I do not own The Maze Runner or any of its characters

Thomas: *does something stupid*
Lauren: *draws a tally mark*

Lauren
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"I saw Thomas run out; what happened?" Peter came through the door.

"Something with Minho, I don't know." I was sitting on the bed, trying to get Newt awake.

"I'm gonna kill that stupid-" Newt finally sat up.

"You can't. He's already dead." I gently helped him off the bed. "Don't go too fast; you might have a concussion."

Newt muttered something about how he'll go however fast he wants, and I just handed the towel to him and put my hands up.

"You said Tommy ran outside?" He asked Peter.

"Yeah."

Newt left.

Peter turned to me with a sad expression, and he didn't have to ask the question that was obviously on his mind.

"He screamed that we shouldn't go to the outside world, and then," I sniffled. "He jumped into a shucking Griever, and they all left."

"Lauren, I-"

"Don't. He made his decision, and I couldn't have changed it. Don't know why I tried. I was too oblivious to read the signs. The, the" Taking a deep breath, I couldn't finish the sentence. I was tired.

My best friend gathered me into a hug. I returned it, not caring about the glass shards embedding themselves deeper in my arms.

I welcomed the pain. It took my mind off of the grief.

"Why does it hurt so much?" I asked his shoulder.

After a couple of minutes of sniffles, I pulled away and examined my arms. They weren't as bad I thought, but still held a little bit of glass. Quickly, I gathered some supplies and pulled out the shards. After wrapping them up, I followed Peter downstairs to see if I could help somewhere. Clint quickly found me.

"Great, you're up. I need you to get some towels and bandages; someone hurt Alby pretty bad." He instructed.

"Are we setting up a room, or what?"

"Get the stuff and bring it to the Map Room. We can't move him to a room just yet." Clint ran off.

"Duty calls." I turned to Peter.

"You gonna be okay?" He sounded concerned.

Smiling, I shook my head. "I'll get through it. Just gotta make it to tonight."

He nodded.

You could still see a little bit of smoke from the Homestead. My arms laden with supplies, I hurried, not sure what I was going to see when I got to the Map Room.

I can tell you truthfully; I didn't expect Alby to be happy to see me.

"Lauren, hi."

Clint looked shocked. I just set the supplies down and got to work.

"Hey, Alby," I said slowly. "Looks like you lost a lot of blood."

"Guess I did."

"It's alright, Clint, and I'll patch you up; you'll be back on your feet in no time, bossin' us all around." I gave a soft smile.

He tried to move, and Clint gently stopped him.

"There's no need for you to move until we get you bandaged," Clint told him. "We'll work around the table. You just stay awake."

The two of us started working a little faster. Clint gave me a look as if I needed to keep talking to him. I responded with a slight glare. 

"What happened to your arms?" Alby questioned.

"I, uh, fist fought a Griever. It was pretty brutal, but I think I killed it."

"The truth, Lauren."

I almost dropped the gauze, the weight of my grief crashing back down again. It was easier when you had a set goal, and you were working to keep your mind off of it. When you were asked to relieve it, the wound was still raw after only a couple of hours, still oozing out blood and excruciating pain.

"Cut myself on some glass, trying, yet again, to be a hero."

Alby gave me a sad look. I quickly changed the subject.

"So, uh, what urged you to come out here?" Might as well get some answers.

"I needed to get back to my old self."

A quick look in his eyes told me he was telling the truth. Old habits die hard.

"I see." Clint and I started passing the bandage between us, wrapping his head, making sure we got the whole injury. I tried hard not to notice we were almost wrapping his whole head. "And did it help?"

"Well, I got a bandage wrapped around my head, and the Maps are burned."

I cleared my throat, trying not to correct him.

Alby tried to move again, but this time I stopped him and looked him dead in the eyes. "I know you're our leader and all that jazz, but this time you listen to me. You just got your head almost caved in. I want you to stay in bed for the rest of the day. There's no use trying to move around; you'll just reopen the wound. Good that?"

