When We're Older- The Maze Runner (Newt)

newt

tw—panic attack and mentions of self harm related themes

play song when you see *

NEWT

She left.

It all happened so quickly, my brain hardly had time to register what was happening before she ran out the broken window, leaving me a sobbing mess as her words played over and over in my head. One moment, I was leaning against her shoulder, feeling my eyes sting as my head pulsed with the bacteria that I was fighting so hard against. The next, she was confessing her love for me and leaving.

I couldn't control my breath, it was a mix of sharp inhales and cries of internal pain. My eyes rolled shut in loss of control, at the same time feeling a hand on my forearm so I felt the slow jostle. I clutched my chest as everything became more patchy in my lucid thoughts.

"Newt, you have to get up." I heard Tommy's distant voice.

"Come on, bud. It'll be okay."

"He's losing it—we need to get the serum!"

I could hear my thrashing heartbeat in my eardrums as I hyperventilated, a wave of discomfort aching every nerve in my body. My chest was heavy and my swollen eyes couldn't process the feelings fast enough. Tommy's hand was shaking my body, trying to get me to stand. He was speaking words of reassurance about what just went down, and that would usually give me comfort and the motivation I needed to keep going. But no amount of comfort or solidarity could change the way I felt in a moment of panic such as this.

I felt the uneasiness almost as soon as she had stepped through the broken glass, it tainting my blood like the dark night shores of the beach. The painful feelings from the deepest parts of my soul mixed with the insanity that clouded my thinking conjoined me into one unavoidable panic.

What the hell? I can't do this right now, please no.

The anxiety in my mind didn't let me protest. My heart started thrashing, chest filling with so much heavy air that it felt like water and my lungs were the stretching wet balloons.

I blindly reached for Thomas' shirt, sweat coating my hairline as my discomfort grew. My hand clenched the fabric around his bicep, wet eyes gazing up to the worried expressions of my friends, something that shouldn't have made me panic more. But it did.

With a throat tightening feeling, I launched to my feet, causing Thomas to lose his balance as he stumbled back. My body threw myself onto my feet, hands flying to the back of my pounding skull. The panic started making itself more known in my mind, solid like a boulder and painful like a slow impale to the skin. I pulled my hair, trying to distract myself from the hurt. It was painful, but not enough to distract me from the rollercoaster that was only going up. I didn't know what was happening to me, why I couldn't calm myself down. My feet started pacing the debris-covered floor, I felt like I was going to be sick. Maybe I was going to puke, that would surely help me.

In a moment of desperation, I swiveled on my heel, looking back at my friends as they stared at me, unsure of what to do. My hands fell from my head as my chest heaved. I didn't know what was going on.

"What's happening to me?" I breathed, searching their faces for some kind of answer.

Gally was the one to take a step forward, only a couple feet away from me as he gripped my bicep. "I—Just calm down, Newt, okay? Mae's gonna be fine, we just need to get to the—"

In a quick decision, I slapped his arm away from me. My fingers ached as I did it, my breathing heavy between my clenched teeth. I was falling apart slowly; chest burning, hands aching, dizziness that made my perspective all cloudy. Thoughts of losing control over my own body made me sick to my impenetrable stomach.