Running From Your Problems (a Newt/ Maze Runner fanfic)

Epilogue

"I'm here to talk to you about the food," were my only words. 

For the first time, Naomi looked anything but strong. "Get inside," she grasped onto my arm and yanked me into the house. 

"How long do we have until our storages run out?" 

"Two weeks," I replied as quickly as I could. 

"What are we going to do?" Naomi began to nervously run her fingers through her hair. "We can't tell them because we need to keep working, but the people need to know the truth."

A small laugh caught in my throat at the word 'people.' We hadn't stopped calling ourselves Gladers, 'people' just sounded so political and foreign.

"It's too late to grow much more, our only option is to hunt. There is an abundance of deer and birds in those woods, send a few guards out every day to bring back some meat." I bargained. "We can limit how much they bring back to make sure that we don't hurt the ecosystem more than we have to."

Naomi looked around her magnificent home, papers were strewn around the entirety of the room. For once, she looked to me for help. "I have no idea what I'm doing here. Get everyone to agree and figure it out from there."

A smile made it's way across my face. "thank you."

Naomi hid her face and walked over to the door, "the food is your issue, anything that goes wrong, I'm blaming on you. Don't screw it up."

With a smile on my face and my confidence elated, I walked out of Naomi's house feeling more sure of myself than I had in a very long time. 

The guys would be a piece of cake, most had been missing the meat in Frypan's famous stews and a few missed the slaughterhouse back in the Glade. The girls would the issue. Many were trying to convert our already vegetarian diet to a vegan one, claiming that the cows that we were raising, and planning on slaughtering and milking, should not be used for milk or meat when they get large enough. Instead they should be released back into nature.

It was a problem, but nothing I couldn't deal with. 

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Three guards were setting out on their first hunting trip, less than a week had passed between my conversation with Naomi and the first hunting day. The girls had agreed to let us hunt on two conditions, no more than five guards could hunt in a day and they could only make two trips to bring back as much as they could carry. 

It wouldn't be a lot, but it would keep us alive throughout the winter and hopefully until the spring when hunting would be stopped until food would begin to run low again.

"I did it," I breathed and leaned my head onto Newt's side. 

"I have something you want to see," Newt grabbed my hand. "No running no matter what though."

"I won't," I answered, confused.

"Promise?"

"I promise."

Newt led me the spot where we landed in Paradise. It was beautiful with the sunset, you could see the town that was starting to form alongside the never ending woods. 

We weren't alone though, a man that looked suspiciously familiar stood at the edge of a drop off, staring at the sun as it began to sink behind the trees. 

"Newt..." I looked at him.

The man turned around and stared at me, tears streaming down his face. 

"Y/N..." he whispered just loud enough for me to hear. At that moment, it all clicked. The memories that had been slowly connecting, names, places, events. Everything was there, but blurry, just out of reach, but still there.

"David," I breathed and ran to my bolder brother, wrapping my arms around him.

"How are you still alive? They told me that you were already past the gone when they got me. Where were you?" Questions spilled out of my mouth without a sign of stopping.

"It was you, but I wouldn't be here without Newt."

I released David and turned to Newt. Who, while I had my back turned, had dropped to one knee and was looking at me with wet eyes. 

"I wanted your family to be here for this moment." Newt took a deep breath before continuing. "I've imagined many things, but I can't imagine life without you, Y/N. Without you, I probably wouldn't be alive right now. I love you more than anything Y/N, and I know that we don't have much. But, we have each other, and I don't want to live another moment knowing that I could lose you to someone else. So, Y/N Y/L/N, will you be my wife?"

I couldn't say anything, only nod. Happiness had overtaken my ability to speak. But, I knew in the back of my mind that my promise would be broken. Once you start running from your problems, you can't stop, but you can start running to someone. And I would be running to Newt.