The leader just stared at me.

"I said, good that?"

Then he smiled. "Good that."

"Great. Now I want you to stand up nice and easy. Clint, could you get his other side?"

Slowly and carefully, we took Alby back to the Homestead. Easily, the stairs were the hardest part of the trip. Alby wasn't a small guy, and while Clint wasn't unfit, his muscles started and ended in his legs. You gotta have some speed to get to all the injured.

Clint and I deposited Alby on a bed, and I glanced around the room. It had no windows, which meant it wasn't near any outside walls, which also meant that a Griever couldn't come for Alby in the middle of the night.

"I figured we wouldn't want a repeat of last night," Clint said softly.

"Yeah," My throat had unexpectedly closed up. I cleared it. "Probably for the best. We kinda need this guy."

Clint looked over for Alby's response, but he was already fast asleep.

"I'll try and come check on him throughout the day," I said, volunteering myself for babysitting.

"Alright." Clint patted his legs, and I noticed he left very bright red handprints on his pants.

"Um, Clint, you've got," I pointed and saw that my own hands were red.

"Shuck! These were my favorite pair of pants!"

"Does that mean-?" I turned to look at Alby, but no handprints were found, as his shirt was already almost completely red.

"I can change it. I know where his room is." Clint said, reading my mind.

"Good. I'm gonna find Peter; we need to patch the gaping hole on the side of the Homestead."

"Hey, while you're at it, could you tell Newt Alby's fine? He's probably worried."

"Copy that." I mock saluted, making a mental to-do list in my mind.

It wouldn't be hard to find Peter. He and I are usually on the same wavelength, so I found him in the room where it happened.

My grief stopped me at the door. The hole, the glass, the bloody still staining the bedsheets, even the knife I held to try and fend off the Griever, it all overloaded my mind. Checking my watch, I saw that it had only been a couple of hours since the attack.

Peter noticed my presence. "Hey, I've got this all covered. You should go take a nap or something." He gently moved me out of the room, closing the door behind us.

"I haven't been able to sleep before. What makes you think I can now?" I tried for a smile. It came out more like a grimace.

"The heavy bags under your eyes, for starters."

"I got some sleep this morning; I'll be fine."

"Lauren," He sighed.

"Peter," I mimicked. He gave me a dirty look. "All right, I'll try and get a nap."

"Thank you." He pulled me into a hug and went back inside the room. I caught a glimpse of some guys pulling the sheets off the bed.

I helped with Frypan for a little bit. He was in my room trying to organize the food. We passed out some granola bars and some other food to satisfy the Glade's hunger. Frypan wasn't happy, and he told me many times.

"Can't believe I'm not able to cook anything."

"Hunger's an emergency, right? Why can't they turn on the electricity for meals?"

"I'm letting everyone down with this granola-bar klunk."

He muttered some other words, including some non-Glader profanities. And his mood didn't improve when Newt and Thomas came to grab his supply of wax paper.

"No!" He folded his arms like a child.

"Frypan, please. It's crucial." Thomas pleaded.

"Absolutely not! I always request this, and with the supplies cut off, how am I suppose to use it for baking?"

"Frypan, come on." Newt threw a look at me as if I was supposed to be helping them.

"I can't really help if I don't know what's going on." I folded my arms too.

Newt sighed. "We need it to figure out a code with the Maps so we can maybe get out of here."

That explained why Minho and I saved the things. The two of them wouldn't tell me when I moved them last night, just said we needed to protect them. During one of my times to get the truth, Newt just gave me a hard glare and told me not to tell anyone else, and I quote, 'Just move them. We're not here to get interrogated.'

"You can have a box." He finally caved.

"Great, thank you, Frypan." Thomas sounded really relieved.

After that, I checked in on Alby, made sure he was comfortable, and made some really odd conversation, where he seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say.

