minho wishes he would look at him again, say something, move closer, just do anything to make this moment feel more real, but he can’t bring himself to ask.

When he falls asleep that night, next to the fire and Thomas, he doesn’t have another nightmare. He dares to hope that it means that things will get better from here.

All of the air seems to be pushed out of his lungs when he wakes up. Minho gasps for air, begging to be able to just take a single proper breath. He grips the edge of his hammock. It swings violently from one side to the other. The world is spinning and blurring and Minho is tired of it.

He climbs out of the hammock in a hurry, almost getting himself tangled up in it, and pushes through the small space that is left between more hammocks and makeshift beds on the floor. He almost steps on Sonya’s hair but she rolls over with a quiet groan, curling up next to Harriet. The air inside the tent feels almost suffocating, thick and heavy in his lungs, and Minho needs to get out and finally breathe properly.

He’s only happy that Brenda moved her bed next to Thomas’ when he put his hammock up in their tent. The last time that he stumbled outside in the middle of the night, she had still slept next to the exit and woken up just as soon as he had passed her by. Those nights were already bad enough without her concerned yet annoyed eyes on him.

The fabric falls right against his face when he pushes out of the tent and it makes Minho want to just finally snap and rip the whole entire tent to shreds. If he didn’t know about the consequences, he would just sleep outside, but he is in no way interested in getting struck by lightning for a second time.

Jorge and Vince are sitting by the fire, on night watch. Both of them look up when Minho hurries out of the tent. Jorge raises his eyebrows almost provocatively and Vince furrows his own.

“I’m going for a walk,” Minho announces, not letting them respond before he rushes away.

The light of the fire and the smaller lamps feel too bright, too orange and too warm. The tents and the scrappy buildings are too close to each other and to him and even the sky seems to be inching closer and closer to him.

Back at WICKED, whenever Minho woke up from a nightmare he just fell right into the next one. As soon as the Griever had torn him to shreds, he would open his eyes to a new one following him through the walls of the maze. He's almost waiting for lightning to shoot down from the sky and strike him, just to have him wake up with Newt above him, bloodshot eyes and black veins as he reaches out to rip Minho’s eyes out of his skull.

Minho starts running as soon as he thinks he’s far enough away from the camp. The cold night wind whips against his face and his entire body throbs with exhaustion. Still, he keeps on running. Keep moving, he remembers, keep moving and you might stay alive.

His blood rushes in his ears, louder than the waves and the sound of his steps on the ground.

He runs and runs, pushed forward by the panicked rumbling under his skin. His muscles burn and his bones scream with every other step, but he can’t seem to stop himself. Run.

Run, run, run.

It’s the longest he’s ever moved after a nightmare without falling over from exhaustion or slipping on the sand. For a moment, he thinks he might run long enough to get away from everything. Just when the thought hits him, a hand wraps around his arm and tears him backwards.

Minho goes down with a choked yell. Terror takes over his brain, violent and striking. The feeling blinds him. He can’t tell what he’s seeing and what he’s feeling apart. Minho punches without knowing what he’s hitting for, kicks and screams until he trips over his own feet and falls right into the sand.

Noises tear from his throat that he can’t remember hearing himself ever make before, desperate and downright terrified. His heart is beating so fast that it might give out and it would probably not take much more to finally get him to cry.

Someone is on top of him, their weight pushing his legs into the sand. Fingers curl around his wrist, pressing down on his bones and his arterial veins. They hold his arms against his chest, until he can do nothing more than to hopelessly wriggle against the grip the other person has on him.

“Minho!” A voice pushes through the sound of skin moving on sand, and his own pulse echoing through his body. “It’s me!”

The voice sounds familiar, but for a moment Minho fails to place it. Everything in his vision is still dark, still blurry from the panic, the sand that’s flown into his eyes and the tears that have yet to fall. 

“Minho,” the voice tries again, and it’s only then, that he realizes who exactly is wrestling him into the dirt.

“Thomas?” Minho stills, not trying to push against his attacker anymore or slip out of his grasp. Even so, he’s tense. His hands are clenched to fists and his legs are pressed against the weight on top of him. He blinks a couple of times, attempting to make out anything in the darkness. Dust falls from his eyes and what was previously just a wild mess of dark colors shapes into a familiar face.

“It’s me,” Thomas repeats. His eyes are wide and from what Minho can see in the dark, his nose is bloody. Apparently, he did land a hit.

“Are you insane?” The tension doesn’t quite ease out of him yet, neither does the speed of his heart suddenly decline. But Minho can finally let his head fall back against the sand, his fingers loosening and his legs straightening. He takes a few breaths, stiff and shaky. “You scared me half to death, man!”

“Me?” Minho looks back up when Thomas pulls both of their hands towards his chest. “How do you think I felt? I thought you were going to leave.”

“Leave?” Minho exclaims and almost feels a little guilty, because the thought did cross his mind. “Where would I even go?”

“Then what were you doing out here?”

A little bit of blood drips on Minho’s shirt. He doesn’t know if it’s his own hands that are shaking or Thomas’, but they tremble between both of their bodies. They’re close enough that Minho thinks he could hear Thomas heart beat if he just focused enough.

“Get off of me.” He kicks his leg up and Thomas rolls on his side, wiping away the blood on his chin with the back of his hand. It’s nasty but they’ve done much worse. 

With the next exhale, Minho can feel his shoulders loosen up. He runs his hands through his hair and, yes, he's definitely the one who is shaking. Sand falls from his head and a little bit of dust almost gets back into his eyes. His body is on alert, still considering to get up and run again, even further, but Minho is so tired that he can’t even sit.

He closes his eyes, rubs his fingers over his temples.

“You stupid shank,” he mutters, knowing that Thomas will hear, “I thought you were going to kill me or something.”

“It’s just us,” Thomas says back, “I thought you think that WICKED is dead.”

A laugh escapes Minho, but it lacks humor.

They’re silent for a couple more seconds. Minho tries to focus on the waves. He doesn’t particularly like the crashing sound they make but it’s consistent and oddly calming. He breathes in with them, breathes out with them. The echo of his pulse in his ears remains but at least he doesn’t feel like he’s going to hyperventilate anymore.

“So?” Thomas asks after a while.

“So?” Minho repeats, because he has absolutely no idea what his friend is talking about.

“What were you doing out here?”

It’s another one of Thomas’ stupid questions and Minho doesn’t quite know how to answer it. He opens his mouth again and again, each time with a different snarky comment on his lips, just to close it and bite down on his tongue.

“Needed to clear my head,” is what he ends up saying.

“Why?”

“Lots of reasons. Too many to count.”

It’s terribly honest but Minho can’t stop the words from spilling out. It almost makes his heart pick up the pace again,  but he’s too tired to properly care. His eyes burn and his entire body aches. He thinks he might never get back on his feet again. Maybe he’ll just sleep until the sand has covered him entirely.

“Tell me one.” Thomas speaks so softly that Minho almost doesn’t hear him. It’s uncharacteristically cautious, gentler than Minho knows him to be. He waits for the rage to flare up inside of him. He’s a dog that bites even the kindest hand, because it’s all he knows how to do. Surprisingly, the heat never comes. He doesn’t feel the slightest bit angry. All he can feel is absolute exhaustion.

He dares to glance at Thomas from the corner of his eye. His friend is lying on his back, his nose still bleeding over his lip and chin. He has turned his head just enough to be able to look at Minho. Even in the darkness, the bags under his eyes and the paleness of his skin are obvious. 

“You don’t have to,” Thomas adds on, but his gaze burns holes into Minho like he’s trying to reach right into his head and pull out all the thoughts surging through it.

Minho closes his eyes and thinks for a moment.

They left Newt behind, he might be dead. He can’t be sure that WICKED isn’t still out there, on the lookout for them. One of his friends might still die. They have no idea what is out there. He misses the people that died for him. He misses the maze, in his own twisted way. He misses knowing what exactly he is running from.

Eventually, he settles on one thing. It’s genuine enough that it feels like he is reaching a hand out to Thomas, but not as vulnerable as to make him feel like he has laid himself bare.

“Sometimes, I don’t know what’s real.” He grits it out, one word at a time. Every syllable burns on his tongue and cuts into his skin. He wants to run again. he wants to bury himself in the sand.

When Minho turns to look at Thomas again, he’s still looking at him expectantly, staring right into Minho’s soul. He gulps and tries to pull as much out of himself as he can, before he becomes too aware of the skin on his bones.

“WICKED made me see things when I was there.” He pauses, unsure what to call the absolute torture machine they had used on him. “There were both memories and new things that didn’t happen to me. It always ended with me dying. And I could never fight it.”

Minho moves his fingers one by one, flexing them just to be sure that he can still move. He remembers being pressed against a roof, remembers the Griever coming closer and closer until its teeth would dig into his skin and rip him apart. There are no scars on his body, no signs that this actually happened, but it had felt so real that Minho can’t make sense of how it wasn’t actually his body that was being torn to pieces.

“I know that this is real. They never showed me so many people and so many new things,” Minho nearly chokes, on air or on his own words, he isn’t sure, “But sometimes, I still think I might just be trapped in the next nightmare they’ll push me through. I don’t know if all of this can actually be real.”

