Teresa hadn't talked to anyone; she had absolutely refused to after she'd been allowed to leave the hospital wing. She felt robbed of everything, of life, of reality, of everything she thought had been her true time and place; she could remember everything, every single second of that simulation, of that experiment she had thought of as her life, everything she'd learnt, everything she'd lived, everything she loved, and she felt like everything around her; WICKED, the Flare, the cranks outside the building; she felt as if all of those things were the lie, even if every single one of her senses claimed otherwise. And what surprised her the most was that, above everything she had lived during those four years under the simulation, who she missed the most was her daughter; that month and a half old baby girl that she was most likely to never hold in her arms again, to hear laughing, to see Newt holding while asleep in the rocking chair.

Diana had never even been real, yet Teresa felt as if WICKED had stolen her from her arms as easily as they had stolen her memories, as if everything she had experienced under the simulation had been her reality; because it all felt better than accepting the fact that her name wasn't her own and she was nothing but part of an experiment, a lab rat stuck in the middle of a world that knew nothing but pain and madness. She would rather have stayed under that simulation until the end of her days, enjoyed her happiness, though unreal, instead of the true horrors that awaited for her were she to decide to escape WICKED.

But she couldn't; she knew she couldn't.

It was why she had isolated herself in the one place that looked as close to the reality she had enjoyed so much in the giant head quarters. It was a room as big as a park; in fact, it was a park, the very source of most of the oxygen around the building, a giant greenhouse to simulate a park with trees saved from the outside world, free from illness, free from anything that could deem itself harmful to those unfortunate ones that were not immune to the horrors of the outside world. It had become Teresa's home in many ways; a place where she spent most of her day breathing the attempted fresh air after waking up in her room, where she returned after her forced meals, where she laid on the grass until she had to head back toward her own room in order to go to sleep, allowed to do so only because she had agreed to continue on with WICKED's trials in enough willfulness that they allowed her to roam free within some levels of the HQ.

It was, of course, where she found herself nearly two weeks after having waken up in that room; she had ignored Thomas' mental calls, she had not directed a word toward anyone that weren't scientists coming to collect some data, and she sat down, hands pulling gently at the grass in front of her while she looked at the rather artificial river running only feet away from her, creating an echo that made her feel as if she were sitting at the border of the lake Thomas had invited her and her friends to a few times inside the simulation world of New York city. If only she could go back, if only she could convince some scientists that it would serve some purpose to send her back into the simulation world, if only… "So this is where you've been hiding." Teresa suddenly heard behind her; utterance that made her parted lips pull upon a needed breath that broke away the bubble of a shattered reverie within the turn of her head.

There stood Newt, blonde hair tussled, his frame wrapped in gray and black clothes provided by WICKED the way her own had been, looking down at her with a concern that she found familiar enough to nearly break her heart. It wasn't familiar, not to her, not the real her, it was familiar to the fake version of her that had lived a life with the boy before her. It made her eyes fall away from his image toward the artificial water running feet away from her. "You were looking for me?" She heard herself asking; the first words she uttered in two weeks that had nothing to do with medical facts and personal data; her hands didn't stop the shredding of the grass under her, in fact, the strength with which she did it became greater.

"For the past week, yes." He replied, and Teresa heard his steps approaching, the artificial dampness of the grass squishing under his feet. "I've been meaning to talk to you alone." he admitted, shortly struggling to sit beside the girl with his legs stretched in front of him and his hands resting against the grass behind him in support. "It's the only way it appears you want to be lately, but you seem bloody keen on avoiding everyone even during our meals." His head shook. "I don't see you anywhere after that, T, and I really wa—"

"Don't call me that." He hadn't even realised the simulation's nickname had slipped from his lips until she interrupted him. Her lashes pressed against the top of her cheeks before she took a deep breath and flicked her hand free from the grass she had pulled out and opened her eyes again.

