Day Two Hundred and Fifty Eight

The months that followed didn't exist to Ada.

Time seemed to have slowed down and sped up all once, the days blurring together in an endless cycle of sleep and work, each day identical to the one before it. Now that neither Isaac nor Stephen were in the glade, things had calmed almost to the point of boredom. The crops grew and were harvested, the maze cycles changed over and over again, and the wind in the trees remained the same.

The only thing different were the two new graves in the deadheads.

Alby had returned from the maze the morning after the impromptu celebration with his face as white as bone, not meeting anyone's eye as he walked them towards the council hall. He had found two bodies, he had told them, too mangled and bloodied to be recognisable beyond the clothes they were wearing. But there were only two people it could have been, and Nick crossed Isaac and Stephen's names off the wall that night.

The only comfort, she supposed, was that they were found sound by side, with their hands linked between them. She supposed she should be grateful that they had found each other before the Grievers killed them, but there was no way of knowing what had happened out there. Perhaps they stared death in the face together, hand in hand, or perhaps Isaac had found Stephen's body and decided to die with him.

They couldn't bring the bodies back, but they needn't have worried, they were gone the next day anyway. Just like Luke's had been that first day there. And much like Luke, they buried nothing other than what few belongings the two had.

Three and a half months later barely anyone ever spoke about them anymore, merely brushed them from their minds and carried on with their days. Ada wished she could say the same, but reminders of what happened followed her everywhere she went, from when she changed in the morning and saw the scars on her skin, to the wooden crosses beside her when she visited George and Carson.

She hadn't been to see them in a while, the place no longer felt as sacred as it once did. It felt heavier, somehow.

Gally huffed as he dragged his sleeves up for the millionth time, trying to secure them at his bony elbows so that they wouldn't fall down. "If these things keep getting in my way, I'm going to cut them off."

Ada pursed her lips to keep her laugh in as she continued unloading crates out of the box. "I sure hope you're referring to your sleeves and not your arms."

"You'd look ridiculous with no arms." Nick added from the other side of the box, his voice lost from where he was crouched somewhere behind the crates with the new livestock in them. Ada refused to touch the animal crates through fear of getting attached to whatever poor creature was inside it and never being able to eat Charles' cooking again. Nick apparently didn't have this problem, and seemed quite happy hauling them up to Alby, who kept making trips to the makeshift animal pens they had set up beside the gardens.

"How dare you," Gally said, placing a hand over his heart, "I would look as fabulous as I do right now."

Minho, perched on a crate and insisting he was helping by 'supervising the madness', dramatically surveyed Gally's scrawny frame, oddly shaped eyebrows, and slightly too-large nose. "Yes," He agreed dryly, "a stunner for sure."

"Don't worry Gally." Ada grinned, hoisting herself out of the box and wiping her hands on her thighs to free them of dust. "I'm sure Minho would be happy to spoon feed you should you ever suffer such dramatic loss of limb."

Minho opened his mouth to enthusiastically protest when Alby returned and shot him a disapproving glance. "Minho, get off your ass and help. Gally, you said we're putting these in the storage containers? I thought we made those prisons, or did I dream that up?"

"Due to the severe lack of prisoners, Nick and I figured we could return them to their intended purpose so we can finally stop using the box as an impromptu storage container." Gally shrugged.

"Ah."

"Hey, where's Newt?" Nick asked suddenly, poking his head up from behind the last few crates.

"You've asked that question several times over the past few weeks." Minho smirked. "People are gonna start thinking you're the one with the crush on him."

"I will squash you like a bug." Nick said simply, before Minho's words registered properly in his head. "Hey, hang on a second, whose got a-"

"He's in the maze." Alby interrupted, rolling his eyes. He'd been particularly prickly since he'd woken up that morning, and Ada tossed him a bottle of water to try and cheer him up. All of them were covered in a fine sheen of sweat from the heavy lifting, so she had created a pile of water canteens to throw at people when she thought they looked too thirsty.

"On our day off?" She frowned, casting a concerned look towards the north doors. "He's been spending a lot of time in there ever since he healed up. What's gotten into him?"

"It's Newt." Minho shrugged. "Broody shank, could be anything."

Ada wanted to disagree, but couldn't. He hadn't spoken to her much over the last few months, avoiding her efforts to spend time with him and dodging her tries at conversation with half hearted remarks and dry one-liners. Things had been strained between them ever since the night of Stephen's banishment and what had happened in the med hut, but she hadn't expected him to completely freeze her out. The sting of hurt she felt had faded away after the first month, however, and frustration quickly rose in its place.

