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Teresa jumps.
Several hands flit around to catch her. She scrambles forwards.
Her ears are ringing. The Berg moves away from the fire and the destruction, but she can still smell smoke.
There’s a loud gasp, and she turns. The others have discovered Thomas’ gunshot wound. Several people start shouting but none of it registers.
All she can think about is that she thought she was going to die on that rooftop, together with Thomas, but they made it. They’re here. They defied the odds.
(What is it with you two?)
He’s lost a lot of blood. The irony of this does not escape her.
The Berg keeps moving.
They arrive in the safe haven in chaos.
Please, Teresa remembers thinking—though at who, she’s not sure. Not him.
Whoever it is must have answered her prayer, because Thomas doesn’t die.
After the immediate danger passes and they’re all waiting for him to wake up, the people around her suddenly seem to realize just who Teresa is. They all double-take at her prescence, and truthfully, she gets it. The only one who was around for when she smashed glass against Janson’s head was Thomas.
The last time she saw the others… The last time she saw Minho…
Her stomach twists.
Minho is glaring at her.
She gets it.
But she’s always been there when Thomas woke up after passing out and she’s not about to stop now. She holds a stubborn vigil at his bedside, silently daring anyone to tell her to leave.
No one does.
She’s holding his hand and drawing patterns with her thumb when she hears soft moaning. She looks down. His eyes are open. She has never been more glad to see those eyes.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” Thomas croaks.
Despite everything, Teresa’s mouth curves into a smile.
Vince gives a good speech about peace and everyone carves names into stone and it’s really hard to believe that it’s really over.
Teresa carves her mother’s name. She looks at the stone and she sees Chuck, she sees Winston, she sees Newt. For one brief moment, she’s inhaling smoke again. She chokes on it.
She goes to the beach for clear air and hopefully a clear mind. Thomas is looking at the horizon. She recognizes the syringe in his hand. She walks until she is next to him.
“Will you use it?”
His eyes slide to her, before returning to the horizon. “Of course.” His voice is hoarse. “We’ll have to make more.”
She nods before reaching out and taking the cure. She frowns at it.
It’s just a syringe. The real cure is standing next to her.
Everything she has done has been for nothing, because—
Well.
They watch the waves together in silence.
It’s not like Thomas was exactly a beacon of happiness before, but for someone who is supposed to be in paradise, he doesn’t look like it. His eyes are shadowed, his hair is a dark tangle. He doesn't look like he sleeps at all. He looks miserable.
No one seems willing to bring it up. Everyone is so careful around him, like he’s made of glass, but Teresa catches Minho giving Thomas sad looks when he thinks Thomas isn’t looking and Brenda keeps affectionately punching Thomas’ arm as if that will make him better.
Teresa, meanwhile, teaches Thomas everything he needs to know. How to extract his own blood and how to turn it into a syringe holding the cure.
She teaches him everything because she can’t stay here.
They let her stay, too worn down with loss and too elated with victory to do otherwise, but it’s clear they don’t want her here. She gets it. She looks at Minho and she hears the way his voice cracked when he was in agony. She looks at Frypan and remembers that look of utter disbelief that she could ever betray them. She can’t look at Newt, not anymore, but she remembers.
She hates leaving behind Thomas, especially when he’s like this. Grieving with nothing to focus on, nothing to distract himself, because the battle is over. Ava is dead. Janson is dead.
They’re not the only ones.
Teresa hates it, but it’s not like she hasn’t done it before. It’s better this way. It’s better.
She doesn’t belong here.
She packs her things and she sneaks out at night.
She doesn’t get far before hearing footsteps behind her. She turns and a figure emerges in the dark.
When she recognizes Thomas, her heart is pounding. She asks, “Can’t sleep?”
“Don’t give me that shit.”
He looks exactly like he did on the cliff at dusk. Tears prick at her eyes but she blinks them away.
“You’re just gonna leave?” he demands.
“I have to,” she pleads, urging him to understand. They’re all better off without her.
“No, you don’t,” he counters, his voice as hard as when he’d told her there was no cure. “You really don’t. If you want to leave, that’s…” He sighs harshly. “Your choice. But no one is making you do this.”
“It’s easier if I’m not there,” she tries to explain. “They won’t have to look at the girl who betrayed them every day.”
“Maybe,” he says, just sounding tired now. “But they’ll still have to look at the boy who didn’t listen. Who could have cured his friend.”