“I can prove it to you.” The sand next to him makes a low noise when Thomas sits up. He wipes away even more blood with the sleeve of his shirt. Minho thinks he should probably go to the health tent as soon as they’re back. He lost so much blood when he was shot that even a nosebleed seems dangerous.

“Yeah?” he asks nonetheless, trying a smug grin, “How?”

“Can I do anything?” Thomas looks at him like he is their maze, puzzles and traps at every turn. Like Minho is a difficult question that he can focus on until he has solved it, something to keep his mind busy. He doesn’t quite know if he finds it irritating or comforting.

“Whatever.” He waves his hand uncaringly, “You already scared me so much that I don’t think this could feel any more real.”

Thomas just rolls his eyes in response. This time, the grin that appears on Minho’s face isn’t one he forces but one that appears naturally. He tries to bite it back, but it’s hard to, when Thomas looks almost overexaggeratedly annoyed.

“Get up!” Out of a sudden, Thomas’ previously exasperated face lights up. He jumps on his feet, swaying a little but standing nonetheless. He doesn’t smile or grin, but Minho can still feel the triumphant excitement radiate off of him. 

“Do I have to?”

“Minho, you lazy shank, just get up. I have an idea.”

His legs practically yell at him to stop, when Minho slowly pushes himself up. He wants to lay back down, wants to let his body rest, but he can’t bring himself to say no to his friend, when he’s nearly vibrating in place. He attempts to clean off his hands with his pants, but they’re still dusty after.

“What now?” 

“Come on.” Bleeding and slightly unsure on his feet, Thomas pushes Minho’s shoulder towards the shore. 

“Thomas,” Minho groans, because he has an idea where this is going, but the other doesn’t even give him a chance to protest. He just pushes against his back again, shoving him forward.

Neither of them get out of their clothes. It’s piercingly cold, even through his clothing and it makes the fabric of his pants cling to his skin. His socks are wet immediately and Minho almost falls into the water when a particularly harsh waves pushes against him.

Thomas, shivering all over, doesn’t stop walking until the water reaches his stomach. When they stop, Minho almost wishes they hadn’t. Not moving in the icy water is even worse than wading through it. It stings everywhere it can reach and Minho is sure that it cuts through his skin and his bones all at once.

“This feel real to you?” The question is clearly meant to sound smug, but Minho can barely take Thomas seriously with how hard he’s trembling from the cold. He has wrapped his arms around himself, chewing at his bottom lip and hunching his back.

“It feels cold,” Minho gives back. His teeth clatter when he speaks but he tries not to make it as obvious as Thomas. Said boy looks him right in the eye. There’s something there that Minho can’t quite place, it’s not bright enough to be hopeful, not sharp enough to be accusing and not miserable enough to be disappointed. Still, Minho feels almost obligated to say more.

“It does feel real.” And he’s not lying. The sensation of the cold all over his skin isn’t pleasant, but it’s so strong that Minho can at least let himself feel it. It takes up enough space to make his mind go blank and even though his body is tense from shivering, he feels less pent up than he did before. “Thanks. Or whatever.”

“Ungrateful.” Thomas straightens from his hunched position to shove Minho further into the waves. He grins and it’s weak, but it’s there nonetheless.

Minho’s heart squeezes with it. He didn't realize how much he missed seeing Thomas look at him like this.

They may not be in the maze anymore, but it doesn’t change the fact that they are both runners through and through. Minho, brash and terrified, and Thomas, curious and endlessly brave, could never have been anything else.

Minho loves the way the ground feels under his feet, the way everything passes him by. He likes having a task, doing something useful, providing any kind of help that he can with all the limits that the circumstances have set for him.

Thomas loves the freedom. He looks around the trees and the sand with a fascination that Minho wants to drink up. When he’s running, it seems more like he’s flying - so far up in his head that he can’t find back to the ground.

It might be why they’re good for each other. Minho keeps Thomas grounded and Thomas keeps Minho afloat. And they’re both still running.

A part of Minho expects Thomas to ask questions, just like he did when he was a Greenie back in the maze. He waits for his best friend to chime up, to wonder about animals and ask questions about what they have already seen, and if they had properly looked around the place.

But Thomas is just quiet. He trots after Minho, eyes wandering over their surroundings. Never once does his gaze stray or find something that leaves him so curious he trips over his own feet.

Instead, Minho almost falls over. He’s so busy staring at Thomas, searching for his usual infatuation with everything he hasn’t fully figured out yet, that he can’t seem to focus on himself anymore. Only after he stumbles over a root, he catches himself.

He’s not here to figure out Thomas, he’s here to map out the forest. 

They keep running in silence. The only things that Minho can hear are his own strained breathing, Thomas’ quiet pants behind them and their steps on the soft ground of the forest. It’s a nice ground to run on, less hard than the floor in the maze and not as slippery and slowing as the sand of the scorch. Here and there, Minho has to make sure he doesn’t trip over a root or run against a low branch, but overall it’s smooth sailing.

Mapping out the forest feels similar to when Minho first started running around the maze to determine its pattern. He simultaneously feels more and less hopeful about the forest than he did about the maze back then. More, because this time, he doesn’t have to find an escape from the deadliest place on earth, well aware that it comes with a dozen lives left to his hands. Less, because the forest ist wider, practically endless and Minho doesn’t even really know what they are hoping to find.

But the longer they take to find it, the longer Minho has something that keeps him going, a reason to keep him running.

They take a break when the sun is at its highest, burning down on them even through the protective branches over their heads. Minho is sweating, struggling to properly breathe, and so is Thomas.

“Alright,” Minho huffs, “We should probably rest.”

Thomas doesn’t respond. He just stops dead in his tracks and looks around where they’ve run to.

They’re at the clearing that has become one of the main places that Minho can accurately pinpoint in the forest. It’s one of the few places where the closely spaced trees part, encircling a small patch of high grass. A tree that’s conveniently fallen over at the side of it, has served as an improvised bench for Minho, Sonya and the other runners a couple of times when they decided to take a break there.

“You might want to sit down and breathe for a second.” Minho lets himself fall down onto the tree, patting the space beside him. “It’s your first day running and I absolutely will not carry your unconscious body back to the camp.”

Thomas rolls his eyes, but he does sit down next to Minho. He leaves a habituated difference between them, just enough for another person to fit on the tree with them. The space feeds into a hole within Minho’s chest, one that’s been growing from the first day in the maze and tore wide open after he turned his back on Newt. He doesn’t shift to remove the hollow shape of their former friend, too scared that it might erase him entirely.

The feeling of missing Newt isn’t a pleasant one. It’s heavy and hollow and wrong. But Minho thinks that it might feel even worse to not miss him anymore, to just forget him entirely.

“So?” Minho asks into the silence, because he can’t bear to think about Newt any longer. “What do you think?”

Thomas doesn’t look up. He’s leaning on his legs, fiddling with his hands. He pulls at his fingers, stretches them, folds them neatly against his palms.

“It’s green.” 

“Wow,” Minho exaggeratedly exclaims, “Do you consider stating the obvious a fulltime job?”

“There’s a lot of trees.” The fiddling gets faster, sharper in movement. “Do we plan on mapping out the entire thing?”

“I don’t know.” Minho’s eyes are trained on Thomas’ hands. A part of him wants to close his hands around them, at least keep an illusion of calmness, but he knows that Thomas needs the fidgeting. “We’re just trying to find out if we can find something useful. Grains, animals, berries. All that.”

“What about other people?” The way Thomas asks the question, like he thinks they haven’t considered the possibility before he woke up and thought of it, reminds Minho of when they first met. A little bit of that Thomas - the restless, curious, kind of self-important Thomas - shines through and it makes it a little bit harder for Minho to be mad at the tone of his voice.

He likes this Thomas just as much as he liked Thomas in the maze or in the scorch, and he wants to get to know him just as well, but the thought that Thomas, the way he had first met him, hasn’t been swallowed whole by grief and violence, makes Minho feel a little lighter inside.

“No one around here.” Shrugging, he leans back onto the tree. “If there is anyone on this island with us, then they’re somewhere behind the forest. I doubt it, though. This place seems almost completely untouched.”

Silence. Minho can practically see the gears turn in Thomas’ head. His eyes flicker from left to right, never focusing on anything specific, and he grabs his fingers so hard that Minho fears he might break them. He wants to crack open his brain and take just a single glimpse inside. Thomas’ mind is the hardest place he has ever tried to map out and maybe, if they both were other people, Minho would have given up already.

“That’s good, right?” 

“Yeah, probably.” 

They both know that people doesn’t mean Immunes. People doesn’t mean peace, has never meant it for them. Minho would rather be entirely alone on this island, building a village from scrap, than to have to fight even more Cranks or other people.

Thomas keeps on fidgeting and it’s slowly starting to make Minho nervous. Maybe, he thinks, it wasn’t a good idea to bring Thomas outside so soon after he woke up. Maybe he should have taken more time to get used to all of this, to properly get back on his feet.

“Are you good to go again?” Minho asks. It’s not really what he wants to say. What he does want to say is that maybe they should just go back. He wants to ask if Thomas is alright, if he’s sure that he can do this. He wants to know what it is that Thomas is thinking about.

