#tho yesterday I slept in. when my muscles ache too hard I get really tired and I just sleep. They don't tell you that about being disabled

[neewtmas]

{#43} connection // newt

fandom: the maze runner

pairing: newt x reader

word count: 4k words

request: by anonymous

summary: y/n is a runner in the maze of group b, and one day she discovers a path that shouldn’t even exist and  which leads her into a new, unknown part of the maze. She finds her way to a glade full of boys where she meets Newt, with whom she shares some kind of connection.

a/n:  a little imagine after a really long time (I’m so so sorry for the long wait anon) and I feel like it’s absolute shit (tho @preciousnewt assured me it’s not that terrible lol). I struggled so bad with this and I don’t even know why, though I hope my writers block is cured now. Enjoy <3

a/n 2.0: there seems to be some weird glitch with the text that I can’t fix, so just read it on my blog because it should work there

masterlist

“Please be careful”, Sonya said as she hugged me. I tightened my ponytail and fastened my backpack with my lunch and my running gear with the attached knives once again and nodded.

“As always.”

I gave her a last smile and started jogging down the narrow corridor. I noticed an immediate change as I stepped from the sunny glade into the maze, a cold breeze brushing over the exposed skin of my arms and making me shiver. But I had learned to ignore the uneasy feeling that consumed me every time I entered the huge maze because I knew as long as I took the right turns and came back in time, I was safe.

I turned around corners, running the way I had memorized so long ago and focused on breathing slowly and steadily so that I wouldn’t run out of air so fast - that was the first thing every runner got taught. Occasionally I cut off some of the vines hanging from the massive grey walls that seemed to come closer the longer I ran.

After a few hours of running and cutting off vines, I decided to take my lunch break at my usual spot. I pushed back strands of hair that had come loose from my ponytail and dug my small lunch package out of my backpack.

Somehow being in the maze felt weird today, as if something had changed, yet I couldn’t explain where this feeling came from.

A brief glance at my wristwatch showed me it was time to start running again if I wanted to finish my whole sector and come back in time. I got up, stretched quickly and then started running again.

It was only a few hours later that I realized I had no idea where I was. This was not my section anymore, that much I knew. But neither was it one of the sections next to mine, which I also knew by heart after running them for several months.

It was almost as if I were in a totally different maze. But this was impossible, right?

The beeping of the watch slung around my wrist interrupted my thoughts, making me aware of how much time already passed.

If I wanted to make it back in time, I had to turn around now. There was no time left.

I almost didn’t make it back this night, just because it took me quite some time to figure out to the way back to my section. The walls were already closing when I sprinted over the hard concrete towards them, squeezing me through in the last second and collapsed on the ground from exhaustion, trying to calm my racing heart that beat as if it hadn’t realized yet that I wasn’t even running anymore.

Sonya, who had waited for me just like every other day, kneeled down next to me and brushed away some of the hair strands that stuck to my hot and sweaty face.

“Y/N, what happened?! Why are you so late?”

I forced my eyes open only to see her worried expression as she hovered over me.

“Nothing happened”, I spoke through heavy breaths, trying to calm her down, and when my erratic heartbeat had somewhat slowed, I extended my hand towards her.

She immediately knew what I wanted from her and took my hand, pulling me to my feet.

I raised my arms over my head and stretched, groaning as I felt the bones in my back crack. “It was just… weird today, I guess.”

She followed me as I walked over to the homestead, eager to get to the showers to wash off all the dirt and sweat and relax my aching muscles.

“What do you mean with weird?”

“Well, I was running, and suddenly I wasn’t in my section anymore. And it wasn’t one of the sections next to mine either. It was... as if I were in a whole new maze”, I said as we reached my room and I opened the door.

“Wait, a whole new maze? That’s not possible. Are you sure?”

I rummaged in my dresser for some clean clothes. “That’s the thing, I’m not. I’m gonna have to take a closer look at it tomorrow.”

“Do you want to take one of the other runners with you?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s necessary, it’s probably nothing anyway. But I’ll take a shower now.”

After we had had dinner and sat around a small fire for a while, I was now laying in my hammock slightly swaying back and forth, a thin blanket tightly wrapped around me.

I tried to close my eyes and sleep, but even though I was unbelievably tired, sleep  wouldn’t come.

What happened in the maze today just didn’t stop preying on my mind. After I almost fell out of my hammock two times because I was turning and shifting around so much to find a somewhat comfortable position, I gave up. Sighing I sat up and removed the blanket from over my body and swung my legs over the edge of the hammock.

I slipped on my shoes and quietly made my way around the sleeping girls, careful to wake no one up.

I made my way through the fields to the room where we stored the maps we had started to sketch down after we ran the maze for the first time.