Newt frowned, his eyes studying her features with every movement, nearly afraid to move, to speak too loudly and upset her. "Sorry." He didn't care, he had to try, he needed to try, otherwise the whole point of him deciding to do what he wanted for once would be in vain. "Teresa, I—"

"Don't, Newt." She cut him off again, pushing herself up from her place with a tired demeanour and a heavy sigh escaping in a puff from parted lips; it didn't take long for her to turn around and start walking away toward the very distant door that would take her away from the little bubble of a familiar reality she had found.

But it also didn't take long for Newt to project equally angry and frustrated words in her direction, turning in his place, not standing, while his big brown orbs remained in a following gaze in her direction. "I was there too, you know?" He told her, a frown edging into the middle of his forehead while his fingers nearly dug into the artificially damp earth. "There's no need for you to act like you're the only buggin' shank to get jacked up in this situation."

That was all it took for Teresa to stop in her tracks, eyes shutting for a short moment as a breath held up in the middle of her throat like a knot. She felt as if every memory, every look, every laugh that hadn't been real was hitting against her heart like a hammer ready to shatter her every bone and leave her hollow. One of her hands lifted, pressing against the softness of her lips with the attempts of stopping the tears she had been able to push back for the past two weeks. "You remember?" She heard herself asking after a few more beats, finally dropping her hand and turning around to face Newt's equally angry and concerned orbs.

It didn't take long before the boy started nodding slowly, his Adam's apple bobbing with a gulp meant to push back the equally tight knot in the middle of his throat. "I remember." Even if he didn't feel so comfortably familiar around her, he would not have been able to ignore the manner in which her eyes shut and her head hung with the breath of a sigh he could swear echoed in some sort of relief and anger mixed within a sorrowful push of breath that ended in a gulp of her own.

"Do the others...?" She couldn't finish the question when her eyes landed on the blonde boy once again. When he nodded again she felt relieved; but then she felt angry. She had been scared that her abnormal brain could have been the only one to retain the memories of everything she had deemed real, she had been scared that she would have to be the only one to suffer through a literal hell on her own, but at the same time she had hoped for it; she had hoped that not one of those who she vaguely still thought of as friends would have to suffer through the realisation of being pulled away from a better world into the one they existed in now. She had wished to go to Newt, to Thomas, as well, but she had been too scared that when she approached them nothing of what had happened within that simulated word would be in their memories as vividly as it played in hers; but she had also wished for it, wished for a private pain that couldn't reach them at all, wished for her to be able to carry out with that broken realisation.

The silence continued between the two for a little longer, but at least Teresa's frozen frame broke movement in order to walk back the few steps she had taken away from the older boy in order to rest by his side once again; the quiet speaking louder than any words could while her arms wrapped around her legs and her eyes became lost in the movement of the artificial waters once again, both gladers aware of each other's movements as if it were impossible not to reach for one another in a means of seeking comfort. And after what felt like an equally comfortable yet unbearable silence, finally Newt spoke again. "You look tired." He stated, folding his good leg under the other one while leaning his weight against his hands on the grass once again. His eyes lifted and looking in her direction. "Maybe you should get some sleep."

Even if she'd tried to, Teresa wouldn't have been able to push back the scoffed breath that left from her nose. "I slept for nearly four years, I think I've had enough of it." She said rather harshly, eyes closing, wishing upon her anger to not show itself at such a moment, nor in such a way; not when Newt had reached for her in the real life version of what felt like a familiar reach for help like the ones they had lived together in that which they were pulled out from. So, instead, she took a breath, shook her head, and forced the tone of her voice to soften before she spoke a truthful confession in a tired statement. "I haven't been able to sleep much."

Newt's head bobbed in a nod that she saw only in the corner of her eye. "Yeah, me either." He admitted, eyes that had been studying her frame and the pain he recognised as well as his own crossing her every feature, fell to the artificial water in the river; forcing himself to concentrate on the crystalline sound that echoed all around them like a waterfall tooting against invisible walls before attempting to word out an inquiry that could help him answer one of many painful questions that weighted against his shoulders like a million rocks. "Do you believe what they told us?" He asked, looking in her direction again with the curiosity of his inquiry shining unwavering from his gaze. "About..." The silence he inclined forced upon an unspoken meaning he could see Teresa's features shifting in understanding.

