Chapter 29 - Spiders, Shakespeare and Shirts with Buttons
THREE DAYS LATER
The Berg outside Denver
"Okay, muchachos, we're going to need the second door on the right. Lily, that's the one you'll need in the morning, too, you got me?"
Jorge and I were bending over the maps of Denver that we'd downloaded off NetBlock earlier that morning, amidst the chaos of the supplies we were throwing into bags for the journey, and papers that would convince first the Denver operatives to let us in and then convince Brenda's doctor friend Hans to take the implants out of our brains that allowed WICKED to control us.
"Yep." I tossed three water bottles and some apples into one of the rucksacks and scrabbled in a nearby drawer for a flashlight. "Is that all they'll ask for?"
Jorge had an A4 folder out on the table and was flicking through the pages, his expression focused. He pulled one of the sets of papers out and handed it to me - it all looked very official, if you ignored the fact that only my photograph and my first name were even vaguely true. 'Lilianne Peterson' was twenty and originally from the Bronx, apparently - a nurse in a New York hospital. I could work with that.
"Yes." Jorge replied. "That and a Viral Contagion Test, but that'll be no problem."
"Got it."
It was late morning by then and the sun was already burning through the skylight above us as everyone gathered in the commune area of the stolen Berg that we'd landed about half a mile from the towering walls of Denver - built ten years ago to keep out the Flare. It had been a decision that we'd argued about for hours in the air, going round in circles, but in the end, nobody had a better idea. We'd never thought about what we'd do if we actually managed to escape WICKED's clutches. In a way, the outside world had seemed no more real than one of their simulations before that point.
"Do you have the chequebook? And the maps for when you get inside? What about records - do you need some kind of medical records?"
Now they were about to leave, I was suddenly terrified that something would happen to the others inside the city and we'd never find out, stranded outside the walls while they got arrested or worse. Jorge must have heard the worry in my voice because he gave a huffing laugh and rubbed my shoulders, saying with a grin:
"We've got it all, don't you worry. Dontcha' know you're talking to the master of disguise here, sister?"
I nodded and forced a laugh. "Didn't forget for a second. Just be careful, okay?"
One of the steriliser machines for the water bottles pinged and I turned to pull it out and fill it, looking out of the window above the sink to where the walls rose impenetrable in front of us. This had once been an airport, according to Jorge and Brenda, but there wasn't a single aircraft on the miles of tarmac, and the lights of the control tower looked like they'd been extinguished for some time. I wondered why they'd decided to close it. Maybe not enough people want to see what's left of the world.
"When's the next check-in, Lils?" Karly called from her perch on the heavy oak table next to Thomas, both sorting supplies into Tupperware boxes. I tossed her a water bottle and answered:
"12:10, according to their website."
Thomas leaped down from the table and hauled his rucksack up into the space he'd left. "Damn. We'd better get going, then - Jorge?"
There was a strange caution about everyone that morning. At least at WICKED we'd had some idea of their limits, of the routines and the plans. Denver was about to be our first experience of 'real life' - something not calculated to monitor our emotions, but something we could just experience. We could make it in and out of Denver and be off before lunchtime tomorrow; we could all be arrested or anything in between.
"Yeah - give me five minutes. The walls aren't gonna evaporate, hermano. That lever controls the grounding for the Berg - it's a brake, basically, you shouldn't need to touch it. If you do, you'll be halfway across the desert in half an hour, boy."
Jorge was sitting with Newt now, going over the basics of the control panel for the next twenty-four hours. Nothing fancy - heat, electricity, internet, locked zones - and Newt was leaning on his elbow and nodding as Jorge pointed to lever after lever. He hadn't said very much that morning, other than a couple of words to Minho as they'd thrown supplies into his rucksack earlier. As Jorge was talking, Newt closed his eyes for a second, rubbing the bridge of his nose before quietly repeating Jorge's instructions back to him. He was trying to put on a normal front for the rest of us that morning, but I could see he wasn't feeling great - rubbing his temples and bouncing his bad leg every time he sat down.
Last night had been difficult. Newt had already told us he didn't care about the chip - he didn't want to go into a Quarantined city and risk infecting somebody else - but after two hours of arguing, when everyone was exhausted and worked up, Brenda offered to get him in anyway, saying that we could get past the scanners somehow. You can imagine how well that went down. There was now a hole in the wall of the sleeping area, and Thomas, Minho and I spent an hour talking Newt down while I picked splinters out of his knuckles. Nobody had suggested him coming again. He'd always been a worrier - making sure other people were eating, sleeping, healthy - but I hated (and was more than a little frightened) that he was already acting like his life meant nothing anymore.
Brenda had dragged all of the rucksacks over to the main doors of the Berg and was calling the others around her, her eyes flicking to the clock over the table - 11:50. She shot Jorge a 'hurry up' look, and he nodded and beckoned me over to the doors.
"You sure you're staying, hermana?" He asked me, his expression warmer than usual.
I glanced across at Newt who was standing with Karly, laughing at something she'd said that I couldn't catch and I gave my best shot at a reassuring smile. "I'm sure."
Nobody else had seen his face last night when Jorge had proposed staying overnight in Denver to give Hans time to carry out the operations, which would mean N staying overnight on an empty Berg that creaked when the wind blew through the propellers, blurring with the noises that had already started playing in his head anyway - they'd only heard the "Good that. I'm not goin' anywhere." when Jorge asked for a vote.
"Okay." Jorge's expression turned serious, focused on me. "Repeat the plan back to me, Lily. We can't have any slip-ups if you're gonna do this alone."
"7:30's the earliest check-in. The entrance door is the second one on the right. I hand over the papers in the file - Lilianne Peterson, I'm an associate of Jorge Gallaraga, here for information gathering and field testing - feed the data into their machine and then do the Viral Contagion Test."
"Right." Jorge's expression didn't waver. "We'll leave your name at their admissions desk. Then what?"
"Go through the government building, don't speak to anyone, make it to the Paperchase at the end of the mall and wait there."
Jorge nodded but Karly was frowning, biting her lip, "Is that going to be safe? If all these people are ready to jump Immunes?"
"It's probably smarter, actually." Brenda replied, tapping her nails on the folder in her arms. "If six Immunes arrive in an unmarked Berg at the same time, they might start asking questions and that's the last thing we want. There's not one major organisation in these places that's not funding WICKED."
"Damn straight." Jorge added. "One of us will be there to collect Lily at 7:30 anyway. And, the two of you will probably have a better chance at a cover story if a border patrol come round to check out the Berg than Newt on his own."
I grimaced. Any cover story involving an Immune and an infected WICKED Candidate could only ever be horrible - experiments and exploitation. Newt clearly wasn't any more thrilled by that than I was, raising his eyebrows at me and pulling a face. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, I decided.
The clock above the table started chiming twelve and Brenda shouldered her rucksack, gesturing at Karly, Minho and Thomas to do the same. "We'd better go. Be careful you two."
