{mahemio - a violent or extreme disorder that can turn into chaos.}
newt's pov:
I washed my hands thoroughly into the bowl of porcelain, the water flowing quickly over my skin, dribbling under my nails, into my pores.
The water slowly turned a light shade of red, but after I had scrubbed my knuckles so long, they began to turn a starkly white. I brushed over the scars on my fingers, up my arms and on the palms of my hands. I looked at my reflection in the mirror, catching sight of the grey circles that lingered under my eyes.
I saw her soon after also in the reflection of the glass, glad to see my face.
"Are you okay?" She asked, crossing her arms together.
I sighed. "Are you?"
She didn't seem to appreciate my answer, pulling a sad face as she took a step closer. "No."
I noticed her hands, her fingertips and nails – the blood that rested upon them, under them. I turned around to face her. "What did he say?"
Y/n swallowed hard, clearly uncomfortable about the events that had pursued. She cleared her throat, "He doesn't have too long left – Lincoln reckons a year, maximum."
That wasn't what I wanted to hear at all. "Can't we do something? There must be some sort of medicine we can get out there to help him. Lincoln doesn't go out there but if he mentions something that we could look for on the hunt I'm sure we could find it. We just need-" She cut me off, hurriedly and upset.
"No, Newt. I've already asked this, already begged Lincoln to give me something to work with, something that we could find to help him." She looked down at the floor, not wishing to meet my eyes. "It's too late, there's nothing we can do. He's been consistently coughing up blood for days apparently - it's not a good sign."
The image in my mind of this place being our safe haven, our home, was crumbling. "There must be a way, y/n..." I said, softly.
She held back any emotion that struggled its way through her exterior. "There isn't. We need to figure out where to go from here. What we do, what we change and how we do it." She explained, seriously. She stifled for a moment but quickly composed herself, " People are scared, and upset, especially with all of the funerals that have been happening lately; this place doesn't feel safe to them anymore, and it's understandable."
I wanted to chime in, and inevitably couldn't help myself. "But inside these walls, everyone is safe. People are only getting hurt when they go to the outside, when they aren't within the confines of the camp."
Y/n looked up at me, realisation appearing on her features. "So, what? We just keep everyone from leaving camp? How would that work? We still need to scavenge for food and resources."
I sighed at her, watching as her eyes would droop from everything that is going wrong around us. I knew she didn't want to lead, but also that even she knew that she didn't really have a choice.
"True, but not everyone needs to go. Maybe we limit the amount of people allowed to go out on the hunt for the next couple of weeks - it could cut down on the possibility of people being injured." I replied, only thinking of the animal enclosure, and how that was supposed to be just a simple routine run.
I would often think about how the bear ripped through that one girl's head with an incredibly terrifying ease; its claws tearing through the skin on her face, scratching over her eyes, drawing thick dark blood that collected over the floor.
I couldn't stop thinking about it.
Y/n sighed. "It isn't our choice, Newt. Vince needs to make the call."
