Chapter Text
Thomas didn’t sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Newt’s pale face in the firelight, the streaks of white in his hair, the way his body had crumpled in the dirt.
By morning, Brenda and Frypan had fussed over him, checking for fever, listening for breath. They found nothing wrong—nothing except the obvious: he was alive when he shouldn’t be.
Alive.
Thomas sat outside the tent, hands clenched tight enough that his nails dug into his palms. The world felt sideways, unreal.
“Tommy,” Minho muttered, crouching beside him. “He’s awake.”
Thomas’s head snapped up.
Inside, Newt was sitting upright, leaning against the cot. His hair was a mess—dirty blonde slashed through with streaks of white, jagged around his temple as though someone had carved through it. Beneath the uneven strands, Thomas could see faint lines, scars that disappeared into the scalp.
Newt rubbed at them absently, then dropped his hand when he saw Thomas watching.
“Bloody hell,” Newt rasped, voice hoarse but familiar. “Why’re you lookin’ at me like I’m a ghost?”
Thomas’s throat closed. He couldn’t answer.
Minho stepped in for him, crossing his arms. “Because you are, shank.”
Newt gave a broken laugh, one corner of his mouth twitching. “Guess I didn’t get the memo.”
But Thomas noticed the tremor in his fingers. The way his eyes darted toward the tent flap, as if listening to something no one else could hear.
Brenda brought him water, and he drank too fast, too desperate. Some spilled down his chin, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand.
“Hungry?” Frypan asked gently.
Newt hesitated, then shook his head. “Not… not right now.”
But Thomas remembered the way his hand had strayed to his stomach. He remembered the strange gleam in his eyes before he’d collapsed the night before.
Something in him knew—this wasn’t over.