Flinching at the loud creak the wooden door made as I pushed it open with shoulder, I slipped into the room and searched in my pockets for the matches, before I lit two candles and placed them on the table in the middle.

In the warm glow of the candlelight I unerringly grabbed the stack with the maps of sector 4 - the one I had been running today - and spread them out on the table.

Today was the tenth day of the month, so I let my eyes wander over the pieces of paper in front of me until I finally found the one with a 10 scribbled in the upper left corner.

I pulled out one of the old chairs from under the table and sat down, leaning over the map.

The darkness that surrounded me and was only interrupted by the two flickering candles made the lines on the paper hard to see, so I lit a third candle and placed them all closer to me after I had pulled my hair up in a ponytail so I wouldn’t accidentally set it on fire.

Now I was able to read the map a lot better and began to trace along the lines with my finger, starting at the entrance of the maze and recreating the way I had taken this morning.

But it didn’t make sense at all.

Wherever I had run, it was not on the map. Wherever I had run, it shouldn’t even be possible.

Had my mind just played a trick on me? Or maybe, for some unknown reason, the maze had changed differently?

Because I didn’t have any better ideas I started to do the same to the maps of all other days, starting with the first.

Two hours later my eyes were stinging and constantly threatened to just fall shut, I had to blink every few seconds to keep my vision from blurring too much and yet I still had found nothing.

The whole thing was literally impossible, and I tried to convince myself that I had just imagined everything, but there still this small voice in the back of my mind that told there was something.

The next morning I could barely climb out of my hammock because staying up too late really got to me apparently and I dragged myself to the kitchen where Sonya already sat, eating.

She was the only person here who didn’t be a runner yet still woke up just as early as we did, mostly to wish us luck. It had become a ritual I really wouldn’t want to miss.

“You look terrible” were Sonya’s first words as I plopped down on the bench opposite to her.

I just squinted my eyes at her and started to eat. “I was in the map room the whole night”, I said after a few bites, and Sonya looked up, focusing her whole attention on me. “I tried to recreate the path I took yesterday. And must have been some kind of weird trick, because it’s absolutely not possible, even if the maze changed differently.”

Sonya blinked a few times, deep in thought. “Well, then it’s probably nothing. Maybe you were just tired?”

I shrugged. “Could be. I haven’t slept all that well in the last few nights. Keep having these weird dreams.”

“It’s nothing that could help us in any way. Just blurred imagines and stuff”, I added at her excited expression. “And this boy. Well, I’m pretty sure it’s a boy, though I can barely see his face because I wake up every time.”

“Ooh, you dream of a boy? Why didn’t you tell me”, Sonya giggled, making me roll my eyes.

“Shut up. Anyways, I’m gonna test it out again today. I would have followed the path yesterday already, but it was too late.”

“And you are sure that you want to do it alone? I’d feel better if you took someone with you”, Sonya said, finishing her sandwich and taking a sip of her water.

I nodded. “I don’t wanna keep another runner from doing their usual sector. I’m sure it’s nothing anyway.”

Sonya still didn’t seem convinced, but she didn’t argue any further, so when I finished my breakfast, I went over to the map room to pack my usual backpack and get into my running gear.

The whole time I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened yesterday. It was like my brain couldn’t accept the obvious like there was this little voice somewhere in the back of my head telling me it was more than I thought.

I knew I needed to get my mind off these things, I had to concentrate on running – not being focused 100 % could easily end deadly.

After I collected myself and said goodbye to Sonya as usual, I went into the maze, taking the exact path I did yesterday, just this time I didn’t bother with mapping down anything and also didn’t cover all the little side corridors like I usually would. All for the sake of reaching the part that had felt so weird yesterday with enough time to properly investigate everything.

I soon realized that one of the corridors I had run down yesterday which was supposed to be a dead end actually wasn’t anymore. It was like the wall had just disappeared, which was impossible.

I decided to just keep running and seeing where this new part of the maze would lead to – maybe it was a possible escape route?

After running a few hours without anything in my surroundings changing I turned around a corner and came to an abrupt stop as I came to face the gap in the wall down the corridor, opening to a wide green.

My gaze fell on a blonde boy standing right at the entrance, seemingly waiting for someone, just like Sonya usually waited for me every evening.

He had his hands stuffed into the pockets of his pants, tapping his feet on the ground and then he looked up and run both of his hands through his hair in exasperated motion, abruptly stopping as he locked eyes with me.

His eyes widened, mouth falling open when suddenly several things happened at once. A low rumbling filled the air, and the walls at the end of the corridor started to close slowly.

