Chapter Text
When Theo left the dark confines of the box, she found the boys to be less shocked by her being a girl, and more-so by her sunken, frail, composure. Her pallor complexion didn't quite help either, but her time in the box had lacked food, water and comfort (although that made little difference to what she'd had before.)
She hadn't always been like this.
Not that Theo remembered the sleepless nights, when her eyes felt like they were burning, the images of the people she once knew being taken away for... god knows what, would forever rot in her brain. And she would skip breakfast, excuse herself, only to go outside and take a slow, thoughtful drag of a cigarette - because it felt as though that was the only time her head was really centred. But the slow became a quick and incessant need for a drag, and her lungs began to burn too.
If she'd known the pain of being one of WCKD's 'favourites,' perhaps she would have tried to escape sooner - but that had only placed her in the middle of a maze.