Him || The Scorch Trials

Eighteen

"We won't die." She told herself. It was the only encouragement to keep going that she could give herself. "If we get behind schedule of arriving, we'll just have to walk faster."

"Your optimism is bloody depressing, M."

"I know." Mara smiled widely at Newt, and for a second just looking at his grin made the eternal sadness seem to dither away. "I keep it just for you."

A loud cry of pain from the other side of the room broke their bubble of joy. One of the Cranks had kicked Frypan in the leg, forcing him to move backwards against the wall.

Mara hadn't noticed that all of the other Gladers had moved to sit along the edges of the room. Minho and Aris sat a few inches to Newt's left, their backs pressed up against the cold stone brick of the building.

Each of Jorge's goons were taking their turn to size up the fresh meat, drooling over the idea of striking. Mara could see the hunger in their eyes driving them crazy; they wanted blood and there was no going back. She could only imagine the haunting things they were doing in their head. Blood pouring from flesh. Teeth sinking into skin.

In an attempt at hope, Mara looked back to Newt. His gaze had lowered the ground, fixated on the small stone he was running his fingers across. There was a deep look of concentration on his face, one Mara was frightened to see.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

"Do you have a penny?" He replied, his eyes flicking back up to meet Mara's.

"Nope." Mara picked up a chipped bit of the wall behind them. "How 'bout a rock instead?"

Newt laugh quietly. "Sure." The rock slid between their fingers smoothly, allowing the briefest of moments for their skin to touch. His skin was dried and wrinkled, but it was to be expected in the middle of the Scorch.

"I'm just thinking," He paused. "I wanna know about my parents. I wanna know if my family is okay, where they are. Shuck, I just wanna see them again, and actually remember who they are. If they're out there, I wanna find them and make sure they haven't been thrown in the loony parts of the world. If they have... I don't know what I'd do. I don't... I couldn't..."

"Shh." Mara could see the tears lining his weeping eyes, seeping from his soul and messing with his emotions. A tightening lump squeezed at Mara's throat, burning through her body.

All she wanted to do was pull him closer to her, to wrap her arms around his small body and tell him that they'd do what they can to find his parents. But she knew the truth, and the tightness in her throat prevented her from lying. She could still remember her brother telling her what had happened;

Paige shipped our family off to America- that's where she and the other Gladers' accents come from. She brought Newt up with us too. He lived with us for a while after his parents... well, his parents were... eaten... by Cranks.

Once again, Mara looked up to the boy she had fallen in love with to see pure sadness embedded upon his face. A gut wrenching feeling twisted inside Mara's stomach, climbing through her body to attack her aching heart.

Her grubby, dirt-concealed hands linked with his as she shifted to sit on her knees. Newt's eyes lingered over her fingers as he allowed their hands to intertwine.

"I can't promise you that they're okay, but once we get out of this..." Mara trailed off, losing hope as she spoke. Were they ever going to get out of WICKED's grasp? The two of them had talked about freedom for so long, but it just seemed too far out of reach. "Once we get out," She picked up, trying to comfort Newt. "We'll go looking for them."

The boy nodded subtly, breaking his hold on Mara to wipe his eyes dry.

"Thank you." He whispered, sincerity leaking from his voice. It left a sore pang of guilt in Mara to lie to him, but she would do anything to protect his feelings. After all, she didn't know how far his emotions extended, or how easily the madness could be triggered inside him.

He took a moment to pause, something looming inside his head. For the briefest of seconds, Mara was hesitant with the idea that he knew she was hiding something; that she was hiding the death of his parents from him. But as he pulled her into the warmness of his body, embracing her with his fragile, bony arms, she knew that he was just an unhappy boy who longed for the comfort of others.

"Promise me," Newt spoke softly into her ear. "Promise me that you won't die. For real. I'd go bloody insane, turn myself into one of those shanks." His eyes flickered across the room, presumably landing on a Crank. "I wouldn't last a buggin' day as one of them."

Mara squeezed her eyes shut at the mention of Newt as a Crank. He didn't know what was to come. He didn't know that he was already becoming one of them.

The insides of Mara's throat were clouded with a thick, dry lump, preventing her from saying anything. It felt like there was something in her throat, physically blocking her from replying with anything but the truth. So instead she just nodded, a hatred for herself burning within her core.

"Break it up!" A ragged voice spat from the other side of the room. Mara and Newt both pulled away from each other at the same time, turning to the man scowling back at them. He stood with a strange posture; pressuring all of weight onto his one limp leg.

Reluctantly, Mara sat back against the wall behind her, releasing Newt from her grasp entirely. She looked up to the Cranks surrounding her, watching them squeal with anticipation for the result of Jorge and Thomas' conversation.

A feeling of dread opened up inside of her; what if she became like them in the future? Scrounging for the chance to kill others, having nothing but pure insanity to guide her through her life. She couldn't live like that, she couldn't let herself turn into one of them.

In that way she and Newt were very similar; neither of them thought they could last as a Crank, but then again, who would want to be that way? How could anyone enjoy being something like that?

Still, it wasn't certain that they would definitely be like that. Mara was a 'half Crank', although she still didn't really understand what that meant, and she had only seen Newt as a Crank by the hand of WICKED. That didn't mean that he was going to end up that way. There was still a chance of them both staying sane, but Mara could only see their lives ending badly.

All she wanted was freedom. She didn't care if she lived in the world Scorched by the Sun, or if she couldn't remember life before the Maze, she just wanted freedom to live without someone else controlling her life. She wanted freedom with Newt.

Newt deserved more than this; all of the Gladers deserved a life of freedom. The others who had lost their lives deserved to be alive; Chuck, Alby, even Gally. They deserved a chance at finding their parents and living their lives.

But that wasn't going to happen. The reality is that they were sitting in a room with death as a common factor in their lives, haunting their every movement.

The dead are dead, and the surviving are still breathing. There is nothing that can change the past. Now, their only hope is to keep breathing, and to keep surviving.

That is how Mara was planning to make it to her freedom.