"Well, maybe if you'd let me start running sooner then I could talk to him?" Minho grinned innocently up at them, still on his crate. "Ya know, mano to mano, friendo to friendo."

"Adding 'o' to the end of every word doesn't make your offer sound more appealing, Minho, it just makes us want to punch you."

"Says the one who throws around words like 'slinthead' and 'shuck'."

"You're lucky we're even letting you run at all, Minho." Ada straightened and shot him an unimpressed glare. "You start next week, and that's final."

Minho pouted and crossed his arms like a child. "Yes, mom."

"I don't even understand why you're letting him run at all." Gally chimed in, rolling his eyes. "The dude's asthmatic."

"What?" Alby asked, frowning. "Minho isn't-"

Ada cleared her throat loudly. "Damn, breathed in some dust, Alby can you pass me some water please?"

The final few crates were lifted from the box, and everyone began to scramble out of it, closing the doors firmly behind them. It was only when they were all making their way towards the slammers when the alarm went off.

Ada's hands clamped over her ears as the crate she was holding thudded to the ground, spilling bandages onto the grass. "What the fuck?"

"That's the greenie alarm." Nick said over the noise, staring wide eyed at the flashing red lights. "But we aren't due another set for two weeks."

"Back away, back away!" Alby ordered as other members of the glade came rushing over, crowding them back with one arm whilst the other was clamped firmly over his ears.

A figure appeared at the maze doors, and Newt surveyed the scene in confusion for only a moment before rushing over, forcing his way through the crowd to meet them. "What the bloody hell is going on?" He asked, staring down as a strange whining noise came from inside the box, like metal scraping across metal. Ada grit her teeth against the sound as it rattled through her unsettlingly.

It seemed to last a lifetime, but was no more than ten minutes of staring in bewilderment and waiting for it to stop. When it did, the silence that settled over the glade was deafening and punctuated only by the occasional whispers and hushed sentences of the crowd behind them.

Ada and Alby shared a tense look before lowering themselves down onto the platform, grabbing the handles and swinging open the doors. Instead of an empty box, or rather a box filled with frightened boys and fresh supplies, when the doors swung fully open they were met with a giant gaping passage, walls of thick steel and stone stretching downwards until the shadows consumed them. The gaping black at the bottom was as ominous as staring into the eyes of a Griever, a yawning black hole eagerly waiting to swallow them.

Ada backed away from the edge quickly before she got too dizzy and fell in.

Alby picked up a rock and tossed it gently into the shaft, waiting for the echoing sound of it smashing against the ground.

The sound never came.

"Either that rock was just swallowed up by some horrifying monster, or that is a long drop." Minho said from somewhere behind her.

"Where does it go?" Someone asked, and it was like a switch went off inside Ada's brain, the dots connecting in her mind so fast it had her head spinning. She turned to Alby with an eager grin.

"Alby," she said excitedly, "this must be the passage we came up through, when we first got sent up here. Which means that down there is-"

"The people who put us here." He finished the thought and ran a hand over his head, barely concealing his growing smile. "That's the way we came in, that's where we came from."

"What if we followed it down?" Newt suggested. "Our way in could also be our way out." It was the most eager she had ever seen him, the most emotion she had seen him show in a long time as cracks began to appear in the carefully constructed mask he always wore around her.

"We did it." Nick exhaled a sigh of relief. "We found it."

Ada grinned. "Our way out."

—

"Do we have a council meeting?" Someone from the crowd asked. "Discuss our options."

"No, no, what if it comes up again in that time?" Another disagreed. "We should just check it out now, right? Whilst we're here?"

"How are we even gonna get all of us down there?" Avin asked. "Do we even have rope that long? I can't see the bottom."

"We can tie a bunch of rope together." Nick suggested, "It should hold if we do it properly."

"And what, just go one at a time? That's gonna take forever."

"Hang on a second," Minho put his hands up in surrender when several glares were aimed in his direction, "we don't even know what's down there. There could be a dozen Grievers down there for all we know, what if it's not safe? Are these creator people even gonna let us come down that way?"

"They've been wanting us to find a way out." Gally argued. "That's why they put us up here, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but they've been wanting us to escape through the maze," Ada said slowly, eyeing up the towering walls around her. "Not through the box hole. Minho's right, we need to be careful about this."

"All due respect, Ada," Connor raised an unimpressed eyebrow at her, "the last time you said we should think an escape attempt through, we lost our chance at a way out of here. You'll forgive me if I don't want that to happen again."

