Chapter Text
Everything was dark around Newt when he woke up. Solid and pitch-black, almost alive and swirling around him, lay a thick wall of seemingly impenetrable darkness. It had only been a minute or two since he had regained consciousness and his eyes were still utterly and completely blind to his surroundings. He could hear his own breath loud and clear, rattling in his ears. It was the only sound in the place he was in. His heart was already racing and he was terrified of what was to come.
No matter what it was, he didn't think it could be good.
Carefully he reached out and let his hand slide up the wall he was lying next to. His back had been pressed to it or he wouldn't have known it was there. His hand moved along a padded, soft surface with a swishing sound that tore through the darkness and drowned out the hasty, heavy intakes of breath and the shaky exhales.
The floor felt just as the wall did and was definitely made of exactly the same material.
The image of a padded cell in an asylum came to his mind but he couldn't tell where he had pulled it from or how he knew that there were cells like these made for people who were potentially going to hurt themselves.
Maybe he was trapped.
Newt shook his head. I’m a bloody idiot, he thought and huffed. A bitter, gruff sound in the confined space he was in. Of course he was trapped.
If only he could see something.
It took less effort than he thought to sit up. He had no way of knowing how long he might have been asleep, but he didn't feel rested. His legs pulled close and up to his chest he blinked against the darkness and tried to make out anything around him when suddenly a bright light flickered into life right in front of him, just a few feet away.
Newt hissed, shielding his eyes with his hand and turning his face away from the source of light in a fluid motion. He needed a few moments in which he had his eyes squeezed shut tightly, regretting that he had wished for light only a second earlier, before he could attempt to see anything. Bright white dots disturbed the darkness behind his eyelids and made him dizzy.
When he opened his eyes again beneath the protecting cover of his hand, he did it slowly to make sure it would be bearable before he put his hand down and turned his head towards the light source.
It was still bright. Unnaturally bright. A single monitor, sitting in the wall opposite of him. There was no sound at all, just the black and white picture, flickering through the darkness and casting wavering shadows onto the white walls.
At first Newt didn't know what he was looking at, because he had never seen it from this perspective. He squinted his eyes, his mouth dropped open and he felt terror creep into him like liquid oil, dripping in and moving fast until it filled him whole.
It was him.
He was climbing up a wall in the maze when he was supposed to run and he knew nobody would miss him for the next hours. The monstrous, gigantic walls that had meant nothing to him than entrapment. Still, he wasn't that far from the Glade. There had been no point in going far and exhausting himself. There had been no point in anything anymore.
Newt could only stare as he climbed the ivy in what must be a recording one of the beetle blades had made of him. It skittered over the wall, making the camera jiggle and bounce but never lose its focus on him, filming his slow ascent. He recalled the sounds of working machinery and the clicking of it’s feet on the wall, but there was still no sound.
His breath hitched. He knew what would happen and he didn't want to watch it. His hands were wrapped tight around his own knees, palms sweaty and damp against the fabric, and his face contorted with terror.
The figure was turning around now, carefully and slowly, watching his every move so he wouldn't fall just yet. Newt remembered how his sweaty hands had almost slipped on the ivy at one point and he wished he couldn't.
It was almost hilarious to him, watching himself, knowing his intentions and seeing how careful he had been.
His eyes were opened wide, fixed on the flickering screen, imagining some scientist in his place while he was actually doing it. They had been watching. They had driven him to a point he thought killing himself was the only option and then they had watched. Recorded it. Saved it for rainy days.
He knew the small version of himself, hanging from the monstrous wall, was taking a few deep breaths to steady himself.
He had been so sure it would work.
The recorded version of him suddenly let go of the ivy and leaned forward. The camera jiggled again as the beetle blade moved to capture his fall and Newt saw himself head towards the earth at a maddening pace. Seeing this he could once again not believe he had survived this.
Just as he hit the earth suddenly there was sound. A loud, sickening crunch, the sound of broken and shattered bone and Newt flinched, squeezed his eyes close and bowed his head forward.
A loud scream of pure agony and then silence fell again.
The source of the small hiccups and hitching breaths stayed cowered forward, head hung low until he realized the light didn't fade.
Newt wished the darkness would return.
After hours he almost got used to it. It was on loop and he had seen himself attempt suicide 56 times, but he had stopped counting after only a short while. They never showed how he got found and rescued before night fell and the grievers came out. This was a tape made entirely of his desperation, his failure and his pain.
It didn't stop and Newt couldn't sleep. He felt like he was going crazy. There was an itch at the back of his brain, inside his mind, a sudden urge to try and break the monitor to make it stop that felt foreign to him. It wasn't him who did things like that. He wanted to reach inside his skull and scratch until it was gone, but all he could do was try to ignore the only source of light he had.