She simply shrugged, allowing a slow breath to cleanse her lungs before puffing it out in rather hopeful words. "New York was a real city before the Flare." She replied, her arms tightening around her legs as if it were a hug of its own. "I don't know if that's what it looked like in 2014, but I don't see why they would lie about it."

"They've lied about so many things." He worded, the air of logic slipping into his voice while a frown invaded his forehead in a crease. "I wouldn't put it past them." It was an admission that broke him due to the many prospects of what had been real and what hadn't of what he could remember; though technically every moment under that simulation had been a lie, he could remember carrying his daughter, after her birth, into Teresa's tired arms as clearly as he could remember fighting off the Grievers to make way for Thomas, Teresa and Chuck to get them out of the Maze. They were memories implanted, a possibility he had never even thought of until he lived a peaceful and rather normal life within a WICKED simulation of which lack of reality he wasn't even aware of until he'd woken up years later. "This is all kinds of shucked." He simply said after a silence.

Teresa couldn't help but scoff. "That's one way to put it." But her eyes refused to move away from the clear water running with soft melodies down the river; in it, if she concentrated hard enough, she could see the colour of Diana's eyes. And before she knew it, a forming thought in the middle of her mind had escaped through her lips like a mindless worded ponder. "How is it possible to miss someone, something that was never even real in the first place?" She wondered, her chin resting atop her knees, eyes unblinking in the hue of the running waves. "How can you miss it if it was nothing but a dream?"

Newt's eyes lifted in her direction once again, and he watched the soft waves of her black hair falling over her shoulders in messy curls, her lashes fluttering unmoving as the bright familiar blue of her orbs focused somewhere in front of her. And where she found a reminder of her baby girl in the folds of the water before her, Newt found it on the colour of her hair, of her own eyes. It came nearly like the invisible dagger that had brought him enough pain during that first week awake that had made him wish he never had to see Teresa again. "I miss her too." He said, the knot in the middle of his throat breaking the words shortly while his eyes refused to move away from her features; features which shortly after turned to look in his direction, resting her face against her knees while her eyes studied his own visage in the manner he had studied hers.

They stared at each other in silence, while both their minds unknowingly travelled through the same memories of which mementos remained like a fake object within a corner of their subconscious. "They said..." He started again, feeling a short tingle at the pads of his fingers upon his eyes landing on one of her hands wrapped around her legs that he decided to blame on the fact that he'd been resting in the same position for too long. So he shifted his weight only slightly before gulping and continuing. "They said the only parts of those four years that weren't real were the images of what we were living." He repeated the words the blonde doctor had told him and the rest of the gladers upon their return to consciousness. "That the simulation fed on our subconscious, on our brain, that that was the whole point of it, meaning that every thought, every feeling... we might have had during that time was real, that it was the result of what we might have felt and thought during those implanted circumstances..." He was frowning again, even if his own eyes had fallen on the grass by Teresa's feet.

"'We only gave you the image, you created your lives.'" Teresa repeated in her best imitation of the blonde doctor's voice, her eyes resting on Newt's digits sprawled on the artificially damp grass as he nodded, attempting to gulp back the knot that seemed to grow the longer he forced himself to not ask that which he truly wanted to. But, it seems that, as much in their reality as in the simulation world, Teresa's mind ran along the same lane as his own, because, only a few moments later, a few words escaped through her lips with the same loud pondering as the ones before. "You and I…" She started, voice tired, almost broken, yet ringing with a short hint of hopefulness that made Newt's eyes lift in wonder upon her own. "…we started a life together." Her eyes glistened with the countless tears she'd forbidden to spill for the past two weeks. "We were friends, then we were lovers. We had—we had a daughter." Her eyes closed; it was the first time she said those words out loud since she'd woken up from the simulation, and a treacherous tear escaped though her pressing lids upon her cheek as a breath got caught in the middle of her throat. "I trusted you with anything, I loved you, we… we were in love."