He hopes that Thomas can hear it even though he isn’t saying it out loud.

“Are you?” The question is provocative in the way that Thomas has always been, serious but poking at spots that he knows will get Minho to react exactly the way he wants him to.

“Definitely,” he says and hurries back on his feet, “Don’t fall behind!”

And then they run again.

The gasp is quiet yet it echoes through the tent like a scream. Minho almost flinches at the sound even though he is the one who made it. Maybe even because of it. He inhales deeply yet shakily.

He doesn’t feel like he needs to get up and run. He remembers the icy water against his skin, sickering through his clothes, and he exhales. He can remember that this is real. He can remember that everything that has been done to him is a part of the past. They’re safe. Safer than they’ve ever been.

Minho breathes again. He inhales and his shoulders move up to his ears. His chest puffs. When he exhales, his body stays just as tense, like he’s holding his breath without realizing it.

Making as little noise as possible on a shaky hammock, Minho turns around. 

And looks right into Thomas’ open eyes.

He sleeps right next to Minho, with Brenda perched in the improvised bed at both their heads. She’s still sound asleep, making small noises while she moves, but asleep. Minho knows that she sleeps just as restlessly as he does, as they all do.

“Did you have a nightmare?” Thomas breathes into the near silence. His eyebrows are furrowed with something akin to concern and Minho rolls his eyes.

“I promise you that more than half the people in this room are having nightmares as we speak,” he hisses back, “I wouldn’t be surprised if you woke up because you had a nightmare.”

Thomas doesn’t respond to that. He doesn’t need to. His eyes darken and he looks down. Minho knows what that means. He doesn’t need to see Thomas’ hands to know that he’s moving them agitatedly.

“See?” He wishes he could be a bit more triumphant, but it doesn’t really feel satisfying to know that Thomas had a dream bad enough to wake him up in the middle of the night.

“I’m not the one who’s trying to run around the world,” Thomas snaps back. He’s loud enough that Fry, lying somewhere close to Brenda, mutters a sleepy “Shut up, Thomas”.

“I just needed to be outside.”

“You can be outside and not sprint like you’re trying to escape from a Griever.”

Minho winces at that. He’s aware that he hasn’t told Thomas exactly what WICKED made him see. Thomas doesn’t know that the feeling of being chased, eaten and killed by one of these beasts sits deep in his bones, a phantom pain that never eases. Still, the comment is enough for Minho to turn back around so he doesn’t have to face Thomas any longer.

“Hey.” Persistent as always, Thomas continues to whisper. “Minho. Come back”

“No.” 

“Minho.”

“Go to sleep.”

“Minho.”

“What?” The vigor with which Minho rolls over almost sends him flying out of his hammock. Someone in the room hisses a “Psst” sound that’s even louder than Minho’s whispered yell. 

“Don’t just turn around.”

Ignoring the people that their nightly conversation might have woken up, Thomas frowns at him.

“Why not?” Minho tries to cross his arms but it’s awfully hard to do when you’re lying on your side. “I’m trying to sleep.”

“Liar.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Wow, Minho, I love you, too.” Thomas’ voice drips with sarcasm and it’s the easiest that he’s ever been to read. Sarcasm and deflection are languages Minho speaks fluently and he notices them just as well as he uses them. The fabric of Thomas’s hammock moves tirelessly where Minho assumes his hands are and he just knows that the other is fidgeting.

“Spit it out and then we can both go to bed.”

“We’re already in bed.” 

“Will you two shut up and sleep already?” Ada, one of the girls from Maze B sits up in her hammock across the room. She glares at them and even though she couldn’t look more different with her short, dark hair, bronze skin and heavylidded eyes, the tone of her voice and the look she throws them reminds him of Newt. Minho can see and hear him so clearly that it shoots through him like a bullet. 

Something burns behind his eyes, but he blinks it away.

“We’re almost done,” is all he says, “I’m sure Thomas will let us all go to sleep soon.”

She huffs and purses her lips. It’s very much unlike Newt, not at all resembling his scolding, eternally annoyed yet always attentive demeanor, and Minho can breathe him out again. 

“I can’t sleep.” Thomas’ confession is so sudden that Minho needs a second to realize what’s happening. When he turns to look at him, Thomas’ gaze is fixated on his hands. “I’ve been awake for an hour or something.”

“And you didn’t wake me up?”

Thomas’ eyes shoot up to meet his and Minho doesn’t quite know where his own words came from, he just knows that he stands by them. 

“If you can go ice bathing with me, then I can sacrifice a few hours of sleep for you.” 

“How would you even help me?” Thomas raises his eyebrows almost provocatively. With every other person, Minho might have snapped back, but this is Thomas and so a grin spreads on his face, even though he tries his hardest to hide it.

“I can talk until you fall asleep.” It’s supposed to be a joke but as soon as the words come out of his mouth, Minho realizes that he’s serious. Back in the maze, during the first days, the silence had been unbearable. The only reason why he had gotten even a few hours of sleep was, because he had focused on listening to whatever conversation Newt and Alby would have at the time. 

“I’m pretty sure that everyone else wants you to be quiet.” Despite the glance Thomas throws Ada’s way, there is a slight smirk on his lips. Deep down, he’s just as insufferable as Minho.

“I don’t care what they want,” Minho says outright, and then, with a teasing grin, “Besides, I can be quiet.”

The look Thomas gives him is absolutely deadpan. A snicker bubbles up in Minho’s throat and it’s the first time in months that he actually feels like laughing. He bites it back until he thinks his lips might bleed, because that would definitely wake up a couple of people.

“Okay,” Thomas disrupts Minho’s sad attempts at holding back his laughter, “Then talk to me.”

It feels familiar. The way Minho and Thomas pull each other forward. Even in the scorch when Minho had been coined as the leader, when Thomas had followed him without doubt or question, Minho had followed Thomas just as much. It shouldn’t work; the way they both lead each other onwards whilst running after the other, but for some reason it does. 

It’s nice to know that this, at least, is something that Minho doesn’t have to miss.

And so, he talks. He talks until he’s certain that Thomas has fallen asleep and only then does he close his eyes and try to get some sleep himself. He’s hoarse and tired when he wakes up but he doesn’t mind it in the slightest.

It doesn’t happen often that Minho sleeps in. He’s used to waking up at the crack of dawn and, even if he wasn’t, his sleep is too light for him to actually stay in bed long after the sun rises.

The one time that it happens, no one thinks to wake him up.

Instead, Minho finds himself in a near empty tent, sunlight shining through between the fabric. He blinks a couple of times, tries to make sense of the fact that he woke up late enough for the sun to get into the tent. He has runner duty, with Thomas and Sonya, but the two of them don’t seem to be laying in their beds anymore. The only other people who are still inside are the two who were on night watch duty yesterday.

Minho doesn’t really know how to feel. His body feels heavier than it has in a long time, the load of a full night of sleep still weighing down his bones. He can’t remember when he last slept this long without waking up, sweat running down his face and his entire body tense with fear. He feels good, a little less rigid than he usually does after waking up,  but he’s still tired. He could go to sleep for another three days and it still wouldn’t be enough.

Even before this, Minho was fully aware of how exhausted he was, but now he actually feels it. His bones, his muscles and his skin all feel like a gear wheel that hasn’t been oiled in ages. He gets up slowly, every movement taking up more effort than he usually puts into a good sprint.

He groans quietly once he has fought his way out of the hammock. His legs feel almost as weak as they had when Thomas and Newt had rescued him from WICKED, after months of barely moving at all. Maybe Minho should have taken it slow rather than going back to running for hours on end after not training for that long. 

His body hurting with every step, Minho drags himself out of the tent. The sun is too bright and too hot. It stings in his eyes and Minho almost expects it to burn right through his clothes. He groans again. Maybe if he was someone else, he would consider going back into the tent and just falling straight back asleep.

“Look who’s finally gracing us with his presence.” This time, when Minho groans, it has nothing to do with his overworked limbs. He can picture the mocking smirk on Brenda’s face without having to look at her. 

He feels like she just became more insufferable when they got to the safe haven. When he told Frypan, he said that it would serve Minho right. He’s not sure what exactly that meant but he isn’t a fan of the implication.

“Oh, shut up,” Minho mutters. He rubs his eyes and stares straight into the sun until the dots dancing in front of his vision fade away. “Where’s your boyfriend?”

It comes out more bitter than he means for it to.

“My boyfriend?” Brenda repeats incredulously. 

When Minho finally decides that he can look at her and not punch her right in the face, her expression is exactly the one he thought she would have. She’s leaning against a tree, hip cocked and her arms crossed. She isn’t grinning anymore, but her eyebrows are raised like she expects Minho to know himself, how stupid what he just said was.

“So?” Trying not to let her get under his skin, Minho stretches his back. The pull of muscle is both slightly painful and satisfying. “Where is he?”

“Out. Sonya and him went without you.” Brenda shrugs and pushes herself off of the tree. “If you hurry, you might find a little bit of food left in the kitchen.”

“Why didn’t they wake me up?” Minho asks, ignoring the rest of what she said.

