AU: Chapter is scheduled for revision.

After a long while, the group breaks apart, sniffling and wiping their eyes while exchanging pats on the back and soft words of empathy to one another. My breaths are stuttered, but my chest is no longer locked up, and the tears have ceased from my puffy, red eyes.

Another gentle hand rests on my shoulder, and I turn to see Teresa, who pulls me into an individual hug of her own. "Losing people we care about to that virus can be very hard," she whispers almost chokingly, consolingly rubbing my back. "I would know." She pulls away from the embrace, brushing her hand down my arm. "But we'll get through it."

'I would know'? How would she know? We just exposed ourselves to the virus yesterday.

Before I can ask her what she meant, I'm interrupted. "Uh, (y/n)?" A hesitant voice says from behind. Slowly turning back around, I see Minho scratching the back of his neck, seeming a little anxious and awkward. "I just wanted to let you know that you're not alone. We're all really torn up, but that doesn't mean you can't talk to me about it if you ever need to."

I manage to give him a minuscule smile, though it is weighted with sorrow. He secretly has a heart, even though he attempts to cloak it with sarcasm and an uncontrollable attitude. "Thanks, Minho."

"No problem," he smiles weakly in return.

I don't know why, but a part of me feels like Minho's willingness to listen to one's troubles has been needed before.

"Guys," Aris speaks up softly, "we should probably get going."

Although none of us want to admit it, we know that Aris is right and that we have to keep moving.

Thomas, who hasn't said a word since we left Winston, nods, walking ahead and starting us in a single file line, once again.

As I turn to walk, weak smile vanishing as the weight of the loss grows heavier after momentarily easing during the warm embrace, Newt gently reaches for my arm. "(y/n)?"

Looking up at him questioningly, I freeze in my tracks. "Hm?"

"Would you mind if I walk alongside you?" He asks, his voice low and somber.

With my eyes shifting back and forth between each of his, reading him, I shake my head. "No, I don't mind."

He gives a similar forced smile, but it fades as soon as we start walking once again.

. . .

The pain of the loss slowly spreads from my heart, flowing through my veins and weighing my feet down, so much so that it feels as if each weighs a ton.

The sky begins to gradually shift from a pale, blinding shade of blue to a deep, burnt orange, the sun slowly sinking towards the mountains along the horizon. Fortunately, the heat grows bearable, and my sweat no longer cycles through, having time to cool my body before it evaporates in the heat.

Thomas continues to lead from the front, and he has not spoken a single word. With each passing second that he walks in silence, another pound of death's weight pushes down upon my shoulders.

Aris walks alongside Teresa, directly behind Thomas. The two of them exchange quiet words to one another, muttering so low that I'm left to wonder what they are discussing. All that I know is that Teresa initiated the conversation, attempting to distract my friend's sullen mind.

Fry follows the two with Minho walking somewhat behind and beside him. Neither of them speak as well, but Minho had moved closer to Frypan when the normally cheerful boy randomly broke beneath his own aching heart. His sniffles and the act of occasionally wiping his face with his arms had signaled the necessity of consolation, and Minho responded before anyone else could.

Newt, similarly to Thomas, has not said a word for the past few hours, nor has he left my side. However, interwoven with his own mourning expression, there seems to be subtle contemplation, as if death has triggered something else buried within his mind.

Following from the back of the line, I feel unfathomably dejected, the gunshot that signified Winston's death continuing to wrack my brain as I fight to suppress the thoughts of the others I have lost.

"It's going to be okay, you know," Newt mumbles out of the blue, breaking his extensive silence.

I nod halfheartedly, managing to scoff lightly. "Yeah, sure," I mutter doubtfully.

Newt looks down at me as we tread through the sand at a painstakingly slow pace. "Hey, I'm serious. It is going to be okay."

Frowning, I return the glance by looking up at him. "Is it really, though?"

"It is," he replies in confidence, giving me a nod. "Trust me."

I stare at Newt as he returns his eyes to the land ahead, face stone cold, clenching his jaw as if he is in deep physical pain. "Trust you?"

Nodding once more, Newt repeats, "Trust me."

I revert my eyes to the backs of the others ahead, yet again. For some reason, even with having only spoken to him for the first time merely one night ago, I do trust Newt. I trust him wholeheartedly.

