Newt Imagines (The Maze Runner)

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Newt is dead.

Newt is dead long before the news reaches the others. There was nothing to be done but mourn. Even after the smoke settled in the city no sane man will ever see again, even after Minho managed to wash the blood from his hands despite the fact that he still sees it wherever he goes, that truth will remain. Just as honest. Just as impossible to bear.

Minho can still hear the ringing in his ears. Thomas said that Minho had stayed sickeningly silent when he stumbled upon the body; the body that was not his friend's, no, Minho doesn't want to start thinking like that. Minho swears that he remembers screaming until his lungs gave out, but maybe he had been quiet after all. Maybe this confounded pounding against his temples is just that cry waiting to be let out.

It'll have to wait a little longer. Minho is not ready to let go quite yet. If he closes his eyes, if he slaps a hand over his mouth to keep the unearthly howls out, perhaps all will go back to normal. Minho is a king at pretending that everything is just fine. Surely he can do it one more time. Surely if he plays along one more time, he can look up and find himself back in the Maze.

He never thought he'd be thinking back on the Maze as the good old days, but as it turns out, the future only grows worse and worse. Minho misses craning his aching neck up to stare at a blue sky. Thick fogs of smoke and ash have blanketed his horizons for some time now; sand has worn out Minho's dreams of a world that could be kind.

Minho thinks that he ought to give up his pessimism. He is in the middle of some sort of paradise now, an island in the middle of the ocean where no one can reach him. Cranks cannot swim to him, WICKED cannot fly. There is one person that Minho would like to be tied to, but even that line has been clipped too short. Now he's spinning out of Newt's reach forever, never to be together again. Minho wakes up in cold sweats, wondering what he's supposed to do when Newt wakes up and can't find them. It always takes a minute to remember that he never will.

Minho is supposed to be doing better. That's what he promised the others, at least, that he would try. Most times, even the faintest of efforts is passable by Minho's standards. He may not be able to rally the energy to keep going with his usual jokes and charm, but he can at least try. Today, that feels impossible. Tomorrow, it will be even harder.

This is usually the part in which Minho accepts that he's lost and goes to find the one person capable of turning his mood around. No matter how many times Minho's down and out, seeing one friendly face in particular guarantees that he will always be better. That face, however, is an insurmountable distance away. Newt's body is burned to ash, golden hair and blessed smile hidden by tongues of flame. Newt is no more Minho's than that of life, that of love.

Minho is trying to hide from the truth. He already took on as much control over the fate of the island as he could; responsibility helps to distract him, it always has. If Minho worries about other people, he won't worry about himself. He couldn't possibly spend any more time thinking about the fact that Minho unconsciously searches every crowd for a blond head bowed in thought, and how his heart aches like a dead thing every time he comes up short.

For now, Minho is alone. He doesn't trust himself to be around other people once the night starts falling. The thoughts come quicker when the light is gone, running towards him on fleet footsteps with all the agonizing encouragement that the past has ever needed. Minho coughs up blood remembering how he used to run that fast with someone else, someone who won't be here on the island no matter how much time Minho puts into cataloging every single hiding place like it's another turn in the Maze.

The night is late, it always slips away from him. Minho used to love how time flew by in the Glade, like the faster the days could spiral by, the sooner he'd be out of that place. Now he hates it for carrying him further and further from Newt. He's already started to forget the dry exhale Newt always let out when he was trying not to laugh. What will be next, then? The uneven rhythm of his feet against the dry grass? Worse still, the surefooted pattern of Newt's sprint before he gained that limp?