Peter Pan Imagines (Once Upon a Time)

The Heart is Home

OUAT x The Maze Runner Crossover

Even from where you stand, you can tell that the odds aren't great.

The unfairness of it strikes you now. This should work, it has to, but just because a cause is right doesn't mean it will succeed. The world is unfair like that sometimes, blessing its heroes with the chance of escape only to kill them where they stand.

Then again, you're no hero, just a survivor. You've never claimed to be anything else. No one here is the stuff of storybooks. No one in the Maze will ever be born of anything but spilled blood, and that means none of you truly have a fighting chance of getting out of here.

This is your world, after all, and it's not pretty. No one said trying to break out of the Glade would be, but you were hoping to lose a few less friends than you have. Already, you look around and see far too many bodies on the ground. Some are Grievers, yes, getting you that much closer to escape, but many more are those of your friends.

One of the spiked monsters lunges at you now, but a spear erupts out of its fleshy middle before it can reach you. You turn to see your protector as he retrieves the spear from the fallen Griever.

"Thanks," you manage to gasp out through uneven breaths.

Minho nods grimly at you. "No problem. Keep your head up, Y/N, we're almost out."

Neither of you are entirely convinced of that fact, but that's Minho for you. The guy would sell his soul to keep his friends' intact. If anyone deserves to make it out, it's the Runner himself.

The only way he'll be alright, however, is if you get him to safety. So, you keep your chin up, and return the favor, pushing Minho to safety out of the reach of a Griever's lunging claws. It may take some effort to get through this, but you'll be damned if you're going to give up so easily.

Your mentality is rewarded when you eventually manage to get Thomas, Teresa, and Chuck into a small room to shut down the Grievers. Using the codes from the daily maps of the Maze, they're able to put a stop to the creatures once and for all. The surviving Gladers collapse in shaky heaps, most clutching wounds or fallen friends.

The cost of making it to the other side is high, far higher than anyone anticipated. Still, you're out, and that's what matters most. Thomas leads your group through a series of inner rooms, including one in which your losses take another hit. This time, it's Chuck who falls, and it rips the last shred of hope for a happy ending from everyone. Chuck was just a kid, you should have protected him. He should have made it out, but he didn't.

Still, the best thing you can do to honor the kid is to escape, once and for all. After stumbling through a wrecked room holding the last vestiges of the WICKED Creators, you and the Gladers learn that the project was created to find a cure for the Flare, and that the rest of the world has been ravaged by solar flares.

It's not great, to say the least. It looks like your dream of finding a quiet place to rest for the remainder of your days may be put on hold for a while. However, you are able to make it out at last, and a group of armed guards appears out of nowhere to guide you through the surrounding desert and into a clean if austere facility.

Despite the comforts of having good food and a roof over your heads, you can't shake the feeling that something about this place is off. Minho, Thomas, and Newt share your concerns, especially when the lead director, a man named Janson, is eerily fixated on the rest of you getting your memories back, even if he has to force you to get the procedure done.

That's why you and some friends are running for your lives at the moment. You don't know how long you have until Janson's men come for you, but you have to find a way out, and find it now. Thomas met up with some kid named Aris who claims that Janson's secrets are even worse than you'd imagined, something along the lines of human experimentation. In all likelihood, the inhabitants of this complex are probably WICKED themselves, not your saviors but a new form of captors.