The sky develops a gradient of a red-orange that fades into a dark, navy blue, stars beginning to reveal themselves in the dark half of the sky as the sun slips just below the horizon. We continue to make our way through the sand, beginning to put back on our coats and extra layers as the dulling sky is joined with a cold breeze.

Something suddenly twists at my heart, a question that does not sit right with me: How is it that Newt was able to give Winston the gun - the tool that ended his life - and hardly shed a tear? As someone who has acted as an accomplice to death, time and time again, I have never been able to do so without completely shattering.

I inhale deeply, using the deep breath of air as a means of calming me, my eyes locked onto the stretch of desert ahead. "Newt?"

"Hm?" He hums questioningly.

Tossing my scarf around my neck, I mumble, "How did you do it?"

He furrows his brows together. "Do what?"

"How were you able to give Winston the gun?" I ask hesitantly, my voice low. "How were you able to make that decision and stay collected?"

A long stretch of time passes, and yet Newt doesn't respond, causing me to avert my eyes up at him.

His face has remained stone cold after all of this time, jaw clenched, but I can see that, deep down, he is broken. Not simply because of the fact that he appears to be in pain, but because I can see it in his eyes, which are glossy with tears.

Biting my lip to keep my mouth shut, I look back down, ashamed to have asked that when the deep ache of loss was just starting to ease slightly with the hours. Why am I so stupid?

"Because it had to be done," he suddenly replies in a cold, flat voice.

Somewhat shocked that he answered my question, even though it was an utterly horrible time to ask, I look back up at Newt, eyes wide.

"Because no one else would have done it," he mutters.

I frown in response. "How do you know that?"

I can see the indent in his cheeks from his jaw clenching tighter, his eyes narrowed. "In situations like that, no one is as numb to the reality of death as I am."

I feel an instant pang of pain in my chest, and there's an icy chill that shoots through my spine, causing me to get goosebumps. Those words. They were so cold. So lifeless.

I clear my throat, trying to settle the whirlwind of thoughts that had just swept up my brain before responding to Newt. "How exactly would you know that?"

He looks down at me, blinking in attempt to clear up his watery eyes. "We lost a lot of people in the Maze."

Staring intently into Newt's eyes, my vision begins to blur with tears, though I am not quite sure why I feel the urge to cry. "But," I begin, struggling to formulate the question, "why are you specifically 'numb' to death?"

Newt clears his throat, breaking eye contact and looking ahead once again. "Trust me. You don't want to know."

But I do.

. . .

Once the sky is pitch black, we decide to set up camp, Minho and Fry beginning to build a fire with any scraps we find in our packs or lost in the sand. Newt quietly digs through his pack for some food, only to stop amidst his search when his eyes catch Thomas and Teresa conversing a few yards away, yet again.

I sit down on the ground, watching Minho and Fry as I pull my knees to my chest, silent.

Aris quietly takes a seat next to me. "You doing alright?"

Sighing softly through my nose, I nod. "Yeah, I'm okay. This stuff just might reoccur in my nightmares." As if gravity strengthens its pull on my face alone, a frown stretches across it. "Which, I just realized, I have yet to warn everyone about my occasional night terrors," I mutter, face-palming.

Aris leans towards me a little closer, listening intently. "You have night terrors?" He whispers, surprise interwoven with his concern.

"Yeah... They got worse after we escaped."

As I explain this to him, his brows draw together, and his pale irises shift to the growing pile of wood in thought. "Wait," he mumbles, something seeming to click in his head, "one of the nights I was in the Heart, I woke up to screaming, but, by the time I was fully conscious, it was quiet again," he whispers, averting his eyes to mine. "I thought that maybe I was hearing things, but... Was that...?"

Pursing my lips together as I watch his pupils dilate slightly, I hesitantly nod. "I'm surprised you only woke the one time. There were a few after you arrived because Annie had just... Well, she..." My voice trails off as my lip begins to quiver, and I shake my head, looking down in shame.

Aris, sensing the deep, hollow ache that hits my heart with each beat, rests a hand on my back consolingly. "Don't push yourself."

Sniffling as I quickly blink back the rising tears, I lift my head, shaking it slightly as if to clear my mind. "I know, I know..." I inhale deeply, my shoulders rising and falling with my breaths.

