Fire ➳ TDC, Thomas [3] ✓

chapter {7}

"Aria, please you need to hear me out."

It was that desperate voice, that pleading tone fully overwhelming it, that shaky, shattered feeling underneath it which no longer betrayed any madness, certainty but tears and complete loss— each word Devon spoke was nothing less and nothing more but a plea I, to be truthful did not intend to consider and listen to at all, not after everything she had done wrong to me and the only family I had left, my friends.

Settled in a room Rosie and I first saw each other after months and where we spoke after our arrival and sitting on a sofa stitched up clumsily which stood just by the window open to outside heavy air, Devon looked up at me with glazed over eyes, searching for any sign I was willing to comply to her pleas, yet found none which soon led into a tense silence only protruded when Rosie spoke up in my stead.

"It would be wise," The now blonde doctor confirmed, silently shifted in her seat by a work table as she nodded in Devon's direction, a calm look in her eyes closing in on the mad, crazy one she had during our first meeting. Rosie looked much calmer now. "Maybe she knows something you don't."

I let my lids drop, shook my head disappointedly and surely, sure neither to let a murderer explain anything, nor try to drop off guilt. "I can't do that, Rosie. I just can't." My words came out quickly, as if I did not want to spend any more time on a useless talk of explanation, for nothing could stand, justify why had she killed my best friend who just only sacrificed himself for me, the one who bullet was meant for.

Devon's features visibly sunk, her clammy hands began playing with a cloth draped over her jacket as tears collected in her eyes. She didn't speak anything, just plainly stared at something behind me, as if struggling to maintain the calmness in her eyes so they wouldn't spill her tears.

"You listened to Gally, Aria. What difference is between them?" Rosie assured with a heavy voice, her gaze upon me spying me uncertainly.

Looking back between the two, I sighed out eventually. "Fine, but this doesn't mean forgiveness."

Devon gave me small and sad, grateful smile melting it soon into nothing but a deep frown of utter regret as she picked up her voice rather heavily, fighting for right words. "Thank you. Janson, it was him. He always wished— wanted you dead thinking it would get Ava back to cure searching. She worried about you so much. So he threatened me, and when I firstly refused to kill you, he made sure to control me. I didn't know what I was doing then, I swear. I never wanted you or— or Nico dead. Please, you— you have to believe me." Devon's shoulders shook with heart wrenching sobs, her lip quivering sadly as she looked at the ground with certain desperation plastered in her eyes.

Rosie looked pleadingly at me, her own sad eyes jumping to the sight of Devon and then back at me as she lastly motioned me to leave the room. I nodded, slowly walked outside into the empty hallway bathed in night  light of broken street lights coming form the holes protruding the wall and waited for the blonde woman who appeared not a second later, closing the door on the way out.

"She reminded me of something," The sick woman said, turning to me slowly as she seemed to fall in deep thought within her own reminders, at last speaking up, her voice yet small and quiet. "Janson did want you dead, after Aiden died in the maze like you were supposed to, he needed to get rid of you because it messed with the experiment. Ava said he was to find you and bring you back to her, unharmed and well. Seems like he isn't keen on authority."

"So that's what Chris meant." I wandered out loud, certain coldness sweeping over me at that realisation, no matter that it was still beyond warm. "And Aiden? Who's Aiden?" My eyes snapped toward the woman, whose silence only lasted a second longer before she composed herself.