“Minho.” Something complicated happens on Brenda’s face. She rolls her eyes, but her brows furrow like she’s trying to show two feelings at once. “I know we’ve had our issues -”

He scoffs. She sighs and shoots him a glare.

“I know we’ve had our issues,” she starts again, “But even I know that you would’ve crashed sooner or later if you would have kept going like you did.”

“I got struck by lightning.” He’s sick of this conversation and of her. He doesn’t know what makes it so easy for her to get under his skin, but he can feel it itching already. “If you think running a little will kill me, then you’re stupid.”

“Everyone needs sleep, asshole.”

“I sleep.”

She gives him a doubtful look before she continues, “And you’re not just running a little. I don’t think I’ve seen you sit down for longer than two minutes ever since we got here.”

“So? I’m helping.” Brenda looks like she wants to say something else, but Minho cuts her off before she can even open her mouth. “And don’t act like I’m the only one who’s still on the run. I’m not stupid. The only reason why Thomas hasn’t asked you about the gun you keep carrying around, thinking no one will see, is because he’s too busy making heart eyes at you to notice.”

“That’s not the same thing,” she protests.

“Isn’t it? You deal with it in your way and I deal with it in mine.”

A triumphant feeling burns under his skin, when Minho catches the sour expression on Brenda’s face and the way her shoulders have shot up. It feels good to know that he can get under her skin just as well. She doesn’t say anything after and that lets the triumph flare up even hotter.

“Tell Thomas to wake me up next time,” Minho says, “I’m going for a run. Alone if I have to.”

“Maybe you should talk to Thomas yourself!” Brenda yells after him when he walks away. “Seems like you have a lot more to tell him than just that.”

Minho grits his teeth. His knuckles burn when he clenches his fists, closed so tightly that his nails dig into the palm of his hand. Anger brews inside of him, boiling hot and as steady as he knows it. He considers swirling around, spitting everything in her face that he’s been swallowing down for the sake of the group, but he knows that that would only make it worse. It doesn’t feel good to yell at Brenda. If only because she will snap back with something that’s too true and too vulnerable for Minho’s liking.

The only good thing about yelling at Brenda is that she never holds him to it. They both know well enough that neither of them chooses to bite. It just happens to them. Still, Minho is in no mood to feel even worse than he already does, so he doesn’t even open his mouth.

Instead, he flips her off over his shoulder and walks away.

When Thomas comes back later that day, Minho can’t bear to talk to him. He thinks about what Brenda said, thinks about what he might have to tell Thomas, and he fears that it might just come out of him with no control. He bites down on his tongue, until he thinks it might bleed, and lets Thomas do the talking. 

The next time that Minho has a nightmare violent enough to get him out of bed, Thomas doesn’t catch up with him later on. Minho watches him stir awake the second that he’s on his feet. They only need to exchange a glance that Minho thinks means “go back to sleep” but Thomas seems to think means “I need your help”, and he steps out of his hammock and walks outside with Minho.

It doesn’t feel steady or reassuring. If anything, Minho only feels more nervous. He still wants to run, still wants to move until his feet give out, but he doesn’t want to force Thomas to run with him nor does he want to be held back.

“You wanna go swimming again?” It doesn’t sound careful or hesitant when Thomas asks it and Minho couldn’t be more grateful for it.

“Skinny dipping?” Minho grins back and it is not even half as convincing as he wants it to be. Thomas doesn’t mention it. That’s just how they are. Minho knows Thomas and Thomas knows him; there’s no need to say it out loud.

“Spare me.”

The laugh that escapes Minho then almost feels real. If the terror of his dreams wasn’t still sitting heavy on his chest, dragging him further and further down, then it might have been genuine. This way, it is a well-meaning shadow of himself. Thomas gives him a small grin nonetheless.

And then, because Minho is just himself, nothing more and nothing less, he starts running. It’s not a sprint, not the desperate movement that kept him going the last times this happened, but it’s speed and it’s burning pain and a pleasant rush in his veins that reminds him that he’s alive, vision or not.

He stumbles into the water. Thomas is closer behind him than he thought and he follows with little distance. The water splashes around them, salty liquid landing in his face and hair. The beach has a certain kind of smell to it that Minho drinks up the best he can. It’s different from the artificial glade, the sterile WICKED laboritorium and the burned up scorch. That's what he likes about it.

It’s good, so good that Minho feels dizzy with it, but it’s not enough to ease the desperate tingling in his veins. His fingers drum against his legs as he thrashes through the waves, farther than they had gone the last time. He walks until the water reaches his neck, and only then does he stop.

“Minho,” Thomas pants behind him, “Were you going to warn me?”

There’s no answer, genuine or sarcastic, that Minho can think of. He tries to feel into it, focus only on the ice cold water around him. It’s there, it’s clearly there. It burns, just like it did last time, but it feels duller now. The cut isn’t as sharp and Minho doesn’t know if the water is warmer than last time or if he can just feel it less. 

He’s up in the water, engulfed by it. It sloshes around his neck and deep down, in the pits of Minho’s imagination, he starts to fear that it will harden, curl around him and suffocate the life out of him. His clothes cling to him just like last time but this time, Minho regrets not having torn them off. They itch at his skin but not enough to cover up the storm that’s brewing beneath it.

“Minho?” 

“It’s not working.” The water splashes when Minho swirls around. It gets into his hair and his face, but he can’t bring himself to care. He can barely feel it anyway.

“What do you mean?” Thomas is shivering so violently that his entire body is shaking. “Are you not cold? I’m freezing.”

“It’s not cold enough.” 

Minho doesn’t know what to do. He wants to bite and punch and kick, wants to rip the entire world to pieces just to know if he can. He needs to get out of the water, because when it’s not cold. The only thing it does is limit his movement. He can hardly get forward or backwards, held back by the current, and even though he can still move, it suddenly feels too much like being paralyzed in his own body, moved when he doesn’t want to and still when all he wants to do is run.

Maybe this is what will happen next. Maybe the ocean will swallow him down until he can’t breathe anymore, until the pressure lets him implode, until he dies just to die again.

He wishes he could get out of this, wants to tear himself out of his own brain, crush his skull until he can be himself again.

He doesn’t know what is worse: how terrified he feels that this might all be an illusion, unable to ever truly be sure about it, or how endlessly angry he is without being able to properly let it out. There’s no Chancellor Paige here, no Rat Man, no Teresa, absolutely no one who he can grab and shake and punch until the rage bleeds out of him. There’s not even Newt, who knew anger just as well as Minho did, but was better at keeping it down.

There is only Thomas, a few steps away from him, just far enough into the water that it reaches up to his stomach.

Minho doesn’t want to hurt him. He doesn’t think he’s ever wanted to harm anyone less, but his hands are urging to do something and a part of Minho fears that breaking is the only thing they are good for. Everything he has ever tried to hold onto has slipped out of his grasp.

“Punch me,” Minho breathes. His hands are underwater but they’re still shaking. He wades through the water, his movement slow and limited and terribly difficult. He stops when he’s right in front of Thomas. There is barely enough space between them for Thomas to actually get his hand up to Minho’s face, but he asks him anyway. “Punch me.”

“What?” 

“Punch me,” Minho repeats, steadier, “Just do it.”

“Why would I do that?” From the way Thomas looks at him then, he must think that Minho is completely out of his mind.

“You said you would do anything, right? Anything to prove that this is real?”

“Yes, but -”

“Then punch me,” Minho hisses. He reaches out to grab Thomas’ hands, instruct them to crash against his face, but Thomas pulls away.

“I don’t want to hurt you.” His voice is shaky. He looks terrified all of a sudden. Minho doesn’t know why, what exactly is so scary about his demand, and he burns with it.

“I know you don’t.” His body feels like it’s on fire. He needs to do something, anything, but he is not going to hurt Thomas unprompted. It’s the only thing holding him back, “You won’t hurt me.”

“Minho -”

“Thomas.” He didn’t intend to be this loud. He can’t recognize himself in his own voice, distorted by anger and desperation. He breathes. He doesn’t want to be like this, but something pushes against his skin from the inside, wretched and twisted, urgent to break out of his body. When he opens his mouth again, he puts in all the effort to sound calm. But even though it’s nothing more than a whisper, the desperation still bleeds through. “Thomas, please.”

Something happens with Thomas, when he says this. His hands twitch, his eyes darken and then, finally, he swings at him. Knuckles hit Minho’s cheek and he stumbles back, dazed and stricken.

“Are you going to fight back or what?” Thomas’ voice is shaky, he’s still shivering, but he isn’t hunched over and there is not a hint of doubt on his face. He bares his teeth, vicious and angry, and Minho doesn’t know what he did to set him off like this, but he doesn’t care.

He lunges through the water and shoves Thomas so hard that he falls right over. Something switches in the blink of an eye. Minho doesn’t have to plead anymore, because Thomas comes at him again and again. Skin splits, bones collide, blood drips from their cheeks, lips and noses into the water. With every hit that Minho lands, he takes another inhale. With every time that Thomas hits him, he breathes out.

He’s fighting, he’s moving, he’s alive.

