Error | The Maze Runner / Newt ² ✓

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Disclaimer:

Here you will usually find a disclaimer about how I do not own The Maze Runner. Well, I still don't, so the disclaimer is still here!

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I woke with a foggy mind and my eyelids sticking to each other like glue. The only reason for being out of my slumber was because Newt was talking. My head laid against his chest so I could feel it vibrating, but his voice sounded a little strange. Weird.

I stirred, causing him to cut off his sentence and his hand running through my hair to freeze. "There's only thirteen of— oh."

My head rose off of his chest, feeling like a fifty-pound weight. I ached all over and my side still burned heavily. I could feel dried blood on the side of my head from where my left ear had bled.

Newt gave me a soft, tired smile through my bleary vision. "How ya feelin'?"

"Like death," I responded in a grumble. A frown pulled down my lips when it sounded strange to my own ears. I reached up and hit the left side of my head, feeling panic rise in my chest when I realized something. "I - I can't hear out of my left ear."

"What?" Thomas stood up from where he sat on the dusty floor of the dilapidated building we must have gotten to sometime during the storm. I didn't remember it, and I was kind of glad I didn't.

"Tell me about it," Minho groaned, sprawled out on his back in the middle of the floor with his eyes closed. "At least you didn't catch on fire."

I blinked and realized he was right. His clothes were singed and some parts had charred holes burned through the material. Burns covered his arms, much like mine, and his face held a constant grimace. It looked like he had gotten the worse end of the bolt.

"No, I literally can't hear." I lightly touched the part just below my earlobe, recoiling at the sharp stab of pain that followed. No wonder my ear had bled- my eardrum must have burst from the volume of the lightning. What was I going to do if I was deaf in one ear? I plugged my right one and was met with silence except for a strange, slight ringing sound. "It just rings."

Newt frowned and wrapped his arms around me, pulling me closer. I grimaced at the pain that he accidentally caused when his skin touched my burns, but ignored it as best as I could. My head flopped against his chest when he set me on his lap. All I wanted to do was fall back asleep.

Newt chuckled half-heartedly when I fell back into him so easily, but lifted my chin with his fingers and barely gave me time to open my eyes before his chapped lips met mine. The kiss was slow and meant to distract me from the trails of fire raging through my veins, I knew that much. It was also an 'I'm glad you're alive' type of things that could be reciprocated both ways.

"Agh, really?" Thomas pretended to gag. "Right in front of me? My twin sister? Really?"

Newt pulled back and sent my brother a glare. "Shove off."

"God, I'm so glad I don't have the physical strength left to open my eyes," Minho sighed from his beloved spot on the ground. "Nobody wants to see that."

"Once again, nobody bloody asked anybody to look," Newt defended in an exhausted tone. He let me get comfortable against his chest once again and began combing through my incredibly windswept ponytail with his fingertips. I couldn't stop tensing up every time he accidentally brushed his arm against a burn. It did help that he would whisper, "Sorry," in my ear every time he did.

I swallowed, my throat dry as sandpaper and stomach growling. I sure did miss that dried beef jerky. Sure enough, Newt had dropped the pack of food during the storm. I was proud of him for even carrying it for as long as he did.