𝑆𝑂 𝐺𝑂𝐷,

𝐼𝑇 𝐻𝑈𝑅𝑇 𝑊𝐻𝐸𝑁 𝐼 𝐹𝑂𝑈𝑁𝐷 𝑂𝑈𝑇

- 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑛 𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑦, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑥𝑖𝑡

╔⏤⏤⏤╝❀╚⏤⏤⏤╗

AFTER all the past weeks, Melanie found herself in a white room that was always a part of her nightmares. And as always, these children were there too, sitting at a table and putting their heads together. It didn't take long before they started laughing, whereupon Melanie's knees suddenly went weak and her hands kneaded restlessly. Then they all rushed towards her from indefinable angles.

First she was hit from the right, then from the left, until she no longer knew anything. Everything seemed to happen with not a drop of pity. She screamed out of sheer pain or to scare them away so that they were frightened and jumped up.

However, she didn't know that her consciousness was slowly taking over and she had also been screaming in the real world. Most of the Glader's were still awake and had certainly heard her.

Thomas jumped up out of sheer curiosity and panic, but Newt shook his head and left alone. He limped along as fast as he could, worried that something had happened.

When he arrived, he pushed her lightly onto her mat and shook her so that she would fully wake up after he noticed that she was asleep. With a gasp, she opened her eyes and sat up suddenly. The blonde boy also gasped for air in relief.

"You screamed," he managed to say. "A nightmare?"

She nodded.

With all the retrospective thoughts, all the pain rose within her again.

"It hurts so much," she murmured suddenly to herself, burying her head in her hands because she was crying and ashamed. His heart as soft as it was pure, the blonde boy sat down next to her, a hand placed on her back to caress.

"What's hurting you, love?"

As soon as she began to speak, a sob danced from her normally sealed lips. She blamed it on this cycle of her emotions that she could no longer endure, which is why she finally let out what she could no longer keep inside in this loneliness.

“Anything, Newt. Everything hurts. I just don't want to be here. And I feel bad. I'm feeling really bad," she revealed, pausing because her pulse was going so fast it hurt, "I tried, okay? Every day. Every damn day I tried, but there are always these nightmares, they cross every line. Sometimes they are in the form of a hallucination during the day. Then ... then there's that shank James, a fucking idiot."

Immediately after she fell silent, she hated herself for speaking. Melanie felt so ridiculously small that her worries seemed unimportant. As a sign that he was here and that she should continue talking, he rubbed her entire back with light force.

But after her long confession, she didn't say anything at all. Until Newt reached a spot on her back, causing her to hiss in pain and raise her face in shock.

The blonde reflexively removed his hand, incredulous that his touch was causing her pain. It took him a few blinks of an eye to realize

and God,
finding out what had happened here
hurt him so much
that it tore through his so full heart,
like clear window panes shattering
and colorful autumn leaves burning to ashes
while precious words failed
because he no longer dared
to say
or even ask anything.

Melanie knew it from his expression, his hair messy on his face, everything about him so still that she thought she was losing him. He had simply added up what was immediately in front of him.

Newt licked his lips, eyes narrowed, before he spoke, and he sounded so calm that she suspected it was raining inside him.

"Show me your back."

No, no, no.

"That's not possible." Instantly she discovered an anger in him that was as foreign to her as when she looked in the mirror in the morning and the versions of herself slipped further and further away from her. “Stop ... just stop it! Damn, Mel, what are you doing, huh? You're protecting him by lying for him. I know he hurt you. So let me just help you, okay?”

She reluctantly jumped up from her hammock. “But I can’t!,” she screamed at him, her chest heaving with adrenaline. She was afraid that the ground would slip out from under her feet. And in all her blindness, she didn't know that it had happened a long time ago and that she had lost her ability to see within.

There was nothing left for her to run from; that she had to keep secret; that she could sugarcoat things. There was now so much that she had nothing left to lose.

That she had reached the bottom and that no light would reach her in this pit, which is why she didn't see that Newt had been holding out his hand to her for an unspeakable amount of time.

