World Gone Mad (TMR fic 3)

Chapter 18

Sitting in my tree, I run my fingers over the edge of his journal. Did he write about the day he jumped? I want to understand him. Our time is running out, and I need to know who he is. Flipping it open to the first page, I start to scan the paper.

One Year, Three Months

I guess I'm starting a journal. I never thought to before now. But sitting here in the Homestead with nothing to do has gotten on my nerves. Alby says it might help to get my thoughts out. I know he'll warn the others, tell them to never read it under pain of banishment. I wish he wouldn't.

Alby technically isn't the leader, but he's the force behind the Glade in most ways. Nick's only a false front, talks to the Greenies, helps make the biggest decisions. Alby's in charge of all the smaller details.

My leg hurts. Of course it does. What had I been thinking, really? That it would just be done?

But dying hadn't been my focus. I had been willing to do anything for the sake of a milligram of control. And look where it got me. Laid up in the care of the bloody Med-Jacks.

They're not bad fellows, but I hate being stuck here. I hate being stuck in general. That's all this is. The stupid Maze sitting out there and mocking us. There's not a way out. There never was.

He had started his journal while recovering, then. It's a sobering thought, but I smile at his use of "bloody" even in writing. I've missed him. I need to find him again. Where in WICKED are they?

One Year, Three Months

It breaks my heart that there's no one who sees me, who understands, and I can't change that. If they think I have hope, then I have to continue to pretend. For them. I'm so broken, but they don't see that.

Alby might be able to tell, but he has enough on his shoulders. I don't want to burden him. I just want to get out of this shucking prison. I want out.

I understand that.

Maybe I've been wrong.

Maybe, all this time, Newt has been the one dying for freedom, not me. I thought I was hurt. I thought I was claustrophobic and terrified.

I was blind.

One Year, Three Months

Escape. That's why I did it, of course. I tried to catch that elusive feeling of freedom. And now I'm stuck in a shucking hospital cot.

What's the worst part is that it almost all worked out. Because for just a moment I was free. I fought my way up that wall, climbed high up the vines. It was a challenge, and I won.

Even when I survived the fall, the Grievers would have taken care of it all if Alby hadn't been such a stubborn idiot of a friend. He rescued me when I didn't want it. How can I give up that gift by sacrificing myself again?

If he wants me alive, then I have to stay, no matter how much I hate it. And I'm the hope-giver of the Glade. I have to stay for the boys as much as for Alby. A freak accident in the Maze they would have believed. But now that's not an option, and if I find another way they'll know.

And if they know I want to die, they'll know it's hopeless. So I must stay. I hate it, but I have to.

I have never met anyone so kind as Newt. I don't deserve him. I start to flip pages, skimming. It's hard to read the deep longing for death that someone I love so much experienced. He was so brave... he still is...

One Year, Four Months

And here we are. Like we always have been. Like we always will be. We'll die in here as we're replaced, one by one. Not much chance of sustaining a family, what with everyone being male. I wonder what they're trying to do, sometimes, but then I remind myself. I don't care.

One Year, Six Months

I'm tired of watching everyone die.

One Year, Nine Months

It's so lonely here. I wish I had someone. I have friends, but... none of them see me. None of them understand why I spend hours in the Deadheads, staring at the graves, drinking in the smell of rotting leaves.

I'm an object to them, a role I fulfill. Not a person. I wish there was someone I could be a person to. "You can feel my mind and move my body with the fiction, fantasies, just call this what it is, we don't pretend it's real..." I keep imagining that I have someone, but it doesn't help. Not really.

I want to know the song he quoted. I want to hear his voice telling me about everything he went through. I want to see his gentle smile, to hear him say that he's safe now, that everything will be fine for us and we will be okay no matter what.

I want there to be a happy ending.

I'm crying as I read, and maybe it isn't the leftover drugs from the surgery.

I remember walking into the burning city, wanting to choke to death on the smoke. I remember the times Sonya had to drag me back to bed because I was hunting for a way to end it all.

Newt was hurting in the same way and I had no idea. I told him when he dragged me out of the city that he didn't understand.

I'm an idiot.

With a deep breath, I start climbing out of the tree. It's a lot to process.

I had meant to start looking for something I could use to escape WICKED and fight back, but I need to give my thoughts a chance to settle. Payton. It's not the name I would have expected, but I guess that makes sense. I really had forgotten that. They had trained me to be only Ash well before they wiped my memory.

I remember how terrifying it was to grow up in WICKED, knowing my every choice gave them ammunition to control me. I remember trying to curb my own humanity, my own self, just so they couldn't find the thin cracks in my armor and use them to break me.

Maybe I lost who I was years and years ago.

Maybe Newt lost himself, too.