He looks exhausted, even in the darkness.
“Thomas…” She doesn’t know what she’ll say next, but before she can think of anything he's speaking.
“You asked me, that night, to understand. And I do. I understand why you did it, even when I never agreed. I understand, okay?” His voice softens. “So, please, don’t do this again. Please, stay.”
Teresa looks at Thomas, and he looks at her, and she holds her breath in her lungs feeling like she’ll combust.
“You were right,” she insists. “You were right to be angry with me—and you’re asking me to stay when you of all people should hate me—“
“What are you—”
She barely hears him.
“Because I called WICKED to the camp and I got people killed, like Mary, when—if I just—if I’d stayed then, I would have seen the effects of your blood on Brenda. If I’d just been patient—”
“Teresa—“
“Everything you went through, everything Minho went through—Newt—“ Her voice breaks. “It all could have been avoided. I can’t—”
“Teresa.”
She looks away.
“We all have regrets,” he says softly. “We’re just people. And for what it’s worth, I forgive you, okay? I forgive you.”
“You… You shouldn’t.”
“Well, that sucks for you, because I’m doing it anyway.”
She scoffs, but not with derision. Fondness, maybe. Fondness for this boy she remembers running through lit up hallways with when she was little, back when everything made sense, back when it was just them against the world. This boy with his penchant for doing things he shouldn't.
“Stay,” he repeats, painfully earnest.
“Okay,” she says softly.
Teresa tries to make amends.
She can never change that she’s the reason Vince lost the woman he loves and she can never take back what Minho went through, but she can apologize. She can help Vince run logistics and she can assist Frypan in the kitchen and it will have to be enough.
She dreams about fire. When she wakes up she inhales invisible smoke, so she leaves for the beach.
It shouldn’t surprise her to find Thomas there, but somehow, it does.
“Can’t sleep?” she asks once again.
He laughs joylessly. He didn't laugh very often before, either. He’d smile sometimes, and he’d chuckle.
But laughter was always rare.
“Obviously,” he says.
They are blanketed by still night air and the expanse of galaxies above them.
“Nightmares?” she prods.
“Yep.”
“Me too.”
“Aren’t we a pair,” he sighs, drawing a small smile from her.
The smile fades. “Do you really blame yourself for what happened to Newt?”
He runs a hand through his hair, disheveling it more, and he doesn’t answer the question.
“We’re just people,” she reminds him, but he still doesn’t say anything.
“Newt said…” He clears his throat. “Newt said, in his letter. That I deserve to be happy.”
“You don’t think so,” she surmises from the heavy self-loathing in his voice. Her throat feels like sandpaper.
Another joyless laugh that isn’t really a laugh.
And maybe it’s selfish, maybe she should try and convince him it’s true, that he does deserve it. But instead, Teresa says, “Do you want to go swimming with me?”
His eyes grow incredulous. “What, now?”
She nods. “Right now.”
He lifts an eyebrow. “Fully clothed.”
“I don’t know about you, but I’m taking my shirt off. Unless you really want to go skinny-dipping.”
He gives this startled scoff that’s almost a laugh.
She gives him a smile, and he returns it. She remembers telling him how she’d been taller, back then, and faster.
That’s it, Teresa thinks. That’s when I remember you laughing.
He picks her up and runs through the shallow part of the sea. They splash water at each other. She dunks his head under.
She draws real laughter from him. She doesn’t think about fire once.
“Do you think,” she asks one evening, “we used to be in love? Before…everything.”
They’re lying on the grass. The sky is turning a beautiful shade and the air is cooling down.
“I don’t know,” he says belatedly.
They lie side by side, both resting on a hip and turned so they’re facing each other.
“Do you…” She licks her lips and looks at his. “Do you think we might be now?”
He lifts an eyebrow and says wryly, “Are you asking me if I like you?”
“I’m asking…”
His grief today is not as pronounced as it has been before. It looks a lot like hope.
“Can we start over?”
Instead of an answer, or maybe as the answer, he leans in and he kisses her.
It can’t be more different than their first kiss. That one had been desperation, tears, fire.
This one is soft. This one is a new beginning.
He moves so that he’s on top of her. With each kiss he presses to her lips, her chin, her neck, the heartache she has been feeling dissipates. She runs his fingers through his hair.
“I think we already have,” he whispers against her skin. He settles back into his previous position.
They lie on the ground and admire the sunset together, their hands entwined.