When they’ve been at it for a while, Minho’s knuckles entirely split open and Thomas shirt stained with red, Thomas surges at him. His arm wrap around Minho, wrestling him into the water. Thomas pushes him under the waves, face pressed against Minho’s chest and he wonders if he can hear his heartbeat. 

He wraps his arms around Thomas and at first, it’s just another act of violence. At first, Minho just wants to take him down with him, tearing at his clothes and digging his nails into his best friend’s back. He doesn’t let go when his body pushes through the water and he doesn’t let go when Thomas has fallen, either. 

The salt burns in the open wounds on his knuckles, but Minho can’t bring himself to care. As soon as he had his arms around Thomas, he knew that he couldn’t just let go again. They’re in an uncomfortable state between diving and floating on the surface, bodies clashing against each other. Minho swallows salty water when he thinks it’s safe to breathe again and Thomas’ head hits against his chin, but neither of them let go.

It’s messy and even more desperate than the frantic punches they threw at each other before, but it’s the most that Minho has felt for the past days. He presses closer and closer until there’s no more space between them and even then, he wishes he could be closer. He wants to melt into Thomas, wants to leave his body behind in the waves and settle in the only person he’s never once lost hope in.

Life goes on as it always does. Minho runs and Thomas follows. Thomas leads and Minho doesn’t question him, not even for a moment. The cabin in their camp grows sturdier by the day, no longer just a concept but a structure. 

The safe haven builds its own routines, like the glade and the scorch had done. It’s just as twisted, full of holes that they have to fill as they go and loose parts that seem to shift everyday, but it’s routine nonetheless. 

Just like Minho and Thomas run, everyone else seems to find their place. Sonya shows around the Immunes who didn’t grow up in the maze, Harriet disappears in the woods to hunt, Frypan cooks (as always). Aris learns about medication and health and Minho doesn’t trust him one bit to heal his wounds or help him when he’s gotten sick. Brenda keeps watch, a nervous guard dog waiting on the edge of the camp for all of them to come back home, and Gally helps build up their cabin. 

They wake up, they do what they have to do and they go back to sleep. 

And when Minho wakes up from another nightmare, trembling all over and agonized by the overwhelming need to run, Thomas follows after him. What starts as a clumsy attempt to find any little thing to ground Minho, slowly but surely shapes itself into a ritual.

“Is this real?” Minho asks.

“Yes,” Thomas responds.

“Prove it.”

He does. Some of the times it works better than others but it usually is enough to pull Minho out of the spiral in his head and back into the world around him. 

Thomas forces him to do a handstand, wraps him in rope and demands he find his way out, jumps from one of the cliffs into the icy water and pulls Minho into a tight hug.

“I don’t think I’ll ever feel better,” Thomas confesses one night, when Minho is shaking so much that he can’t even get himself to move. “I will grieve forever and I will feel guilty forever. It won’t go away.”

Minho can feel the words hit deep inside of him, stronger than a bullet or a blade. It strikes him so hard that, at least for a moment, he’s absolutely certain that this is real. He doesn’t know if it’s because the thought of Thomas being miserable for the rest of their lives violently knocks the air out of his lungs, because what he’s saying is such a perfect mirror of what Minho himself feels or because the last time someone he cared about said something like this, he ended up with a broken leg. Either way, it squeezes in his chest until he tears up. 

Neither of them says anything after that. They just sit with it.

“Tell me something true,” Thomas demands another night. Brenda had seen them walk out then and when she had asked what was going on, Minho had barely been able to keep himself from knocking out her teeth.

“I’m sick of everyone.” 

At that, Thomas frowns like it isn’t quite what he wants to hear. 

“Not you, obviously,” Minho says, kicking away a stone in his way, “But most of the others. I did so much for them, but I still feel like it’s not enough. And they don’t make it any better. Sometimes I just want to be alone.”

He’s not the leader anymore, if he has ever been. Vince and Jorge are older, Sonya is more determined, Harriet is more empathetic and Thomas is, as always, the one with the plan. None of this changes the fact that Minho feels like he has to pull everyone forward. Back in the scorch, all he had to do was go and everyone else would follow. Maybe they would complain, but they would follow. Recently, Minho just feels like everything he tries to say, drowns in everyone else’s ideas and thoughts.

It should be comforting to know that he doesn’t have to be responsible for the lives of everyone around him anymore, but all it does, is make him feel like he failed. He lost so many people, he got himself captured by WICKED, he left his best friend behind and now he can barely keep himself from lashing out anymore.

He used to be so far ahead of everyone, always a runner, always a leader, but now he’s the last in line, no matter how fast he runs and how hard he tries.

“Minho.” There’s something about the way that Thomas says his name, that makes Minho feel like his body is burning up and running cold at the same time. He can feel so much from just those five letters that he feels dizzy with it. It’s so intense that his entire skin tingles from it, and yet it’s almost uncharacteristically soft in a way, that makes Minho feel like all his emotions are crawling up his throat, ready to finally spill out.

“Yeah,” he croaks out. It’s pathetic how his voice breaks from just that. Maybe all of these feelings that he’s kept locked away are finally breaking through, threatening to shatter him completely.

“You’re the one who got us here.” It’s not true, not really, but Thomas sounds like he believes it. “I wouldn’t have made it half as far without you. You got me through the maze and through the scorch and farther than that. If you hadn’t believed in me, I could have never -”

The sentence ends there it seems. Thomas closes his mouth. His brows are furrowed, his lips quiver and Minho kind of thinks that he might start crying. He hopes it won’t happen. If only because he’s sure that seeing Thomas cry, would be all it would take for him to break down as well. And he doesn’t know if he can pick himself back up afterwards.

“Thanks, man.” It’s all that he can think of saying and he forces his lips into a smile. “For everything, you know?”

He doesn’t say what that entails, but he doesn’t need to. Thomas knows that he means.

“Don’t thank me.” Stupid, humble Thomas doesn’t just take it for himself, but Minho didn’t expect him to. “I told you, I need you.”

It makes Minho want to throw up. He stumbles over the rocky path they’re walking, knocked over by what he just heard. It could mean everything. That Thomas needs Minho’s physical strength, his fight, his never once wavering support or the one thing that Minho doesn’t even dare to think. It might mean all of it at once.

He doesn’t say anything about it. They just keep walking and life goes on, as it always does.

When Minho, Thomas and Sonya run back into the camp, the bottom of the sun just about touches the line of the horizon far, far away. It smells like food and most of the others have gathered around the bonfire, sitting on the wooden boxes, stones and self-built chairs they collected during the past months.

Harriet hurries over to crush Sonya into a hug like they haven’t seen each other in ages. She presses a kiss against her temple and Minho looks away, feeling physically unable to bare witness to such an open display of affection.

Farther away, not running towards them like she was worried they had died, Brenda stands up. Gally, Frypan and Aris, who are all sitting around her on one of the selfmade, slightly bumpy benches, don’t get up, but they all turn around to look over. Frypan waves at them with a wide grin, Gally rolls his eyes and Aris just looks. That alone is enough to get Minho’s blood boiling.

Sure, they’re sort of friends now and Minho can recognize that Aris has helped them, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t still hold a little bit of disdain for him.

“Missed us?” Minho asks nonetheless, a grin plastered on his face as he drops down next to Gally. Thomas sits down on the other side of the group, next to Aris. The tiniest bit of displeasure rises in Minho with how far they’re apart from each other now, but he pushes it away. It leaves a bitter taste on his tongue.

“Only Thomas,” Brenda returns, but the smile she gives him is nothing but friendly, if a little teasing. “You could have stayed in the woods.”

“But who would watch out for him then?” Minho asks and winks at Thomas. His friend just rolls his eyes and looks over to where a bunch of others are getting their food.

“Did you eat already?”

“A little while ago, yeah.” Gally shrugs and leans back. “We didn’t know when you’d be back.”

“There’s still a lot left over,” Aris adds, a little too eager to please.

“Good.” Throwing back his head, Minho groans. “I’m starving.”

He jumps up from the bench and as soon as he moves, he can feel his muscles throb, sore from running the entire day. He winces slightly, but hopes that no one else notices. The least thing he needs right now is someone being on his back about overworking himself yet again.

“I need something, too.” Before he can get up, Frypan is already on his feet, reaching a hand out to stop Thomas from moving. Minho silently notices that Fry hasn’t said anything ever since they arrived even though he’s usually the first to ask about whether or not they had a good day and what they found this time. 

“I’ll get you something.” Frypan isn’t looking at Thomas when he speaks. He’s eyeing Minho and it feels far less warm than the friendly smile he’s giving the others.

“Okay,” Thomas stutters, clearly surprised.

Minho’s hand twitches, almost reaching out to grab Thomas by the wrist and drag him along anyway. It’s not that he dislikes Frypan or doesn’t want to talk to him, but Thomas and him have gotten food together almost every single day, and it’s one of the many things they got used to, that Minho doesn’t want to change even for a day.

“Let’s go.”

Not waiting for Minho to say or do anything else, Frypan steers towards the tent that has become their kitchen. As usual when they’re eating dinner, the curtains forming the entry have been pulled to the side, making space for the scrappy table that Frypan and the other Immunes who help him cook, use to present the food on. 

