Finality | The Maze Runner / Newt ³ ✓

epilogue: part one

[trigger warning: suicide attempt]

LOCATION: THE MAZE

T-MINUS 13 MONTHS SINCE NEWT ARRIVED

Newt has been thinking about this for days. Every second of every minute of every day for the past month, a recurring thought has struck him with enough force to nearly knock him off his feet. His knees had begun to ache from the burden of the plea from somewhere deep within him. The voice has been growing louder and louder each day, now present as a pounding voice screaming in his head, loud enough to rattle his brain.

The Wall the Wall the Wall the Wall the Wall—

When he first came up to the Glade with thirty other boys at once, twenty-nine of them soon realized they had one thing in common: they couldn't remember anything. Everyone they may have met before they woke, blinking into the sunlight, was a mystery. Newt was the one person who could remember something— the face of a girl.

He didn't know who this girl was, at first. He didn't know why he remembered her. The only thing he knew was that he couldn't tell anyone— if nobody else had a single memory, something terrible could have happened to him. He constantly felt out of place. It was like he didn't completely fit in with everyone else. He never felt comfortable in his own skin, a walking anomaly among his seemingly normal peers.

But later on, he began gaining more memories, only surrounding the girl. He didn't know her name or where she was from. The memories came in vivid dreams that caused him to wake breathlessly. He only knew that she once existed, but now she was gone.

Newt realized a while ago that he must have loved the nameless girl. It would explain a lot.
It would explain why he's caving in on himself. It would explain the ache in his heart every time he woke up.

Everything has become so much. He can't take it anymore. The frustration at the Creators for sending them here, the fact that they've been here for a year and haven't discovered any type of solution, every day being the same routine over and over, and the stupidity of his memories. Why him? Why her? Why is he the only one who can remember?

Newt laughs, a half-crazy sound, and tightens the ivy vine around his waist. He must have been imagining her this entire time. His subconscious had developed a coping device for him: a sweet, brave girl whose smile could light up the darkest sky. She can't be real.

It would explain a lot.

A dark shadow has been following him for a long time. He'd find himself crying angry tears when he woke, livid at his brain for torturing him with her face every night. For giving him images of someone he could never have. For making him feel the brush of her skin. For having him feel so much raw adoration for someone. He has felt himself spiraling down, down, down. It's too late to try to pull himself up. His fingers are slipping, barely grasping onto the edge of sanity.

Newt's pale fingers shake as he unties the vine from his midsection and buries his feet securely in the notches he'd made in the plant. He faces the open space behind him, back to the Wall, and exhales slowly. A small gust of wind blows his tousled hair out of his face. The Maze is otherwise silent. The time on his digital watch blinks at 7:05 pm, meaning that, technically, he should be going back to the Glade with the other Runners soon. But not today. He won't be going back.

Then, something clicks in his mind.

Dylan.

Her face, again, pops into his head. The heart-shaped face, her smile, her dark brown eyes that match the color of her hair—