Upon hearing his own thoughts in her soft utterance, Newt nodded, feeling as if the weight that had been pulling down upon his heart had lifted and dissipated with each mirrored memory she had worded and he could see behind closed eyelids. And then he was breathing out an equally tired sigh. "You think that was real?" He asked, fearful orbs lifting upon her features once again, fearing to hope, fearing to feel and most of him beginning to wish he had not allowed the best of him to pull him toward her that morning in search of her comfort. He was scared of her answer; and he nearly hated it.

But then she was nodding. "It feels real." Teresa's eyes opened and glassily looked at him, a frown edged to the middle of her forehead shortly when the present tense slipped like a norm from between her lips. But then she gulped, eyes dancing on his own frowning visage as she nodded once again and knowingly repeated the words that had automatically escaped through sorrowful lips. "It feels real." Her words broke by the knot a sob formed in the middle of her throat.

"Come here." Newt said, lifting his once tingling hand in her direction with a wordless offering of his own comfort. And then she was moving, dropping her arms to reach for him, nudging her frame forward with her feet until her frame rested against his and her own arms wrapped around his torso. She was crying, soaking the material of his gray shirt with every single tear she had held back from the moment they'd come back; he sat as straight as he could, wrapped his own arms around her and rested his chin atop her head, welcoming the comfort she didn't know she was giving him, welcoming the familiarity that felt strange upon the broken reality that the world they lived in was. "It feels real." He echoed in a short whisper as he held onto her frame, pressing a soft kiss to her head and admitting it finally to himself as every speck of fear dissipated with her own actions and words.

He was angry, and it showed upon the frown that refused to dissipate even as the sense of relaxation waved inside his frame with the reciprocated recognition, strangeness and familiarity from Teresa's own hold; but he wasn't angry with himself, or Teresa, or any of his other friends. He was angry with WICKED, for stealing them all from a better reality, for throwing them in it when it was never real in the first place, for playing with their minds once again as if what they felt didn't matter, he felt violated. But above all, he felt like embracing that which they called simulated meant not only allowing himself some sense of happiness, but also defiance upon the people he hated the most.

He welcomed it even further.

-O-O-O-O-O-O-

They stayed like that until they had to head back for their next meal; holding hands they slipped back into the reality that was now theirs, that had always been; the reality where Chuck had died and Alby had sacrificed himself. The reality where all the gladers had escaped a Maze and were later on captured and taken to the room where the simulation world had started; the reality where the world outside was dangerous to even breathe in.

A reality that almost seemed like a dream the moment Teresa and Newt arrived to the nearly filled cafeteria; other gladers sat on tables, some with girls Teresa recognised from many of her classes in the simulation world, along with other faces she found familiar from other places that reminded her just how much she had been played with in the name of science.

But in one table, near the corner of the cafeteria, were three people she recognised by more than just their faces; she recognised them by the friendship they had formed within an unreal world. And it was exactly who Newt and Teresa were approaching as they made their way through the noisy cafeteria. Their faces were as broken and tired as everyone else's, but there was a demeanour within the table that displayed some sense of peacefulness between all of them. The horrors of sorrow and loss edged across their features, yet a speck of hope shone through as well. Are you okay? Came Thomas' voice within Teresa's mind as soon as the three spotted them approaching.

Considering. She nodded as she sat beside him and Newt sat on the empty chair beside her own. "For you." Thomas said rather tired as he slid a white cup in Teresa's direction, making her eyes fall to the cup's contents with curiosity shining upon her features. "It's not as good as..." He trailed off, nodding shortly with the subtext everyone in the table understood before lifting a shoulder in a shrug. "...but it's good enough."

