In Dreams We Drown

52- Whatever We Face

Beth

Waking up was like being dragged from deep water, the weight of my soaking body threatening to pull me further below the waves. I struggled to fight for my consciousness, to rise up to the light instead of plunge into cool darkness.

My eyes fluttered open as I tried to make sense of my surroundings. Only for a second could I focus on the interior of the Medhut and the five boys huddled in a corner of the room before the torturous ache of my body was all I knew.

"Is this real?" I murmured to nobody in particular.

"Beth?" The Greenie exclaimed as he approached the bed. "Guys, she's waking up."

There was a rush of bodies moving towards the bed but I still couldn't make out what was going on. The memories I'd just lived through came flooding back, the emotional impact numbing me from what was happening around me.

"Beth?" Newt's soft voice somehow cut through the noise in my mind and I looked up to see him stood next to me.

"Newt..." I whispered hoarsely.

Had he always looked that beautiful? Maybe I'd failed to notice the nuances on his face before- the asymmetric freckles scattered across his cheeks, how his curls framed his forehead, the way the muscles in his jaw tensed as a tell-tale sign he was worried about something. It had taken a night in the Maze to make me see him clearly.

The Maze... An image flashed in front of my eyes: Grievers surrounding me from all angles as though slowly boxing me into a coffin.

"What happened?" I gulped.

"We were sort of hoping you'd tell us that, shebean." I looked around to see Minho smirking on my other side. I couldn't help seeing the battered and bruised body of the friend I'd just attacked in my memories... I'd been out of control...

"I... I thought I was dead." I breathed, still not entirely sure this was real. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more suspicious I became. Was this just another trick by the Creators? "How am I still alive?"

"We found you by the Maze doors, barely breathing." Clint said.

I nodded, remembering how I'd painstakingly crawled back to the entrance despite my injuries.

"What happened in there Beth?" The Greenie asked.

Our eyes met and with a shock I remembered I'd seen those same eyes during the Changing. I couldn't quite make sense of it yet, so instead focused on retelling what I could remember from my night in the Maze. I told them about my plan to look for some kind of clue, and how I'd used blood to number the walls. I described how the Grievers had slowly cornered me and, despite my attempts to fight them off, had Stung me.

"Then what?" Thomas prompted when I paused.

"I followed my numbers back to the Maze doors." I said simply, teeth gritted. It was getting harder to ignore the internal screams of my body.

"How did you get away from the Grievers?" Jeff asked.

"I... I didn't. They just disappeared."

"What?" Minho asked incredulously.

"It was like they'd done what they meant to, and they'd been called away." I tried explaining. "I guess the Creators didn't want me dead. They just wanted me to remember."

"Speaking of which, what did you see during the Changing?" Newt asked, his hand stroking comfortingly over mine.

I'd been dreading that question. How could I explain what I'd seen? How could I possibly tell them that what I'd seen of myself before the Maze terrified me?