I finally plopped down on my bed and didn't even bother changing. I passed out and slept like the dead.

|~^_^~|

Peter would be proud of me. I got a solid two hours of deep sleep. I yawned and stretched and did the normal people thing of feeling really disoriented, and the whole no-sunlight thing was no help.

I opened my door and found Newt standing in the hallway.

"Lauren, brilliant."

"Yes?" My eyebrows creased; apparently, everyone was happy to see me today.

"I need you to help trace the Maps; Minho and Tommy are going to go run. Follow me." He grabbed a couple of other Gladers, and I recognized Jim being one of them.

"What're we doing?" Jim quietly asked me.

"Returning to kindergarten, Jim. You ready to trace?" We descended the stairs into the weapons room, and I saw the chick down there, hard at work.

She seemed surprised to see me, and I just waved. "Nice to see another female face around here."

"And who are you?" She asked, something resembling condescending lacing her voice.

"Lauren. Been here for almost three months. You?"

"Teresa."

"Great, we've got introductions, now let's get on with it.  As you can see, we're tracing the Maps."

"I thought the Maps got burned?" Another Glader piped up from the back. I recognized Jeff's voice.

Newt thought for a moment, choosing his words carefully.

"We thought the Grievers might come for the Maps, so we moved them in here." He eventually said.

And there it was, another reminder of what happened last night. After my knees started shaking, I decided I just wouldn't think about it until tonight. Tonight was when I was going to grieve. Tonight was when I would tear down my walls. Tonight, I would try to accept the fact that Gally was gone, and I couldn't have done anything about it. I took a deep breath.

"Let's just assign them a section and get on with it. We're losing time." Teresa cut in.

"Good that. Everyone gather 'round, I'm only saying this once."

We all watched carefully as Newt showed us what we were doing.

Jeff got assigned to cutting out pieces of Frypan's wax paper, and the rest of us started tracing the lines of the Maps onto them. It was really boring work, and all of us sitting at the table with no words other than the occasional "I've got something" or "My marker just went out" or "This section's done" made me want to bang my head on the table.

Newt sent me to get some food around lunchtime, and I was grateful for the chance to stretch my legs. I went to my room to find Frypan and eventually found him in the Kitchen's back, experimenting with a wood stove. He gave me some sandwiches and promised that he'd have something good for tonight.

I found Peter during that time, and I told him what I was doing. He seemed shocked that the Maps were safe, and when I finally explained the 'secret mission' I had, it helped with his confusion.

Back to work, I went. I'll try to spare you the details of the rest of the night.

Frypan didn't disappoint with supper. He somehow managed to make some amazing soup with the old wood stove, and I loved it. However, he did get chewed out by Newt. I guess our supply of hot meals ended that night.

We didn't break for the evening, Newt insisting that we were so close and that we'd be perfectly safe down here. This was also when I learned that Gally said Grievers would come for us, taking one Glader each night. I wasn't sure how I felt about him having that information. The only other person who was on board with the idea of staying down here was the chick-Teresa.

I looked at my watch one time and saw it was almost 6 in the morning.

"Please tell me we got something." I popped my back for the thousandth time, looking around the room.

"It just finished repeating itself," Teresa informed the group.

"What?!" Jeff almost screamed.

Being cooped up with someone for almost 24 hours told you a lot about them.

Jim, for instance, really loved baking. At around the 6-hour mark, I moved to where we could have a conversation. The silence was slowly murdering me. He spoke a lot about this fudge recipe, which I was agitated I couldn't taste. Apparently, the Creators started rationing their chocolate chips, and Frypan decided to use them for cookies.

Jeff got really cranky without sleep. That is all.

I learned that the last Glader was Frankie, a Slicer. He kept to himself and ignored all of my attempts to talk to him. I could see why Newt wanted him to work.

"Slim yourself nice and calm, Jeff." Newt moved towards Teresa. "What words do we have?"

