Dear Newt;
It might seem stupid to write to the dead…but I can’t bring myself to be embarrassed. I can’t keep this in anymore, I can’t think of you anymore. So even with the knowledge that you’ll never read this damned letter, I’ll spill my guts on to it anyways. So here it goes.
I wish I could’ve loved you like I wanted…I wish that we had had time for that. The truth is, though, we did have time. We did have enough time; I was just a coward. You knew it too. You said it yourself. But damn it, Newt! I didn’t want you to be right. I didn’t want to acknowledge the world where our time wasn’t infinite, the world we lived in. I wanted to revolve around you like the earth does to the sun. I wanted to bask in your glow, brace your darknesses. I wanted you, all of you.
I…I loved you.
I didn’t know what it was when I first arrived in the Glade. I thought I did when I connected with Terresa, and though I won’t deny how I did feel, how my heart aches for her as well, it does not compare to the pain you’ve left inside me. It’s not a deep untouchable ache in my heart, but instead a rabid, gnawing, desperate sort of pain that makes it hard for me to sit still, to live this new life on beaches and calm society. Your memory lives with that pain, it makes me need to run, run like I never have before, not even when I was scared shitless in the maze. It makes me realize that, even though we may be free from WCKD now…the Cranks are still out there, slowly dying from an incurable madness.
I wish I could’ve saved you, Newt. In a different way than I did. Some days I wake up in my bed to my ears ringing and the blankets over me almost feel like the weight of you…your words echoing in my mind like a sadist siren. You were changed then and yet… I knew you. I’ve always known you. And yet I know someday your face will be blurred and your features will shift to an unfamiliar yet almost there memory. I know I’ll forget what your voice sounded like, what your accent did to your words and tone. It seems impossible to forget about you know…but I know it’s true. Years from now you’ll only be a name on the stone in the middle of our safe haven…decades from then no one will even remember you truly, remember who you were, what you did for us. I think that knowledge is killing me slowly.
I embrace and yet fear the idea of dying. I’m not scared of leaving this hell hole…but I am scared that there is no afterlife, no in between of life and death. It scares me to think I’ll never see you again. Forgive me for my shaking writing…
I’m not sure if I know how to write the rest of my thoughts so I’ll end here.
I loved you Newt…goodbye.
Always yours, Tommy.