Removing his hand from my back, Aris folds both hands in his lap, looking at Minho and Frypan as they start to scuff some metal scraps together, attempting to get a spark. "How long have you had them?" He pauses, fidgeting with his hands. "That is, if you're comfortable with sharing?"

I manage to let out a pathetic snicker. "It's fine." Weaving my fingers together, my arms still draped around my legs, I rest my chin on my knees, watching a few sparks fly from the scraps. "I've had them for as long as I can remember. Literally."

I can see Aris frown in my peripherals.

Tilting my head to the side, my brows furrowing together ever so slightly, I take a moment to ponder on it. "I don't know if there was trauma that induced my night terrors before the Maze," I mutter, only to scoff lightly, "but, then again, I shouldn't underestimate the Maze and my lack of memories. That was traumatic enough." The bitterness drips from my words, and I feel myself growing more angry than upset.

He turns to me, opening his mouth to speak only to close it again, hesitant. "How... How long were you in the Maze, exactly?"

Staring ahead, I clench my jaw and tighten my woven fingers. Looking down, my hands bouncing in a fidget, I mutter blatantly, "One thousand, one hundred, and seventy one days."

His mouth falls open slightly in disbelief. "Woah..."

I let out a heavy, drawn-out sigh, nodding my head. "They didn't get bad until recent, though. Now, I keep seeing you guys getting hurt by the Grievers," I explain, "or, sometimes, I see the girls we lost over the past three years, so I won't be surprised if the Cranks and Winston are added to that list."

Aris, with a slight nod of understanding, offers, "If it's too hard to talk about, I can tell the rest about your night terrors for you, if you'd like?"

I shake my head. "No, really, it's fine," I assure him. "I can tell them myself."

He does his best to read me for a few moments before saying, "Alright, but just know that, if you get nightmares, wake me up. You shouldn't have to endure that fear alone."

"I will if I haven't already woken you up by the screaming," I mumble, eyes locked ahead onto Minho and Frypan.

With his tongue sticking out of the right corner of his mouth in concentration, Minho continues to swipe the metallic scraps together beside the pile of wood. This time, the sparks ignite little patches of flames on the wooden debris. Minho's face lights up, and Fry, thrilled by their success in building a fire with limited resources, gives a little cheer.

However, a sudden gust of wind hits our camping spot, and the weak flames are blown out. Both of their faces instantly drop.

Chuckling to himself softly, Aris rises to his feet. "Looks like you two need some help," he says as he walks over to the two boys.

While they work together to get a lasting fire started, I stare at the pile of wood in front of them. Creasing my brows together, I contemplate on the conflict of my night terrors, now realizing the strangest issue: Why didn't I wake up screaming last night after we were almost all killed by the Cranks? That of all things should have triggered it.

. . .

Once the fire has been made, we all sit around it in silence, staring at the flickering and dancing flames in a daze, trapped within our own minds as we try to register the events that had played out today.

"I thought all of us were supposed to be immune," Teresa mumbles out loud, causing all of us to break our stares with the fire to look in her direction.

Fidgeting with a pocket knife, Minho merely tightens his jaw in response to Teresa, flipping the knife just above his hand and catching it securely by the handle.

"Well, given that Winston wasn't, we should assume that it's the same for the rest of us," Newt adds in a low voice, returning to his stare-down with the flames and slightly adjusting his propped up position in the sand.

The rest of us may be susceptible to the Flare? My stomach ties into a tight knot at the thought; however, I feel a flicker of unsettling movement in my brain as well. Suppressing the frightening itch in my head, I shift my worried eyes to Aris, who is watching the dancing fire in an exhausted daze. What if Aris isn't immune? What if neither of us are? Although I should not allow myself to think too heavily on the hypothetical, I cannot help but look to Newt, whose stare appears to stretch far beyond the fire in front of him. He's the one who gave Winston the pistol when he was pleading to die, so what would happen if Newt is not immune and gets infected as well? What would he do to himself? Both my fear-driven nausea and the terrible itch in my head get worse, and I bury my face in my knees, attempting to breathe through the darkness that looms over me.

