Newt Imagines (The Maze Runner)

How to Overcome

You awaken with a cry choked in your throat, hands grasping out blindly for a contact they'll never make. It takes you a minute to remember where you are and why you shouldn't have to fear for your life, but longer to force your heart rate back to normal. For a moment, you thought you were still there and never left.

It's not true, though, no matter how many nightmares would like to tell you otherwise. You're out of the Maze, out of the Scorch, and W.I.C.K.E.D. no longer has a hold on you.

It's hard to remember that when you're stuck in the dreams, though. Your mind has had enough testing and exposure to Variables that it's able to cook up horrifying night terrors quite easily, and is very good at making them seem so realistic that you never know that you're stuck in them until the moment you wake up.

This moment has come and gone, but you're still afraid to lie back down and try to go to sleep. You have no other choice, though; trying to build a new life in the Safe Haven is a lot of work. It reminds you of what it was like in the very beginning of the Maze, but this time, no one's sending up supplies. You have what you have, and the rest must be built or otherwise made.

It's a good life, but an exhausting one, so you can't afford to miss any more hours on nightmares. So, after allowing yourself one last precious moment of safety, you force your eyes shut once more. Sleep comes fairly quickly, despite the horrid nightmare you just experienced; your skin and bones are too worn to save you from unconsciousness. You close your eyes once more, condemning yourself to that very pit of hell you only just recently escaped.

Despite your best efforts, though, you're not able to fall asleep for a very long time, and when you do, it's a restless sort of slumber that leaves you longing for more when the first traces of dawn first start to make themselves known.

You keep your eyelids firmly down as if by not looking at the quickly approaching morning, it'll go away for at least a little longer. Unfortunately, your plan doesn't work, and you're left with the cruelly cheerful sound of birds chirping outside your small shack as a reminder that it's time to get up.

You'd like nothing more than to hide away for the rest of time, but if there's one thing you've learned from the Maze, the Scorch, and now the Safe Haven, it's that everyone needs to be seen as putting in their equal bit of effort to get anywhere. Although you swear you've earned the right to lie about uselessly after everything you've been through, you still need to help out, so you force your legs out of your threadbare blankets anyways.

Your hut is small, the top of your head scarcely a few inches from the dimly thatched ceiling, but it's enough to keep you dry and out of sight, and that's just fine by you. Still, you can't help but wish that the carefully constructed walls could protect you from the nightmares as well. As you go throughout the day, your lack of sleep presses in on you like heavy clothes on a drowning man, threatening to pull you under.

Every step feels like a momentous weight of effort, and your eyelids must be lined with lead, judging by how badly they want to fall shut. You're supposed to be helping clear swathes of the island of brush and wilderness to make more habitable areas, but it's impossible to get your arms and legs to do what you want without a monumental amount of focus.

Someone approaches from the vague direction behind you, but you can't find it within yourself to care until they tap the freshly laid fencepost in front of you to get your attention.

"Hey, sweetheart. Everything alright?"

You glance up dully to see Newt looking at you, eyes lanced with concern. The late morning sun does wonders to his hair, threading it through with gold as if he were a prince from an ancient tapestry. You could look at him forever, you think, and never grow tired of the sight. You've been loving him for months now, maybe more if you knew what lurked in the memories W.I.C.K.E.D. stole from you, and it is still not enough.