It’s nothing spectacular, it never is. The best thing about it are the pieces that are left from the deer that Harriet managed to catch a few weeks ago. It was everyone’s highlight of the month when she came back home with it, dragging it along with the brightest smile that Minho had ever seen on her. 

Aside from that, all that they have really managed to find were a couple of wild berries and grapes as well as a, mostly eaten, loaf of bread that they managed to make from grains that Ada discovered in a field not too far away from the camp. It’s an even scrappier meal than what they got to eat in the glade but so much better than everything Minho had during the scorch or at WICKED.

“So, how are you?” 

Fry breaks the silence between them as soon as both of them stand at the table, waiting behind a couple of Immunes that came to grab food as well. The five of them are younger than Minho and they haven’t been in the maze for as long as they can remember. They whisper with each other and one of them laughs loudly until she catches Minho’s eyes and goes quiet, face flushing bright red in embarrassment.

The sight squeezes harshly at Minho’s heart. It’s not that he forgot about all the people he lost along the way, but in moments like these, he becomes painfully aware of the fact that they’re not there anymore. Newt and Alby were never the types to whisper and giggle, neither was Ben, but they had been his friends. What had connected Minho to them had been the same kind of unsaid trust and silent love that he can see with the five Immunes in front of him.

He wonders if he will ever stop mourning them.

“I’m good,” he answers Frypan’s question. He tries to sound at ease, careless, exactly the opposite of what he feels right now. “You?”

“Good.”

Silence.

It’s difficult with Frypan. There will always be something to connect them, something that has tied Minho to every single Glader despite what he thought of them. They spent two years at most and a month at least together in that place, they’ve gone through losses, small victories, questions and answers together. Even though there has been another maze, Minho still feels like they’re the only ones who are really capable of understanding what it was like. They speak the same way and they mourn the same people.

However, Minho and Frypan have never been particularly close. They had watched people die together, had fought together and run together, too, but aside from the shared nightmares, there isn’t much that connects them. With Gally, at least, there is violent hatred that’s slowly strating to morph into a closer friendship.

But Fry and Minho barely talked. During the maze and in the scorch, Frypan had been close with Clint, Jeff, Jack and Zart. They had died one after the other and Minho supposes that there was nothing else for him to do but to try and connect to the only people left. Minho knows that he got closer to Thomas and Newt while Minho himself was trapped by WICKED, apart from his friends. 

They know more of each other than most of the other people around him, but Minho still doesn’t know how to talk to him.

“Is there a reason why you came here with me or did Thomas just look this frail to you?” The question comes out wrong. Like a joke that’s been sharpened, not really funny but not really cutting either.

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you for a while.” Frypan shrugs. “But it’s kind of hard to catch you away from Thomas. It’s like someone stitched you guys together.”

It’s supposed to be a joke, Minho knows, but it doesn’t really feel like one. Thomas, at this point, has become such a vital part of his life that every moment when they’re not around each other is starting to feel like Minho is lacking a limb. He leans against someone who isn’t there, reaches out to hold an empty space.

He does it, when Thomas is there, too. But it’s more obvious when his left and his right are both just air and empty space. With Thomas, he can still stand on one leg, lean on one side. Without Thomas, he feels like he’s just floating in space, with nothing to ground him and nothing to hold.

There are too many people that Minho leaves space for, even when he knows they won’t come and sit down with him. He prefers having one of them filled.

“What for?”

The five Immunes in front of them hurry away, still whispering with each other. Minho grabs a plate and takes all that he can without feeling guilty about it.

“I know that we don’t talk much.” Frypan grabs a plate, too. He seems much more careless, far less sparse, with what he picks for Thomas. But then again, if Minho was picking out food for Thomas and not himself, he probably wouldn’t care about how much he was taking from other people, either. “But you’re the only one left.”

“What about Gally and Thomas?” Minho keeps his eyes on his plate and the food. His heart is starting to race again, faster than it has the entire day, and he can’t bring himself to look at Frypan.

“That’s not the same thing and you know it.”

He does. 

“Listen, man, I don’t want to bother you or anything.” Fry turns towards him, Minho can see it from the corner of his eye. He doesn’t move to do the same. “I know that it’s hard. No one is really doing okay, I think.”

Despite feeling himself already tense up, Minho pretends like he isn’t bothered by the conversation. At this point, he can’t pretend to be picking more food for himself because he doesn’t dare to take more than he already has, but he can’t bring himself to walk away either. All he can really do is stare at the table, not even glancing to the side.

“You’ve been really off lately,” Frypan continues. There’s that worried edge to his words that Minho has heard more times than he would like in the past few months, but it doesn’t sound pitiful. Rather, it sounds earnest, definite. “And I just wanted to tell you that, after all you’ve done for us and all that you went through, I think the least you can do is allow yourself to be happy.”

“What?” Before Minho can really stop himself, the word falls out of his mouth. Finally, he turns around to look at the other former Glader. “What do you mean?”

“Look, man.” Defensively, obviously aware of how Minho’s attitude has been recently regarding friendly advice, Fry raises the hand that isn’t holding a plate. However, his gaze stays straight on Minho, not wavering once. “I’m not going to pretend that I know what is going on in your head. But to me - and everyone else, honestly - it seems like you’re denying yourself every little good thing. Even the ones that you can have.”

It seems almost purposeful when Frypan looks over to where the rest of their friends are sitting. When Minho follows his eyes, he can see Thomas looking right over at them. Minho looks away as quickly as he can, immediately running hot with the embarrassment of it.

“I’m just saying that you deserve to be happy. At least as far as you can be.”

With that, Fry swaps the plate Minho is holding in his hand with the one he packed for Thomas. Minho wants to be angry about it, waits for the feeling to well up inside of him, but it doesn’t come. Instead, all he can find in himself is a warmth so heavy and thick that it closes up his lungs and burns behind his eyes. His chest nearly bursts with his next inhale and Minho needs another couple of breaths before he can find it in himself to speak again.

“You do, too,” he forces out of himself. He means it, but it doesn’t stop the words from only falling out of him one at a time, slow and strenuous.

Frypan gives him a smile. It’s wide but genuine and Minho can’t help but smile a little bit himself. 

They walk back to the others together, in complete silence but with less of the previous awkwardness hanging between them. Minho’s eyes catch on Thomas. 

I need you, echoes through his head and Minho allows himself to think about saying it back.

Newt’s eyes are hollow and lifeless when he looks at Minho. His skin is paler than it has ever been, veins lifting off of his skin and his bones showing through. He looks like he put a sheet over himself with how loose his clothes fit on him. He's a walking corpse and it sends an icy shiver up Minho’s spine.

“Why did you leave me?”

The words sound more like a gurgle than his actual voice. It’s a horrible noise, wet and full of anger. Newt stumbles a few steps towards Minho, his face horrible distorted by the virus that’s rotting inside of his brain. Drool drips over his split open lips and down his chin. When it falls on the ground, it mixes with blood and dust. 

“You asked me to,” Minho tries to remind his friend. He can’t move. He can’t walk backwards or forwards, he can only stand and watch as Newt slowly comes towards him. His movements are choppy, like he needs to remember how to move his limbs before he can take another step. A gutteral, animalistic growl rumbles in his throat and Minho nearly sobs.

He remembers Newt in the glade; one of their leaders, one of the people who made sure to take care of everyone, the person who held them all together. Even when he had been at his worst, weighed down by depression and hopelessness, Newt had never looked at Minho like this.

They had fought various times, sometimes with nasty words and other times with fists. None of those times had struck Minho as hard as the way Newt looks at him now. Somehow, he simultaneously looks like he can’t remember him and like Minho has done something so utterly unforgiving that it fills Newt up to the brim with rage.

“Why did you leave me?” he asks again. Black liquid sprays out of his mouth as he speaks. It smells rotten, like a corpse that has just been laying around for a week. “I did so much for you and you just left me to die.”

Newt’s voice grows louder and louder until it becomes a wretched scream. He opens his mouth as wide as a snake about to unhinge its jaw. Spit flies, teeth are bared and his hands reach out to grab Minho’s collar. 

Now, they are close enough to each other that Minho can smell Newt’s breath. It smells like a WICKED laboratorium and death itself. He wants to cry, wants to scream, wants to turn around and run away, but he can’t move a muscle.

This is a test, he thinks, It’s WICKED. Newt wouldn’t hate me. Newt asked me to leave.

“You could have saved me.” The hatred in Newt’s eyes fades into something worse. The tension in his fists and shoulders eases out, lets them drop down, and for a moment, Minho can see the shadow of his best friend in the Crank’s eyes. His eyes are glassy with tears and Minho feels like he can see Newt’s soul shatter through them. “If you had stayed, then you could have saved me.”

“Newt -” It’s all that Minho can bring himself to say. He tries to reach a hand out to do something, anything, to show Newt that he never wanted to leave. He wants to make up for it. This time, he won’t leave him behind. This time, he’ll stay with Newt until the bitter end.

But Newt, the real Newt, disappears as fast as he came. The rage returns to his eyes and his grip tightens around Minho’s jacket again. He pushes him to the ground, so hard that the pain of it jerks through Minho’s entire body. Then, he digs his fingers into Minho’s skin and rips. 

