Title: Sky Blue
Description: Harry Potter/Maze Runner Crossover
Summary: Cho is new to the Glade.
A/N: Welcome to a quick oneshot, featuring a Maze Runner and Harry Potter crossover. This story was written for the Myths & Legends classroom over at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry (Challenges & Assignments) forum. It was written for the first task, which was to write about a maze. Also note that I will be using the appearances of Maze Runner characters from the movie, rather than the book. Plus, this oneshot does not follow the storyline of the actual book/movie. This is also for Summer Olympics over at the Caesars Palace forum, and it was written for the task of athletics. Well, without further ado, I hope you enjoy the story.
Word Count (without A/N): 2,002
There were strange whirring noises that weren't familiar to Cho. Nor was the feeling of the ground moving underneath her still body, lying on a platform. Her first instinct was to stand up, and so she did. Cho looked around a bit nervously, but she couldn't see anything through the darkness that had descended upon her. All she could do was feel.
She tentatively reached out to her right, cautious of what she would find. Her fair-skinned hand gripped a chain-link fence, which was confining her into a small space. All the while, she kept ascending upward in the darkness.
There was light at the end of the tunnel, or so to speak. Cho squinted and raised her head up to the sky, and she could just about make out a speck of sunlight. A small speck, but it was still something. For the first time since she had been in the small area, she began to feel hopeful. Possibly, she was being lead somewhere?
She didn't really care where she was being lead, as long as it was somewhere out of the dark and confined area she was trapped in. As the light got more prominent, shining through consistently, Cho crouched into a corner of what she made out to be a shaft or an elevator of some sort. She tried not to panic, but she definitely was not sure where she was. Or even who she was.
She couldn't even remember her own name. Who she was.
Before she could dwell any further in her dreadful thoughts, it was almost as if someone had flipped a switch on. Natural sunlight streamed through the shaft, and when Cho looked up she could even see the sky. It was a bright blue color, almost blinding to look that, with big fluffy clouds stationed on it. Never had something that she was sure she had seen everyday in the past seemed so welcoming.
Someone - or rather someones - blocked her vision of the horizon. Cho inclined her head up at an unnaturally slow pace. She could see a bunch of people staring at her, all of them male. She tried to look for someone of her same gender, but didn't spot any. She wondered why she was stuck with all boys. She wondered where she was.
That's exactly what she asked. Looking up at a mocha-skinned boy who looked to be about the same age as she, she posed a question. "Where…" Cho cleared her throat, which begged for a liquid to drink. She tried again. "Where am I?"
The boy she had asked the question was the one who answered. "You're in the Glade," he told her in a gruff, rough voice. Cho stood up tentatively, unsure of what to do. He spoke again in the same tone. "Who are you?"
She thought about it for a second, but her mind was at a blank. Like she was trapped in a white room with nothing else to look at except that very same neutral color. "I don't know," she responded, a bit slowly. For the first time, she began to feel a bit panicked. With everyone staring at her wordlessly, it made her feel like something bad was going to happen.
Murmurs swept through the crowd of boys, saying something about how she was a girl. Not for the first time, Cho noted that there were still no females in sight. She couldn't possibly be the only one, could she?
To most girls, it would be a dream come true to be surrounded by boys. However, she couldn't care less. She at least wanted someone she could connect with, someone who knew what she was going to. Why couldn't she remember her name?
In a clipped tone, another black-haired boy stepped forward. "It would be unusual if you did know your name," he said, a bit slowly. Like he didn't want anything to do with her. "We've all been through that."
"Get up," the first boy spoke again. "You can come out now, I guess." His tone was one of reluct. Cho ignored him and stood from her crouch, her legs feeling a bit sore. She climbed out the box and she looked back down at it, quickly realizing that it was an elevator. Maybe a grain elevator of a sort.
She found footholds and her bare feet hit the green grass. Only then, Cho realized that the Glade was a bit like a farm. There were no animals, or even any other living things besides humans and plants. The sun was beating down on her, and she was already beginning to feel uncomfortable. She wondered how she could possibly withstand the heat for as long as she had to stay there.
There was one thing that attracted Cho's attention: a looming structure with moss-stained walls. The first boy followed her gaze and said, "That's the Maze. No one ever survives a night in there."
"H-how do I get out of here?" Cho asked dubiously, already dreading the answer. Everything in the Glade seemed negative, with nothing positive about it. She just hoped that she wouldn't have to stay there, and that she could get out sooner or later to wherever she belonged. She knew it certainly wasn't in the Glade. She knew she had a home someplace else, but if she could only remember where…
"There is no way out of this buggin' place," another boy spoke up with a foreign accent she had never heard before. "That's where the runners come in. They run through the Maze every day, looking for a way out. So far, we haven't found any."
"N-none?" She stammered in disbelief.
