IT STARTED WITH A MAZE - Newt x Reader (F)

- RAT-MAN -

The shower is blindingly bright. The white tiles sting my eyes. I step inside on shaky legs.

The water hits my skin and I nearly collapse.

Hot. Too hot. It scalds - but I don't move. I need it. I want to feel something that isn't numb. I want the heat to carve into me, make me real again.

I press my hands flat against the wall, and the red starts to fade down the drain in slow, syrupy spirals. It takes minutes. Maybe longer. My fingers tremble. My stomach turns.

It's not enough.

I want it all gone. I want the smell of blood off my skin, the memory out of my head. I want Chuck's voice to stop echoing through my ears. I want my guilt gone, not just the blood.

But nothing washes that away.

A nurse - different this time, a man with a clipped accent and sun-scorched skin - leads me from the showers into another room. He doesn't say much. Just points to a chair.

The room smells of metal and antiseptic and something faintly medicinal. The kind of place that knows how to hurt you quietly.

I sit down. The chair's stiff and reclined like a dentist's, the edges too clean, the restraints too close. I don't ask questions.

I don't need to. I know what's coming.

"Just a sample," the nurse says flatly. He presses a needle into my arm. I wince, but I don't flinch. I've been stuck with worse. I've lived through worse.

He draws two vials of blood - thick and dark - and caps them without looking at me. Like I'm just another test subject. Another box on his clipboard. Not a person.

Not a girl who watched her little brother die in a sterile lab.

They inject something else next. A clear liquid. It burns in my veins, like ice catching fire, and then my limbs feel heavier. Slower. Dulled. "Medication," he says without emotion. "Regulates cognitive activity. Standard protocol."

I don't answer. I just blink at him. I don't care what it's for. I don't care what I'm becoming.

A fresh set of clothes is waiting when I'm led back to a bed. A deep red shirt. Soft cotton. Real. It smells clean. It smells like something untouched by smoke or blood or fear. But the colour disturbs me and it takes a long while before I can even pick it up.

I pull it over my head. It catches on my damp hair. I tug it down.

I almost feel like a person again.

Almost.

I sit back down on the same padded bench. The lights above me flicker. My hands are clean now. My hair is wet. I smell like soap and something sweet and artificial.

And I still feel like I might throw up.

The small space is partitioned by curtains - thin and pale, meant to create privacy but only managing to make the silence louder. I hear voices on the other side. Quiet ones. Talking. Laughing. Groaning.

Frypan.

I shoot upright. His voice hits me like a wave. "Fry!" I call, loud and desperate.

Footsteps pause. Then a moment of silence, like someone holding their breath. Then another voice - older, colder. "Quiet down," it says before the shadow keeps walking.

Please. Just let me talk to him. Let me know he's okay. I don't need much. Just a second.

But the footsteps move away.

I sink back into the sheets. My jaw is locked tight. My fists are clenched in the fabric of my pants. I feel like I'm behind bars made of cotton and silence.