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"WELL, LET'S GO get them then."
As soon as the words left Jorge's mouth, there was a pregnant pause between them all.
"Do we even know where they are?"
Brenda snaps out of her stupor and nods quickly. "Thomas said to meet them at the tunnels."
"Well then, all aboard." Vince climbs back into the berg, taking his place in the pilots seat with Jorge in the copilot seat.
Newt? How are you doing? She tries to connect to him, but it doesn't work. Thomas?
I'm here. The boy responds, his voice out of breath even in her head.
Is everything okay?
Not really— shit. He cuts himself off, and the link is broken.
Before Juno can reach out again, the hatch is being opened and Brenda is descending, a vial of the cure in her hand.
They are paused in their steps only a few feet away from the berg when a voice rings out through the intercoms. "Thomas?" It's Teresa. "Can you hear me?" Her voice is loud around them. "I need you to listen to me."
"I know you have no reason to trust me, but I need you to come back." They all had no reason to trust Teresa, but they would all hear her out. "Thomas, you can save Newt. There's still time for him. There's a reason Brenda isn't sick anymore." Teresa pauses before continuing. "It's your blood."
Juno looks over at Brenda, who stands there, mouth parted in shock. "Do you understand? She isn't sick, because you cured her. She doesn't have to be the only one. All you have to do is come back. And this will all finally be over."
"Please. Just come back to me. I know you'll do the right..." Before she can finish, everything goes dark and her voice is cut off.
They all stand in silence, shock coursing through all their veins. All along, they had the cure with them. The thing they were searching for all this time was right under their noses. If Brenda had gotten a blood transfer from anyone else, she might not be here.
"Brenda!" Someone yells. They all turn to see Minho and Gally running their way. "Where's the serum?"
There's a still moment, it passes like slow-motion in her head; she makes eye-contact with Minho, and she knows. Newt isn't making it any further without the serum.
Something snapped in Juno's mind, and her body soon followed. She grasps the serum out of Brenda's hands, and she flies past Minho and Gally in a flash.
Both of them are stunned, but they break out of it when she calls over her shoulder for them to follow. "Where are they?"
I'm almost there, Newt. Stay with me. She begs, legs pumping faster than they ever have before. She was nearly passing Brenda at the speed she was running.
She needed to get to him. She was dependent, and she knew that. Maybe she was a little too dependent on her friends, but they all needed eachother. They always had eachothers backs, and that wouldn't stop now.
Now, Thomas, Newt and Leanne needed her, and she wouldn't shy away because she was scared. She wouldn't hide because she was worried of the what-ifs, and she certainly wouldn't run away because of the fear.
Bullets and bombs exploded through the air, but June didn't stop. Even when her friends did to take cover behind stray cars, she kept running. She ignored their yells, pumping her legs even faster. She was jumping over bodies, through rubble and fire but it didn't matter. She just needed to get to him.
It's okay, June. A sign of relief left her body harshly when she could hear his voice. It echoed in her head, full of sadness, pain and regret. Everything is okay. It's—
And suddenly, she felt empty, like she had lost something. Or, maybe losing something wasn't the right way to explain it. It was more like something I'm her had been broken. She wondered if this is what it felt like to break a leg, or an arm. But no, this wasn't a limb. This was her heart.
Their link.
That's when she knew it. He was gone.
Rounding the corner, June stops short when she sees Thomas hunched over a still Newt and Leanne kneeling next to them.
Everything became all too real all too quickly, and June could barely understand how it all happened. Just earlier, they had shared their first kiss, and now he was gone. He was gone.
Not a sound escaped her lips as Thomas made eye contact with her, unmoving. It wasn't his fault; Juno knew that. But Thomas didn't, even as he stood up from beside Newt —unnoticed by Leanne— and moved away, picking up a discarded gun and jogging in the other direction, he didn't know that. Yet, he needed to.
There was this pounding in her chest. She couldn't hear anything; not Leanne's cries, not Brenda's soft words of assurance, not even the war still raging in.
An unmistakable feeling of emptiness settled inside of Juno.
This boy had taken up such a large part of her life that she couldn't to let him go. He could not just leave her like this, when they were so close to their happy ending. Juno had spent years watching her friends die while they tried to reach this point and now that they were here she felt she couldn't advance without him.
She barely registered Minho's cries. She could not hear Brenda's quiet sniffles. She didn't look up from Newt's body. She couldn't see Frypan on his knees a few feet away, or Gally standing far behind them all, too afraid to approach for the reality would set in; Newt was gone.
This boy, one full of smiles and laughter, made out of pure positive sunshine that radiated so brightly, could not be extinguished to a dim coal. He could not blow away into a breeze of ash. He was always the one who had held onto hope, and who —sometimes forcibly— made them hopeful as well.
Juno couldn't understand how she had lived those first few months without him by her side. Those months, where they pushed eachother away like two magnets repelling eachother, would be her biggest regret from now until she died. They were supposed to make it to the safe-haven, together.
Newt had always been that golden, late-afternoon sun of blinding happiness. She would joke about it at their temporary safe-haven; how she hated it. Really, it was the only thing everyone knew she was lying about. She could never hate something that had the smallest implication of Newt in it. It was simply impossible for the brunette to despise something so pure and heartening.
