|| After We Fall ||

Suffering

Thank you to everyone who's read and voted and commented -it means so much to me to know someone's enjoyed this fic. I'm sorry I haven't updated it in a while... (what an understatement) but I hope the next few things I *hopefully* have in store will make up for it!

Keep in mind that this chapter, and probably following ones, will reference the Crank Palace novella and Fever Code.

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Thomas felt warm, despite the cold bitterness of the night. His eyes fluttered open, and he looked around in confusion. The makeshift shelter was dark, shadows shrouding and morphing objects to look like monsters. His confused, frightened mind created those monsters into Cranks, their twisted, chewed-up fingers reached for him, clawing for him, their mouths hanging open and teeth bared-

He jolted, squeezing his eyes shut and taking deep breaths until his imagined terror dissipated.

Next to him, Sonya shifted in her sleep. Her head was on his shoulder, her hair falling over her face. Their legs were pressed together, crossed at the ankles. 

Between their knees was his journal, opened to a worn page. His handwriting scrawled across, messy but undoubtedly Newt. He told of a woman named Keisha and her son, of his fears of the Palace and himself, of his plan to get them out, to save them somehow.

Thomas flipped through the pages, skimming over the words Newt had written and words he and his sister had read countless times. 

He reached the final pages. 

Newt's penmanship had gotten increasingly worse. Now, some letters were so obscure Thomas was sure that not even Newt would have been able to decide quite what they were meant to be.

Newt had hoped that perhaps one day his journal would be found. He wanted the world to know that he had experienced happiness despite "going nuts", both with his newfound family in Keisha but with his friends from the Maze. 

Thomas' tears slid down his face, silent but steady. 

"Tommy?"

He stiffened. Newt, he thought. He looked to the side, expecting to find his friend there, smiling at him as though the journal had been a prank. It was all just one big joke, another Trial... 

Instead, Sonya looked back at him, squinting at him blearily. 

Thomas took in a shaky breath.

Sonya's brows pinched. She reached over and wiped his face with the back of her hand. "Hey, you okay...?"

"Yeah," Thomas croaked, flipping the journal shut.

Sonya rested her head back on his shoulder. He sunk against her, grateful for her steady company. She was like him in that way. 

"Are you glad we read it?" Thomas whispered. 

For a moment he thought she had gone back to sleep. But then she answered, "Yeah. What about you?"

"Yeah." Thomas picked at his fingers. "I was scared for him. I didn't want him to suffer, you know?" He waved the journal. "He wasn't, in those last pages."

Sonya laced her hand in his. "I remember stuff. Like, I remember one night he snuck into the girls bunk of the WICKED facility and talked to me. For the first time since we were separated. I remember how happy he was to see me, and even if we didn't fully remember each other, I like to remember him that way." She sighed. "He was really happy. Hopeful, too." 

And so they sat in silence, each with their own Newt in their mind. 

A Newt that didn't suffer. A Newt that was happy.

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Kinda a filler, I'll try to come up with something exciting for the next part

...What would you guys think of a Sonya-Thomas romance?...