Ice prickled in Ada's veins, chilling her blood. Connor's words may as well have been a dagger for how sharp they cut at her. "Right," she said around a thick swallow, her voice oddly hoarse, "yeah."

"That wasn't Ada's fault." Newt said strongly. When she turned to him in surprise, she was shocked at the cold look he was levelling at Connor, and the stone-like way his body had gone rigid. Part of her was touched at his defence of her, but the bigger part was pissed that he felt like he still had a right to defend her that way after ignoring her for months on end. He had no right to act like he was still her friend when he had been about as welcoming to her recently as the Griever was that one night she was trapped in the maze.

"You're all right." Alby interrupted, stopping an argument before it could break out. "Which is why we're gonna approach this slowly. Send one person down and see what happens, and go from there."

Minho clapped his hands together sarcastically. "Oh yay, a sacrifice. Who volunteers?"

Nobody raised their hands.

"Now they're shy." Nick rolled his eyes, reaching down into the supply crates to gather lengths of rope into his arms.

"I'll do it." Avin raised his hand into the air, right as Ada's heart dropped into her stomach. "I want to see what's down there."

"No." She said simply. Avin turned his wide eyes to her, but all it did was cement her decision that no matter what this child was not going down that elevator shaft until they were one hundred percent sure it was safe.

"But, Ada-"

"No, Avin." She said sternly. "I don't care if you hate me forever for not letting you do this, but you are not going down there until we know it's safe."

"I'm the least valuable person here," he argued, his young voice thick with determination, but Ada didn't care if he was only two or three years their junior, he was still just a child, and so so innocent in a way that not even the glade could corrupt. "I'm young and not very strong, I'm a liability, and if I can be useful by doing this, then-"

"I'm with Ada on this." Alby stepped forward, placing a heavy hand on Avin's bony shoulder. "I know you want to help, buddy, but this isn't the way, alright? Please let somebody else handle this."

"I'll do it." Someone stepped forward out of the crowd – Archie, a track hoe who she had very rarely interacted with. She had seen him working on the gardens with Newt before he became a runner. His hair, so blonde it was almost white, was long enough to be tied back tightly into a low bun, the streaks of dirt in it obvious against the pale colour. It clashed a little with his tan skin. "I'll go down."

"Are you sure?" Gally asked, tying two stretches of rope together. "We don't know what you're walking into. This could be dangerous."

"Everything here is dangerous." Archie shrugged. "I've only been here for two months, and I want out. Some of you have been here for a lot longer than that, and If I can help get everyone out of here I want to do it."

There was a moment of silence before Alby nodded tensely. "Okay." He said. "Get him strung up."

—

The rope wrapped tightly around Archie's waist did little to quell Ada's concerns as she watched him lower himself into a sitting position at the edge of the pit, legs dangling into the space below. She watched him take a deep breath, no emotion showing in his steel grey eyes. She was aware enough to realise he was putting on a mask for their sake, for surely if the others couldn't see how afraid he was then they wouldn't be afraid either.

But his efforts were for nothing, for anticipation hung in the air like a thick fog, threaded through with a fear that was so palpable it had their hands shaking as she and four others held onto the other end of the rope, intent on lowering him down slowly.

"Okay, Archie, we're gonna keep checking in with you, okay? It's gonna be dark down there but we need you to keep talking to us." Alby patted Archie's back and shot him a stern expression. "I want to hear you checking in with us no more than thirty seconds apart, okay? When you get to the bottom, tug on the rope, so that we know you're there. We'll give you an hour on the way down and if we don't get a tug from you by then, we'll start pulling you back up. Sound good?"

"Sure thing, boss." Archie nodded, climbing down until his entire lower body was in the shaft and he was using only the weight of his arms to keep upright so he could glance around at them all. "See you on the other side." In an impressive display of strength, Archie lifted one arm and gave them a two fingered salute before letting go entirely and letting his body drop into the hole.

Ada dug her feet into the ground and pulled back, glancing behind her at how much slack they had. There was a lot of rope, but the drop seemed extreme.

Time trickled by, punctuated only by Alby's voice and the echo of Archie's words bounding back up to them. Someone took over from Ada at one point, a new builder she couldn't remember the name of, so she perched herself on the edge of the box and stared intently downwards, searching for any sign of Archie's progress, any glimmer of pale hair in the dark. But the blackness had swallowed him up a while ago, and his voice was growing fainter and fainter into the distance.

