𝑌𝑂𝑈, 

 𝑌𝑂𝑈 𝑊𝐸𝑅𝐸 𝐿𝐼𝐾𝐸 𝐺𝐿𝑈𝐸 

 𝐻𝑂𝐿𝐷𝐼𝑁𝐺 𝐸𝐴𝐶𝐻 𝑂𝐹 𝑈𝑆 𝑇𝑂𝐺𝐸𝑇𝐻𝐸𝑅 

 - 𝑓𝑙𝑒𝑒𝑡 𝑓𝑜𝑥𝑒𝑠, 𝑙𝑜𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑎𝑖

*＊✿❀　❀✿＊*

"Please stay with me, Mel," Newt breathed to the girl, continuing to stroke her head to keep her conscious. Melanie was, as she assumed, in the small medical hut that the lights had built themselves.

She recognized Jeff and Clint's worried whispers, who were also present. She was so incredibly embarrassed that they all had to watch this.

I survived.

That everyone certainly knew what she had done to herself. That they had won their little game of life and death that seemed to be the order of the day in a maze.

The girl almost paid her price for it. And that was simply because she couldn't handle being dealt the victim's pawn. Not knowing that everyone gets it once. Just as everyone will hold the role of those in power in their hands. It's an unwritten law.

Her back had a bandage under her top, but it still hurt like hell. Like any minute someone was going to plunge a knife into it and bring her nightmares into reality. "I'm sorry," the blonde said to her, "I always just wanted to help you, Mel. You have to believe me."

Newt gently took Melanie's hand and got a chair so he could sit next to her lounger. He wasn't going anywhere. The girl would have loved to look at him now to see what expression he had on his face. Thinking about what her fear had prevented - her inability to see things - filled her with so much regret. Realizing that she had friends throughout her time, but constantly pushed them away, thinking they weren't seriously interested in her.

Something she couldn't control. Even less that she was liked, but she didn't have to deny it either. Don't deny it to the point where you're already resisting it.

"Slim it Mel, I just don't want you to end up like I did." Silence, silence, silence, so loud that there is a space where broken hearts can coincide with forgiveness.

Did the blonde know that she could very well hear him? It didn't matter if she could open her eyes. Or he simply hoped she would. That he also had someone who would listen to him. Melanie, on the other hand, needed his words and would have liked to question what he meant by them.

What she had probably repeated was the crucial thing that he had once done. Her body felt so completely petrified, nothing but her ability to think was currently functioning. Exactly what you would like to voluntarily give up for a moment.

She heard the two paramedics leave the hut and it gradually became quiet again. Newt's ragged breathing filled the room. On his hand, she thought she could feel his pulse, which was so fast and uncontrolled, as if he had an inner turmoil that he couldn't control. Melanie knew all too well what that was like.

"I thought I'd never see you again." His voice so sad that he sighed and yet for the first time she felt her heart warm. That there was so much worry that made her realize. Newt continued to caress her hand without hesitation, which was pleasantly warm. A little rough from working in the gardens, but definitely tender.

He had never just held her hand, she remembered.

Thomas loudly entered the hut, whereupon the blonde took his hand back to stand up. "How is she doing? Is she in pain?,” the runner immediately asked in a husky tone filled with worry.

Newt took a while before answering. She thought he didn't know what to say. But his words, which were so irrevocably about her, seemed to hurt him more. “I think she's in pain - yes,” it was quiet for far too long a minute, “There's probably a hole in her heart. And you can't close it or replace it, it can just get better. It's like a glass that shatters into a thousand pieces and in different directions. Because you'll never be able to glue it back together the way it once was."

Melanie didn't need to look at the blonde to know how glittery his eyes must be right now. That people with soft souls had another heart that only existed for other people. And just seeing her suffer could break her.

Just as his heart must have been broken since he found out and she lay on that couch as if she were lost forever.

“Why did she do that?” Thomas stood awkwardly in the room, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. The girl meant a lot to him, more than he said, and he wished there was something he too could do to help her recover.

Newt looked him in the eyes.

There were so many answers to his question, reasons he too had once felt, but at the same time he didn't know either. In the end, he didn't know why she was still convinced of her plan when the runner and Newt had consistently offered her so much. “Call me as soon as she wakes up, is that okay?”

“Sure,” Thomas nodded, before the blonde disappeared with slow steps and turned to Melanie once again in thought. Then the brown-haired man took her place, was completely calm and studied her face while he thought a lot of things.

Melanie's eyes became lighter, she narrowed them briefly and then opened them slowly. At first her vision was slightly blurry, it took her a few seconds until her vision cleared and she noticed the runner leaning closer to her.

Smiling with relief, he stroked her head. Melanie suddenly took his hand and at the same time one of the so often repressed tears made its way down her cheek, which was caught by her top. "I'm sorry," she said, blinking.

“Melanie-,” the other person wanted to start, shaking his head, but she interrupted him, “Because I was ready to give all of that up. Just because I couldn't believe that people meant well for me. I was so ungrateful! But ... there were always these nightmares, you know? I just wanted it to not be so hard anymore," taking a deep breath and with silent tears that didn't dare to seep away, he helped her as she tried to sit up. "I just wanted it to stop ..." She contorted her face in slight pain, supporting herself with her right hand.

“You could have talked to us like I told you. Everything would have been fine, Melanie, you should have just kept going instead of giving up. With us."

Melanie studied his face, reveling in a loop because she was trying to bring up old thoughts and how convinced she had been that disappearing was a solution to all problems were.

As soon as she coughed a little and looked up, she noticed Newt, who had stormed back into the hut because he thought he had heard her voice. It was the greatest joy to find out that he was right. But a knot rose in his stomach when he saw the runner holding her face in his hands. A knot that wrapped around his mind and made him sick.

For the moment, Melanie sank into an immense sadness because she almost never saw this sight again. It was still bad for her that both of them knew about it. On the other hand, she was eternally grateful to be able to share this burden with someone.

Because as Thomas had said, she had to move on. Maybe finally in a direction that held a future for her.

"Newt," she breathed, wiping the tears from her face and just wanting to run up to him for a hug and then apologize way too many times for no fault of her own.

A few hours ago she would have been dead, within seconds, and nothing would have mattered anymore. Everything she had ever done would have been accompanied by a sense of unnecessaryness. And after a while you would have forgotten what her voice sounded like. How she looked and how rare it was that she laughed.

There would have been only remnants of their existence that would have catapulted you into a dream of denial, because loss is a completely surreal thing. Something so lively that is suddenly gone and never never never comes back, swirling in a speechlessness that suffocates all words.

"Melanie," the blonde replied and sat down on the lounger next to her after the runner got up again to leave the two of them alone. Thanks to his above-average intelligence, he understood a lot, more than others, but he couldn't analyze what unspoken bond lay between them. He was just missing something.

Melanie and Newt talked for a long time, skipping lunch and dinner, until a change was felt in the room and they became closer than ever.

There was so much that they could finally talk about with each other that hadn't been possible before. Things that you no longer had to bury with yourself because it was okay to make space for them from a favorite person.

Completely

n-e-c-e-s-s-a-r-y.