Bad Dreams | Newt x Reader

Chapter 45-The Explanation

Warnings: basically a recap of what's happened so far (feel free to skip it), so lots of murder mentions and death. Newt being kinda jealous

Hours later, we sat around small fires after we had eaten dinner.
“You both owe me an explanation,” Alex reminded us and I nodded. Nikolai and I stood up and everyone crowded around, people sitting at the front and standing up at the back so they could all see. I shifted awkwardly, feeling many eyes on me.
“First of all, the Snake is dead,” I announced as dramatically as I could.
The crowd instantly erupted into quiet whispers and murmuring.
“How?”
“We killed her,” I replied simply. My eyes quickly flicked to Newt to monitor his reaction. I couldn’t tell much about what he was thinking. He was frowning slightly, his eyes fixed on me. I swallowed and looked away.
“No, don't drag me into this, you killed her,” Nikolai pushed me lightly in a teasing way.
I smacked his hand and glared at him. He could really be annoying sometimes.
“That’s not possible,” Ember said from the front of the crowd.
I drew in a deep breath to avoid being overwhelmed by annoyance.
“I can take power from Enhanced, remember when I took it from your brother?” I asked and she glared at me. “Yes, you do. Anyway, I took the Snake's power and killed her.”
I lifted my hand and let an illusion form a picture of our old home. People whispered to each other and shared glances.
“How do we know that you’re not an illusion?” Ember snapped, glaring at me with a burning hatred.
“Alex, do you remember that time we were at that old park in the town near where we lived?” I asked and he nodded.
“A Crank came out of nowhere and nearly attacked you, you managed to move out of the way and I killed it but you got a cut on your arm from the sharp metal. You healed it but there was still blood. Nikolai caught us trying to sneak back inside and I bribed him with my share of desert for a month to keep him quiet.”
Everyone looked at Alex and he nodded, confirming the story. Vince looked mildly annoyed. “You didn’t tell me about that,” he said to Alex.
“Anyway, now that we’ve sorted that out, we can start telling the damn good explanation that Alex wanted,” I let the illusion zoom in closer to the house and reflect what I said. “We lived in a house on the top of a cliff overlooking the ocean. It was our parents, Coralie, Nikolai, me, Lillian, Vince, Alex and Archie. We were happy there.
“One day, two people came running towards the house being chased by Cranks,” I let the illusion show them, “James and Lillian, we saved them and let them live with us. Over time, James and Coralie seemed to fall in love. Our parents didn’t mind, James was kind and knew how to make Cora laugh,” I didn’t notice that I used her old nickname. “We didn’t notice anything off about them at first, we didn’t even know they were Enhanced. Eventually Coralie seemed to become more distant, she would give us strange looks and I heard her crying on multiple occasions, she wouldn’t tell me why.
“One day, months after they arrived, I was upstairs and I heard a noise so I came out of my room. Vince, Alex and Archie were out that day. Coralie came up to me…” I trailed off and let the illusion depict the memory instead.
“What’s going on?” my illusion self asked.
“Wicked’s here, we have to leave!” Coralie pulled her down the corridor. Past me tried to pull herself from the grip but failed.
“Coralie? You’re hurting me! Let go.”
“I’d say I was sorry, but I would be lying,” Coralie said and clamped the ability stopping metal band around the writer of my younger self.
“Wh-what,” the younger me stared in horror at her. “What are you doing?”
“Wicked is good, we need to find a cure for the virus,” was all she said and started dragging me for the door.
“You—you’re betraying us?”
“Yep,” Coralie said cheerfully.
Back in the present, I waved my hand and the illusion skipped forward and paused.
“The three of them managed to get us all into the one room and used the metal bands my uncle created—yeah he and Marcus betrayed us. That’s how Wicked knew where to send James and Livia—and they tried to get us to join them but we refused and then Coralie…” I swallowed and Nikolai glanced at me, “murdered our parents. Right in front of us.”
Nikolai continued on for me, “I managed to break the thing off my wrist and I got the three of us out of there,” Nikolai said and I gave him a grateful look, “I collapsed our house on top of them. Y/n, Lillian and I spent months on the run from Wicked, we tried to find Vince, Alex and Archie but we couldn’t. After a while we started to have more close calls with Wicked and then…”
It was Nikolai’s turn to trail off.
“Lillian got infected. We thought she was immune but she wasn’t,” I explained and showed the memory of me looking at the black scratch on her arm. “We got desperate and decided to break into a Wicked centre for serum. We didn’t find any, we were discovered by soldiers while we were there and we had to fight our way out. Nikolai got separated from us and Lil started to get worse. We made it outside, I was trying to get Lil away and then go back for Nikolai but…” I forced back a sob and took a deep breath to even my voice, “While I was fighting off an Enhanced, a soldier shot Lil and she died in my arms,” I lied, feeling guilty. “I sort of lost it, I barely remember going back to the Wicked facility. I remember seeing my brother on his knees about to die and everything’s a blur after that.”
Nikolai shot me a confused look about why I didn’t mention Ember or her brother but I quickly gave him a look so he wouldn’t mention them. Only Alex and Newt seemed to catch the small interaction and frowned.
“Then it was just the two of us,” I went on, “We spent about two more months on the run after that. We almost gave up after losing Lil, but we still had each other and that somehow was enough for us to keep going. Well, until the Phoenix found us,” I let the illusion form the scene of us fighting her. “We hadn’t seen much of her up until this point, it had mostly been James and Livia, they were there that day too,” I let the illusion speed up to the point where Nikolai was on his knees and I was being held back. I decided not to include the screaming, “I begged her not to kill him, to kill me instead but she killed him anyway, I’ll come back to that because clearly this idiot isn’t dead. I managed to free myself and just ran, I figured that if I could get away I could figure out some revenge,” the illusion changed to show me running through the old building.
“The Phoenix caught up to me and managed to capture me,” the illusion followed what I had said but showed a glimpse of the mirror that I had seen in my dreams, in it, I saw my blood covered self. I quickly forced the image to go away and change to the later part of the memory, hoping that no one found it suspicious.
Thankfully, no one reacted, they hadn’t noticed it.
“I was then taken back to a Wicked facility,” I showed myself being dragged along the corridor, past a familiar black haired girl. Teresa. Thomas drew in a sharp breath and I quickly changed the scene to where I woke up in the Box. “They wiped my memories and I woke up in the elevator that sent us up into the maze,” I finished and turned to Nikolai. “Do you want to explain what happened on your side?”