I grabbed the paper we were writing on from the middle of the table. "Uh, float, catch, bleed, death, stiff, push. Just spilling out happiness all over the place, isn't it?" 

"And this just started spelling out float for the third time." I was shocked Teresa didn't sound agitated.

"Third? Why didn't you tell us the first time?" Newt looked confused.

"I wanted to make sure it wouldn't go in a different order," Teresa said like it was the easiest answer in the world.

"Well, we'll keep going, and if it does the same thing again, we'll stop."

Jeff muttered something under his breath that lasted for almost 3 minutes. I was just ecstatic there was an end in sight.

Newt left us and brought down another Glader in his place. I was kinda shocked to see Alec's face but welcomed the new blood that wasn't almost exhausted. After debriefing him on what was going on, he started working pretty fast. Jim and I figured Newt must have bribed him with something.

After maybe an hour, I heard a knock and found Newt was back to help us again.

"Tommy and Minho just came back." He told Teresa, and making himself just loud enough so the whole room could hear. 

"And?" Teresa prompted.

"Didn't find anythin'. Minho got mad and stormed off; not a big surprise there. Let's just finish this."

It was a little disappointing to hear that nothing changed in the Maze, no magical opening revealed itself, but I didn't really expect it. Shaking my head, I got back to work.

Finally, maybe half an hour later, Newt threw down his marker.

"All right, I'm callin' it. The bloody thing just repeated the entire code again."

Everyone but Jeff sighed, trying to pop their wrists. I couldn't help but notice all of us looked exhausted, even Alec, who came in much later. I guess the vibe of the room was to suck out your soul.

Teresa grabbed a fresh sheet of paper and started numbering it. I couldn't blame her; the one we were writing on originally was a mess of four different people's handwriting/scribbles.

"Can someone tell me the order of the words?"

"Sure, you've only been looking at them for the past 15 hours," I muttered and grabbed the paper. "In the order we found them three consecutive times, float, catch, bleed, death, stiff, push."

"Six words?"

"Yep."

"One for each section of the Maze?" Teresa questioned.

"There's eight sections." Newt and I corrected.

"And how do you know about the sections?" Our second-in-command looked confused.

"How do you?" I turned on him.

"I was a Runner before." He looked at the paper, effectively cutting off the conversation.

There was a confused silence.

"Why did we just casually skip over the fact that the Greenie knows about the sections of the Maze?" Jim put his hand up.

"Because we have better things to do." Newt didn't even look up.

Jim put his hand down. "Good answer."

"What do these words have in common with the Maze?" Teresa murmured. I noticed she didn't share her new paper.

"Well, they have something in common with drowning," I pointed out.

"Huh?" Newt handed over the original paper as if telling me to explain.

I grabbed it, not understanding what they weren't understanding. I held the paper up and started pointing to each word. "It starts with float, so maybe someone's enjoying a nice time at the beach. Then it moves to catch, so maybe the person, let's call him, I dunno, Gerald, catches himself on a piece of rock or trash. So then he starts bleeding, hence the word bleed, but he's still caught and eventually bleeds to death. You all with me so far?" My hand hovered at death. No one said anything.

"Great. Gerald's dead and starts succumbing to rigor mortis as all dead people do, and we're at stiff. 'Cause, y'know, he's dead, and dead people get stiff. Anyway, eventually, after his dead body has been in the water for a couple of days, the ocean pushes him back to shore, where his loved ones can start to grieve." I thought for a second. "So maybe someone has to die a watery death? There isn't someone named Gerald here, right?"

The room was utterly silent.

"What in the bloody hell was that, Lauren?" Newt looked a mixture of horrified and confused.

"I thought it made perfect sense." Frankie finally spoke.

"Of course you do, Frankie." Jeff snapped. "Aren't you a Slicer?"

"Jeff, I think you need to take a nap." Newt turned to the Med-Jack.

"Fine." He clomped up the stairs and opened the door to find Thomas standing there.

