~Two Years Later~

Newt had done everything in his power, everything, to remain quiet, he'd watched the telly almost on mute, he'd even decided to read a book instead, or use his computer with the earphones on, but of course there were some things that simply wouldn't work regardless of how much he wanted them to; specially when it meant trusting on the quiet of a month and a half old baby. Her crying made his hands almost flail to throw the book to the side and his long legs to carry him swiftly up the stairs of his home for the third or fourth time in the past five hours with as much stealth and speed as he could master. It only took him half a minute to arrive to his daughter's nursery and pick her up from the purple crib as gently and carefully as he would if she were made of glass. "Shh." He soothed, placing her fragile body against him with the care of his arms around her. "What's wrong, little princess?" He asked in a halfway chanted whisper, his fingers rubbing gentle presses against one of her little hands while his chest felt heavy with the curse of hearing her cry.

It was all it took for his eyes to scan the room for the reason of her crying; the window was closed, blocking the cold breeze from entering into the nursery, the light had been off until Newt had flicked it on to check on her, he had changed her diaper not long ago, so that definitely couldn't be it. "Are you hungry?" He asked, eyes lowering to his crying daughter in his arms once again as if she were going to answer him with anything other than her cries. "Shh." He soothed again, holding her a little closer as he walked toward the small table where the bottles of breast milk were warm inside a thermal lunch bag. "Work with me, Diana, we don't want to wake your mother." He said, eyeing the open door and managing to walk toward it before nudging it ajar with his hip, due to the fact that his hands were completely occupied with his baby and a bottle of milk.

The past month and a half had been exhausting, for him and for Teresa, but more for the latter due to the fact that two weeks after the baby's birth, Newt had had to go away in a job trip for three and a half weeks; she'd barely slept, taking care of little Diana with next to no rest. It was exactly why, when Newt arrived home and saw her exhausted features, he offered her to take care of the baby girl while she rested for a while; something which, with bags under her eyes and a stomach nearly empty, she forced herself to agree with. She left him what he would need prepared and in order in the nursery before passing out with exhaustion on her bed as soon as her head had rested on the pillow; and such continued for a few more days at his request. She would help at times, but others he would insist that she let him take care of Diana; like this day, when Teresa had started to show herself tired and a headache had been prodding inside her brain many hours before midnight, thus he had told her to go lay down and leave the girl in his care. It was exactly why he hushed little Diana into silence, hurrying to find the source of her discomfort so her heartbreaking crying wouldn't wake Teresa from her slumber, it was why he walked along around the nursery, bouncing the baby on his arm while he prepared the readied bottle in the manner in which Teresa had taught him, one handed. "Princess, hush." He whispered, nearly blowing out a thankful huff when he was able to take the bottle's cap off to offer it to his baby girl.

Not even a few seconds after he'd placed the sucker in between her lips, did Diana stop her weeping; big blue eyes sparkling with the fresh pleading tears that had just ended, shinning bright with a hue much like Teresa's own, looked up at him as her little hands rested around the bottle, one on top of the one of his, which held the object there, her feet kicking softly from under the little blanket she remained wrapped in, reminding Newt of the first time he had felt her kick when she was still growing in Teresa's belly; little sucking sounds tooted as she fed, minutely accompanied by the echo of relief that puffed from Newt's lips in a relieved sigh. "There we go." He said quietly, smiling at her as his tired legs led him to the rocking chair by the crib, where he lowered his frame to rest as his eyes remained adorningly, and his arms remained protectively, around that who he called his little Princess Diana.

