The Maze Runner ✖ Unbroken {Newt}

✖ Banishment ✖

We spend what's left of the afternoon throwing knives at a painted sack of sand.
It takes me a while to figure it out, but I get closer and closer to hitting the middle of the bulls-eye.
Soon it gets darker outside and I can hear voices and yells.

"What's happening?" I demand, but Winston presses his lips together.
The loud sound of something heavy moving across the ground fills the air and I feel my entire body slightly vibrating.
"What is going on?" I shout, but I barely hear my own voice.

"The maze doors are closing!" Winston yells back and with one last big shake that goes through the ground, it's over.
I fix the blade and the knife I currently am holding to my belt and rush out of the building.

The boys stand in a semi-circle around the closed maze doors.
No one dares to make a sound, some of them are holding wooden poles.
Newt has one, Alby and Minho, too.
"He belongs to the maze now." Alby says in a husky voice and the boys leave, each one into another direction.

I try to catch up on Newt, but he doesn't pay attention to me.
His eyes are full of sorrow, his hands are clenched fists. He's heading straight towards a small house with one door and no windows.
Before we completely get there, he turns around, guilt written all over his suddenly so pale face.

"You'll hate me even more than you already do, Joanna."
"I don't hate you." I reply calmly.

He takes a few more steps and leans his back against the closed door of the wooden house.
"You have enough reasons to hate me."
"Even if I did, I wouldn't. Hey, I'm sorry I yelled at you. What's happening to Ben is none of your fault."
I expected my apology to enhance his mood, but his voice is even more painful as he repeats:
"Just bloody hate me already!"

"I am not going to-... what on earth happened?!"
His dark brown eyes meet mine and I don't turn away. He looks so, so incredibly broken and all I want to do is comfort him.

"Ben's dead."
"What?"
Newt has to take a deep breath before he explains. "The council of the keepers decided he had to be punished for almost killing Thomas, and as well for attacking you.
He was banished at sundown. The keepers pushed him into the maze; I pushed him into the maze..."

"But he'll die in there!" I interrupt,
"The Grievers will rip him into pieces!" He avoids my eyes again. "I played around with swords while you sent him out there to DIE. I should have been there, I-..."

"I made sure that you weren't." Newt says.
"Is that why Minho came in?
Why? I didn't even get to say goodbye."

He bites his lip. "I'm sorry."
Everything is silent until I murmur: "You're not to blame."

With a swift movement he opens the door of the house and steps aside so that I can enter.
"What's this?"
"It's for you, to sleep. You can lock the door from the inside so that no one can come in and bother you if you don't want them to. Someone will knock tomorrow to wake you up before breakfast."

I am speechless for a moment. "That's really nice."
"Thank the builders."
Shyly, I take a look around and start wondering how they built all this in one day.
"Who is the second hammock for?" I ask.
"The other girl, when she wakes up."
"That's kind."

"You could eat dinner with us. If you don't want to meal next to the people who are the reason for your boyfriend's banishment - which everyone would understand - then you can just go get a sandwich at Frypan's..."

"He wasn't my boyfriend." I interrupt silently, but he turns away.
"Whatsoever."

"I wouldn't mind having dinner with you."
I say a bit louder and he turns around, a hint of a smile on his lips.
"Then we better hurry before Minho eats all the food."