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

Lauren: I'll just keep all my feelings right here, and then I'll die!

Lauren
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Two hours. That's how long it took us to reach our new destination.

And as we all walked in the door, my eyes had a hard time adjusting to the new environment.

For so long all I'd seen was grey, black and just dark in general. It seemed like the rainbow of the building was too much.

"Well I'll be shucked and gone to heaven." Minho summed it up.

"It's like it's overcompensating for something." I murmured.

Peter hadn't left my side the entire time. We'd been connected by some sort, either my hand was in his or around his arm, or he had a comforting hand around me. So when he left to look around, I felt abandoned.

Something about the too-bright yellow paint, or the red blankets scattered around, or the green curtains just put me on edge.

"They just saved you. Stop this." I told myself.

I half-expected Crackface to show up again, but when they didn't, I shook my head and gave my attention to the new staff the newbies handed us off to.

In half an hour, we had been assigned new sleeping quarters with new beds, given new clothes and a place to wash up.

"You and Teresa are able to use this bathroom to take a shower before dinner." A female staff member, Lorelei, as it said on her nametag, was showing us to our new room. I noticed it was far away from the guys.

I gave her a smile.

"I can take this for you—" She reached for my backpack.

"No!" I shouted.

Teresa jumped, looking from me to her.

"No, sorry. There's a lot of, um, emotional value. Inside here."

"I see." Lorelei gave a thin smile. "You guys have half an hour before you're expected for dinner. You saw the dining room, right?"

"Yes." Teresa answered.

"All right. If you guys need any help, find me there." She gave another smile and left. I listened closely to make sure that she wasn't locking us in.

"Teresa, do you think—" I turned, and she was already gone. The shower was running in the bathroom.

I sat on the bed and tried hard not to think about anything. It worked, somehow.

20 minutes later, and she came out, her hair in a fluffy white towel.

"You can go. Also, there's actual mirrors in there." She started unpacking her stuff.

"Thanks." I took my backpack and the stuff they gave us into the bathroom.

It was white.

So white.

It was a stark difference from the explosive rainbow of color out in the main rooms.

I looked down at my hands to find something, anything, that wasn't white, to save myself from oncoming headache. They were blood-red and—

Blood.

They were stained with blood.

Somehow I had forgotten, on purpose or accidentally, why my hands would be stained.

The casualties from the final battle?

Gally's death?

Amelia's death?

I found myself taking shallower breaths, and I couldn't hear Teresa shuffling around outside the bathroom door.

"No no no no no, we can't do this again." I was so tired of anxiety attacks. I was so tired of breaking down.

With shaking, blood-red hands, I opened my backpack and tried to find my music player. Everything came tumbling out, including Gally's notebook.

"Shuck," I cursed, not wanting to stain it with his blood, but not wanting to leave it on the ground with the water.

After some deliberating, I left it there, deciding that the blood would be much harder to deal with later than a water-stained back cover. It's not like it already was a little battered and bruised from being in my backpack with the rest of my things.

Finding the music player, I clicked on a the first song that popped up, and shoved my earbuds in, turning it up as high as I could stand it.

The song started with soft acoustic guitar, and eventually someone started singing, a male with an accent.

The lyrics were a kind of resigned sad, like the guy singing it was upset at the things he'd found out, but he somehow knew it already, and he was coming to terms with it. It was odd, but enjoyable.

As I listened, my heart rate started slowing down to match the pace of the song. I started breathing deeper, somehow soothed by his soft voice and lyrics. When it finished, another song by the artist started, but I hit pause, deciding I'd listen to it later. I needed to get my hands clean, I couldn't stand the red anymore.

Teresa ended up knocking on the bathroom door, probably alert to the fact that I hadn't made any noise for a couple minutes now.

"Lauren? Are you..." She paused. "Do you need any help?"

"I'm uh, good for now, thanks though." I called back, turning on the water.

Neither of us wanted to lie to the other. We both knew we weren't okay. We both knew that we were barely holding on.

"I'm gonna go head to the cafeteria." She left before I could call back.

As I got ready to get in the shower, I took special care to not look in the mirrors. I wasn't sure I'd like what I'd see.

Or even recognize it.

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The shower was heavenly. Most of my time was spent scrubbing off all of the grime and memories from the past couple of days. As I watched the stained water swirl around the drain, it was therapeutic. I imagined it was all the terrible things I had gone through the past week or so, and all the memories were leaving my body, slowly leaving me with a clean conscience and mind.

It wasn't a permanent solution, I knew I was never going to be free of that time, but it helped, for now.

The clothes they supplied us with were not unlike the clothes we had gotten in the Maze. It was actually a little startling how similar they were. They weren't super soft but more comfortable and easy to move around in. I almost compared it to the clothes I had shown up in, but those were beyond dirty and couldn't even be considered wearable anymore. But at this point, I would have taken anything, as long at it was clean.

I had a silent battle when I exited the bathroom, wondering if I should bring my backpack with me, or leave it safe and sound in the bunk room. I really didn't want to part with it, my entire Glade life was in there, for shuck's sake, but I also wanted to chuck it off a cliff and never interact with it ever again.

After a decent amount of time, I eventually slid it off my back, tossed it on my bunk, and left to go join the others in the cafeteria without a second glance.

Was this moving on?

When I met all of the guys, they were digging into some pizza, a couple boxes already finished off, lain unceremoniously off to the side. Peter waved me over to a table he had set up shop at, eating what I was sure wasn't his first slice.

"You took forever, are you okay?" He said, instead of a typical greeting.

"I will be." I almost made a joke about fighting some of the guys for a slice of pizza, but the words died in my throat. We had already seen enough battle already.

"Here," Peter slid a half-eaten box towards me. "I was going to finish this off myself, but you're probably starving."

"I am, thanks."

And so I ate, trying to imagine myself as a typical teenager hanging out with friends, but it was hard, considering some of them still had stained blood on their skin, and others looked over at empty seats next to them, expecting someone to be there, laughing along.

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aaand that's the first chapter! i thought about making it a bit longer and including some things from 0.2 into this, but then it would have been super long and confusing. so expect the next chapter to be longer! 

this prologue should only be about 3 chapters, like the first book, but that might change! i have a TON of ideas (and tried to write them, but then some MASSIVE writer's burnout happened!) and i'm going to try to squish it all into 3. 

thank you guys for reading, and i hope you enjoyed/enjoy!