"None," he deadpanned, a serious look on his face.
Cho sighed.
The first boy began giving the others instructions, and he pushed Cho towards a young-looking boy who seemed to be the only gleeful person in the Glade. Everyone else shared weary expressions, unwelcoming. Perhaps they were just so tight-knit that they didn't really want her there. On the downside, maybe they just were like that.
The boy, who introduced himself to be named Chuck, went around the field with her cheerfully. He told her plenty of useful things: where one could sleep, where one could work, more about the Maze. Chuck also told her about the jobs she could have in the Glade, and he finished up that topic by saying, "You already heard 'bout the runners from Newt."
He proceeded to tell her rather trivial things, such as an over-the-top definition of klunk. By the time the tour was over, Cho partially missed the stoic, serious boys.
They went over to the elevator she had come up in - the Box - when they were done and had covered every aspect of the land. "You still don't remember your name?" He asked her, sounding a bit more serious than before.
Cho shook her head. "Am I supposed to? I thought that one guy said it was normal."
Chuck smiled at her brightly. "I'll just give you a nickname for time being, then! What about…Sunny?"
Her heart melted at the little boy. He made her want to protect him, to keep him safe. Cho still thought he did talk too much, though. She wouldn't mind some silence as well.
However, the rest of the day was horrible. The boy she had first addressed, Alby, put her to work and soon Cho learned that she was not at all handy with a shovel. Another boy, Gally, kept sneering at her repeatedly everytime she messed up. She would have lost her friend if not for Chuck by her side. He was a good companion.
At night, all the boys fell asleep as their heads hit their makeshift beds. Cho was the only one who uncomfortably laid awake, the silence wafted by loud snores of the other Gladers. She tossed and turned, wanting to go to sleep but she couldn't. After a long period of time, or what seemed like eternity, Cho finally gave up and stared into the dark, thinking. She hoped she would learn to like it at the Glade, but she could already tell that it was going to be difficult. Something told her that she wasn't used to working hard. That she was used to a much nicer home.
She tried to hang onto that thought, like a child clutching a toy tightly to her chest. But it kept slipping through her fingers, not unlike grains of sand dancing away in the wind. Soon enough she lost the thought completely, like she had been pulling a ribbon too hard and it had become unraveled.
Cho couldn't remember who she was, her mind still a blank slate. She wanted to go back home… if she did have to home to go back to.
She looked into the black of the night miserably, absentmindedly twisting the bottom of her shirt. The simple sky blue shirt was already dirt-stained and damaged beyond repair. Perhaps that's what she would wake up to everyday. A ruined sky blue shirt.
That's all she had in her life now. Demanding boys and ruined sky blue shirts.
Or so she had thought.
After about a week in the Glade, Cho already despised it. Alby had tried her out with almost every job in the entire Glade, but she was no good. Her least favorite had been cooking. Her fingers kept trembling and shaking as she followed Frypan's instructions, and she was surprised that no one got food poisoning when they ate it later.
One morning, he had instructed her to find a pair of runnies, which meant running shoes. She looked at him warily, and when he questioned why, she had a lot to say to him. "What do you mean, why? Last week, I was told that no one gets out of there!"
"No one lasts a night there," Alby corrected her without missing a beat. "But you're useless with the other jobs. This one might be right for you, newbie."
"And if it isn't?" She asked slowly, continuing to walk at his pace to where they kept the running shoes. When he didn't talk for a while, she shot him a confused look. He sighed and looked at her with the same emotionless expression he always seemed to have.
Alby answered, "Well, you'll either die in the Maze or we'll just have to find a...different job."
Cho almost snorted. They had tried almost every job already. She hoped that if this one didn't work out, she wouldn't have to clean the klunk bowls, as Chuck had so gleefully put it earlier that week.
There was a black-haired boy named Minho that was waiting for her there. As she reached him, he began to make plenty of sarcastic remarks at how slow he was. However, she supposed she would rather have company in the Maze than none at all. She didn't know quite what to expect, after all.
As they moved to stand in front of the Walls, Cho asked him, "What else is inside, besides the Grievers that Chuck told me about?"
The Walls began to move slowly. Minho watched with interest for a few seconds, before turning to her. He had a serious expression on his face as he said, "Hopefully, a way out."
For the first time, Cho saw the Maze being revealed. As soon as an opening was in sight, Minho and the other runners began sprinting. "Come on," he gestured and called to her over his right shoulder.
Cho began to sprint, pumping her long legs to join them. She eventually was running side-by-side next to Minho. She inspected the Maze, and saw that there was run-down walls that were moss-stained and nothing really else. She wondered what attacked those very walls.
They didn't get one round of a corner before there was an awful howling sound, and a mechanical one that followed, that made black hairs rise on the back of her neck. A Griever.