She nodded at Newt and me. "Back at ya'." Newt replied, slapping Minho on the back. "Don't get eaten by anything - or bloody arrested."
"All this underestimation..." Jorge muttered, shaking his head and pulling the lever that triggered the whirring open of the enormous Berg doors and the lowering of the ramp.
Before she could step out of the doors, I ran forward and pulled Karly into a tight hug and she squeezed me back just as hard. "Don't fly off or die while I'm in there, baby." She said into my ear.
"Promise I won't fly off or die. Love you."
Karly stepped back and grinned. "Love you madly. And if you don't show at exactly 7:30 tomorrow, Lils, I'm raising an army."
"You better - see you!"
They all trooped down the ramp onto the dusty concrete, Newt pressed a couple of buttons on the control pad and the ramp retracted, and with a final cheesy wave from Minho, they disappeared as the doors clicked shut, leaving Newt and I staring at the corrugated steel of the closed doors.
The Berg, which had been filled with chaos of people packing bags, talking over each other and fighting with the NetBlock printer for the last three hours was suddenly quiet - only the humming of the air conditioning and the beeps of the control system reaching our ears and two people left to rattle around in it. Well then. There were a few minutes where we didn't quite know what to do with ourselves.
"You didn't have to do that, Lilby." Newt said from behind me. When I turned, he was perched on one of the windowsills, leaning against the window, trying to catch a glimpse of the others as they passed into the city, but he looked back at me as he spoke.
"I know." I rested my arm on his shoulder to look out too and he leant his head against mine for a few seconds with a half-smile. You could just about see the five figures disappearing into the dust that the breeze was throwing up from the nearby plains. And that was all that was said about it then. Whatever stereotypes WICKED had forcefed us, being sick never made Newt stupid.
12:30pm - The Storage Cupboard
"Well, whoever had this Berg last was either Victor Frankenstein or a serial killer." I reflected as we stood in front of the enormous Berg storage unit that Jorge had told us to take inventory of. Amongst the tins of beans, canned sausages, semolina and First Aid kits (ranging from paper cut level to 'whoops, lost an arm in that door'), were a wide variety of weapons - mostly knives - and metal contraptions with wicked-looking protrusions, some of which were glowing in the shadow of the cupboard.
"Good that. Whaddya' think this is?" Newt had pulled one of the contraptions out from the bottom shelf, causing a mini-avalanche of canned vegetables. The thing had a cylindrical base with a button on it and long metal claws at the top of the tube with rubber balls on the ends.
"Seriously?"
"No."
"Hmm...a massage thingy. Or a spider catcher."
"Bit big, isn't it?"
"Not for tarantulas."
"Ugh." Newt shuddered. "Don't. Let's see, shall we?"
"What?"
Before I could tell him that this was the last thing we should do, Newt had pressed the button on the base of the contraption. The claws shot out of the cylinder on a thin metal rod with a grinding sound, snapping until they slammed into the wall opposite us, still snapping and scraping at the wallpaper.
"Don't press the button! Have you never seen a sci-fi film? That's the number one rule!" I spun to him, my eyes wide with fake horror.
"Whoops." He grinned. "'Least it wasn't bloody radioactive."
"You think."
We looked at the machine again, scraping weakly against the wall, the fight seemingly draining out of it. Newt pressed the button again and sucked the claws back into the cylinder. He picked up the notepad and gave me a businesslike nod.
"Aaand...one spider catcher."
After a while, we got a box system going - food, First Aid, spare clothes, 'interesting', 'potentially useful', 'things that could probably kill you' and 'absolutely no way am I touching that'. We found maps of various major cities in America, communication devices we hoped Jorge could hack, a device that seemed to identify plants, another one that seemed to be a Swiss Army Knife gone mad with enough nail equipment for a serious manicure, but simultaneously containing five or six serrated steel knives amongst a lot of other things. The last box contained anything we'd noticed that seemed to glow with that eerie blue light, a set of green tinged bandages that were black around the edges and something that may once have been a sandwich but was now a technicolor fuzzy mass that looked like it could harbour a wide variety of tropical diseases.
"So that's what, seventeen tins of beans, twenty-four tinned lasagnas and thirty-eight hiking boots on that shelf - seventeen left feet and twenty-one right feet?" I asked, twirling the blue biro between my fingertips.
Newt was sitting cross-legged opposite me - it had turned into a pretty long job and we were down to the last shelf - but his gaze was much higher up, wandering somewhere between the first and second shelf a couple of centimetres down from the ceiling.
"N?"
He didn't respond, drawing circles absentmindedly on the floor with the fingers of his left hand. I crawled forwards a foot or so and tapped his shoulder.
"Newt? You okay?"
He jumped at the contact, turning instantly, his dark eyes focusing on me and he smiled suddenly. "What? Sorry, did ya' say something?"
"It doesn't matter." I tried to rearrange my concerned expression into something more normal as the twisting in my stomach settled again. "Have you got anything left on that one?"
"Yeah." Newt picked up the twisted metal instrument with sharpened metal prongs we'd discovered a few minutes earlier. "What did we decide this was?"
"Demon corkscrew. Or an automatic snake coiler."
"'Course. And-" Newt rolled backwards, crawling on his stomach to the back of the bottom shelf. "There's one more in here...hang on a sec."
A dull thunk echoed back to me as he banged his head on the shelf above. "Ow! Bloody hell. Oh, this is one for you, Lilbug - we could have a lesson!"
Newt shuffled back out from the shelf and handed me the last item. It was a series of what looked like plastic wheels, joined by bits of metal that shone with copper reflections and the top of the machine was covered in tiny notches and buttons that must link to a long lost manual in the depths of another cupboard - in reality, it was probably some kind of pocket Locator or tracking device, but in that second, only one thing came to mind as Newt smirked up at me.
"Radioactive rollerskates!"
3pm - Outside the Berg
The land around Denver was dry. That was the first thing you noticed and the only word I had to describe it. It was nothing like the endless sand of the Scorch, utterly devoid of any signs of ordinary life, but nothing like the simulated perfection of the WICKED compound either, lush and forested and repetitive. Everything outside Denver seemed brittle - fragile, somehow; the trees were a comforting change as we watched them blow in the breeze, but you felt that it would only take a decent wind to strip their few leaves from them and only a little more than that to tear off the spindly branches from the cracked trunks entirely. The expanses of grass were green and brown in patches and interrupted by the occasional cactus, which I hadn't realised grew so far north.
Denver's Quarantine walls dominated the skyline, imposing and impenetrable. They must have been almost a hundred feet tall, made out of dark concrete and punctuated only by the couple of doors at the base and some lookout panels for patrol teams at the top. Creepers had started to make their way up the concrete expanse at the bottom, but it looked like it might take them another decade to come anywhere close to the top.
"Reminds me of the Maze." Newt said, taking a slow sip of tea from the canteens we'd found. "'Cept now we're trying to break in."
I knew exactly what he meant. The towering walls were a little too close for comfort. "The walls do." I nodded and offered him the sandwich box. "But everything else is kind of the opposite."