-O-O-O-O-O-O-

She was running, battle screams echoing all around her while her eyes focused on the goal before her, the opening a feet away and the boy running at her side. "Come on, Chuck!" She encouraged, forcing herself to not look back regardless of the plethora of horrific sounds echoing off of the walls; metallic whirring, human screams, metal clashing against metal, motors roaring, and the continued pressures from Thomas in front of her, who pulled on her hand in the direction of the gray emptiness. She didn't know what was happening, all she knew was that she couldn't let go of Thomas' hand, let alone the hand of the boy behind her; they ran together, a blur of gray and green passing beside them and only the seeming emptiness before them mattering in their journey. Something just sliced my arm! She thought loudly, the part of her that didn't know what was going on feeling more scared by the second. Did anything serve her purpose by thinking such an obvious thing as the side of her arm stung with the scorching fire of a wound?

Her eyes did not at all miss the metallic flash that brought upon a red slash along Thomas' leg; her own burnt with tiredness, she wanted to ask him if he was okay, but the lack of response she seemed to have been waiting for, and the manner in which he pushed forward let her know that he was not daring to give up, much like her. So she continued running; the side of her that seemed to know what was going on refused to let the part that didn't find any answers in her surroundings, for her eyes remained forward regardless of the battles that seemed to be happing at either side of the three of which she was part of. But then she almost wished she hadn't prayed for answers, because a creature she could only think of as a monster suddenly rolled feet away from them; spikes, claws, slime and a monstrous size making the observant Teresa tremble; a boy, his face hidden from sight, was clutched in its claws, stabbing viciously into the thick, mucky skin, trying to escape the monster's grasp.

She was led to the left by Thomas' hold, and even if she'd tried she wouldn't have been able to miss the shriek that came from the side where the monster had disappeared; it echoed endless behind them, nearly drowning every other sound, every other thought. It could only possibly mean one thing: death. Just keep going! She thought; how could she be so heartless? "I know!" Thomas replied, as if he had heard her very thoughts; which, in fact, he had.

But how could she possibly ignore such a horrible scream? How could she pass by so many battles and continue on running with her eyes on the gray clearing that they attempted to approach? What could be more important that helping everyone around her, what could—"Protect Thomas!" She heard Minho screaming behind her. "Don't let these shucks get them! Protect Thomas!" She wanted to look back, she wanted to ask, she wanted to stop running, but instead of being able to do that she only heard more metal clanking in horrid echoes around her. And everything continued, echoing too loudly around her, making her almost wish she had learnt to hear silence among the loudness that had been around her, because it echoed louder, it echoed endless and unstoppable.

She kept running, she couldn't stop, she wanted to stop, she wanted more than to just stop, she wanted to escape that image, she wanted to not see it anymore, ever, she wanted to—Everything came to a stop quite suddenly; she had crashed against Thomas' back, Chuck crashing against her own, and then she was falling; her hands no longer held by the two that had held her before. Too many echoes, to many voices around her as a rain of lights shone upon her mind, flashes on computer screens, the distant echo of a beating heart, It's almost time... whispered right beside her ear while the beeping of a monitor tooted like screams into her ear. More flashes, more images, more inexplicable and strange colours forcing themselves at the front of her mind and her eyes while she fell in a painful spiral downwards. She was gasping, then, forcing breaths into her lungs and sitting up while breathing as if she had never breathed before "It's almost time." She whispered unwillingly and without truly noticing as her darkened surroundings came into a rather strange focus to reveal the room she shared with Newt in their home at the outskirts of New York city; his jacket on the back of a chair near the window, her vanity mirror serving as a frame that held pictures of her, her friends and her husband against gravity's hold, the photograph in which her eyes looked into Newt's and a grin adorned both their lips – her in the white folds of her wedding dress and veil and him in the black tux he had worn on their wedding day – rested on the night table on the side where Newt usually rested. He was nowhere to be seen, but she was safe, she was alright. She could breathe again.

Her heart was a loud drum against her ears; one she could feel at the tips of her fingers and toes like white noise running through her veins as she attempted to relax. Her hands lifted in order to press against her face with hopes of removing the sweat that had soaked her whole frame and the sheets under her. "For fuck's sake." She groaned, breathing out a sigh in frustration over the images that remained burnt into her mind along with the last echo of a whisper she could have sworn she heard once her eyes had already opened. That dream, the maze, the computer lab, along with the new flashes she had never seen before... it had been at least two years since she had seen them, since she had suffered through them and lived in hidden fear and confusion throughout her college finals and nearly distracted her enough to fail them. All like a horrible echo she wished she could have ignored.