A scream is stuck in Minho’s throat, when Newt tears at his limbs, scratches over skin and cuts into flesh. His eyes are black with rage, teeth bared, while he repeats, again and again, “You left me.”

It’s only when Minho makes peace with the fact that he is going to die and deserve it, that he wakes up in his hammock. He falls out of the nightmare brutally, a violent shock rippling through his body. His heart hammers wild in his chest and he can still feel the ghost of Newt’s hands tearing through his body. 

Minho’s hands shoot up to his chest, press against his breastbone just to check if it’s still there.

You left me, Newt’s voice echoes in his head, ugly and hateful, I am like this because of you.

He needs to get away. He needs to get out of this room, fabric inching closer and closer. It’s too loud, too crowded, too dark. Minho’s skin itches all over as he jumps out of his hammock and rushes out of the tent. He can barely see the people around him, stumbles into someone’s hammock and almost trips over someone else’s body.

Corpses, he thinks even though he knows better, these are all corpses.

Nausea wells up in his throat and he breathes in deep just so he doesn’t throw up. The inhale he takes when he finally gets out of the tent is desperate and quick. 

You left me, he hears again, How could you leave me?

Minho wishes Newt was there so he could apologize for it.

I never should have left you behind, he thinks and he would say it, if it didn’t feel so useless to apologize to an empty space. Newt isn’t here, Minho doesn’t know where he is. Every last bit of remorse, every apology and every though about going back is wasted.

“Minho?”

Thomas’ voice comes so sudden and unprompted that Minho jumps at the sound, flinching back with his hands flying up to his face. 

“It’s just me.” Thomas looks normal. His eyes aren’t bloodshot, his hair isn’t felted and he doesn’t seem to hate Minho more than any other thing on the planet. The relief that washes over Minho at the sight makes him want to start crying on the spot.

“Thomas,” he gasps out.

“Nightmare?” Thomas asks, like he doesn’t already know.

“Yes.” It’s what he says, but not quite what he thinks. The dream had felt real, like Newt had actually been sitting on top of him, trying to take him apart limb by limb, just a few moments ago. Minho exhales shakily. 

The world feels too big for him. Minho sways on his feet. He wants to lean to his left, wants to rest against someone who isn’t there. He takes another breath, but it doesn’t feel like it’s enough. It’s like Minho is supposed to be taking something other than air into his body, but it refuses to come. He stays empty.

“Is this real?” he asks. He clings onto it, the ritual seeming like the only lifeline he can give himself. Because Thomas is here and Thomas will make sure that Minho can feel like himself again. If he doesn’t have any hope for himself then at least, he will always have hope in Thomas. 

“It is.” Unsure if he should move closer or get even farther away, Thomas inches towards Minho just to take a step back again. Minho doesn’t know if he wants to hug him or if the touch would just make his skin burn even more.

“Prove it,” he says and he sounds almost more desperate than he did in his nightmare. 

The look on Thomas’ face means that he’s thinking. Minho knows it well enough to name it as soon as he sees it. Usually, Minho lets him. The fact that Thomas is thinking means that he will come up with something. Something that might make him feel a little less like he’s falling down an endless hole. 

Usually, Minho doesn’t have any requests. He just waits for Thomas has to say and goes along with it.

This time, on the other hand, a question burns on his tongue. Minho needs to know, because it’s the only thing that might make his nightmare press a little less against his skin.

“Where do you think Newt is?” he blurts out.

Thomas’ face goes blank. The furrow of his eyebrows smooths out entirely and his jaw slacks. His hands, however, are shaking.

It’s not a pleasant topic for either of them. Newt sits between them like a heavy weight, an omnipresent empty space that demands to be filled but cannot be. He’s a pause after a sentence when they wait for his comment, a look over Minho’s shoulder just to stare into nothing and a conversation that can never be held.

“I don’t know.” Thomas sounds robotic as he says it. Not a single emotion lies in his words. Minho wants to shake him until they fall out.

“Do you think he died?” he urges, “Or do you think he’s still running around over there, suffering inside of his body?”

Both of these options make Minho feel sick, but he knows which one would prefer. He feels cruel and selfish thinking it, but he can’t stop himself.

“I hope he’s dead,” he says, when Thomas doesn’t respond. The words just tumble out of him and he wishes he could stop them, but he thinks that if he didn’t say them, they would eat him from the inside. He laughs, entirely hysterical. “Man, I hope he’s dead and not a fullblown Crank. If he’s just straying around over there, completely past the Gone and eating people, just because we left him there, I -”

Minho has no idea what the end of that sentence would be. All he can do is laugh again, wet and humorless. 

“Minho.” The tone of Thomas’ voice is freezing cold. When Minho looks at him, he’s staring straight into his face, devoid of any actual expression. 

Minho’s first instinct is to defend himself. He knows full well that what he just said reeks of selfishness. He shouldn’t wish that on anybody, especially not Newt, and it only sounds like the most twisted attempt at getting rid of the guilt he still holds.

“Thomas, listen.” It’s nearly impossible to find the right words, not when the topic is so delicate and the person they’re talking about so important and good. “Don’t tell me, you would rather have him live like that, completely out of his mind. You saw what they were like.” Thomas seems to grow paler and paler with every word, so Minho just keeps talking. “We both know that Newt would despise himself for being like that; he already did. If you really think that he’s better of stumbling around like a violent, cannibalistic lutanic than just being dead, then you’re -”

“Minho.” It’s just his name again. But this time, it sounds completely different. It’s not cold or monotone, it just sounds deeply, heartbreakingly stricken by grief. The sorrow in just those two syllables is enough for Minho to feel like he could drown in it. It shuts him right up.

“I killed him,” Thomas says next, like he can’t stop himself. His voice breaks in the middle of the sentence and he falls forward, nearly dropping on his knees. “He’s dead, Minho. I killed him. He held my gun to his head and begged me to do it and then I did it. He’s dead and it’s only because of me.”

What he’s saying wipes Minho’s mind completely blank. He doesn’t know how to respond. He doesn’t even know how to feel. There are a million thoughts in his head, none of them coherent. His fingers clench with rage, his chest squeezes with pity, his shoulders slump in relief and his heart drops, torn down by grief. It’s so much that he can barely make out a particular feeling.

Thomas killed Newt. Minho’s best friend shot his other best friend. The person who Minho had put his trust in up until the end had put a gun to the head of the person who never ceased to trust in Minho.

He feels sick.

“He’s dead,” Thomas repeats again, like he can’t believe it himself. Even though he’s nearly silent, Minho realizes with a shock that rattles through his body like lightning, that Thomas is crying.

It’s all he needs, to be sure that he doesn’t hate Thomas for what he did. There’s still a little bit of anger inside of him, still a hint of an accusation that Thomas is at fault for everything that happened to Newt. But it’s drowned out by the bottomless pit that opens inside Minho as he thinks about losing Thomas, too.

He knows what it feels like to lose people, to be responsible for their deaths. He was never naive enough to think that it wouldn’t happen, but Minho still wishes that Thomas didn’t have to bear the feeling, too.

“It’s not your fault,” he says. 

Still crying in silence, Thomas looks up at him. It’s almost like facing a mirror, his own grief and guilt facing him in the shape of his best friend.

Minho steps forward and pulls Thomas’ body against his own.

“It’s not your fault,” he repeats and he doesn’t know if he’s saying it to Thomas or himself.

For another heartbeat, Thomas is completely stiff in his arms. Then, almost more desperate than Minho, he hugs him back. He holds him so tight that the air is knocked out of Minho’s lungs. His ribcage aches and his back strains, but Minho doesn’t let go.

He hears Thomas sob for the first time, cutting through skin and bone, and that’s when it hits him. Like a wave crushing against the shore, it falls right over him, and Minho finally cries. He can’t hold the tears in anymore and as they stream down his face, falling into Thomas’ shirt, he realizes he doesn’t want to.

Like a rock falling off his chest, he lets himself cry. It doesn’t make the grief, the rage or the loneliness go away, it doesn’t even make it better, but it makes it feel a little less heavy. Suddenly, it’s less like a parasite eating through Minho’s heart and more like an open wound that he lays bare. It’s good and painful and Minho holds on to Thomas the whole way through.

They find a rock in the forest. It’s big, so high that Minho can’t reach the top of it when he jumps, and it stands in between the trees like Minho himself had willed it to be there. The moment he sees it, he stops dead in his tracks and Thomas almost runs right into him.

But all that Minho can do, is stare at it. It’s just a single rock, not even half as tall as the walls and far more uneven, but it still reminds Minho of the maze. It’s bumpy, but just flat enough that it feels smooth under Minho’s palms when he touches it.

“What’s that?” Thomas asks from behind him. While Minho immediately walked over to the rock, drawn in by it like a moth to a flame, Thomas still stands at a safe distance, watching from afar.

“A rock,” Minho answers. He feels starstruck and he thinks that this might be what people mean when they talk about love at first sight. 

“Who’s Mister Obvious now?” 