"We aren't going to be able to hear him soon." Ada said stiffly. She tossed another blade of grass into the steadily growing pile at her feet and ripped another one out of the ground to fiddle with until it fell apart.

Sure enough, Archie's voice quickly faded into quiet, and silence descended over the glade once more. The rope steadily lost its length.

"How long has it been?" Nick asked, crouching in the grass with one hand curled over his mouth, the other beating an unsteady rhythm against his knee.

"Forty five minutes." Newt said. His eyes tracked the sun in the sky, but she knew damn well he had been counting every second in his head. They locked eyes for a brief moment, but he looked away after only a second, returning his carefully neutral gaze back to the shaft.

The next fifteen minutes went by so fast she may as well have merely blinked. He had been down there for an hour now, and they were steadily approaching the end of the line. "He hasn't tugged." Minho said simply.

"How long has it been since he said anything?"

"Forty minutes."

"Come on, we should get him back up here."

They started to pull, but Alby frowned. "Huh, weird."

"What?" Ada asked.

"He seemed heavier going down, that's all. Strange."

They didn't speak much for the next half an hour, but when Ada looked down and caught a glimpse of blonde against the shadows she let out an excited laugh and tugged on Gally's sleeve. "He's there!" She pointed. "I can see him!"

"Hey Archie, what's down there?" One of the trackhoes asked, leaning over with a grin on his face.

Archie didn't answer.

"Maybe he didn't hear you."

But when Archie still didn't say anything for the next ten minutes, that little knot of panic living in Ada's stomach seemed to grow again. "Archie?" She called down to him, but he still wasn't answering, and he should definitely have been able to hear them at that point; but all she could see was the top of his head, hanging down onto his chest at a weird angle.

Why is he looking down like that? She wondered. That can't be comfortable.

He was oddly still, staring intently down at something below him. Were there monsters down there after all? What could he have possibly seen to install this kind of shock in him?

Finally, at long last, he was nearly at the top. Ada looked away towards Gally. "Gally, start untying the ropes." She looped her hands under Archie's arms and pulled. "Avin, go get a blanket from the Homestead, I think he's in shock." He was strangely light, especially for a man of his build, perhaps he had fainted. But weren't people supposed to become a heavy deadweight when they passed out?

Minho was in her direct line of eye contact, staring at the crest of the elevator shaft, so when she saw his face go white Ada could only frown in confusion. A thick silence, tense and horrified, descended abruptly over the crowd. The other trackhoe helping her lift Archie out of the box hole let go suddenly, hands moving away as if he had been burned, and it was this that had Ada finally glancing down as she heaved Archie onto the grass.

Or rather, Archie's upper body.

His eyes, glassy and unseeing, stared into the sky as blood pooled steadily onto the grass at his waist. Or rather, where his waist should have been. Ada's hands went slack on his arms.

Archie's entire lower body was gone.

—

"So it's official," Minho said hours later, face still oddly green and perfect hair ruffled slightly, "the only way out is through the maze."

Ada nodded in response. She didn't raise her eyes from where they were fixed on the gladers in the homestead, sleeping peacefully in their hammocks. The occasional sound of tossing and turning from someone unlucky enough to be plagued by nightmares or restlessness was the only thing to break the relative quiet. She watched them silently, unsure if she envied them or pitied them.

Many of them had never been exposed to the brutality that came with life in the glade. Besides whispered stories and glimpses of the names crossed off the wall, the death and bloodshed that she had seen was nothing more than a horror story to them, a warning to never venture beyond the maze walls. But now there was a new threat, and the proof of it came in the form of the cut in half body now buried under a fresh mound of soil.

"Are we sure?" Gally asked. "What about going over the walls? Has anyone tried-"

"Tried it." She said simply, breaking her silence. She looked up at them finally and shook her head. Gally ran a hand down his face.

He, Minho, Ada, and Newt were sat on the stairs to the med hut, just to the side of the homestead. Newt was sat the bottom, leaning against the wall, one of his legs tucked up to his stomach as his fingers tugged idly at that damned shoelace. Gally was beside him, long limbs bent awkwardly to accommodate him on the narrow steps. She and Minho looked down on them from a few steps above.

Her tailbone ached from being pressed against the unforgiving wood for so long, but she would take the discomfort any day over being where Nick and Alby were now, crossing another name off the wall. The glow of their torch was barely noticeable in the distance.

"We're never gonna know what's down there." Minho sighed. "What if it really is the way out though?"

