The Inventor

Chapter Twenty Seven; "Not while you still stood"

It continued, replaying almost the same everyday, hardly moving from your chair, sometimes even falling asleep in it. It all mushed together in a blur, then you slept, and you would wake with a start from nightmares and read until you passed out again. You liked that part, the reading. It sparked something different every word you read, something other than how everything has become so tedious, boring and out of your control. And, much to Newt's disapproval you had gotten drunk incredibly often, enjoying how it turned your mind into a careless buzzed feeling. Gally was your drinking partner, happily complaining about the glade and your equal dislike for certain keepers. Those were the only moments that you felt some dopamine rise in yoru hide and it began to come up more and more.

It had been a month since the accident and you woke up, groaning from an ache in your thigh, you slept on it wrong again. Sleeping even was a pain. You struggled for a few minutes to sit upright, rubbing your eyes and trying to remember what that dream was about. It was one of the first decent ones you've had in a while, you fell down a giant hole in the floor at the end but until that moment it was nice.

You were running, running through the parts of the maze you were familiar with, genuinely running. There was barely a limp, no crutches and when you looked down there was this contraption on your foot that looked like the cast you had made for Newt, small minnie crutches only at the sides of your ankle. It was delusional but sweet. A cast in reality couldn't do anything to help you but you felt so weightless in the dream, you ached for it to be real, feeling the grief in your bones. You wanted that, wanted to magically slip on a cast and be able to walk without those crutches.

After weeks of feeling like your own thoughts had been blurred out, you felt it. The quick shot of adrenaline, the idea forming, the goal pathing it's way. You could do it, you could make something so that you could walk on your own. You could move easily, stand up for longer without crutches, and run. You could run, if only for a few minutes.

You took advantage of this, preying on the small hope before you grew tired of it. With the help of crutches you made your way from your bed, back to your seat, scooting over to turn on the light above the main table in the middle of the room.

It was still late, the sky looking black and your hair a mess but you began to flip through page after page from different books, building the invention in your mind and writing it all down on paper. Sketches beyond sketches were drawn until you secured an idea that looked manageable for a first try.

And even though it was late you turned on the radio to have it's noise in the background while you rolled around your workshop all night, drinking a caffeinated drink and tinkering away until the sun came up. Wake up passed and you had begun to measure your own leg, testing how big you would have to make this boot-like brace when Newt lightly knocked and entered.

He took a step back when he saw you up and rolling around, clearly not expecting you to even be breathing yet. A plate was in his hand.

You gave him a toothy smile and beckoned him over to sit on a stool, "I have an idea, I'm making a brace for my leg so I can at least walk without those stupid crutches."

"I swear I saw you only a bloody night ago. What is this?" He waved his hands at the mess of a table and your new surge of energy, "How did you buggin do this? Did you make sketches?"

"Yes! Take a look," You spread all of the drawings out in front of him, looking like a mess but they made sense to you, "this was my first. This is the second one, you can see there's a different type of band. The third one I decided to add these rods for support so that I could stand but only make them go up to below the knee so I can still bend it. I got stuck on how to make it bend for a while but I remembered I had scraps of that stretchy material stuff, then I figured out what I would line the inside with so it didn't get hot or itchy or too smelly because we need good air, you know? Did you know that ghost pain exists for numb legs? I thought it was only for people with prosthetics."