She was angry, as she got up and changed into something less cold from the drying sweat, switched the sheets on the bed to dry and clean ones and walked out from her darkened room into the dim light of the hallway with the hopes of going into the kitchen for a glass of water. An anger that almost immediately dissipated into curiosity the moment she saw a soft light coming from the crack of an opening on the nursery's door. "Newt?" She called in her rough tired voice, stepping quietly along the wooden floor and pushing the door open with a careful hand. "New-?" She started to repeat, but stopped due to the image that suddenly lay before her.

It was as if any and every speck of anger and frustration that the dream had brought forth suddenly disappeared as if it had never existed, because the image of the man she had fallen in love with sitting on the rocking chair with their baby in his arms, sleeping as much as the baby was, brought upon an adoring smile into Teresa's lips. His head rested against the backrest of the rocking chair, tilted in Diana's direction, lids closed as if he had fallen asleep while watching her, and their baby girl's soft breaths lifted and lowered the half emptied bottle of milk half held in Newt's other hand resting on her stomach on top of the blanket that wrapped her frame, her small lips parted softly in a way that left it rather clear she had fallen asleep while drinking from the bottle. It was a view to keep implanted in her memory forever, something to revisit in those moments of darkness in which her subconscious decided to haunt her so horribly with dreams as vivid as the one she had woken up from.

Of course, she hadn't been able to help it; she didn't even think about it twice before she reached for the Polaroid camera that rested on one of the nursery's tables, left there exactly for the purpose of catching a beautiful moment with something other than her phone. She lifted the camera to her face, framing the perfect image within the little square, and clicked. WICKED Is good... She heard beside her ear the moment the flash went off, making the strange image of a face looking down at her as if she were laying down flash along the splash of white that suddenly surrounded them the second she took the picture. It made Teresa's hands lower the camera, her eyes searching around the familiar nursery for the source of the words she could have sworn she'd heard.

It was exactly what she was doing, when a sleepy tired tone reached her from steps in front of her. "Teresa?" Newt asked, voice cracking with sleep as he attempted to sit up without disturbing Diana from her slumber. She looked at him with that small frown edged in the middle of her forehead. "What are you doing?"

Her lids blinked repeatedly, head shaking as her bright blue orbs roamed along the nursery once again before landing on Newt's tired browns. "Nothing, I—" She started, her eyes falling to the object in her hands before one of them moved in order to remove the freshly taken picture from the slot that offered it. "I took a picture of you two sleepyheads." She admitted, shaking the white rectangle with a soft motion before forcing a smile onto her lips.

A smile that, even though it didn't reach her eyes, Newt quickly retaliated before allowing his frame to direct him the four steps toward the purple crib and his arms to carefully set a softly stirring Diana onto the cushiony covers and blankets so she could resume her sleep. "Any good?" He whispered softly, shifting his eyes in Teresa's direction, who walked toward him after setting the Polaroid down until she could stand a couple of steps by his side and he could wrap an arm around her waist, smiling a little more when she nodded.

"Perfect." She said, leaning gently against Newt's side and allowing her eyes to fall to their sleeping daughter; something that brought upon another equal smile along their lips. "She looks so fragile." She admitted, resting the hand that held the developing picture on the top of one of the wooden walls of the purple crib while the other rested inside Newt's left back pocket.

"Mm, no." He disagreed, smiling and turning his head in order to press a kiss against Teresa's temple. "She's just small, but just watch," He nodded, "she'll grow up to be strong, like her mum." He paused, watching the girl as well, her stomach falling a dropping under the blankets, her hands at either side of her face. "It is time." Pull them out.

