You Expect Me To Carry On? (A Newtmas Fanfic)

Chapter Twenty One: Did you love her?

Thomas couldn't see.

Couldn't think.

Couldn't breathe.

Her eyes... her eyes...

However far he had pushed it down inside him, Thomas had cared about Teresa.

She had betrayed him, hell, she was half the reason that Newt had died... but...

I didn't want this.

Thomas felt a slow, burning anger in the pit of his stomach.

I DIDN'T WANT THIS.

He hadn't asked for this!

He hadn't signed up for dead friends, burnt down cities, torture, pain, constant, constant running, fleeing, hiding.

All he'd ever wanted was a home.

A bed to sleep in, his friends by his side.

I didn't want this.

Thomas tentatively touched a hand to the side of what had once been Teresa's face.
He remembered how she used to make him feel, right back when she had first come into the maze. He had always wanted to talk to her, to see her sparkling blue eyes, to be with her, to understand her.

Now, as he stared at her lifeless body, he felt only cold, numb grief.

Not grief for her, the girl who had ripped his beating heart out of his chest and stamped it into the mud, but grief for everything that had been taken from him.

He felt it everywhere, pain, sorrow, regret. He felt it rising up his throat, red hot behind his eyes, it tasted sour, it was thick, it stuck to him, choked him.

Thomas screamed.

He screamed into the dead remnants of the once thriving city, screamed into the mass graveyard of bodies, into the dead, burnt out, world.

His lungs twisted and his throat burned but he kept screaming.

He wanted to scream out all of the pain.

"Thomas! Thomas! Oh my god what's wrong?"

"You hurt? Hey man what's going on?!"

"Newt get over here!"

"I don't think he's hurt I don't know what's- oh... oh my god."

"What?! Brenda wh-
... shuck."

Vaguely, Thomas was aware of a hand on his back. He couldn't scream anymore, his body wouldn't let him, so he just sat there, crouched next to Teresa's body, sobbing, shaking.

Then he heard another voice.

Oh god... Newt.

"Tommy?! TOMMY?!"

"Newt- Newt he's okay. Just... come and look."

There was a pause, and Thomas heard the scrambling crunch of fast approaching footsteps.

Then silence.

Then

"Bloody hell." Newt breathed.

Now they were all together except Frypan, who hadn't heard the commotion and was still off in the ruins searching for the cure.

Thomas felt the hand on his back withdraw as Brenda stepped away from him, so that Newt could move in.

Thomas waited for Newt to embrace him. He was desperate to have someone to lean into, to hold, to comfort him.

He heard rustling as Newt knelt down beside him.