Nikolai nodded, his eyes found Alex in the group of people in front of us, Alex gave him a reassuring smile and Nikolai began to fill in the gaps on his side. “When the Phoenix “shot” me, it was actually an illusion, the Phoenix possessed me and took control of me for almost a year. I could barely think for myself, I didn’t know what happened to Y/n, Coralie wouldn’t let me know anything useful. Early on, Coralie figured out that I didn’t know anything and gave up torturing me,” Nikolai said and I winced, Alex flinched.
“After Y/n and the others escaped the maze, they were taken to a Wicked compound and I was there. I don’t know why they thought that was a good idea,” Nikolai laughed, “I saw Y/n and suddenly I had reason to fight off the Phoenix, I saved my energy for a while and used it all in one go to regain control of myself for a couple minutes and tell Y/n what she needed to do and who I was. After they escaped, the Phoenix retook control of my mind. After a couple days, Livia and I had to go with Ratman to go try to capture them,” Nikolai turned to me.
“I got separated from the others and got cornered by the Snake and Nikolai. Nikolai managed to fight off the Phoenix for a moment and I managed to overpower the Snake and steal her power. The Phoenix retook control and I made a deal with her, if she fully released my brother, I wouldn’t slice open the Snake’s neck,” I paused and looked around at the group, “There was a small loophole in that deal. The Phoenix released control and I broke the Snake’s neck, technically keeping my end of the bargain. Anyway, we hid the body and then I passed out because it’s annoying for my brother and I enjoy annoying him.
“I woke up in the city and my brother filled me in on what happened and he had heard something about a guy named Marcus. We thought it was strange enough to check out and it was our uncle Marcus. We found him with a possessed Enhanced, we managed to knock the Enhanced out and we took Marcus and him to another part of the city where there were Cranks. One of my abilities is to take energy from beings and convert it into my own energy.”
“Crank batteries,” Alex realised, ignoring the annoyed glances at his interruption.
“Exactly, so when we had enough Cranks I used my ability on the Enhanced and managed to get into the Phoenix’s web of possessed people. I sensed a bunch of them clumped together so I got control of one,” I flicked a glance at Skylar. “And helped you people fight off the soldiers. Marcus also fell into the Crank pit, we definitely didn’t tie him over it. After I let go of control I passed out, woke up in the back of a car with Nikolai driving. We stopped in a town for the night and while looking for supplies I found Aaliyah, she was the last of the survivors there. We took her with us.
“We then drove past a Wicked compound and decided to stop and pay them a visit. Nikolai snuck inside while I caused a distraction. Nikolai found and broke Archie out. The Wolf showed up and I had to fight him—his ability is to do with time by the way—I distracted him while Nikolai got Archie out and then we got back to the car.”
“I drove us the rest of the way to Mexico City,” continued Nikolai, “We found an old apartment to stay in, and we put up signs around the city for Alex to find.”
“Wait? Those weird symbols were for Alex?” Vince interrupted and shot a look at Alex.
“Yes, we created a secret language when we were younger,” Nikolai admitted, glancing at Alex.
“I went into the city with Aaliyah earlier. Austin managed to surprise me and impaled me with a bit of metal. I told Aaliyah to run and she did. Another Enhanced showed up, the girl who could conjure things. I wanted the people to get off the street so I made it rain and then cast an illusion to make it look like blood, a bit dramatic but it worked. I escaped from the Enhanced and got over the city wall. I had to stop and find something else to bandage the room but I heard Aaliyah scream and I had to go help her. I then found you idiots trying to fight Austin. I stole his power and killed him with the help of the Corrupt King—who also seems to be weirdly obsessed with me. Then we ran into the Phoenix and I had Élliot take you to Nik.”
“And I was in the apartment when I saw you below and then I decided to jump down and help,” Nikolai finished.
“Any questions?” I asked. No one said anything. “Excellent.”
The people started to leave and we went back to our friends.
“Satisfied?” Nikolai asked Alex.
“Yeah,” Alex said and ran a hand through his hair. I frowned at him, he gave me a look. He wanted the stuff we had left out. I rolled my eyes and gestured for him and my brother to follow us.
Newt frowned at us.
“We’ll be right back,” I promised him. I led the boys to the edge of the camp and made sure no one was close enough to hear.
“Okay, first of all, why didn’t you say who the person was that was gonna kill me?” Nikolai asked me and Alex frowned.
“Because no one here knows who Ember is, that’s where we have an advantage just in case,” I explained.
“Ember? What do you mean who Ember is?” Alex asked.
I shared a look with Nikolai, he nodded. “Ember is the daughter of Ratman.”
Alex froze, his eyes widening, “What?”
“She’s on our side though, her father and brother were very abusive towards her and she took the first opportunity to turn on them,” I explained, mildly annoyed that I had to defend her. “Still, it’s good to have information on her that we could use against her if need be.”
“Right,” Alex sighed, running a hand through his hair. Nikolai’s eyes tracked the movement with a strange expression on his face. “Anything else I should know?”
I hesitated and looked back at Nikolai. He shook his head this time. I turned back to Alex, “Nothing you need to know.”
“Really? Because that suggested otherwise,” Alex said, looking between us. We both stayed silent. “You can trust me, you know.”
Nikolai grimaced, not meeting his eyes. “It’s not that we don’t trust you, it’s that a lot of people would kill and torture for it.”
“For what?” Alex asked, exasperated.
“The identity of the Wraith,” I said finally.
“I thought you said earlier that you only knew enough to contact them?” Alex said after a moment of shocked silence.
“That wasn’t exactly true,” I admitted guiltily, stupid Alex and his curiosity to know all our secrets. I had a feeling that Nikolai would give in eventually, if the look on his face was anything to go by. I didn’t mind if Alex knew, but he could tell his father. Vince was a little paranoid, he would either kill me or kick me out of the Right Arm.
“Nikolai!” Vince called, “Come over here for a moment!”
Nikolai quickly went over to him and left us alone.
“Does he know?” Alex asked. Icy fear seized me, could he know? How could he know?
“Know what?” I said carefully. Alex gave me a weird look.
Alex frowned at me, “Who the Wraith is?”
“Oh, yeah he does,” relief flooded through me. I took a shaky breath.
“What did you think I was talking about?” Alex asked, confused.
“Nothing, I just got confused,” I gave him a smile. “Come on, I want to go back to Newt.”