Frypan, with tears rolling down his cheeks as he watches the crackling of the fire, whispers in a soft, shattered voice, "I miss the Glade."

By the context, I assume that's what their group called the heart of their Maze.

The lack of verbal responses indicates an almost secret, unanimous agreement with Fry's comment.

The sound of quiet shifting in the sand causes me to lift my head, only to see Thomas rising to his feet. Dusting off his pants, he takes in a stuttered breath before turning and walking a few yards away from the fire. Once he's created a bit of distance between himself and the rest of the group, he sits down with his back to us, silent. Slouched, his shoulders press low with visibly unbearable weight.

I stare at Thomas's back without a word, my face slowly distorting in concern. Maybe someone should talk to him?

As if he had read my mind, Newt cautiously gets up and limps over to Thomas, taking a seat beside the brunette. I can see that Newt has his head turned towards his friend, his lips pursed together as he stares at him. After a few moments of silence, by the looks of it, Newt begins to whisper words of sympathy.

I decide to not intrude by attempting to eavesdrop, and I look over to Aris. "Do you miss our Maze?" I ask quietly.

He lifts a brow, taking a deep breath as he ponders on it for a few moments. "I'm not too sure," he mumbles. "Do you?"

I look back into the fire, biting my lip as I mull over the question. "I... I don't know. In the Heart we had Sonya and Harriet and–"

"Rachel," Aris finishes for me in a somber voice.

I nod, sighing heavily, shoulders sinking. "Yeah... And Rachel," I repeat.

"Who's Rachel?" Minho asks curiously, finally breaking his daze with the orange embers. "You two have mentioned her a few times."

Aris and I exchange pained looks, and I know it hurts too much for him to talk about it, so I decide to answer Minho's question. "Rachel was the Thomas of our Maze, if that makes sense," I explain. "She came up the day before Aris did. She's the one that put two and two together and found the way out."

"How'd you guys manage to find your way out?" Teresa asks, her bright blue eyes illuminated by the golden glow of the fire.

"Yeah, how did you?" Minho chimes in. "Thomas ended up killing a Griever, and we pried out this nasty hunk of meat-flesh-whatever from inside it with a key to the escape," Minho says, folding his arms as he lies back.

I scrunch up my nose, cringing. "Thankfully, our story's a little different," I note with a huffed chuckle. "Harriet and Sonya were assigned to go out into our Maze at night and follow the Grievers to their 'nest' at dawn, wherever that was. Rachel figured that they had to be somewhere during the day." I huff a sigh to blow a strand of hair out of my face. "It was her insane plan, so she went with them that night, too, and it worked. At the time, we were puzzled about why the Maze didn't change shape and lock them in there, but now we understand that WICKED likely stopped the shifting once they had discovered the exit," I say, running my fingers through the sand.

Minho gapes. "Your friends sound like Thomas, being crazy enough to go out into the Maze at night."

I nod, laughing lightly. "Yeah. It was pretty crazy of them to do that." The Maze at night. There is a vivid memory that I've suppressed since my first day in our Maze, and, nauseous, I do my best to keep it down in the darkest corner of my mind.

"And pretty risky." Teresa adds to Minho's comment.

"But is it worth the risk?" Aris finally speaks up, muttering.

Giving Aris a confused look, I watch him as he stares into the fire. "What do you mean?"

"All of this death," he says flatly, his eyes holding a hollow emptiness to them, "is it really worth it?"

"Why are you asking that, shank?" Minho asks, frowning and propping himself up on his elbows; his eyebrows furrow in confusion.

"At the facility we had food and a bed. Would it have been better to have stayed at the facility than put ourselves in even more danger?" He questions.

All of us around the fire remain silent, thinking this one through. I can see Teresa nodding out of the corner of my eye.

"Think about it," Aris says. "Wouldn't it have been better to have sacrificed ourselves for the sake of possibly finding a cure than to die out here?"

"Of course not," says the thickly accented voice, causing everyone to jump with a start and look to Newt as he towers over us from behind the circle, hands on his hips. Although he's returned to the fire, Thomas has not. "And I'll tell you why. First of all, it's not a sacrifice. None of us chose for them to hook us up to machines and drain some essence from our bodies for the sake of science," he pauses, scoffing slightly, "and I'm sure none of us need our memories to sense that we