thomas woke up with a sharp gasp, his body jerking upright as he clawed his way back to consciousness. his head was spinning, and his vision blurred for a moment before settling on minho, who was sitting beside him. the look on minho’s face—somewhere between exhaustion and grief—made thomas’s heart tighten with a sudden, inexplicable fear.
“minho,” thomas rasped, his voice barely more than a whisper. “where’s newt?”
minho’s eyes flicked away for a second, his jaw tightening. when he looked back at thomas, there was a rawness there that thomas hadn’t seen before. “gone.”
"kill me. if you've ever been my friend, kill me."
suddenly, the world stopped spinning. he felt the single word sink in, but they didn’t make sense, didn’t fit into any reality he could accept. “what do you mean, ‘gone’?” he demanded. he kept his voice low, steady, but painfully desperate.
minho exhaled, his face set in a hard, pained expression. “dead, thomas.”
“no,” thomas shot back, shaking his head furiously. “he's not, you’re lying—"
“i'm not." minho snapped, his voice breaking with the intensity of his own grief. but they both kept a level head. neither let themselves raise their voices. “he’s gone.”
minho spoke as if he was still trying to convince himself as well.
thomas suddenly got up on his feet and walked towards the sick excuse of a door to the medical tent they were in. "i'm going back for him."
minho stood too, his hands balling into fists at his sides. “he's not the only one we've lost, thomas. so many people died to get us here and you're just gonna walk away? grow the fuck up—”
“stop it!” thomas yelled, his voice raw with pain and frustration. he turned around to look at the runner. his brown eyes glared daggers at thomas. they made him want to hide. “stop fucking looking at me like that!”
"like what?!" minho returns thomas' anger, raising his voice. minho wanted to scream, yell, cry. anything to take the weight on his chest.
"like its my fault." thomas stood there, chest heaving and eyes watering. "he asked me to—"
minho’s eyes were burning, his face a mask of grief and anger. “i know that, thomas. you think I wouldn't do the same? you think i don't understand how your hurting? you have to be stronger than this. we have to be stronger than this. we should be grateful we even had him in our lives. all you can do is learn from this, thomas— we can learn from this—”
“i didn’t ask for this to be a lesson, minho,” thomas’s fists clenched, his whole body trembling with the intensity of his emotions. he opened his mouth to shout back, to argue, but the words caught in his throat, strangled by the tears that were threatening to spill over.
The fact that "ain't that something? A secondhand lonely" isn't even the hardest line in Sula is still mind boggling to me. What in the HELL miss Morrison