The next day there was food. Three times in total, always the same. The only way to measure time was the little version of himself that tirelessly climbed the wall, let go and screamed. The sound remained just as much as the picture. It was always turned on when he hit the ground and turned off immediately after that.
Sometimes Newt looked over, trying to will this small version of himself to stop. It never did and he always looked away before he could witness himself hitting the ground again.
At some point he fell asleep and he dreamed of the slow ascent up the wall. In his dreams he could remember how hopeless he had felt, how desperate and empty and old. Nobody as young as him should feel this used up and hollow. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he was sure it was true. It was one of those things he could remember without having any memory of it. It was maddening how the barrier that held his past at bay worked.
He fell and yelled, jolting up to sit only seconds after one of his past versions had hit the ground on the monitor and yelled over the thundering crack of his own bone. He was gulping in huge breaths of air, almost choking on it. Sleep didn’t come again.
~*~
There was no food on it. Something silvery lay where it usually used to be and Newt pulled himself to his feet, walking over with careful, hesitant steps as if he expected whatever was lying there to jump up and attack him.
After everything he had been through it was a valid concern.
The silvery turned out to be a dagger, maybe ten inches long. It lay there accompanied by a note. Two simple words in huge, bold letters.
TRY AGAIN?
Newt was breathing heavily, didn’t know if he had ever stopped doing it between waking up and discovering the dagger. A long moment passed in which he just stared down onto the tray and the shadows dancing over his surface, while he imagined doing what the note asked him to. He imagined taking the dagger and burying it deep in his chest, slowing the rabid pace of his heart to a slow stutter to silence.
Peace.
The thoughts were so similar to the thoughts he had when he had climbed the wall in the maze, but so many things had changed since that day.
He had started to feel a hint of grateful for every day he could escape death and stay with his friends, even if he sometimes didn't know what for. Things weren't great. Living wasn't great. He was trapped in a room by the same people who had trapped him in a maze.
After all that had happened, after the last failed attempt on his own life, he knew he couldn't do it. He had never been able to just stick a knife into his own chest and he couldn't risk failing again.
But more importantly, if he ever would try to kill himself again it wouldn't be because these people asked him to.
The expression in Newt’s eyes hardened considerably before he turned around and limped back to where he had sat before. He really hoped they were watching like they had been in the maze.
~*~
He ate, he walked around, he ignored the dagger and the recording, but the itch inside his mind didn't go away. It got worse.
The next day Newt got angry.
It was confusing, mainly because he didn't want to. He just felt drained and tired and furious beyond reason. Days had come and gone and all he ever heard were his own screams and cracking bones.
Quick steps took him to where the dagger rested and he knelt down, his knees hitting the padded floor with a loud thud.
It felt heavy in his hand. Heavy and cold and dangerous. He wrapped both his hands around the handle and took a deep breath to steady himself and when he stabbed out with it he put all the strength he had into the blow, intend on going through as far as he could.
The sharp blade tore through fabric and cotton easily but hit something hard and solid beneath it. A loud, metallic clang sounded through the room and the force of the impact and the sudden stop reverberated through his arms. It almost hurt, but it made him stop for a moment to reconsider what he was doing.
Newt wasn't sure what he had thought could lie beyond the soft padding of the wall, but he hadn't expected it to be solid metal that blocked his escape. He pulled the dagger out, seeing it had only vanished for about four inches before it hit metal and started slashing at the wall’s padding with renewed ferocity. He pulled out chunks of cotton between slashes, once almost hitting his own hand with the swirling blade. His own screams out of hidden speakers occasionally drowned out the grunts and sounds of effort. Sweat was trickling down his face and the back of his neck, but he only stopped when he could see the metal that lay beneath the padding through the hole he created.
It was almost the same color the dagger had and shone in the light that flickered over it’s surface every now and then. Newt stared at it before staring down at the weapon that had done all the damage to the wall. The weapon that tore through the soft padding so easily.
There was no doubt left that he could kill himself with it. A quick stab just the way he had attacked the wall and it would all be over.
There was no clattering of metal, no sharp, loud sound, when the dagger landed in the far corner of the room. Just a soft thud, a scream of anguish, silence.
Newt went back to the place he had sat in most of the time and waited, rubbing his hurting hands on his legs. The next time he fell asleep and dreamed it was of Alby finding him out in the maze after he had jumped. One look at his friend’s face had shown him what a bad idea it had been to try what he had tried.
He had almost left his friends, left Alby behind to fend for themselves. He had almost made their pain worse than it was already. If there had been any doubt left he could kill himself in this room it was gone the moment he woke up from the dream, feeling numb against the ongoing assault from the recording that was still playing. Finally even the most terrible thing he could remember happen to him had lost it’s terror.
He couldn't die while his friends needed him, no matter how long they would keep him in that room.
That day was the day the door opened for the first time since he had come here.