Once In A Blue Moon

Sixteen

A/n:

I wrote this part a while ago and it wasn't originally going to be part of this, so some parts might stray from the story a little. I'm sorry if you notice anything off... I'm trying to spot them as I edit. It was also with Minho when I first wrote it, but I believe I changed most signs of this. Thank you in advance. 🤠

Six weeks trapped behind four walls, enclosed in an incessant maze. Sometimes, you didn't believe that you held the hardest position to get in the Glade: a runner.

Your legs carried you back into the Glade, only fifteen minutes until the walls would close. The map room was to your left, but you ran right. Towards the deadheads. You didn't feel like being around people right now.

The grass in the deadheads almost thwarted your running as you passed, but you ripped through the thick blades.

You reached the Graveyard -- a small clearing full of insipid, weathered tombs.

The tree seemed to mock you as you threw youself to the ground below it, back against the sturdy trunk. With your head in between your knees and arms around your legs, you cried. Not lightly. It felt like you had been running in the Maze for a decade, and there was nothing. Not as much as a hair had changed since the last time the Maze looked like this. Whoever put you here -- those... Creators -- were messing with your mind, ripping you apart at a pace so slow it created physical pain.

A while later, when your eyes seemed to bulge with the puffiness created with each tear, you heard leaves crunching. Twigs snapping. Someone coming toward you. Probably just a stupid Beetle Blade.

The sound approached you. You decided it was definately human. Whoever it was sat down next to you. Muscular arms wrapped around your trembling body, pulling you into a tight embrace. You tried to pull away, but their grip was too strong.

You looked up to see who it was. Newt. Of course. In that moment, all you wanted was for him to leave. You didn't need -- didn't want -- him to see you like this.

"What are you doing here?" you ask bitterly. It sounds acrimonious, like you suddenly hated him.

"What am I doing here? I think I need to ask you what you're doing here. Doors closed fifteen minutes ago and nobody saw you come back!"

You could only give him a quiet 'sorry.'

"Sorry?" he asked, sounding angrier than you had a moment ago. "You're sorry? Well I'm sorry, Y/n, but sorry isn't good enough right now. I had a shuck mental break down back there, in front of every single one of those shanks. I cried, Y/n, because I thought you were bloody dead! Because your map was empty, shoes still gone, weapons missing -- which, by the way, I see you threw down somewhere over there" -- he pointed to the area where he had walked into the graveyard -- "and probably lost. So if sorry is all you are, then I'm sorry, too. That's not enough."

He slumped against the same tree as you, exhausted. His explosion of anger had only made you cry harder, not because he had made you sadder but because he was right. You frantically wiped your eyes in a hopeless attempt to keep him from noticing. You didn't respond; you couldn't figure out how to. You saw Newt chewing his fingernails slowly, as if he were involved in deep thought. In the blurred corner of your vision, you could see him reach out and rub his right ankle. 

It occurred to you then that he probably thought you had tried to do exactly what he had done when he got his limp. Your heart dropped. Your whole body felt heavy as a dreadful pang of guilt swarmed you. Of all things, you had not intended to hurt Newt. Even just thinking about how he must have felt when he considered the vague possibility that you had died -- had killed yourself -- created a feeling that ate away at your insides.