ᴏɴᴇꜱʜᴏᴛꜱ ; ɴᴇᴡᴛᴍᴀꜱ

014 ⸺ sunken and starving

Damn it's really been 5 month hasn't it...

For the first day it was fine. Everyone was lying in wait, waiting for some sign that WICKED would bring them food.

They were alone in the facility. The Gladers — less than half of the 60 odd boys who had once lived in the maze — and Aris. No WICKED guards or workers. They were used to being alone at this point.

But WICKED had left them no food before just leaving them to their own devices. They had nothing. Nothing to grow, or cook. Nothing to calm the distant gnawing of hunger.

But it was still the first day. Newt held out hope. He kept telling himself over and over that WICKED wouldn't just leave them to starve. Not after everything they'd done. Not after all they'd been through.

So he stayed calm. Reassuring the others, talking with Minho about what the future may hold, and just wandering around the empty building they had been dumped in. There was nothing much to it. The walls and ceiling were the same uninspired grey color, all doors that Newt guessed would lead to the outside were bolted shut. Besides where was there to go out there. From the little he'd seen everything outside of the building he was in right now seemed wholly unappealing.

He shuddered just thinking of those things — cranks — that had been clawing at the window just that morning. He silently thanked WICKED for putting bars on the windows. It was probably the best thing they've done for him throughout all the time he could remember with them.

As he finished his fourth — or maybe it was his fifth — trek around the building, he stopped at the entrance to the bedroom he had slept in the night before.

Opening the door revealed that the room was empty, save for one person. On the lower bunk across the room Newt could see someone lying under the thin sheets. He didn't have to wonder who it was. The thin frame and mop of mess brown hair gave it away.

Newt smiled at the sight. It was nice to see Thomas relaxed for once. After their escape from the Maze only two —had it really been only two ? — days ago and all the commotion that morning with Teresa disappearing and Aris appearing, they finally had time to catch their breath.

He gently made his way across the room, sitting himself on the edge of the bed. He watched as the sheets of the bed shifted with the rise and fall of Thomas' breaths.

Newt reached out slowly, tucking an unruly strand of brown hair behind Thomas' ear, then letting his fingers slowly trail down his freckled arm.

He felt Thomas stir beneath his hand, and glanced up at his face, noting the soft crease of his eyebrows and the fluttering of his lashes. Thomas slowly roused himself awake, turning to his other side with a grunt. He looked up staring at Newt with large brown eyes. Thomas' eyes had always reminded Newt of a deer. Of course he had never actually seen a deer, but his mind was able to supply him with this comparison. He didn't really understand it, but that's how he felt about most things regarding his patchy memory.

"Glad to see you still know how to take a nap," Newt quipped, moving his hand from Thomas' arm to rest on the bed beside him.

Thomas grunts, whether it was because of Newt's jab at him or because he had moved his hand away. "How long's it been ?" He slurred, his voice thick with sleep.

"Couple of hours. Everyone's started relaxing, nothing much else to do around here anyway." Newt watched as Thomas' hand slowly moved to his wrist, his thin fingers wrapping around it. His skin was cool to the touch, and felt nice against the heat of Newt's own body.

"Do we have any food ?"

"No. But I'm pretty sure these people wouldn't have went through all the trouble to get us here just to let us buggin' starve," Newt sighed, repeating the same words that had been bouncing around his skull for the past few hours, playing in his mind like a broken record.