The Walls themselves took up most of our skyline on the left as we sat on the railing of the Berg's retractable balcony deck to eat a late lunch, but if you looked past the airport settling into rigour mortis around us, the green-brown landscape with its wispy trees stretched out flat almost as far as you could see, before it crashed into the slopes of the mountain ranges, off which all the snow had melted long ago. We could just about make out the skeleton of a ghostly, redundant ski-lift on the nearest one.
"Isn't it strange-" I wondered aloud. "- we hated the Maze because we were closed in. There was nowhere to go. But here, there's everywhere to go. You could keep walking and never get to anything that would stop you - and somehow, that's just as scary."
Newt nodded, swinging his legs back and forth over the railing as he thought about an answer. After a couple of seconds he replied. "I think I've got it. Aside from being trapped in a stone prison until we croaked, the Maze was bloody terrifying 'cause of the uncertainty, I reckon - 's the same as being scared of the dark. You're scared of the dark 'cause anything could come at ya', all your worst nightmares are possible, ya' know?"
That was certainly true - why didn't everyone leave the Glade the night we escaped? They were frightened that whatever was outside it might be worse than any fate we would suffer in there.
"But, here-" He carried on, encompassing our surroundings into one sweeping gesture. "There is no uncertainty. You can see for bloody miles and if anything's coming for ya', then you'd know - but that sort of means there's no possibilities either. If you're alone, you're alone. If you can't fend off what's coming at ya', then you've lost, before they've even got to you. You've just got the certainty of death while you wait. And that's pretty shucking scary."
Newt paused, taking a deep breath. "Did that make any buggin' sense, or was I rambling?"
"No, I think you're right, actually." I tossed my canteen back into the belly of the Berg and leaned into Newt's shoulder. "It's not very happy though. All it makes me think is as soon as we all get back tomorrow, we need to get the hell out of here. Find some place that isn't scary at all, some place we can do something good. Like you said, remember? Where we don't have to keep sticking splitting up all the time."
Newt nodded slowly, his eyes on the mountain ranges and the ski-lift carcass. At the time, I didn't know what he was thinking. Now, I think I could guess.
"Yeah. But I'm glad we're not prisoners, ya' know? If I'm gonna die, I'd rather die free. I mean - this place is bloody weird, but at least it's real."
And without any warning at all, Newt threw himself off the railing of the Berg down into the dust and the concrete below. I jumped back down to the deck with a cry of panic, fear shooting through my chest as he hit the ground and rolled a couple of times before stumbling to his feet and smiling up at me, already on the stairs to follow him. My face must have shown my unbridled horror because Newt laughed and shook his head as I said, in what can only have been a squeak:
"What the sticking hell was that, Newt?! You could've broken something - are you okay?"
"But I didn't." He spread his arms wide, as if to show me that his newfound nihilism had done no harm. "And, bloody hell, I'm not sure I care all that much if I do."
I sat back down - on the deck this time - hanging my legs over the edge of the balcony and sighed, ruffling his hair and pushing him so he stumbled back, still chuckling at me. "You might not, but I care."
Newt came a bit closer again to ruffle my hair in return and lean on the railing next to me. "Well, I've got you to sort me out, haven't I? Therefore, not worried."
He disappeared again, bending down out of my sight round the other side of the Berg to retrieve whatever it was that caught his attention in the first place. When he came back up again, one of his hands was behind his back.
"Up ya' get, Lilybird."
In some contortionist act, Newt kept one arm hidden behind him as he swung himself up and rolled back onto the canopy, flapping at me to step back. When I'd got back to my feet, Newt tossed his hair out of his eyes and cleared his throat dramatically, like an actor about to give his closing monologue before a captive audience.
"My Lady." He began. "In our journey through this dust bowl of a planet, I have yet to encounter anything or anyone even vaguely equal to your beauty or value-"
I snorted with laughter, counteracting his 'lady' assessment almost immediately. "N-"
"No interruptions, I'm tryin' to serenade ya'." Newt raised his eyebrows in an expression of general reproach. "Ahem. I have yet to encounter anything to equal you in any facet of character - you outstrip all praise. However, upon approaching this den of horror-"
He pointed to the walls of Denver beyond the airport control towers. "-I caught sight of a fragment of beauty, which I have braved the choking dusts and the sharp rockfalls of these Denverian plains to retrieve."
Newt rolled his sleeve up to show me the graze that the gravel below the Berg had torn into his shoulder. "Gaze upon my grievous wounds, my lady. Fear not, I shall not die. But, allow me to present this gift to ya' as a token of my undying devotion."
He gave a sweeping bow and, with a flourish that must have hurt his shoulder, he presented a single yellow moss-rose, it's petals spread out wide, revealing the darker circle of gold just inside them. It was slightly ragged, a couple of its petals thin, and others missing completely, but to someone who hadn't touched - hadn't even seen - a real flower for at least four years, it really was a fragment of magic, however dramatic Newt was trying to be when he said it. I played along, reaching out to take it, covering his hand with mine and trying to curtsey without falling over, which just made him splutter.
"My good sir, that is a very generous gift. I greatly appreciate the trials you undertook to retrieve it and gratefully accept both your gift and your devotion."
Newt smiled and, rather than handing me the yellow moss-rose, pushed it into my braid just above my left ear, careful not to split the stem as he worked it between the strands. "There. Perfect."
I pushed up onto my tiptoes to hold his face and kiss him softly. He leaned into the kiss, one hand moving round to the back of my neck to pull me closer.
"Thank you." I whispered when I stepped back, slightly breathless.
"The pleasure's mine, m'lady." A grimace replaced his smile. "Ugh, that was more farmhand."
"Where did all that come from, anyway?"
"I don't know - my inner poet? Shakespeare's probably turnin' in his grave."
We both laughed as we picked up the cutlery and the litter from lunch, sorting it back into bags.
"Right." Newt ran his fingers through his hair with a sigh, the game over. "Let's go calibrate Jorge's navigating system before it starts gettin' dark."
It was only as we made our way back inside that he suddenly said. "Wait - do I get any devotion? It's a pretty big graze, ya' know, Lil?"
"However much you want."
"Undying devotion?"
"Undying devotion, you romantic stick."
It's ironic, really that - after everything we did at WICKED, all the madness there that defied explanation in every sense - that day on the Berg is one that stands out to me as strange. Newt and I drank tea, calibrated the navigation system, took the inventory, sorted the commune, washed the clothes we'd discarded the day before, did tiny task after tiny task on the Berg and talked for nearly every minute. We talked about anything and everything - from dogs to lizard conspiracy theories, from space to the underworld, imagining pasts and speculating presents as we washed and calibrated and scribbled and sorted.
It was almost like we'd snatched a moment in time where we were totally separate from the rest of the world; we were in a metal bubble where WICKED, the Scorch and the Flare couldn't touch us, didn't even exist - at least until Newt tripped over something because his vision was swimming or had to take yet another painkiller, and I had to change the drug we were using because he was up to maximum dosage after six hours, scouring the medical guides to check the drugs wouldn't start reacting in his system. "I'm fine, I'm fine" was what he kept saying - I'm not sure who he was trying to convince.