Teresa nearly flinched, turning her frame partly in order to look up at Newt's smiling features with a frown edging in the middle of her forehead. "What did you just say?" She asked, her eyes dancing on his as if she were to find the horrible answers she had seen in her dream.

"I said 'she'll be fine'" Newt replied, his arm dropping in order to take Teresa's hand as worried orbs studied her features completely. Had she noticed she'd dropped the picture she'd taken into the crib? Was that a drop of sweat that adorned her forehead. "Teresa, are you alright?" He wondered out loud, lifting his free hand to rest upon her sweating forehead. When his skin touched hers, his eyes automatically widened. "Whoa, love, you're burning up."

Teresa almost instantly started shaking her head. "It's nothing." She reassured, forcing another smile onto her lips as he studied her features with deep concentratioj.

He held her gently, carefully, almost as if she could break. "Is it your headache again?" He wondered. "Come on." And then he was leading her out of the nursery with the hopes of taking her to their bedroom.

Until the moment he had mentioned it, Teresa had not even realised that the pain that had led her in agony toward an early slumber remained horribly pulsating across her temples. It allowed her only to nod and lean gently against him with the weakness brought forth from the short flashes that stunned her with the image of the same face looking down at her every single time her lids closed. "Let's just go to bed." She said, head shaking, eyes open nearly too wide from the fear of closing them again, which made no sense due to what she had just asked of her husband. "I'm tired."

"Of course." Only a few moments later, both lovers were stepping into their room, Newt leading her to her side and forcing his own tired and startled demeanour to the back of his head as he tucked her into the freshly changed sheets. "No wonder you're tired." He said as his eyes flicked to the clock on her night table. "It's nearly three AM."

"Don't leave." She whispered, making Newt frown at the manner in which her eyes seemed to be on him, yet focused on something far away. She's coming out of it. He heard in a different tone somewhere far away from him. "Newt, come here." She said, scared, a hand trembling in the air as it reached for him.

It took him another three seconds to climb onto the bed, regardless of the clothes he wore, and get into the sheets by her side. "I'm right here." He told her, taking her hand, sweaty, almost as much as his own, as he moved closer to her. "I'm not going anywhere." His forehead rested against her own, and for the first time, in his case, when he blinked, a bright blinding light appeared behind his eyelids, quickly disappearing when he opened them again. "Teresa?"

"I love you." She whispered, her eyes falling shut and her lips pressing against his own in the faintest of caresses; a kiss he nearly couldn't even feel due to the warmth of his own skin and the scorching in his own mind.

Yet his free arm moved, reaching for Teresa as he blinked one more time. "I love you." He said with the bright flash of white sparkling behind his eyelids... and when his eyes opened once again, he was alone. Teresa's image disappeared from his side, his hands reaching for empty air and everything around him flickering as if he were stuck inside a broken television set. "Teresa?" He asked, big brown eyes looking at him appeared in his vision the next time his eyes closed, making his breath pick up, and his frame to attempt sitting up in search of his wife. Where had she gone? How could she have moved so quickly? She'd been there, then he'd blinked and then—keep an eye on him—she was gone.

He couldn't move, his hands rested against the empty mattress, his eyes fixated on the clock on the night table, front and centre in his eye line. But it was strange; Newt could remember the clock reading 2:58 when he'd last seen it, yet at that moment, in his frozen state, the clock read 00:20. And it was going down, numbers flicking lower and lower, the images behind his eyelids becoming brighter and brighter as the numbers on the red digital devise flicked into the single digits. There was a loud echoing of a baby's cry somewhere seemingly too far away from him; his daughter, she was crying again. He wanted to go to her aid, but the echo of his princess' cries were becoming more distant. He couldn't even breathe, he couldn't do anything but will his eyes closed into that blinding light behind his eyelids.

The echoes of his baby's cries faded into the distance, and a faint whisper tooted inside his brain before everything went black.