I knew I should run, run over to the stranger at the other side of the door – it was my only way to not get stuck in this other, this unfamiliar part of the maze that was probably just as deadly as the one I’ve been running for years.

Suddenly someone came from behind and grabbed my wrist, yanking me forward. I yelped, almost stumbling over my own feet as the boy dragged me over the stone floor. It was as if he had ripped me out of my daze and I managed to regain my balance, sprinting towards the fast closing stone walls scraping over the ground.

“Minho!”, the blonde boy yelled, and the boy running next to me sped up even more and threw himself through the gap, pulling me with him.

The doors closed with a loud thud, and the boy lets go of my wrist, bending over and panting heavily.

“Minho, are you okay?!”, the blonde boy pressed and grabbed the other's shoulder, almost shaking him. “Why are you so late?”

I immediately noticed that he had the same, definitely foreign accent Sonya spoke with.

“I came across a griever...”, he said, his breathing slowly returning to normal. “But I’m okay.”

Just now they seemed to realize that I was standing next to them and turned towards me.

The blonde boy looked me up and down, and I stared back. And as weird as it probably sounds, the longer I looked at him, the more he seemed like someone I had met before.

But still, I crossed my arms defensively in front of my body. “Where am I?”, I asked, sounding harsher than I had intended.

“Who are you? Why are you in the maze? Why are you –“ The tall, muscular guy – Minho – who had pulled me in here straightened his back and crossed his arms as well, trying to stare me down.

“Minho, stop it”, the blond said sharply and placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Who are you?”, he then asked, wearing a tight-lipped smile.

“Y/N…”, you slowly replied. “Where am I? Why am I here?”

“That’s the question we should ask”, the blonde boy said. “But I’m Newt, and that’s Minho. And you’re in the glade.”

“How is that possible”, I murmured quietly, more talking to myself.

“Where are you coming from anyways?”, Minho said, his voice laced with slight annoyance.

“From my glade”, I said.

“Wait, there’s another glade?”

“There’s another maze. Though it shouldn’t be possible for me to be here. The path I ran shouldn’t even exist based on what our maps say.”

“Your maps?”

The blond boy was just absentmindedly repeating what I said and I watched him scrunching his eyebrows together in deep thought.

The strange feeling of familiarity only grew as I was watching him, and when he spoke again, it was like I snapped out of a trance.

“Minho, we’re going to the map room. Right now. And you’re gonna show her all of our maps.”

Minho didn’t seem too happy about this order, but Newt seemed to be some kind of authority figure around here because all it took was a stern look from him and Minho sighed, turning around and starting to walk away.

He obviously expected me to follow him so I did, trying not to look at Newt again. I didn’t want him to think you were weird, for whatever reason.

Soon you reached a little hut, the map room as Newt had called it, and Minho pulled a key out of nowhere, opening the old, rusty-looking lock at the door with a loud creak after fiddling the key in the small hole.

The door swung open, revealing a dimly lit room with one round table in the middle and several crates and dressers at the walls.

Minho immediately proceeded to pull one of the wooden crates from the corner into the middle of the room, opening it and starting to spread out different stacks of paper on the table.

“Here”, he curtly said, motioning to the papers. “Eight sectors, 28 cards for –“ “For each month”, I finished for him and went to take a closer look.

Newt and Minho exchanged a look behind my back before they waited for me to say something.

I examined the maps, and after only a few minutes of studying the quickly scribbled-down lines, I was sure.

“Your maps are exactly the same as ours”, I said, crossing my arms in front of my chest as I turned around.

“The mazes are the same. And just like on our maps, the path I took isn’t possible on yours.”

This seemed to spark Minho’s interest because the scowl on his face disappeared and got replaced by a more or less neutral expression. “Show me”, he said, and I took one of the maps.

“See, here”, I pointed at one of the corridors drawn on the paper. “It’s supposed to be a dead end, but it isn’t anymore. I didn’t realize at first that I was able to keep running instead of having to turn around like usually when I run this sector. But that’s where the two mazes apparently have their connection.”

Minho was quiet for a few moments. “You’re gonna show this to me tomorrow. We have to check that, it’s the first abnormality in over three years. Maybe it’s a hint or something.”

“Let’s talk about this during dinner”, Newt interrupted our thoughts and I followed the two boys out of the map room and over to the largest building in this place. It looked totally different to what we had so I figured they had built it themselves, just like we had to build our own shelter.

Newt led me to a separate table while Minho went to join a few other boys. “You’re surely hungry, right?”, he asked, and I nodded absentmindedly, examining my surroundings.

I watched him walk over to an old table where he grabbed two plates and seemed to exchange a few words with the dark-skinned boy behind the table. He wore a rather dirty apron, so he must be the one responsible for cooking.