Under different circumstances, Minho would have probably laughed or said something even snarkier back, but in this moment, he can’t really focus on that. The gears in his brain are turning ferociously and yet, he already knows exactly what he wants to do. His gaze wanders over the rock and he takes it in. It’s nothing special in any way, but it feels perfect to him. He reaches for the knife he keeps at his belt, just in case they might need it, and turns around to look at Thomas.

Understanding is clear on the other’s face and then, he smiles. It’s not wide and it looks more sad than it does anything else, but it still flutters light in Minho’s chest.

He thinks of the maze, thinks of the people who died in there, and he thinks of all their names on the walls.

Then, he starts to carve Newt’s name into the stone.

He can hear Thomas on the other side of the stone doing the same, even if he may be writing different names. There’s still the space of another person between them and Minho finds himself leaning towards it. He doesn’t know if there is a god or an afterlife, but he hopes that Newt can feel it anyway.

Minho thinks of him with every cut into the stone and every letter he spells out. It doesn’t make him miss Newt less, if anything it makes it worse. Still, Minho keeps going, until all four letters are clear on the stone. It hurts, enough to make him cry again as they make their way back home, and it doesn’t make the ache fade, but it seems like a good place to start.

The day that they finish the cabin is the happiest day of Minho’s life. He doesn’t feel particularly giddy about it, his brain already set on the next mark they need to reach, but the excitement of everyone else is contagious. He thinks it might be the only time that he has seen Gally actually smile, wide enough that his eyes crinkle, and Brenda laughs so hard that she starts crying, another thing that Minho has never seen happen before.

There is a lot of ado about the whole thing. Everyone gathers in front of the slightly crooked but stable doors, and stares up at Vince. He holds a speech and Minho zones out through most of it, too focused on the hopeful sparkle in Thomas’ eyes to really listen. All he hears are snippets of encouragement, about how proud they can be of themselves, and then his own name.

“I think I speak for everyone when I say that this wouldn’t have worked without the four of you.” Minho doesn’t know who the other three people are but he assumes it’s Sonya, Harriet and Thomas. It usually is.

A few people cheer and clap and MInho has no idea what to do about it. He just blinks, aware that he missed a few parts before. Fry slaps him on his back in a friendly gestures, and Thomas grins at him. 

“Remember when you didn’t think you could be a leader?” he asks. He has to get close to Minho to be heard over the noise of people talking. Minho can feel his breath against his ear and his heart stops beating entirely for a moment. 

From the corner of his eye, he catches Brenda looking at him, lips pulled into a grin and her eyebrows raised. Trying to get a little bit of his dignity back, Minho straightens his posture and grins back at Thomas.

“Remember when you tried to steal my job?”

At that, Thomas just laughs. Pride swells warmly in Minho’s chest, triumphant that he made his friend laugh.

Vince continues his speech. Again, Minho only listens with one ear. He hears something about trying to build as many cabins as they can, but needing time until all of them will actually have their own home. He thanks Gally and the other people who helped build the cabin, and he thanks the stars above that they found this place.

Minho’s attention is on his friends, the people he fought tooth and nail to get here. The people who got him here. Sonya has her arm wrapped around Harriet, holding her so close that it almost qualifies as a headlock, while Aris stands next to them, a content smile on his face. Frypan is practically beaming, looking around to catch the others’ eyes every now and then, as if to make sure they’re all living this moment, too. Gally is silent and the smile Minho saw on him was only temporary, replaced by a proud glint in his eyes. Brenda has vanished from where she stood before, but Minho catches her slipping through the crowd and towards Jorge.

Still next to him, Thomas looks like he isn’t really listening either. His eyes are on the stairs and on Vince, but they look glazed over, like his thoughts are somewhere entirely different. The smile is still on his face but it looks sadder than before, almost melancholic.

“Chuck would have loved this,” he says, as if he can sense Minho’s on him.

“They all would have,” Minho agrees. He can feel the ghosts of his friends, invisible eyes staring holes into his back.

Thomas gives him the smallest of smiles, a pathetic shadow of what was there earlier, but Minho treasures it just as much. He puts an arm around his shoulder and squeezes Thomas arm, hoping that he knows just what it’s supposed to mean.

When Thomas looks back at him, eyes unbearably soft, Minho thinks that he might.

As soon as the doors open, a couple of the younger Immunes storm inside. No one yells to hold them back and no one scolds them either. Minho guesses that it’s relieving to see that this youthful excitement hasn’t been burned out of all of them yet.

They carry their hammocks from the tent into the cabin - Thomas and Minho still sleeping right next to each other - and Minho thinks that he might be okay with calling this place his home.

Despite it all, Minho wakes up that night, breathless from a nightmare he can barely remember. It’s not as violent as some of the previous ones he had, but it’s enough that his throat dries out and his chest feels tight.

He sits up in his hammock and turns to look at Thomas, just to see if he woke him up. He isn’t particularly surprised when Thomas looks right back at him, already halfway out of his hammock.

“Nightmare?” he whispers into the darkness, as if he even needs to ask.

“Yeah.” 

Nearly silent, Thomas hops out of his hammock, sneaks around Brenda’s curled up body and towards the door. He looks back at MInho with raised eyebrows and it doesn’t take along until Minho has caught up with him and they’re both out of the door, shutting it behind themselves as quietly as they can.

As of recently, every time they go out at night because of one of Minho’s nightmares, they went straight to the beach, but the cabin is so close to the bonfire, that there’s no way they will make it around the three people who are on night watch without being noticed. And since Minho has very little interest in hearing what Ada, Harriet and Sonya have to say about them going to the beach that late, he grabs Thomas by the wrist, tight enough that he can feel the other’s pulse under his fingertips, and pulls him down the stairs and around the cabin.

They scurry through the grass and to the back of the cabin. It’s darker there than it is all over the rest of the camp. The light from the bonfire barely reaches them, but on nights like this one, Minho likes it better this way.

He slumps down against the wall, finally letting Thomas go. His fingers still tingle from the touch, a silent and unanswered demand to keep holding on to him, making sure that he can’t slip away. 

Eyeing the ground with unwarranted but well deserved suspicion, Thomas sits down in the grass, his back leaned against the wood of the cabin and his legs pulled to his chest, and glances up at Minho. He pats on the space next to him.

When Minho sits down, stretching out his legs, they're closer than they usually sit. Their shoulders brush and Minho knocks his knee against Thomas’ foot, just because he can. Fondness rises in him, so intense and deep that Minho might overflow with it. It feels safer than most things do, to just sit with Thomas, away from everyone else. Minho can breathe properly for the first time that day.

They stay like this for a while. 

The touch of their shoulders is light, but to Minho, it nearly presses through his skin. Even when he closes his eyes, he’s aware of Thomas next to him, so much so that it hurts. They’re close, barely any space between them, and it just makes Minho agonizingly aware of the little distance there still is.

He can hear Thomas’ leg shake and can feel his arms move as he fidgets with his hands. Minho wants to grab them and hold, so tight that there is no way that no force in the world could pry Thomas away from him. But no matter how much he wants - and at this point, it is a craving rather than a want - MInho can’t bring himself to do it.

The only thing he can manage, is to pull his right leg up his chest and then - quick enough that he can’t change his mind about it - rest it against Thomas’. The other stills. Even the fidgeting of his hands stop, which is something that Minho never thought he would ever get to experience. He’s prepared to make a joke about it, just to make it less obvious how deeply he feels about just this little touch.

He doesn’t even get to open his mouth, because the next thing he feels is a calloused hand on top of his own, resting between them. His heart stops.

Unable to really believe it, Minho opens his eyes and peeks down at their hands. Thomas’ hand, scarred and scattered with marks, sits right on top of his own. It takes all of his courage to look back up, just to see Thomas inspect his face like it’s just another maze to get through.

“Is this real?” Minho asks. Partially because he’s grown accustomed to it and partially, because it’s the only thing he knows how to ask. Of all the things he wants, he can’t find a single way to reach for them, not even with Thomas. Or maybe even less with him.

“Yes.” The usual response. But this time, it feels like it might mean something else.

Thomas looks right into Minho’s eyes. He has a talent of making everything inside of Minho come to a halt and double its usual pace, at the same time. 

“Prove it.”

Thomas’ gaze, that is usually so focused and clear with what it wants, falls from Minho’s eyes. His heart jumps into his throat and it takes all his might to swallow it back down.

“Anything?” Thomas questions, so softly that Minho barely even hears it.

“Anything,” he confirms.

Not a single nightmare has made his heart race this fast, he thinks. He doesn’t know if it’s true, but he would like to believe it.

For a moment, nothing more happens. And then, Thomas is closer to MInho than he has ever been. He inhales, holds his breath. 

The kiss is barely more than a peck, over in the blink of an eye. Nevertheless, it makes Minho run warm all over. He can feel the echo of it, still, and it might just be because Thomas is still so close. His eyes are half-closed and their noses bump when Thomas looks up at him, a silent question that Minho finally dares to answer.

Minho puts his hand to Thomas’ neck, presses his fingers into his nape. When he kisses Thomas again, something inside of him flares up, light and warm and bright. It's a feeling that Minho was certain he had lost.

They’re not good yet, they might never be, but, in that moment, he thinks that they’re getting closer.