By the time we'd finished Jorge's list of upkeep duties, the light was fading outside. The moss-rose was sitting in a jam jar on the windowsill and I was in the kitchenette area of the Berg trying to throw dinner together out of the tins from the storage cupboard, when a terrific bang and a clattering crash sounded from the bedroom area followed by a howl of pain that tugged on something deep in my chest. The pan I was holding fell out of my hands onto the tabletop, adding to the cacophony, terror lending me speed as I ran into the bedroom.
Newt was standing in the centre of the room, utterly motionless, blood streaming over the fingers he had pressed to a wound a couple of centimetres above his left eye. It wasn't long, no more than three or four centimetres, but head wounds bleed like hell and his fingers didn't seem to be helping; the blood was running into his eye and down the side of his face, dying his dark blonde hair and the collar of his shirt a deep crimson that spread, almost black, as I stood frozen in the doorway. Oh god, oh god, oh god. It was a matter of milliseconds before I sprung into action, pulling one of the first aid kits down from the shelf and throwing it open, shouting back as I did.
"N, you've got to press on it hard! Put pressure on it, or it'll keep bleeding!"
I spun around, tossing the supplies onto the nearest couch. Newt hadn't moved. His brown eyes were wide and distant, as if whatever he was seeing wasn't in my line of sight - it was somewhere deep inside his head, somewhere I could never reach - and his gaze never wavered. His whole body was rigid, except for the fingers that blood was still seeping through, which were shaking uncontrollably, sending even more rivulets of blood running across his face.
"Newt, you need to press down!" My voice was getting lost in the roar that was building in his head, if he could even hear me at all. Damn. We'd had enough accidents in the Glade for me to know he was losing a lot of blood, far too quickly, and (proving my point) Newt started to sway back and forth, pale under the bloodstains. I had to sort this on my own - he couldn't help me.
"Come on then." I took his hand, bracing his arm against mine as a support, trying to keep my voice steady in case he could hear me. "Sit down or you'll fall down, buster."
As soon as I touched him, Newt grabbed my arm in a vice-like grip, like someone drowning, though he didn't seem to be any more aware of what was going on. I led him back to the couch as quickly as I could, blood splattering onto my clothes now too. Barely even thinking beyond Medic protocol, I picked up a towel and pressed it to the wound, gently moving his shaking fingers out of the way and waiting for the bleeding to slow up. He hissed at the contact, but his eyes stayed vacant, not acknowledging but not stopping me either.
How did he do it? My eyes roamed around the small room, as I held the towel in place, looking for any kind of explanation. All that was in the room was a series of couches, a sink, a small table and a cupboard. Ah. The padlocked cupboard was at head height, made of iron and the edge closest to us looked sharp enough, if you applied enough force, and the crash I'd heard sounded like Newt had done that somehow.
But, why?
I couldn't work it out as I sat there, the spread of the bloodstain gradually slowing on the towel, but perhaps that was because I was so frightened of the answer.
After a couple of minutes, I pulled the towel away from Newt's head, inspecting the wound. It didn't look too deep, but it would probably scar - I'd have to find one of those knitting bandages. The first aid kit had an antiseptic solution in it, and I pulled out the bottle and sat back down in front of Newt.
"I'm sorry, N - this might sting a bit." I told him.
He didn't reply, but he'd taken his hands away from his head and moved them into his lap. His gaze hadn't shifted and the shaking was spreading from his hands up his arms and torso - I had to put one of my hands on his shoulders to steady him as I carefully cleaned the gash, not letting myself think about anything but the grains of dirt and strands of hair that had fallen into it. There was still dust caught in his hair from his jump to find my moss-rose. How had everything changed so quickly? Suddenly, as I dipped the cotton bud back into the antiseptic bottle for the tenth time, Newt murmured something, so low I didn't catch it.
"What?"
"Why did I do that?" His voice was barely above a whisper and his eyes were fixed on the floor, now. "Why did I do that?"
He brought his hands up from his lap to his face, to cover his eyes, but flinched back to avoid touching the cut. "Why did I do that?"
I wasn't even certain he was talking to me as I tried to formulate some kind of answer. "I don't-"
"Why did I do that, Lily?" Newt grabbed my arm then and looked up into my face, some part of his soul jolting back into his body. His expression wasn't exactly focused, but there was no question that he could see me now, his eyes filling with a horror that turned to open fear as he took in the room, the bloodied towel and the contents of the first aid kit scattered across the carpet. My heart ached at the childlike confusion on his face and the question that I couldn't possibly answer.
"I don't know." I kept my eyes on his, softening my voice and rubbing his shoulders. "But it's okay. You're okay. It's not that bad - I've just got to clean it, okay?"
Newt nodded, settling back down onto the sofa, twisting his shaking fingers around each other. Gradually, as I alternated between antiseptic and water on the cut, keeping the fingers of my free hand in his hair, rubbing the back of his neck with my thumb in an attempt to bring him back to himself, Newt started breathing in controlled cycles, and the shaking eventually stopped and he sat still - except for the occasional gasp and flinch backwards when I hit something that stung.
I kept talking, telling him about the strange birds that had landed on the telephone wires outside the Berg, about the few guards carrying out some kind of drill at the top of Denver's walls, making up things about the ski-lift in the distance, wondering what snow would look like - anything and everything again, but for desperate distraction this time.
"I'm sorry." He said eventually, as I unwrapped one of WICKEDs high-tech bandages that knit the tissue and gently pressed it against the skin above his left eye. His voice was quiet but steadier than it had been - it was his voice.
"Sorry nothing, N. Don't be sorry - what happened?"
Newt shuffled backwards a bit so that he was facing me rather than the wall, pulling one of his knees up to his chest. "I...ya' know...I'm not even bloody sure. I was moving all of the papers in here, 'cause Min left 'em all over the shop and my head was aching like a mother...but I looked at the clock, and I know that the tablets say every four hours, which is what?"
He glanced at the digital clock on the wall. "An hour? So I didn't do anythin' about it. The last thing I really remember is hearing you clattering around with the pans in the kitchen, and thinkin' about how it's so bloody annoying that my head can itch and burn at the same time. Next thing I knew, I was standing by that cupboard with blood all over me."
Newt shot me a rueful look as he took in my streaked t-shirt. "And you too, now. Sorry."
"It's okay. It'll wash out." He nodded, reaching up and gingerly running his fingers around the edge of the bandage.
"I can't feel anythin' now.' Newt said, biting his lip. "It just hurt so much, Lil. Maybe I thought that would stop it?"
And for the millionth time in the last month alone, I despised WICKED so much it was almost a physical thing, burning in my throat. They'd kept the Flare from all of the non-Immune candidates for nearly half a decade. They had the power to protect them, but instead, they'd injected a group of teenagers with this hellish, incurable disease just to see what would happen.