When Newt came back I noticed his limp and I briefly wondered if I should ask about it, but quickly dismissed this thought again. Things like this were often deeply personal and I didn’t want to come across as overly curious and invade his privacy. I would have to find a better conversation starter.

He gave me one of the plates and we started eating. I could feel the stares of the boys burn into me and it made me somewhat uncomfortable, but I knew that we would’ve been the same if suddenly a boy appeared in our maze so I forced myself to just ignore it.

I finished before Newt, and I couldn’t help myself but watch him. There was something about him that made it almost impossible for me to look away, and it was not only his insanely attractive face – though that didn’t exactly help – but more. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on, but I knew it was there.

“Do I have something on my face?”, he suddenly asked, a slight smile tugging at the corners of his lips, obviously noticing my gaze trained on him.

“What?”, I snapped out, feeling the blood rushing to my face. “No! I mean, sorry. I was just… thinking.”

“Thinking”, he repeated. “About what?”

“You seem somewhat familiar to me, and I don’t know what it is.”

He thought for a few moments. “You do too”, he finally said, slowly, as if he were unsure about his own words.

“It’s like a memory in the back of my mind, but every time I try to concentrate on it, it –“

“- It just slips away?”, finished Newt, voicing my exact thoughts.

“Yes. It’s like the things you can’t see until you don’t look directly at them anymore. I just can’t seem to grasp anything real.”

He ran his hand through his hair, shrugging. “I know just as much as you do.”

After we had returned our plates he led me to a watch tower at the edge of the small forest that spread from one of the corners of the glade.

I followed him up the creaking and slightly brittle ladder and we sat down on the wooden planks, our feet dangling off the edge.

A soft breeze rustled the leaves on the trees below us and the last rays of sunshine drowned the edges of the glade in golden light as we sat in comfortable silence, my legs slowly swaying back and forth.

After the sun had disappeared behind the high stone walls, the light quickly got duller.

Newt and I talked about everything and nothing until darkness filled the glade and I was almost falling asleep while sitting, it felt like we’ve known each other for years and not just one evening.

Apparently, only one boy was actually interested enough in me to come up the ladder and have a brief conversation, a little boy named Chuck. He was bubbly and happy and told us that Minho had informed everyone about me, why I was here, how I got into the glade and that seemed enough for everyone to pay no further attention to me.

I was glad about it really, being able to have a long conversation with Newt without any noteworthy interruptions.

My faintly glimmering watch told me that it was almost midnight when Newt suggested going to bed, and since he didn’t want me to sleep outside between all the other boys, he insisted that I’d get his room.

“I can’t just have you sleep outside alone, god knows which kinda ideas those shanks get. You’ll sleep in my room, I’ll just go to Minho”, he said while we were walking through the darkness.

“That won’t be necessary”, I protested. “I don’t think Minho would be too excited about you waltzing into his room and waking him up in the middle of the night. We can both just sleep in your room, I’ll take the floor.”

Newt turned his head to me and looked like I had just suggested to go in the maze for the night and cuddle with one of the grievers.

“Are you kidding me? I’m not gonna let this happen. I’m taking the floor.”

Newt didn’t allow any further discussions about the sleeping arrangements and so he settled down on the wooden tiles next to the bed where I was comfortably wrapped in the covers.

Now that I thought about it I wouldn’t have any issues with Newt sleeping into the bed with me but I knew there was no possible excuse as to why I wanted him to sleep next to me, so I just kept quiet until I eventually drifted off into sleep.

The next morning after breakfast I went into the maze with Minho. We jogged next to each other in silence, not really knowing what to say to each other. This strengthened the impression I had with Newt, the impression that I somehow knew him.

Everything with him came so naturally, there was no way for us to not have had some connection before the maze.

“This is it. This is the corridor I came out”, I informed Minho as we finally reached it, but when I turned around the final corner, I was not greeted with an open path, but a massive stone wall that towered above me as if it had never been any different.

I stopped dead in my track, causing Minho to almost run into me. “What’s up? Why did you to – Oh.” He too stopped for a moment, but then walked towards the wall, lightly knocking against it.

“Are you sure you came out of this corridor. Maybe –“

“No. I’m absolutely, 100 percent sure”, I interrupted him, making my way to the wall and tentatively reaching out for it with my hands, somehow having the irrational hope it would simply disappear when I touched it.

But it didn’t. And only when my fingertips lightly grazed about the cold concrete, I realized what this really meant. I couldn’t go back.

                                               thanks for reading:)

tags:  @preciousnewt @shutupminho @icharleecongrevemultifandomsblog @just2amthings @shuckface-shank07 @221buckythesoldier (if you wanna be added/removed, message me:)

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