there is a vigilant gloss to his eyes. the chary intake of breaths & fidgety movements all indicating his rather conspicuous dread which he still has the disturbed mind-set to try VEIL from newt. even till his last perceptible move in this GAME, till death, he will conceal himself from the world because weakness was never a choice. if he was going to die, he would not die on his knees.
this is not the first time, he’d remind himself,
that your heart has been ripped into t w o.
the thought of death wasn’t as unsettling to him, as was the unforeseen event that he knew was inevitable. it could happen within the next minute, the next hour, the next day — the apprehension was a nightmare on its down. newt mutters god on his tongue, & he thinks, perhaps he’s saying his final prayer.
it was as infuriating as it was frustrating. he had been sent to the maze with the world’s intelligence, a knowledge that bookmarked pages of books in SCHOOLS. he remembers aristotle, he remembers hippocrates, he remembers cesar. he remembers the poems he’d mumble to his friend in the midst of nyx’s curtain, when stars unraveled themselves & gladers snored. he’d remembes sonnets & science, all that he didn’t get to tell newt, but now they would perish — with him.
he wasn’t scared of death.
he was scared of losing his friend.
❜ stop whining … i’d ask fo’ some champagne right now. ❛
it came in flashes, in terrifying bursts, fragments of sanity and void interspersed with each other, obscuring his vision.
it’s not kenneth sitting before him anymore at least, not the kenneth that he ought to be. newt sees grievers and mazes and the horrifying, lurching feeling of FALLING, pulsing in kenneth’s chest, a reminder of everything that led to this moment. but his heart is beating, but he’s alive kenneth is alive, and though the world is stained red and his face is nothing but static, newt knows that none of it was in vain.
he’d do it again, he would, he’d go through all that PAIN and terror again in a heartbeat if it meant kenneth would escape it all safely.
and newt CAN’T let that safety be compromised. ( the demons are howling, echoing and reverberating in his ears, and he knows that kenneth won’t be safe here for very long. )
❛ i can’t i can’t control it, kenny, i can’t please, i wouldn’t be able to live with knowing that i’d that you’ve ❜