"Ah, I don't buggin' know. " Newt sighed and looked up at me again, head to toe this time. "Crikey. I really have ruined your shirt, haven't I?"
I looked down at my top, which used to be white. Now it looked like someone had taken a scarlet paintbrush to my chest, red smears across the middle and splatters surrounding them. I hadn't even noticed. But then I considered his, which looked like the artist had given up on the paintbrush entirely and just dipped the neck and the left side of the shirt in the paint - as did his hair, now I considered it.
"Mine's fine - look at yours! Do you wanna wash your hair?"
"Er-" He looked worried for a second, not trusting his own mind in the showers on the other side of the Berg. "In here? Yeah. That sink works, right?"
Newt disappeared for a second into the commune area to find the soap and I dug some spare shirts out of the dryer and switched mine, throwing the other to Newt when he walked back in. He stuck his head under the tap, washing the worst of the blood out with the soap he'd found, then changed his own shirt, sitting back down at my side.
"Pass me that towel, I'll dry it." I said. Newt passed me a fresh towel and gave me a slight smile.
"Thank you." He replied. "See - I wasn't lyin' earlier, Lilby. I've got you to sort me out. I'm okay."
I rolled my eyes and started separating his hair into sections and drying it in circular motions. "Alright, cheeseball - gosh, N, you've got more hair than me."
"Yeah-" He dragged the syllable out, like he'd explained this a million times, and leant his head further back into the towel, closing his eyes. "Mmm, that's nice. You're an angel. In the Glade, I just never had time. The guys who shaved their heads, like Alby-"
The shadow that always crossed his face when he talked about his friend appeared momentarily. "He had to take minutes out every day to shave his head. That adds up - I had stuff to do - obeyin' all his orders and the like."
He smiled at some memory of the said orders. "It was just easier - it wasn't a buggin' fashion statement, whatever Min wants to tell ya'."
"I could teach you to braid it, if you like?" I offered and Newt snorted.
"Nah, I'm good, thanks." He opened one eye for a second. "Don't think I'd look as pretty as you."
Now the adrenaline was wearing off, I realised that my own hands had started shaking as I twisted the towel back and forth and a wave of nausea crashed through my body. Everything with Newt in those days was like walking on a knife edge, or trapped in a near constant game of Russian roulette - no matter how good things seemed, something could throw everything out of balance in a second and something or someone got broken. And if that's what I was feeling, as an Immune around one infected person I loved, I didn't want to imagine how he felt - how millions of people around the world had already felt. Yes, whispered a quiet voice from behind the door I'd locked in my mind against any imagination - the panic must have let a bolt slip loose - but he isn't going to get better. Surely it can only get worse from here? Surely he's going to- Shut up. Stop. Stop thinking. But I was tired, and the voices had been getting louder all day.
"Could you hear me?" I asked suddenly.
"What?" Newt opened his eyes again. "When?"
"When you did it - it just didn't look like you could."
He frowned and sat up again, shoulder to shoulder with me. "Yeah. I could. But it was kinda like being underwater. It was like you were a long way away - I heard about four words in ten."
"Has that happened before?"
"No..." He was biting his nails now rather than his lip. "Not like that. You know. You've seen me...zone out, I guess. But that's just like daydreamin', 'cept I can't control it. Once you say my name, I'm back. But that didn't happen then..."
Newt reached out, pulling me against him, and I leaned my head on his shoulder and said: "We don't have to talk about this if you don't want to."
"No." I felt his sigh. "I should, I 'spose. No use in bottling it all. No use in anything to do with the shucking thing. Not like I can do anythin' about it."
Another deep breath. "It comes and goes in waves. I don't get to pick when, it just happens. I can try and push it back, like when we started that meeting yesterday, and it'll shut up for a while, but then it just comes back later, ten times buggin' worse."
Both of our eyes drifted to the hole in the plaster on the opposite wall, a reminder of what happened at the end of yesterday's meeting.
"As ya' know. But, I can't feel it all the time. Except the headache - that's always bloody there. Just enough to make things grate on me. Things that wouldn't before - you know, that probably annoys me the most."
"Why?"
"Because I can deal with the headaches, most of the time, even though it's like a power drill inside your skull. I can deal with the voices and the weird colours in my head, but that's not me. I never fight with Min - I just don't, no matter what shuck sarcasm comes out of his mouth. I've never fought with Tommy either. But all of a sudden, I'm the buggin' hothead? I hate that."
"They know it's not your fault." I said, drawing slow patterns on the back of his hand with my finger. "They know it isn't you. Nobody's going to blame you."
"I know. But that doesn't really make it okay. It's still stuff I've said, isn't it? When I'm a slinthead to you guys, it's still stuff that's come out of my head."
"Technically. But that's like blaming the guy that built the control room for some random breaking in and firing all the cannons. If you think about it, all of us have got a hell of a lot of stuff in our heads that other people put there - the way we've been taught to think, opinions that life hasn't proved wrong yet-"
"Microchips, if you're WICKED." Newt added drily.
"Exactly! All this crap can't make you a bad person, Newt. Not everything in your head comes from your heart. It's just that, right now, you're saying both sometimes." I offered him the best smile I could manage from a 45 degree angle. The voice's warning scraped in the back of my head again and I felt a strange pressure building in my chest. I had to make him understand this, and I had to try to understand him. There wasn't time for anything less. "And the people that matter are always gonna know the difference."
Newt didn't say anything for a few seconds, but I could feel every breath he was taking. Then he said: "For a 'cheeseball' answer, that was a bloody good metaphor, Lilybird. I'll remember that next time."
Next time. "Can you tell?" I asked. "When it's going to happen?"
Newt leant back, pulling me with him so we were both resting against the back of the couch.
"Sometimes. Sometimes the pressure gets worse. Sometimes I feel sick. Sometimes it's just like a scratching at the back of my head. But...as soon as I think I understand it, as soon as I think I have a grip on the sodding thing, it seems to - I don't know - mutate. Get worse, somehow. Like today. I wasn't doing anythin' when it went, 'well, let's slam his head into this shucking cupboard.' I guess, I can tell when the easy stuff's going to happen. But every time it gets worse - every time some new bit of my stupid brain decides to pack up - and it hits me with some psycho moment like this one-"
Newt gestured to his bandage. "No. I can't tell...don't know if I'd want to, to be honest. Unless it gave me time to lock myself up somewhere."
What can you say to that? A declaration of utter helplessness - of self-hatred. Self-fear. Nothing. Instead, I laced my fingers through Newt's, squeezing hard. I'm here. All you can do is be there - make sure that person knows they're not the sole occupant of some demonic black hole in their brains.
Yet.
And, with that whisper from the cruel voice, the locks on my imagination splintered and the door crashed open. The pressure on my chest started to burn and I could hear Timmy's damning words on the bus: "I'd rather shoot myself than get it...it shuts down everything that makes people human. 'S more than not recognising the people they love - they'll go for 'em, rip their throats out if they can manage it."
