Winners Collection - Anthology

Romance-Fanfic Collaboration Contest

Round One: THE TRIALS OF LOVE, winners

FIRST PLACE; mieczy-slaw

COME BACK

Cleo's heart was pounding in her chest. It seemed to feel that way ever since two days ago when she witnessed something truly traumatizing. When she witnessed her best friend, and possibly the boy she loved, almost fall to his death.

Cleo knew more than anyone how Newt felt about being in the Glade. How he hated the frustration of running through the maze each day only to return with no news. How he hated that so many of those that came up into the Glade as well hadn't survived, and there was nothing he could have done to stop it. But even after all that, Cleo didn't suspect that he was feeling so lost and helpless that he would attempt to take his own life.

It was the one day she decided to go for her run with Minho instead of him. And it was while they were getting back that Cleo sensed something was wrong. As she and Minho ran through the doors, she noticed a few people in the Glade beginning to run to the walls, eyes cast upward. For a moment, Cleo felt a bit of hope. This was different. This was new. Maybe it was some kind of way out.

But, when she reached the Gladers and turned just in time to see Newt, falling from the top of the wall that surrounded the Glade, Cleo felt her heart stop.

And now, two days later, she hadn't moved from her spot on the chair beside Newt's bed in the homestead. His attempt, however terrifying to witness, hadn't been successful. Not yet, anyway. The Glade's sole med-jack, Clint, had told Cleo that it was all speculation at this point. New could survive this if he woke up from his coma-like state, or his body could slowly give up. If he survived, there was a good chance he could never be a runner again but that was the last thing on Cleo's mind.

For two days, Cleo sat in silence, scared to say anything. Clint said that talking to him would help. That he probably could hear everything and that his mind and his willpower would play a huge role in deciding whether his body should give up or not. Yet, Cleo had no idea what she could say. There was too much to say.

She thought back to the first time she came up in the Glade. Being the first, and so far only, female caused a bit of a stirrup, not to mention that when she came up, she was seemingly harmed. Her pant leg was stained with blood, and only after she was left alone — in the slammer because she hit Gally in the face for being patronizing — did she lift her pant up to see Newt's name scratched onto her skin. It was done hastily and messily, and definitely recently. Right before she was sent up into the Glade. And after testing her handwriting by attempting to replicate the name onto a piece of wood, with a blade, Cleo knew that she had done it to herself, and the only reason she could think of as to why she did it was because she must have wanted to remember him, and some connection they'd had.

A year in the Glade had passed since then, and though the scar was now faint white lines, Cleo thought back to all the moments she'd had with Newt since then, almost like the connection between them, whatever it had been before the Glade, had resumed, instead of starting over.

Cleo remembered sitting and forcing down some of Gally's famous moonshine while sitting with Newt and coming up with predictions about the Glade's newest greenie. She remembered him walking her to her hammock each night when the day was done. She remembered a few moments between them during small breaks between their runs in the maze when their friendship almost took a step forward. For some reason, it never did, mainly because Cleo was unsure if Newt ever felt the same way that she did.