"Tommy, come down here." Newt waved him down. "Minho still hasn't shown up. Sometimes he turns into a buggin' hothead."

"I didn't know he left. Being stuck down here for almost 24 hours does that to a person." Jeff still hadn't left; he stood on the stairs as if he was waiting for something else. 

"Didn't I dismiss you?"

Jim and I chuckled.

"Why don't you all go." Our Map leader waved a tired hand towards the door. "We'll try and figure out something other than Lauren's terrible drowning idea."

"Hey! I didn't see anyone else making a connection." I defended.

" 'Drowning idea?' " Thomas looked more confused than usual.

"You'll see when you read the code." I went to find Peter, anxious to find out if he was the one taken last night.

|~^_^~|

My first stop was at the Builder's hut, where I told Henry, the only guy there, that I was looking for Peter. I then raced to the Homestead, where I swept each floor and still didn't find him. I scoured every building in the Glade. I'm sure everyone knew I was looking for Peter, but no one knew where he was. My final destination was Deadheads.

I immediately went to the same tree I dropped out of and had found Peter before. My instincts told me correctly.

"You're not dead!" I stumbled as I ran to him.

He looked up at the sound of my voice, surprised to hear it. "Why did you think I was dead?"

"Well, because of what Gally said, about one person being taken each night."

"They got Adam and tore up the Homestead again." He stood up, brushing off his legs.

"I feel bad for saying this, but I'm glad it's not you."

Peter laughed, despite the grimness of the situation. "I'm glad it wasn't you either."

The forest went silent for a minute, and I heard footsteps. Peter didn't hear them and started walking towards the direction of the Homestead.

"I should probably get back to work. You coming?"

"Yeah," I said, distracted, trying to figure out where the footsteps were coming from. "I'll, uh, I'll catch up with you." He nodded and started walking off, and I went to find them.

After a couple of minutes of searching, I stumbled upon what looked like a campsite. Some blankets were folded by a tree, and a half-full water bottle sat on top of them. And it looked like I beat the person to the area by only a couple of seconds.

Thomas entered, a troubled look on his face.

"Lauren, uh, what're you doing here?" I startled the poor guy.

"I could ask you the same thing, but I'll be nice and spare you. I heard footsteps and followed them."

"Why?"

"Let's say divine intervention."

His eyebrows creased, and he walked over to the water bottle, finishing it. I folded my arms and leaned on a tree, reading his expression. 

"You've got a look on your face. It's an I've-got-a-terrible-but-maybe-useful-idea-and-I've-gotta-prepare-myself-for-it."

"No, I don't."

"You've really gotta get better at lying. Pro-tip, don't look away from the person and turn off the puppy-dog eyes. And you've also gotta believe it yourself."

"So how do you know the bad idea look?" He deftly changed the subject.

"I wore it myself when I thought about getting Stung by a Griever." I noticed his look of surprise. "It's really obvious; Newt tried to get me not to do it. But I did it anyway, and it got me nowhere. Only a sense of unbelonging."

"Really?"

"But if you did it, I'm sure we could get somewhere."

Thomas stumbled a little and finally sat down. I copied.

"All right, you've got me. But I'm not even sure it's a good idea, and if I'm even gonna do it." He started fiddling with a rock.

I sighed and decided to start with his first trouble. "I get where you're coming from. I really do. It took me a week to get myself to do it. I, personally, think you should do it."

"Why?"

"Because you're like me, you'd do it even if everyone told you not to."

He chuckled.

"I'm not kidding! The only person who was remotely onboard was Ben, and even he didn't think it was a good idea. It honestly wasn't. All I remembered was my past life in the other Maze." It was my turn to fiddle with a rock. "Besides, it wasn't even my idea; a stupid voice in my head told me to," I muttered.

"A voice in your head?"

"Yeah, it showed up, bullied me into getting Stung, and then left afterward."

"Can you talk back to it? In your mind?"