No. No. I don't believe you.
The man with his weeping sores, screaming and screaming: "Nobody gets to hide, no fun, no fun, no fun." The man with the gash he'd torn in his forehead on the handle of the doors, the blood streaming down his cracked face, getting in his eyes and his mouth and on his clothes - Newt, shaking, blood in his hair, in his eyes, 'why did I do that? Why did I do that, Lily?"
No. Stop thinking. Stop. But I couldn't. And for all of my fighting to protect N, to keep him talking, to stop his pain, I suddenly found myself crying, the tears coursing down my cheeks as I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth in an effort to force this sudden outburst back.
Newt noticed immediately and, murmuring "no, no, no, love", reached even further across and gathered me up - the way you would with a child - pulling me into his lap and wrapped his arms around me, folding me against his chest. I didn't resist, trying to force the grotesque parade of images back behind the door, just muttering something about "This is so stupid...sorry, sorry. I just-" He shook his head, stroking my hair and echoing my words from only a few minutes before.
"It's okay. I'm okay." Newt kissed the top of my head. "Don't cry over me, ya' noodle. It's not very gentlemanly to make ladies cry, ya' know. I'm sure my Ma'd be bloody ashamed."
For a few minutes, I let him hold me, resting my head against his chest, where I could feel the beating of his heart through his t-shirt as I wrestled all the bolts in my head back into place and got my breathing under control. Then I uncurled myself from the ball I'd made and hugged him back, as hard as I could.
"This is all backwards, N." I mumbled into his shirt and he just laughed, shaking his head. He was stroking my hair again, twisting it into tiny spirals when he suddenly said.
"Hey, Lil?" There was such a different tone to his voice that I looked up and leaned back in his lap.
"Yes?" Rather than answering straight away, Newt gently shifted me off his lap and spun into a standing position, offering me his hand instead.
"Do you wanna dance?"
"What - now?"
"Why not?" The crooked grin was back, his expression playful. Looking back, that was the closest he came to the boy from before the Maze, if you could have ever called him that. A lightbulb, that sparked with no warning at all.
I laughed, shrugging. "There's no music!"
He tilted his head to one side, like he was pretending to consider it. "And your point is?"
I didn't have an answer for that. I gave him my hand and he spun me to my feet too, pulling me in and resting his other hand on my waist, directing mine to his shoulder. "Like that, ya' see?"
"I see."
Now, I'd rather hoped that the memory we'd shared about the dance had been an exaggeration regarding my dancing skills. I'm sad to say it wasn't. We waltzed across the cluttered bedroom, Newt deftly dodging the feet of the chairs, me falling over virtually every one as well as Newt's feet, both of us laughing at the sheer madness of what we were doing - waltzing to nothing around a stolen WICKED Berg in Middle of Nowhere, Denver as the cloud dissipated in front of the stars, clinging onto that feeling of isolation from everything outside that had shattered with Newt's episode. Moonwalking through the kitchen took some effort, considering the tables and the pans I'd left on the tiles, but we made it out into the corridor after some excellent hopscotch imitations and a lot of banging around.
There were no strip lights in the corridor, only the occasional bulb, but when I went to flip them on, Newt caught my hand.
"Don't. We don't need 'em." He nodded to the circular windows that stretched all the way down the passage. The corridor was lit up by the moonlight that streamed through them in cylindrical shafts, and if you looked up, you could make out the constellations that had eventually burned off the clouds over Denver.
"Go on." He gestured with his free hand down the passage, his expression expectant. I frowned, wrinkling my nose at him.
"What am I doing?"
Newt shook his head, like he couldn't believe it wasn't my first thought. "Just bloody spin. Moonlight, Lil - it's buggin' criminal not to."
My spinning had not been the most graceful back in the bedroom, but I sighed and stretched my arms out and started spinning through the shafts of light as he watched me, keeping up . The walls whirled as I made my way uncertainly along the carpet, laughing and flickering in and out of the patches of starlight that lit my face for seconds at time. As the door to the bedroom got closer and closer again, I felt my head spinning faster than my body, and, when I reached the last window, my feet caught together and I tripped, expecting to end up sprawling on the carpet. Instead, Newt's arms were there, catching me before I could slam into the nearest wall.
"What a stereotypical save, Newton. Nicely done." I said as I got my breath back. Newt nodded, but kept hold of my wrists with a grin, his eyes shining.
"We aim to please, ma'am."
Newt leaned down, bumping his forehead against mine and kissing me gently, sending a warm feeling skittering through me and making the fear of the last hour blur a little around the edges. Pulling back slightly, I murmured into his ear:
"That's one way of doing it."
Newt laughed and kissed me again, letting go of my wrists to cradle my face with one hand, the other moving to my back, holding me to him. I relaxed into him, reaching up to anchor myself, linking my fingers behind his head as we kissed, the warmth settling in my chest and spreading out through my limbs. Our height difference meant that my balance was wavering and I took an automatic step towards him, but my eyes were closed and I stumbled over his feet again, coming even closer to grazing the carpet.
"You're going to tread on my toes now, too?" Newt asked, arching an eyebrow. I shook my head with a laugh that was more of an outward breath.
"I guess-" He said, breaking off to steal another kiss, his hands moving down to my waist. "-I'll just have to carry ya' again."
The last time Newt had carried me was years ago in a ballroom, spinning across a dance floor peppered with projected stars. This time was nothing like that - not least because tonight, the stars were real. This time, Newt lifted me up, his grip tight on my hips and I wrapped my legs around his waist, locking my arms even tighter around his neck. Careful of his bandage, I gently leant my forehead against his and whispered:
"So this is what it looks like up here..."
Newt barked a laugh, mirroring my grin. "It's probably a whole lot better for my back, bein' honest. Let's see, shall we?"
"Okay."
I brushed his hair back from his face and kissed him this time, a new feeling of control stemming from being higher than he was. My hands drifted to the sides of Newt's face, my thumbs brushing his cheekbones. This was soft, and it felt safe and right, like he always did - and safer than you'd think considering the position - but there was something else now, something that went deeper than that. I'd felt secure, comfortable tens of different times, but I'd never felt this inexorable pull to be closer to Newt, closer than standing together, closer than this.
Considering the symbolic meaning that teen romances seem to give to somebody opening their mouth during a kiss, it's pretty hard to avoid. As we kissed, clumsy and slow, my teeth caught on Newt's bottom lip and I heard his sharp intake of breath. The warmth I'd felt at first was building into a heat in my chest and I caught his lip again, deliberately now, and bit it gently - not entirely sure if this was stupid, if he'd laugh rather than feeling whatever I hoped he would feel. But, in response, his grip tightened on my waist, as if he wanted to pull me further into him, and he groaned quietly.
"Ah, you'll be the death of me, love."
