EDEN HAD A RATHER AWFUL conversation with the man in the shadows, who later introduced himself as Lawrence. Well the chat had been rather pleasant at first, simple usual conversation that was not peculiar in the slightest. The usual chit chat she would have with someone she did not know quite as well. Then it took a drastic turn. He started asking billions of questions about the cure, pressing harder than the doctors at Wicked had. She of course refused to answer any, keeping the cure valuable and something secret. Then he went into deep yells at her, blaming her for his condition and the full extent of the disease floating around the population - like she could do anything to solve it at that very moment. Truth was, he was far too gone for the cure to work. She had discovered through trial and error that there was a certain point where the cure just simply would not work anymore. Once the person had been violent for more than five days or parts of their body had rotted away, it would simply no longer work.
Pure relief, for two reasons, flooded through her entire system when the others reappeared again in the middle of the night.
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"NO. THERE'S GOT TO BE ANOTHER WAY," Thomas asserted, distress tugging on his brow. They had all been stuck in a meeting for a solid hour and a half, going through what Newt and Thomas had seen and all the options that stemmed from it. Gally had made the remark that Teressa was a perfectly viable option and perhaps their safest one and Thomas had automatically shut off. To him it wasn't an option, to everyone else it was the best one.
Gally quickly turned to reasoning, knowing that this was pretty much the only option. All other proposed ideas were far too risky. "Like what? You've seen the building. She's our only way in."
"You really think she's going to help us?"
"I don't plan on asking for her permission," Gally remarked, shrugging his shoulders
"This is the same girl who betrayed us, correct? Same dick?" Brenda quiered, earning a hum of laughter from Gally. "What's going on?"
"What you afraid your little girlfriends going to get hurt?" Newt piped up, having spent the rest of the meeting relatively silent. Eden, who sat on an overturned box across the room with Frypan, instantly frowned and wondered what sort of emotion had brought about that bite to his voice. "Hm? Because this has obviously never been just about rescuing Minho. Has it?"
Thomas, who quite frankly looked so perplexed one would think he saw a ghost, stammered, "What are you talking about?"
"Teresa," Newt seethed, face oddly close to Thomas'. The fury felt between them enveloped the room and swallowed all the air along with it, both suffocating in the misplaced rage. "She's the only reason Minho's even missing in the first place. Now we finally have an opportunity to get him back. And what?" he yelled, slowly backing Thomas into a lamppost. Eden slid off the box she was sitting on then, apprehensively shifting closer without even thinking. "You don't want to because of her? Because deep down inside you still care about her, don't you? Just admit it."
"Newt, I-"
"Don't lie to me!" he yelled and Thomas slammed against the post, the sound making everyone in the room jump instantaneously. Frypan grabbed Eden's shoulders, as if to prevent her from entering the situation as she was going to. It had no effect. Eden hurried across the room and placed her palm flat on Newt's chest, softly pushing him backwards as she felt the rapid thumping of his heart underneath her fingertips.
"Love," she whispered, softness her voice directly contradicting his. Newt realised himself then, as soon as his gaze snapped to hers and recognised the pattern of her eyes. He muttered a brief apology to Thomas, then another to the rest of the room, before he hastily left without so much as a glance backwards.
Eden hesitated, joining in with the confused and confused stares that floated around the room. She ran after him after a few seconds, forgetting her coat in the hurry. As the cold air of the morning hit her arms, she instantly remembered her coat. Instead she covered her chest with her arms, hugging the warmth into her body.
He stood as soon as she made a noise, hanging his head as he walked towards her. He did not want to look in her eyes and see the brief fright again. Nor did he want her to see the tears in his own eyes. "Newt what's going on?" she asked softly, fighting the urge to reach out and take his hand then and there. She saw the tremor in one of his hands, the one that had been causing problems for days.
"It's nothing," he instantly replied, still avoiding her gaze like the plague.
Eden's patience was wearing thin but she kept calm and collected, not wanting to yell or anything like that. "Don't you dare tell me it's nothing, tell me it's fine when you just yelled at Thomas? I've never heard you yell before, you're not like that. What the clunk is going on?"
"I'm sorry," he whispered, voice breaking ever so softly. She heard it though and it sent shatters of sharp glass hurtling through her heart,
"Sorry for what?" she queried hurriedly, needing the answer that would soothe the nausea inducing panic that made up her body more than water did. He remained silent, staring at a small hole in the concrete beneath them where a leafy plant grew. "Sorry for what, Newt."
Newt looked up then and her heart shattered even further at the look in his eyes. A look of hopelessness and a pure hatred for something that she did not know the identity of. She had only ever seen that look once yet it was etched into her mind as if it had been chiselled into stone. Eden had seen it so intently the night she pulled him away from the ledge in the maze and had watched it dissipate for the weeks following. She knew then, why that look had returned, but she couldn't believe it. Not even when he rolled up his sleeve, revealing the blacked veins of infection.
She gasped softly, tracing the raised lines with her fingertips. "It didn't work..." she muttered, tears brewing behind her eyes. "How..."
"I don't know," he whispered back, staring down at the veins as she did. Eden's mind went through dozens of calculations in a second as her cold fingertips brushed against the warm surface of his arm.
"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked lowly, breeze raising goosebumps on her arms that she couldn't even feel any longer.
He pulled off his coat and handed it to her, feeling far too warm anyhow. She wouldn't have taken it if he was not flushed in the cheeks and practically radiating heat. He shrugged, "I didn't think it would make much of a difference, you don't have anything from the lab."
Eden took another look at it, surveying whether the cure would even work. She was sure it would. She sniffled and wiped the immediate tears away, switching her brain into fixing mode. "It's okay, we'll find some of the stuff here and cure you. It won't take long, I remember everything even without my-"
He took her shoulders, interrupting her speech. "Pepper..."
"I'll fix this Newt, I promise."
"Don't lie Pepper," he sighed.
"I'm not," she whispered, hugging him tightly towards her. They remained silent for a good few minutes, both just listening to the others breathing and thudding heartbeats. Eden felt tears soaking into her sleeve but did not say a word as she wiped her own away, to prevent his shirt from getting damp. "I'll cure it."
"Okay."
"I will, i'll cure it."
"Okay."
Silence became their home for the ten short minutes. She could not physically get close enough to him to fulfil the need within her brain. Tears spilled constantly, a flowing river that felt as if it would never be blocked. There was a mutual understanding, even without saying a word, that they were both scared shitless.
YOU ARE READING
Little lies - NEWT
Fanfiction❝ I just wish you could see the way that I feel about you.❞ ❝ Show me.❞ - EDEN had spent the whole of her life, that she remembered, trying to find something within the chemicals that she was given every month. She had not found anything until a cer...