I was the one who looked confused. "No, I have to talk to it out loud. Hold on, why are you interrogating me as if you have some experiences with voices in your head?"

"No, no reason." He stuttered.

I let his bad lie go.

"Moving past voices in our heads, what's your plan?"

"My plan?"

"To get Stung, I wanna help." I moved forward slightly.

"Really?"

"Yeah, I'm not your mother or Newt for that matter; I'm the cool aunt who's going to help you go through excruciating pain to get some memories back."

"Sounds like a fun aunt."

I smiled. "The best aunt you'll ever have."

|~^_^~|

Armed with the Grief Serum in my back pocket, I paced around my room, Peter looking at me weirdly from my bed.

"Let me get this straight. You are going to run downstairs, where the Grievers are, once you start hearing yells, to give that serum to Thomas, who is also going to be running towards the Grievers to get Stung, because we need memories to understand the code you figured out last night."

"Yeah, pretty much."

"Oh good, 'cause I, I thought I might have gotten something wrong." He chuckled nervously, hugging my pillow close to his chest.

"Never thought I'd actually want the Grievers to come and take someone away."

"I still don't. The world hasn't gone crazy yet."

"The world was already shucked up; that's the reason we're in here," I muttered.

Peter didn't have a chance to pick the sentence apart because we heard another sound. Specifically, Grievers. I took a deep breath. Any minute now, the metal monsters were going to kidnap one of our Gladers. When I started hearing people screaming, I'd run out after Thomas, and after making sure he got Stung, somehow pulling him away from the Grievers and giving him the Serum.

Really not our best plan, but we didn't have much time to perfect it.

Long, antagonizing minutes passed as more Grievers came to join the party. After what seemed like forever, I heard the crack of wood and a thundering boom that made the house rattle. And there it was—the screams.

Before I could go out of my room, Peter grabbed my arm.

"It's not time yet."

"What?"

"Those are screams of terror, not 'come back!' screams. You've still got a little bit."

"Ignoring the fact that you know how to differentiate screams, why can't I go now?"

"You might get taken by the Griever instead of whatever poor soul it already has."

I sighed. He had a point. An interesting point, but a point nonetheless. I paced for a couple more moments, hearing someone scream that it got Dave, a poor Slicer, and then heard the unmistakable sound of Newt screaming Thomas's name.

"Wish me luck." I winked at Peter and dashed through the hallway, seeing Thomas's shape running towards the monsters.

Barely noticing the ginormous hole that used to be the front door, I tried hard not to cut myself on any of the stray chunks of wood. The things were everywhere, and I just added the mutilated Homestead to the growing list of things I needed to grieve.

The Grievers were a mass of machinery and moist goo; I could barely see the brave soul standing in the middle of the monsters. I stopped a couple of feet away, imagining the torture Thomas must've been going through. One pinprick was enough for me; he must've been getting at least a dozen of them as the Griever's arms kept moving. And the screams. They didn't leave much up to the imagination.

Finally, I saw Thomas trying to run away from the Grievers, and I ran, trying to get to him so I could make sure they didn't follow.

I dunno what scared them off, but they didn't follow, apparently happy with the Glader they got.

"Holy shuck, Thomas, you're heavy." I panted, trying to ignore his groans of pain.

Newt and Teresa were out of the Homestead in an instant, others following. I passed Thomas over to them, fumbling to get the Serum out of my pockets. I prayed it didn't fall out. The things weren't the best of holders.

What might have been minutes, or seconds, I stabbed the needle into Thomas's side, watching it work its magic. Newt looked at me with what was a death glare, laced with shock.

"You knew."

"Can we not get into this now? Your best friend is dying."

The group hoisted him into the Homestead and set him onto a random couch. Throughout the entire time, Thomas kept mumbling different things, getting Newt to yell at him to save his energy. But before he finally passed out, he managed to get a sentence out.

"Don't worry. I did it on purpose." The 'hero' fell asleep, sinking limply into the couch.