Newt started to walk backwards into the bedroom, carrying me with him. I'd never noticed the freckles scattered from his jaw to his collarbone before and I leant down to kiss the path from his jaw to the collar of his shirt, my lips just brushing his skin. I felt his chuckle and he made it easier for me, sitting down on the nearest couch and leaning back, stretching his chin up to give me better access. As I traced the path across his skin, I felt his fingers at the back of my neck, pulling out the hair tie and running through my hair, unwinding my braid as he went - something always made my scalp ache, but that night I didn't care. The feeling just mingled with the myriad of feelings everywhere else in my body, disappearing as Newt eventually cupped my chin and pulled my lips back up to his.
When I was young, long before my first kiss, despite all the books I read, I'd never realised that kissing the same person could ever be different. Kissing was kissing, wasn't it? No. There was kissing in a crowded room, so quickly you could blink and miss it, kissing for the first time, nervous and unsure, kissing for affection, because it's nice and then there was this. There was this.
It was clumsy - noses rubbing, foreheads bumping, frenetic and disorganised - but that didn't matter. I'd wondered fleetingly what Karly would think of me kissing Newt like this, in his lap, running my fingers through his hair (which was surprisingly soft and far less tangled than mine felt) before all lingering thoughts of anybody but him evaporated completely. For as long as either of us could remember, even in dreams, we'd never been in a place where there was absolutely nobody around - no chance that a door would crash open or an alarm would blare. We had time. For a while. And I could think of worse ways to spend it.
Maybe it was what there was a chance of, more than a chance, that drove every caress that night, the kisses it still felt like we were stealing. I wish it hadn't been something worse WICKED that we were stealing from. But I wasn't thinking about that then. The voices behind the door in my mind, the nails they'd been scraping down it all day, had fallen away into the feeling of his fingers in my hair, his lips warm on mine. I'm not sure either of us was thinking anything - other than the desire to stretch the flying seconds into minutes, to be closer, as close as possible to the other person while they were still within touching distance. Maybe it was that.
Something sharp dug into my breastbone, making me slide a little further back on Newt's legs and open my eyes blearily - his shirt had buttons. Gently, so gently I was barely touching him, I traced the line my lips had followed earlier with my fingertips from his jaw to his collar through his freckles - it reminded me bizarrely of a dot-to-dot puzzle - while he watched me, his expression faintly questioning. It was only when I reached the first button and let my fingers rest on it for a few seconds before undoing it and continuing the puzzle across the centimetres of skin below, that his breath hitched in his throat and he understood. Slowly, keeping my eyes on his, checking this was okay, I undid the one below it. There were only three and Newt clearly decided the third was superfluous by then, leaning back and pulling his shirt up over his head himself, tossing it aside.
It was at this point that I didn't know what to do. I hadn't thought past getting rid of his shirt and the buttons attached - and rather stupidly, I hadn't thought about the fact that he wouldn't be wearing anything under said shirt. As I've already said, Newt had always been tall, and nineteen-year-old N was no exception. He always joked that his limbs were too long for his body, and somehow all of that - combined with Minho's frequent emphasis on his own impressive physique - had made me gloss over how easily Newt had swung me up into his arms, the two years he had spent as the fastest Runner in the Glade, the months he'd spent working even after that. His muscles didn't bulge through layers of clothing, not like Min made sure his did (and still does), but without those layers, the muscles of Newt's arms, his chest, his back were defined in smooth curves, interrupted occasionally by scars - some white and old, others recent and raw.
"Well?" Newt was smiling at me, his eyes almost copper as I sat curled on his legs, just looking at the human being in front of me. There was a lot about him that was beautiful. "Do I pass?"
To finish the puzzle, I followed the shape of one scar across his chest to his hipbone with a fingertip and smiled right back.
"You'll do."
He tugged on my hand again. "C'mere."
And that was different again. The lights on the timer in the kitchen had come on, casting shadows across the bedroom walls and reminding us that this evening could never be infinite. Before, Newt had wrapped his arms around my back, like I'd disappear if he let go for even a second, but now his fingertips were light in my hair, brushing my cheek, like I was glass or a sugarwork masterpiece that dissolves against your lips. I think it would have taken both of us more effort to open our eyes again, but I caught Newt's hand the next time he brushed my hair back and held onto it, running my thumb over his palm, my other hand resting against his jaw this time. I'm here, you're okay. We're okay.
That day is a day I go back to a lot; when I want to smile, when I want to hope, when I don't want to be as alone as I feel. Despite everything, it was a good day - and in those years, good days were like finding silver in a coal mine. And that moment felt almost mad, a psychedelic moment where we both lost our minds for a while in a stolen Berg on an abandoned airfield. We'd never said love after the Maze - no number of dreams or feelings had seemed to justify the word in twenty six days - but right then we didn't need to.
Somehow, through the mist clouding my brain just then, I suddenly realised that there was something on my fingers, warm and thick, and - tired or not - my eyes flew open, Newt sitting back at the same time that I did. What? The tips of my fingers were stained the same crimson that Newt's had been and, when I looked up at him, slow drops of blood were running down the side of his face, catching in his eyebrow, his bandage ripped a little at the corner. Newt put his own fingers up to his forehead, pulled them away and grimaced.
There was a moment of silence, where we just looked at the blood and then back up at each other. As soon as we met each other's eyes, the bizarreness of the moment hit us and I couldn't stop the sudden laughter that bubbled up in my throat. Neither could N, though he tried harder than me, pressing his lips together into a smirk for a second before giving in entirely, both of us giggling like hyenas, our laughter echoing off the metal walls as the rest of the lights flicked on in WICKED's renegade machine.
"Do you think the others are done yet?" I asked, yawning, curled up in the window of the Berg as I watched the patrol lights of Denver swing around the sky.
Newt quickly passed me the other mug of tea and mirrored my yawn, collapsing onto the far end of the couch and stretching his legs across it. "Bloody hope so. It's late - don't wanna think about the mood Min'll be in tomorrow if they're not."
"I hope they're okay."
"Me too." Newt frowned for a second, the concern obvious before he masked it with a smile. "Don't really want to have to take Denver down from the outside, bein' honest."
He tipped his head back against the sofa arm and closed his eyes. Scrambling down from the windowsill and pushing his feet back to sit on the other end of the sofa, I noticed one particular scar that seared a puckered diagonal line from the right side of Newt's chest to his collarbone.
"How did you get that one?" Newt opened his eyes and looked down at the various marks on his body, pointing at different ones until I nodded.
"Ah, this one?" He chuckled softly at the memory. "Another one of my not-so-glamorous moments. It was about a month after I'd jacked up my leg, I'd just started getting around again. Nick - he was the leader at the time - realised in the end that I'd go barmy if didn't have somethin' worthwhile to do and sorted me out with the kind of second-in-command job, under Alby. But, before that, he tried to do what you'd do with a buggin' Newbie, putting me with the other Keepers one day each and tryin' to find me a new spot. This one was with the Builders - do you remember me tellin' ya about Gally?"
Gally. The Glade rebel who'd vanished twice. Their Beth. "Yes."