"Can't get to it even if it was." Newt spoke up for the first time that night. His accented voice was thick with tiredness, making the British lilt to it more pronounced. Ada looked down at him, but he wasn't looking at any of them. His eyes were fixed on the ground, dark and troubled. "Can't take a better look without sending more people down."

"Which isn't an option." Gally nodded. "Right." He leant back against the rickety handrail and sighed deeply. "So it really is the maze or nothing."

Ada looked to her left, where Minho was tapping an anxious beat against his thigh. He seemed restless. "Minho, I want you in the maze tomorrow." She said. "I'll take you to the outer ring, show you the blades. Then work our way back in."

"I'll come with you." Newt said quickly. He still didn't look at her.

Ada shot him a strange look but nodded, too tired to argue.

Minho raised an amused eyebrow. "Supervision from the two top runners? My, I am honoured. Prepare to get blown away by my skills."

"It's running, you slinthead." Gally muttered. "It's hardly a skill."

"I literally saw you get winded jogging from the box to the Homestead, Gal, choose your words carefully." Ada chimed in, but couldn't quite find humour in the teasing the way she usually would.

"And I'm the one with asthma." Minho tutted.

Newt raised his head at last, "Minho has asthma?"

"Uh-"

Alby interrupted them as he came waking over, looking so exhausted Ada was worried he would keel over on the spot. Nick wasn't behind him. Perhaps he had needed some time to himself to process the day's events, just as she had earlier. "Done." He said around a yawn. His eyes were fluttering closed as he stood there, shoulders dropped. "Gonna go get some sleep. You should all do the same, it's late."

He left without another word to them, flopping down into his hammock heavily. His light snores filled the homestead barely ten seconds later.

Gally snorted before standing, stretching his arms out behind him. "He's right. Been a ... long day."

Newt stood slowly, that goddamn mask of indifference painted carefully onto his face. "I'm not tired. Gonna take a walk, clear my head."

Ada got to her feet. "I'll come with you."

"You should get some sleep." Newt still didn't look at her. "You've had a long day."

"We've all had a long day." She argued. "Besides, I think we should talk."

Minho rose an eyebrow, suddenly very interested in the conversation. He opened his mouth to intervene, but Gally grabbed him by the shoulders and hoisted him to his feet, steering him away from them with a very pointed glare. When they were alone, Ada turned back to Newt, watching as his face lost most of its colour.

"Go to sleep, Ada." He said pointedly, looking away from her after a second.

Frustration cracked inside of her like a whip. "Would you look at me please? Or have I done something recently that makes me so repulsive to you that you can't even do that?"

Newt's eyes snapped to hers, brown clashing with greenish blue, his jaw clenched, before he turned on his heel and started walking away. Unlike their other encounters over the last few months, Ada followed him, suddenly no longer tired.

"Newt-"

"We'll talk later, Ada."

"Except that we won't." She said stubbornly.

They reached the watchtower, the torch that was always lit at its base providing very little light for her to stare up at him. Half of his body was engulfed by shadow, the other alit with a soft glow that had her stomach twisting. "We haven't talked for three months now, not since what happened with Stephen, and if I did something to piss you off I'd like to know what it was. Is this about what happened in the med hut?"

"Nothing happened in the med hut." He said sharply, eyes flashing. Ada's breath caught slightly at the image he made, staring down at her with more focus than she had seen from him in a long time.

"If that were true you wouldn't be acting the way you are." She crossed her arms.

Newt opened and closed his mouth for a moment before letting out a huff of pure exasperation. "I don't know what you want me to say Ada." He said finally, the sting removed from his words, replaced with a weariness that she didn't know what to do with.

"I want you to tell me why you pushed me away." She said angrily, taking a step towards him. "That's all I've wanted you to say for months now but you've been too much of a stubborn dick to actually talk to me."

"Clearly what happened was a mistake." Newt said simply. Ada's mind span through the events of that night, the feel of his fingers on her skin, the lack of fear she felt at his touch, the comfort he brought her when she needed it. His face in her hair, breath on her neck, pads of his fingers ghosting over the bruises on her skin.

"What?"

"You heard me." He said simply. "I never meant to make you uncomfortable, so I'm sorry." He made to step away from her, but Ada's hand shot out and grabbed his sleeve, fingers curling into the material.

Slowly, she reshuffled her grip so that her hand encircled his forearm, his skin warm against hers through the thin fabric of his jacket.

Newt glanced down at her hand, his lips parting slightly. "Ada-"

"It didn't feel like a mistake." She said softly. He didn't say anything, simply stared down at her with uncertainty in his eyes. "You touched me and I didn't feel scared. That can't be a mistake."

