Questions // Mazerunner

23-In which we all dream

Maddy moved her hammock away from Newts when they went to sleep. It was only a little thing, but after the events that would happen during the next dark hours, they might have felt just a little bit braver for seeing each other's faces. But with the evening came doubt. Maddy wasn't sure if she could tell Newt what she planned to do, and so she just pushed him away. But all the little things lead to big things and all the big things lead to bad things.

Sleep came easily to Maddy, who wanted to hide from her dark thoughts and their malevolent possibilities, but for Newt, sleep was a creature that evaded his grasp for too long. He lay tossing and turning in his hammock, unable to close his eyes for long.

His mind was filled with worries. Why had Maddy moved? Was she okay? Why did he keep feeling so terrible? And all the darkness, like it was crushing him. Would they get out? Every time he thought it, the odds seemed to get smaller, and yet he couldn't stop thinking about it. Eventually sleep came.

In Newts head, he was on a rack, tied to it by string and leather, with his hands pulled up . He could just make out a lever to the side and a person, a girl. It wasn't. It was. Maddy. And slowly, she started to crank the lever and the rack he was lying on stretched. At first, it wasn't bad, just like stretching in the morning. But then it stretched further and further and so did his arms and legs, and suddenly everything hurt. Because of Maddy. Maddy was the one cranking the lever. Maddy was the one making all the bad things happen.

In Maddy's head, she was cranking a lever, as the rack next to it stretched. There was a boy on it, whimpering and crying out. His face was contorting into inhuman shapes, twisting into circles and grimaces that were out of place on his sweet face. She stopped. That's not right, she thought. Nobody should have to go through that.

The boy stopped crying then, and Maddy looked at his face. Newt. She was hurting, maybe even killing Newt. No. She wasn't going to hurt him. As Maddy started to untie the knots that held Newt done, a new figure appeared beside her, one from the album, from the photo. Lucie.

She stood, stock still, next Maddy and looked at her. She was so calm, so serene, that she seemed unaware of the boy being tortured. Maddy looked up at her, but carried on undoing the knots.

Slowly, Lucie raised her arm so that it extended towards Maddy's head. But on the end of her arm, grasped so tightly that her knuckles turned white, was a gun. "Torture him," she uttered.

And it seemed that Maddy had no choice other than to obey her. But god, it hurt her to see him in pain.

Whilst the exact same events had been played out in Newts dream, they were missing just one vital person. So although Maddy still started to undo his restraints, when she returned to torturing him, it looked to him like that was what she had chosen to do. And that hurt him more than the torture.

So when Newt woke up, he had a physical pain from the imaginary torture, but he also had a mental pain, from his obliviousness. Perhaps if he had known what Maddy would know eventually, things wouldn't have happened the way they did. But that was the way things happened. And it is too late to change it.

A/N Guess who updated right in the middle of exam week? MEE granted its short and terrible writing but stilll
As always, thank you for sticking with the story bc it genuinely makes my day every time somebody reads a new chapter. Thank you again.
-Katie
Also new cover, you like???