Newt shook his head. "The crazy shank always hated me after he got stung - probably why this happened, now I think about it. They were fixing the roof of the Homestead, 'cause we'd got some new materials up in the Box. So, I was up there with them-"
"On crutches?" I said, disbelief saturating my voice. Newt laughed.
"No! Don't be daft - left those on the ground."
"Newt!"
"Anyway!" He made his tone louder than my protests, the smile still on his face. "I was up there, carrying some boards to Jackson and my leg buckled. I put my foot through a weak bit of scaffolding and fell off the bloody thing. Don't look at me like that, it was fine. Couple of bruises and this thing - caught a piece of metal on the way down."
"Bet the Medics loved you." I rolled my eyes, looking at the fresh bandage I'd practically glued to his forehead.
"Clint's a bloody good friend of mine." Another smirk. "Gally wasn't quite as impressed. He thought I was a blithering idiot and sent me back to Nick 'soon as Clint'd patched me up. You can imagine how excited he was when I got promoted above him."
I'd heard the story of the disastrous Gathering when Alby was ill from more than one Glader and I nodded. "Weird guy...I wonder what he saw in the Changing?"
"No idea." Newt said. "He wouldn't talk to me, to anyone. Whatever it was was worse than anything going on in there."
Later - I'd completely lost track of how much later - we'd both squashed onto the same side of the couch and stolen a blanket from the other room. I was so tired by now, I was barely conscious. I'd been drifting in and out of sleep for some indefinite length of time, the sound of the Berg machinery, Newt breathing and the wind wailing outside acting as white noise that lulled me in and out of sleep. This time, when I opened my eyes, some of the lights had turned off in the bedroom and the kitchen was dark - the Berg had switched to Night Mode. I was lying down, my head against the sofa cushion, but Newt was sitting up, just like he had been that night in the WICKED Centre, staring out of the window at the foot of the couch, his eyes following the patrol light beams. I wondered if he'd really slept at all since we left WICKED, or if the dreams he had made it easier to be awake. As I watched, Newt sighed quietly and rubbed his temples with his fingertips, a grimace of discomfort on his face, before settling back into the statue position - leaning against the backrest, one arm stretched across it, his dark eyes focused on the horizon.
"You okay?" I whispered, because I couldn't think of a way of phrasing it that sounded less idiotic. Newt gasped a little, not expecting me to be awake, but he turned his eyes away from the window. Before, he had answered my unspoken question with instant affirmation, reassurance, but he didn't do that then. Instead, Newt shook his head very slowly, like maybe the idea was only just solidifying in his own mind. The frown hadn't left his face. He met my eyes and I saw what he told me anyway, his voice not much more than the sigh that preceded it, as if whatever was out there would hear him if he spoke any louder.
"I'm scared, Lily."
That remains one of the saddest fragments of language I've ever heard, and I still have days where it plays on repeat. On hearing it the first time, my heart twisted in my chest, like something was wringing the chambers inside out. My answer couldn't change, because there wasn't an answer but I rested my hand on his knee and I answered anyway.
"I'm right here."
A ghost of a smile as he laid his hand on top of mine, linking the fingers. Newt sighed again, his whole body moving with it, but then his expression suddenly cleared and he nodded, just as slowly.
"So am I."
Another time that could have been minutes or hours later, where I couldn't even open my eyes - I felt Newt shift beside me, squashing back down into the space by my side, but I didn't hear him lie down and his breathing stayed shallow, rather than the deep, even breaths of someone falling asleep. I felt the way you sometimes do when it's early morning and you're the last person asleep.
"Are you watching me sleep?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Okay."
Newt's fingertips brushed my hairline, running across the lines of my face as I laughed quietly but then let him. He traced my features, like he was trying to memorise a route from a complicated map, ghosting across my eyelashes and the shell of my ear, his touch so light I'm not sure I didn't start imagining it. I never heard him lie down, but eventually, his fingers moved to my hair again, twisting it around and brushing it back, stroking my hair until I fell so deeply asleep that I didn't wake 'til morning.
The Next Morning - 7:15am
"Are you sure you know where you're going?" Newt asked for the millionth time, standing on the end of the Berg ramp in the heat of the Denver sun as I shouldered my backpack, 'Lilianne Peterson's' files in hand.
"Yes! Second door on the right, Paperchase at the end of the mall. Stop worrying."
"But I'm so good at it." Newt whined, but gave in. "I know, I know. Come here then, Lilybird."
He pulled me into a tight hug, despite the enormous backpack, squeezing hard. He smelled of vanilla and the soap we'd found the night before, and I felt a sudden flash of concern myself at leaving him here. My mind went back to how I'd found him that morning, standing it front of the window like he'd been carved into place. Newt had never looked round as I got up, just kept his eyes fixed on the sky and I'd been about to reach up and tap his shoulder when he whispered to me, in a voice so close to his own, yet so different that I wanted to cry.
"Look, Lily." My name, but he didn't even look down as he said it, pointing up at the sky with a crooked smile. "There's a hole in the clouds."
Stop thinking. It's just a few hours. He'll be fine. Find the others.
"Are you sure you don't want me to come with you to the doors?" Newt offered as he stepped back, keeping one hand on my shoulder. And he would have done it too, if I'd asked, forget the risk of being captured or worse. I shook my head vehemently, though I'd much rather have been with him in the alien city.
"No, no. I'll be fine." I kissed his cheek and smiled. "I'll see you later, okay?"
He tried to mirror my smile. "See you later, Lily. Don't torch the city."
"I'll try. Don't mess with the spider-catcher."
"No, ma'am."
Newt leaned in one more time, kissing me quickly and managing his real smile. "Get on with ya' then, you buggin' criminal."
And when I left him, we were laughing, and - like Minho - I turned and waved as the ramp slid back up into the doors and sealed him behind it. Looking back, I realise how strange and cruel the circumstances were that morning. How normal. Just telling someone goodbye with a smile and coming back in the evening, like millions of people had done for decades without ever questioning it. It was a flash of what we'd always wanted.
So, there was everything the last twenty-four hours had been. But there was also this. There was kissing goodbye.
Hi everyone!
This chapter took absolutely ages to write, but I really enjoyed writing some Newly fluff (mostly, minus the moments of stress)! Where do you think it's going next for the gang? Are Newt and Lil going to manage to stay together? Can they stay out of the clutches of WICKED? And what's going to happen in Denver?
I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter - I've really enjoyed reading all of your theories about the story over the last few chapters!
See you next week,
Star * x
Guest: Thank you so much! That was such a lovely review - I was waiting for exam results when I got it and felt awful, so your review really cheered me up :) Hope you enjoyed the chapter xx
sarah0406: Hello! Wow, I loved reading all your theories about Newt - you've really noticed some details there :) Thank you - I hope you enjoyed the chapter and where it's going next for them x
AnwynB03: No worries, I love long reviews! Ahh, great thinking there :) Well noticed - and thank you! Xx
GracieMiserables: Yeah, Janson's an interesting one! You'll get to see what happens next with him, pretty soon - and Teresa :) x
Kri5ta: Thank you! Xx