Your sacrifice will not be in vain.

-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-

I love you... She had heard inside the bubble of a dream that faded as the sounds that surrounded her echoed clearer. The beeping of a machine at her side, whispered words she couldn't yet understand, contact upon her arms and head and scribbles upon a notebook somewhere near. "Phase three variables completed." She suddenly understood. "Subject A1." It was a woman, that much she could tell regardless of if the voice still echoed in distant tones as if it came from the depth of an endless tunnel; she was confused, terrified, though she understood her surroundings she found them strange, wrongfully placed. She felt as if she had just stepped inside the world of a dream. "Welcome back, Miss Agnes."

Or as if she had just stepped out of a dream that had been so long her reality seemed strangely misplaced.

"Where am I?" She heard herself asking, her head pounding with the memory of a headache. Where were her friends? Where was Newt? Where had her things gone? Could someone possibly shut down the beeping from that dreadful machine?

Instead of an answer to any of her mental questions, her eyes landed on the woman that had spoken to her before; her long golden locks, her soft green eyes, her attempts at a friendly and reassuring smile. "WICKED Headquarters, Miss Agnes." She told her, and not even a couple of seconds after, Teresa flinched due to the sudden pinch she felt on the inside of her arm. When she looked down, she realised the woman's hands had a syringe held carefully against the inside of her elbow, and as the plunger lifted, a deep red liquid filled the device completely. She was taking Teresa's blood. "You might feel a little disoriented." The blonde informed her. "It is expected in a case like this."

"Where's Thomas?" Teresa asked in that broken tone of her voice. "Where's Newt? Minho, Alby, Gally?" She attempted to sit up, something she was stopped from doing by a gentle push against her shoulder; and rightfully so, because she had only risen a couple of inches and her head started pounding. "Where are my friends?"

"Relax, Miss Agnes." The blonde soothed, resting her hand against Teresa's shoulder still. "Everything is alright, you're back, your... friends are right here." Teresa. She heard inside her mind, making her eyes fall away from the woman's toward her left with the pulsing headache to complain at the velocity in which she did it.

Thomas. He was looking at her too, laying down, just like she was, on a wooden bed covered with white sheets and white clothes covering her chest and arms. "What's—" She was starting to say, her heart was beating loudly inside her chest, echoing against her eardrums as she turned away from Thomas, to her right, where she realised the blonde woman had moved away enough that she could see the bed of who had been behind her. "Newt..." It was such a broken whisper that no one heard it other than herself.

It was broken because his lids were fluttering open, his frame nearly still in the same manner that Thomas' had been, the white sheets making no contrast whatsoever with the same shade of his clothes. But what broke Teresa's heart the most was the slowly slipping tear drop falling down onto the pillow under his head from the corner of his eye as his lips parted to inhale a returning breath that nearly made her wish she could call upon his name one more time.

There was simply no denying it; she knew it for the pinch in her arm as the syringe's needle exited from her skin, she knew it from the familiar and recognising toots of noises all around her that she could easily form a memory upon, she knew it for the dream-like resolution of every single memory she had built upon the seemingly perfect life she had lead under the hurtful simulation, she knew it for the ghost of a deep feeling that remained in a break against her heart as the truth of everything around her downed like an anchor that willed to pull her under with no care in the world; this was their reality. Everything else had been a lie.

She suddenly felt as if someone had ripped her chest wide open with a scaffold and stolen her still beating heart, squishing it right before her eyes for it to be the last image she saw before the life slipped from her insides in a lonely last breath when the realisation of their reality downed on her every fibre with the force of a crumbling wall: everything she had lived, everything she had felt and learnt in the past three and a half years, everything she had grown to love so wholeheartedly, her studies, her friends, her family, the coffee shop where she remembered everything had even started, the awards she'd earned, her marriage, her daughter... it had all been a simulated lie.

'WICKED U' itself had been nothing but a lie.

-O-O-O-O-