A few moments of silence passed, and I savored them, knowing exactly what was coming next.

"You knew." Newt turned on me, and I knew the fight was beginning.

"What of it?" I folded my arms.

He seethed for a couple of seconds as if trying to figure out exactly what he was going to say.

"You knew that Tommy was going to get Stung, and you helped him!"

"I'm really not understanding what I did wrong here because you're making it sound like I was the one who pushed him to the Grievers."

"I wouldn't have put it past ya', you've done it before."

"Oh, don't you even pull that again; I told you that he reached for me too! And you know what happened? He survived a night in the Maze! He killed a Griever! Why don't you trust me? Alby does!"

"Why don't I trust you? Why don't I trust you?! Gee, Lauren, I dunno, you have a habit of not thinking things through!"  

"Not thinking things through?!" I threw my hands up in the air. "Every single big decision I've made I've thought through! And this wasn't even my idea; it was Thomas's! Don't try to pin this on me because you're upset that your 'Tommy' would even think about getting himself hurt and not consult you about it!"

It was Newt's turn to fold his arms, and it seemed like every word I said angered him even more. I didn't care; he needed to hear it.

The whole room stood in silence, and I noticed more Gladers piling around the door, trying to get in and listen to our fight. At some point in time, Peter slipped in and stood against the wall, watching it like a tennis match.

"I'm not trying to pin this on you. I'm just saying that every time he does something stupid, you're always there in the background. It's happened too many times for it to be a bloody coincidence."

"Too many times? It's literally happened twice!" I threw an accusing finger towards him. "The only reason I was in the background this time was that I didn't want him to get hurt! In case you missed it, I did the same exact thing. I know what he's going to need, and I'm not really sure why I'm getting yelled at for helping him!"

"You're not getting yelled at, Lauren."

"Well, it really seems like I am!"

"I'm just saying," Newt rubbed his face. "If you knew about this beforehand, you could've at least tried to stop it."

"You should speak from experience; you know I couldn't have stopped it. Thomas's like a worse version of me, the guy didn't even have a plan."

And that was it. The fight was over. We said what needed to be said and got over it like some rough draft of a mature person. Thomas was moved to a spare bedroom upstairs, and Alby, who was up and walking today, told us we'd move him to the Slammer at night.

The next three days moved by at an awkward pace. Every day seemed long, and every time I got comfortable next to Peter at night, I told myself I'd grieve the next day. Procrastinating wasn't getting me anywhere, but something inside told me that there was a slim hope that Gally wouldn't be dead, and I'd see him somehow when I got out of here.

I know, I know, I was at the first stage of grief. Denial. I allowed myself time to stay in there, promising that I would move on eventually.

But before I knew it, three days had passed, three boys were taken, and at the dawn of the fourth day, Thomas woke up and turned the Glade upside-shucking-down.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
hot dog, i finally finished this.

i don't even know what to put here, i'm just glad to be done. if this feels choppy,
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
but i'm actually really glad with the way the Newt/Lauren fight went, dunno why, just am.

And now I putting my favorite out-of-context quotes here, bc this chapter is FULL of them.

-muttered something about how he'll go however fast he wants,
-his muscles started and ended in his legs.
-Returning to kindergarten, Jim.
-made me want to bang my head on the table.
-but welcomed the new blood that wasn't almost exhausted.
-I guess the vibe of the room was to suck out your soul.
-Sure, you've only been looking at them for the past 15 hours,
-'Cause, y'know, he's dead, and dead people get stiff.
-Aren't you a Slicer? (condescending)
-I could ask you the same thing, but I'll be nice and spare you.
-Let's say divine intervention.
-Moving past voices in our heads,
-Ignoring the fact that you know how to differentiate screams,
-Can we not get into this now? Your best friend is dying.
-and got over it like some rough draft of a mature person.

if you have any questions, put them here

and if you have any comments or cc, put them here.

and now, i must go sleeps.