Instead, she always batted him away, as if she knew how to make tough decisions. Who knew that when you always had to sacrifice something?

"We have long since crossed the line where it was still a matter of whether you wanted to or not. Here your health depends on and it is my job. It's my job to make sure everything is right," he justified himself.

Then he gently tucked his hand under her left forearm and dragged her toward the medical hut. It was time for him to take action. That they simply forced her when she gave herself up like that. When she was so shockingly indifferent to everything.

"I'll fix it for you." Sitting on the makeshift bed, she unintentionally took off her gray top, which she felt had dried some blood on it. She wouldn't turn around, that was for sure. It was enough that Newt saw her back and she felt so disgustingly ashamed. Thankfully she had a bra on and Clint and Jeff were off somewhere else so they were alone here.

The light air swirled around her bare arms as she looked around the hut and all the resources that could be found here. He wasn't a medic, but she just let him do it.

There was once a long period of time that Newt spent here and learned tons of tools that she just didn't know about. As soon as he came closer to her, he found what had happened so terrible that he didn't dare touch her completely.

Slight blisters and welts from blows with vines or similar rope could be seen - as he believed. What on earth has she had to endure?

Her back was red in spots, as if it hadn't been very long since she had suffered such scars. How could she keep such painful cruelty to herself? It had to have been going on for a while, he thought.

"Why didn't you say anything?," he wanted to know, surrounded by all the piercing truth.

She sighed heavily.
"I was afraid. And I thought it would pass if I swallowed it. If I swallow it, no matter how it tastes or sticks. If I just claim I don't know anything when I'm stuck in the process of forgetting."

Newt shook his head in disbelief, rubbing his face lightly because he still couldn't fully grasp the reality. "Being silent is never as good as it is bad." She felt the blonde patting her back with something cold and wet at the same time. He most likely cleaned it first, which also explained the hellish burning sensation, before he applied an herbal ointment with his fingertips.

Impossible as it was, she already thought she could feel an improvement. A step towards healing. "Thanks," she said, "you really didn't have to do that."

Melanie only turned around when she noticed Newt's footsteps immediately to her left. With a new expression on his thin face, he held out a fresh top to her. "It's the least I can do before I get him banished," he said sharply, causing her eyes to widen in panic. That's exactly why she didn't want to say anything.

“Please, I don’t want him to have to go out there because of me. Nobody ever survived a night out there, Newt. It would just make me feel like a murderer," she confessed, speaking with such subterranean disrespect as she let James get away with the atrocities he committed against her.

Something against which there were rules and everyone had to abide by them. But Melanie was his weak point, which made him softer than usual and nodded. He gave in and let it happen. So both of them covered for a person who was beside himself and no longer had any morals.

No compassion, no understanding, no remorse and no love. But that meant they were better than him in every way. Now there was a secret they shared with each other. But instead of it bringing them closer together, Newt believed it would tear him and her apart.

"That's from you," she said, clearing her throat because her voice had been so unintentionally quiet before. For a second a spark danced over him, like the blonde he was before he revealed the truth. "It's just the least."

She slowly got up from the lounger and lifted herself a little firmly, as if she were hugging her shell-like body on her own, before coming towards him.

“No thanks necessary, okay?,” he blocked, thinking she was trying to express this. It wasn't a smile that appeared at the corner of her mouth, but a heavy weight seemed to be lifted from her.

And in all these new events, the raging storm they found themselves in and the abysmal suffering that never seemed to go away, Melanie felt something other than fear or pain for once.

Something so light that she missed the morning hope and what it felt like to laugh with all her heart.

Melanie first looked gently into the blonde's earthy eyes before wrapping her arms around his shoulders and hugging him. How his woody scent filled her nose and a sad smile appeared on her lips when he returned it.

When she was hugged for the very first time and believed it put together what had broken inside her and he found pieces of her that she had once irrevocably lost. She suspected that in that tiny moment, love had flowed through her cells, like rays of sunshine across the grass, warming everything so that life could emerge.

Maybe Newt would bring life back to the brown-haired girl who looked for sunshine in every shadow.