The desert doesn’t care if you’re ready to face your past.
It’s dusk when the wind shifts—hot, sharp with sand and tension—and Newt knows before he even sees you. Something in the air changes. A weight, a shadow. A memory crawling across his spine like a ghost with your name in its mouth.
He’s unloading crates at the edge of the battered commune, hands bloodied from the day’s work, when someone says it:
“New arrivals from the west.”
“One of them said they used to know you.”
“WCKD side.”
His chest knots so tight it hurts to breathe.
He turns slowly. At first, it doesn’t register. Your face is different—dusty, drawn, shaped by months of survival. But your eyes? They’re the same. Haunted. Sharp. His.
And just like that, the world tilts sideways.
You. Alive.
He thought you were dead. Or worse—working with them still. You had the tech. You had access. And the day you vanished—no message, no trace—he felt it like a blade.
Now here you are. A phantom stepping out of the heat.
FLASHBACK: One Year Ago
The last time he touched you, your fingers were shaking.
“Trust me.” You said, your breath hitching against his neck. “I have to make contact. Just once. Then I’ll come back.”
He believed you. For one stupid second, he let himself believe.
You kissed him hard—like you didn’t know if you’d get the chance again. And then you disappeared into the WCKD outpost ruins, where the last transmission spike was buried.
Hours passed. Then a day. Then three.
When he finally found the terminal, it was scorched—wiped clean. The signal had gone through. Someone on the WCKD grid answered.
You never came back.
PRESENT
Now, you stand across from him with that same desperation in your eyes—but you don’t speak. You wanted to hear him, just once, after all this time.
“No.”
Just that. One word, like a chokehold around his throat.
“Don’t.” He steps back. His fists tremble.
“You don’t get to walk in like that and expect—fuck.”
His jaw is tight, eyes rimmed in something too raw to name.
“You ran a signal straight to them. You vanished. You left me—you left all of us.”
Your lips part like you want to explain. Like you need to. But the pain in his eyes is a wall too high to scale.
“Take one more step after me, and I swear I’ll bloody throw you out of here. You already ruined one life. Don’t make it two.”
He turns his back, fists clenched, and walks toward the storm shelter without another word.
You’re not sure if he’ll ever forgive you. But you know this:
You didn’t survive hell to lose him twice.