"I thought I'd made you uncomfortable." Newt said after a beat of silence. "You pulled away from me and started talking about Stephen, for god's sake."

"What did you say to him?" Ada asked, turning to face him fully.

"It doesn't matter, Ada."

"It matters to me." She said. She couldn't explain it, why she felt like she needed to know.

Maybe it was because Stephen had taken the security and comfort of the glade and twisted it into something unsafe and unfamiliar, and the thought of him doing the same to Newt, one of the only people she had had in her corner, had her insides twisting violently. Maybe it was because she never had dealt well with the unknown, or maybe it was because Newt's attitude had changed so drastically towards her after she brought it up and she needed desperately to know why.

Newt shifted his arm and for a second Ada thought he was going to shake her off, brush her aside again. Instead, he looked down at her grip thoughtfully, raising his arm until his fingers were brushing hers. That familiar tingle of dread rose up inside her, but it never grew into the wave of disgust she expected it to. Instead, as his pinkie finger looped around her own, she felt her entire body thrumming like a live wire.

"I told him that if he swore to live peacefully in the glade, if I could tell that he meant it, then I would convince you and Alby to rescind his banishment."

"Why would you do that?" She asked, gulping around the lump in her throat.

"Because I knew it was eating you alive." Newt said after a moment. "You felt guilty enough already, and I didn't want this to be another burden you carried."

"Why wouldn't you want me to know that? Why get that upset when I brought it up?"

Newt looked away for a second, something like shame creeping into his eyes. Their hands hung between them, suddenly weighing a ton. "Because he refused and told me that you had cost us a way out of here. He blamed you for it, and thought I should too."

"I still don't understand why-"

"I did." Newt said simply. He refused to look at her now. "I did blame you. Deep down, part of me blamed you for not letting us take that chance at getting out, and I hated myself for it because I knew you were right and I knew it was a bad idea, but I couldn't help but resent you a little for not letting us take that chance anyway."

Ada snatched her hand back. Newt's fingers spasmed in the air before dropping to his side again, not fighting her.

"All those times you stood by my side and told me it wasn't my fault, all those times you told them it wasn't my fault, you were lying?" She asked, something dark and cold settling inside her, her deepest fears unlocking and rising to the surface and staring eye to eye with a just as painful truth. "It was all a lie?"

"No." Newt said strongly and took a step towards her. "No, it – I –" He trailed off, searching desperately for words. "I meant what I said when I told them you made the right call. I did, Ada. I know we wouldn't have made it out, that it was a fool's errand. But it was getting so hard to stay here." Something deeply vulnerable broke out across Newt's face. "It is getting so hard to stay here."

When she didn't say anything, Newt took a tentative step towards her, brown eyes glassy.

"It was easier to have someone to blame, even if that person didn't deserve it. Even if that person was you."

Ada wanted so badly to be angry at him, wanted so badly for that familiar spark of frustration to well inside her again, but it didn't.

"I know things are bad here," Ada said softly, "but they're not all bad, are they?"

"I don't know who I am," Newt said. "And that might be fine for the rest of you, but it is killing me. People are dying. So many people are dying, and we're no closer to finding a way out of this place than we were when I first came up. When you first came up, even. It seems like everything we try gets someone killed." He swallowed, throat bobbing. "What's even the point of it anymore?"

"The point," Ada said slowly, "is getting home to our families. To the people who love us and miss us and want us back."

"And what if we don't have that?" Newt asked. "What if we get out of here, and there's nothing waiting for us."

"But what if there is? Isn't it worth finding that out?"

Newt glanced back at the Homestead, at the sleeping boys tucked away in their hammocks, dreaming of a better home. "I don't know."

She could see that she was losing him. Newt was retreating back into some dark corner of his mind that she couldn't follow him to, building back up the walls that kept her from seeing the emotions he kept so carefully guarded.

"I think it is." She said simply. "Sometimes that hope is the only reason to keep trying. To keep living." Ada reached forwards slowly and placed a tentative hand on his arm, fingers flexing at the contact. "Try not to lose sight of that."

Newt nodded tensely, and after a moment of simply staring at him Ada smiled and withdrew her hand.

"I'm tired." She said softly. "It's been a long day. Try not to stay up too late, yeah?" He nodded as she moved around him towards the Homestead, shooting him a soft smile over her shoulder as she did.

He watched her go, that blank expression back on his face, but there were cracks in the mask this time. He turned back to the watchtower, and she knew despite her words that he wouldn't be returning to the Homestead that night.