Newt POV
I sat with my friends around one of the small fires. The dying flames sank lower and lower as time passed, resulting in much of it only being flickering embers and coals. Aaliyah and Archie played a game in the dirt with crosses and circles, using the fire to see. As far as I could tell, they were tying in their game.
Alec and Y/n emerged from where they had been talking and crossed the camp towards us, chatting as they did so. Jealousy flared in me but I forced it down and gave Y/n a smile as she sat next to me. Her hand found mine and she leaned against me. I wrapped an arm around her and she closed her eyes, sighing in relief. I listened to the others talk until Vince and told us to go to sleep. I looked down at Y/n who had fallen asleep on my shoulder.
Nikolai helped me lie her down on an old blanket and used a bag as a pillow. I laid down next to her and Nikolai took her other side next to Alex. Aaliyah crawled next to Y/n and Y/n mumbled something and wrapped her arm around the little girl. She turned onto her side, curling her body around Aaliyah protectively. Y/n moved again, looking over her shoulder at me and gestured for me to come closer. I gave her an ‘are you crazy’ look and looked at her brother. She begged me with her eyes until I gave in.
I shifted next to her and wrapped an arm around her stomach, her back against my chest. Over Y/n’s shoulder I saw Nikolai glare at me suspiciously. I met Nikolai’s eyes again and he stared back at me before lifting his hand and pointing at his eyes then he pointed at me in a gesture that meant he was watching me. I rested my head down again and relaxed. With Y/n back in my arms, I would be able to sleep. Warmth radiated off her, enveloping me and pulling me quickly into sleep.

3000 words.