She reached for the cup, scanned the faces of Minho – who looked just as tired, angry and relieved as Newt had looked when they had decided to leave the artificial park –, and Gally – whose visage mirrored haunted by what she assumed to be the more than just the very death WICKED had forced him to relieve as a nightmare within the confines of the simulation –, before lifting the white material up to her lips. She felt the ghost of a smile lift her lips in a tired and broken part. "Mocha latte." She said in recognition of the taste. "How?"

"The bastards seem to feel guilty enough to try to make our transition back to reality as smooth as possible." Newt replied, making Teresa's eyes fall on him and the cup of coffee Gally had slid in his direction as well. She nodded in bitter understanding. And when her eyes moved away from Newt, they fell on the empty chair of the table and the lone croissant sitting upon a white plate right in front of it.

Alby.

There was a silence in the table where the missing presence weighted heavy upon all their shoulders, specially Thomas' and Newt's. A smile where a wordless mutual understanding fell upon the five friends; a mutual hate for WICKED, a mutual feeling of injustice that united the five further than just with the unreal images their brains were filled with as clearly as if they were real. "We're not going to let them play with us anymore." Teresa said, her eyes focused on the untouched croissant as if it were more than just a piece of bread; but then she lifted them to study the faces of her tired friends. One by one until they had each nodded their silent agreement. The hand that held her cup of coffee lifted inches away from the table in a short toast before she spoke once again. "For Alby and Chuck."

Once again, the other four boys nodded, raising their own cups with tired and angry demeanours before speaking the four words in a chant of the same tune. "For Alby and Chuck." And then they took a sip of the brown liquid to seal their pact.

-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-

If there was one good thing to come out of such a cruel tragedy, it was this: the friendship between the gladers remained as strong as it had been when they had all been stolen from their lives in New York; they forgave Gally for crimes he'd been forced to play, Minho and Thomas found a way to not let what had happened between them in the simulation come between them in any way, in fact, their relationship became stronger for their ability to overlook such a pain. And Newt and Teresa? They refused to let the relationship they had built in that simulation disappear; their bond grew tighter, their love grew stronger, they were there for each other, little things like the nicknames they used for one another remained. And neither glader would be alone ever again.

They would not let WICKED win. They would not let WICKED steal such bonds away from them like they had stolen everything else.

In many more ways than one...

WICKED had lost.

Acknowledgements:

First of all, I would like to thank runnerstiles on tumblr for making the post that inspired me to write this story. I never thought it would come this far, or have so many readers or oh my god, literally anything of what did happen. I thought I was just going to write ten chapters and be done with it, but then these characters just played inside my mind and spoke through me into this story and I didn't know how to stop. I did not know this is how it would end; in all honestly I thought the last chapter, the epilogue, would be Newt with her little Princess, but then the characters told me it was not the end, that that's not how it was supposed to end, and I sort of fought with the idea for a bit because I thought it unfair for my favourite gladers to go through so much when they already suffered epicly, but, well, I thought the story should be told the way it came to me, and this happened. But it would be nothing without the inspiration it all started from, so thank you, runnerstiles.

I would also like to thank Sara (sarasnewtasticmusings on tumblr) because without her encouragement and Tewt ideas this story would have only reached 20 chapters or less; my tewt lovah helped me in so many ways and I would love to dedicate this whole story to her because it truly would be nothing without her as support. So Thank you, Sara, I hope I made you proud with all the Tewt.

And last, but definitely not least, I would like to thank every single one of you to reading this story; it started of as nothing and ended up with so much. So many readers I didn't expect, so many reviews I definitely did not even dream of getting, both constructive and flattering, and I just want to genuinely thank all 50+(!) of you for taking time out of your days to read, live and (hopefully) enjoy these character's lives as much as I did. It truly means the world to me, and it makes me wish I had more of this story to tell you. But I love all of you and appreciate you and I can't ever thank you enough for allowing me to let this story go so far. Thank you, thank you, thank you. It truly is a bittersweet goodbye, but everything that starts most come to an end, so... this is it. Say it with me, shanks: Fuck WICKED.

THE END