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Epilogue

There were two boys, one blonde and one brunette.

If you looked at all they had been through, at every scar and every graze, and if you looked at every tear they had shed, they would seem fragile. Broken goods, even. They had survived unbearable separation, and lost each other to the tangle of their memories. They had watched each other bleed, and had been powerless to do anything. They had watched each other ache with guilt and had felt the ricocheting effects of grief. 

The brunette boy had caused the blonde boy to feel such intense and insurmountable fear and loss. The blonde boy had looked vacantly at the brunette boy, his memories of him altered and fuzzy, while the brunette boy held on to every moment they had ever shared. 

The hurt that they had brought to each other though, was only superficial. It was not internal bleeding but bruises that faded with time. When they were apart, the bruises bloomed from their skin, the kind of bruises they pressed on in order to feel them ache. They began harsh and purple, spilling onto their skin like a stain. But when they found each other again, their distance closed, their bruises yellowed and then faded. Despite all things, they had the effect of healing on one another. 

They looked at their arms and legs, months later, when the worst was over, and all that was left was their skin. Blank, ready for more bruises. But of a more gentler kind; a bruise from climbing a tree or from a friendly punch in the arm. The marks of a childhood they had not yet been able to live, one that they would now get to live together. 

They sat together one night, their shoulders pressed together in a way that made them feel like people of the past. The blonde one, Newt, spoke first. 

"We're going to be okay here, you know" he said, speculatively but definitively. 

"I think you're right" the brunette one, Thomas, responded. 

"It feels good" Newt said. 

"It does" Thomas replied. 

Newt looked up at the sky, which was bursting with stars. It felt so limitless to both of them then, and full of life. For once, it was all theirs. No walls stood in their way, restricting their movement.

Newt thought back to the day he had sat on the windowsill, hiding behind the curtain, thinking of the walls that he built up around himself, the ones Thomas had climbed and, eventually, even broken through. He thought it was so stupid now, that a boy he had once turned up his nose at, a boy he thought he would never understand, was now the one person that knew him best. He was the one person that knew Newt's heart as if it was his own, and loved it, as if it was his own. He looked up at the sky and found the brightest star, the one he looked to when he wished for a miracle. Thomas' star. 

While Newt looked at the sky, Thomas looked to the sea in-front of them. Thomas thought to all the times he had felt he was a ship lost in it all, sinking, and drowning in the dark tide. In those times, he always found Newt, throwing him a rope, rowing the life-boat or turning the wheel. While Thomas was a star, a guide and a hope for Newt, Newt was an anchor for Thomas. Newt was dependable and steady and made Thomas sure that despite all odds, he would make it to shore. And he had. They both had. 

They looked at each other now, and they knew that the fog and the dark they had to battle through to see each other, had only made the view clearer. Together, they were going to grow old. Thomas could almost see the grey sweep into Newt's hair as the thought passed through, and the deep smile lines Thomas hoped he would have. 

Life stretched out before them, like the sea, and like the sky. They both felt a deep rooted ache that this had not come more easily to them, but it was useless to be bitter now. 

Newt looked at Thomas, and Thomas looked at Newt. The words "I love you" had passed between them many times since they had known each other, and neither of them had felt it as strongly as they did now. And yet, they both said nothing. 

The silence stretched out between them, empty and still. But unlike anything before, this silence was a beautiful thing; it proved to them both how strongly they understood each other. It didn't have to break, so much already had. Instead, Newt leaned his forehead against Thomas' and they rested on each other, their eyes shut, blissfully. The smell of salt and the warm smell of smoke from the bonfire earlier in the night gently danced between them, among the silence that was so thick, particles of it hung in the air. 

Thomas moved and pressed his lips tenderly to Newt's forehead, filling the space he had left. Newt smiled. 

"Thank you" Thomas said to Newt,  the silence not broken, but paused. "For it all"

"You too, Tommy" Newt replied.

Together they stood and walked across the sand, their life together beginning. 

Limitless and free.