His Fourth Fear

I fall to my knees beside the table and I think I cry, then, or at least I want to, and everything inside me screams for just one more kiss, one more word, one more glance, one more…

My limbs feel heavy and I think it's odd because my chest is empty my heart has been ripped from my body and is lying on the metal table in the middle of this sterile room with her. My brain is telling me that this is happening the antiseptic smell in the air is mixed with the metallic tang of her blood and my nose tickles with the faintest tinge of sickly sweet decay. She is gone. Her skin cold and gray when it should be warm and flushed with Dauntless pride. She, Beatrice, not Tris, my Tris that is awakened by fear, is still as any corpse I have ever seen and I will not give this dull, lifeless body her name. I cannot!

I rise and am surprised that with such a gaping hole in my torso my legs still carry me from this place where she left me.

The days bleed into one another and I am unsure exactly how many pass before I am standing outside the gates between the Amity fields and Chicago. It has been left unguarded and I don't care. I follow Zeke's family, Christina and Caleb, who I have yet to be able to look at on to the train without conscious thought.

I think I speak with the others when they make the effort to speak with me but it is not because I need their words rattling around inside my head. Her voice, Tris' voice, is here in this clacking noisy train car and I let the words claw their way into my skin.

"I want this to end," I murmur but she pushes me farther, haunting me.

"Not yet," she murmurs into my shoulder and the whole in my chest gives a pang, "You can fix this."

The others are huddled at the back of the train car but I stand in the door one hand firmly wrapped around the handle and lean out as far as I can without over balancing. I don't even care that the train is steadily climbing. I don't care that Christina has worried eyes planted on the back of my head. I don't care that Marcus is waiting for us at the Hub or that my mother is just as crazy as my father. "I just don't care."

My fingers warm the small vial in my pocket and I am able to take the next step when we get to the Hub and I don't speak as I step off the moving train as if it isn't and I don't even stumble with the lack of momentum. I walk with my group; I can't call it a faction because they don't exist any longer and neither does she.

The weeks it takes to negotiate peace among the factions and the factionless hemorrhage into one another and I know that it will be over soon. I stay in my Dauntless apartment and imagine I can smell her on the bedding. I don't sleep but I pretend. I close my eyes and pull the pillow to me and if I don't over think it I almost fool myself into believing it is her slight weight against me.

The day the treaty is signed the whole city celebrates and I allow Christina to drag me to the festivities but I leave before the speeches are finished and make my way to Navy Pier and sit under the Ferris wheel turning the vial over and over in my hands. I look up at the wheel and remember the way she looked as she climbed each rung, her presence pulling me upward after her.

"This isn't so bad," her voice is sweet in my memory and I remember wordlessly agreeing even though my heart was hammering out of my chest. I cover my chest with my hand and am surprised that I feel the painful throbbing of my heartbeat. Closing my eyes I sigh and push away from the hulking structure.

Choosing day is fast approaching and I have decided that I will make one last choice; one choice to change everything.

On Choosing Day I make my choice and it is harder than I thought it would be walking into Abnegation territory but I feel my heart thump for the first time with anticipation since…her.

I cut my hair and dress in Abnegation clothes. I clean the clippings from the floor and load the serum into the syringe. I look into eyes that are dark pits of misery and lift the memory serum to my throat ready to forget. It is the cowardly way out. She would be ashamed of me. Her eyes would look at me with disappointment and she would ask herself why she ever felt I was worthy.

Christina stops me at the last second but I had already decided to remember her for as long as I can. She was too brave to be left forgotten on a sterile table with no one to mourn her properly.

It takes months before I am able to awake without my first thought being of her, go to bed without thinking I smell her around me, walk around without every thought being of her …Just every other thought.

The urn is cold like her hand had been that day. I am making a grand gesture. It is another Choosing Day and Christina has finally convinced me that I cannot keep this pain filled existence up much longer. They strap me into the harness and I remember other times my stomach swooped like this without dangling one hundred stories above the ground.

Her tiny hand traces my tattoo and I tell her, "I don't want to be just one, I cannot be, I want to be brave, and selfless. I want to be smart, and honest, and kind…although I am still working on kind." Then I kiss her, I just go for it with Dauntless passion. She tasted so good, so alive, that day, innocent and passionate.

"I think I love you," I murmur as the harness slows and I have come to the end of the line as I finish with, "but I am waiting to tell you until I am sure."

Zeke makes some crack about going again and I think he is talking about something other than the zip line, but I know there will be no next time. Tris was once in a lifetime there will be no others. Looking into the now empty urn I frown it is empty like my chest.

I think I hear a crow overhead and I look up but the sky is clear. The sound is still there persistent and pleading.

"Four," her voice, "Tobias," my name on her tongue, she is calling to me. "I'm here…I love you…Its okay…I'm here." I open my eyes drink in her familiar face and my shirt front is wet with her tears and my ears are full of her words and I know it wasn't real. It was just a fear landscape but I am gutted until I feel strong arms wrapped around me.

She is here…

She is warm and vital and my worst nightmare has not come true yet.

"Do you understand now?" My question is wrenched from my throat like an animal growl.

"Yes," she nods against my chest. "I understand. It's okay…I love you."

"I love you," I murmur with my lips on her forehead. "You are the only true thing I have in this world, Tris, you can't leave me in it alone."

"I'm sorry you had to do this to make me understand." She grips my shirt and pulls herself closer to me wrapping me in her living touch. "I love you, Tobias."

I have fallen to my knees and I think, maybe, I cry but I can't be sure.

AN: This is me fixing the totally heart rending ending of the books. I literally read the books, all four, in one weekend and darned if I didn't end up depressed for an entire weekend because of the ending of Allegiant. Veronica Roth did a spectacular job of everything except that. Four needed her and I hate that in the book-verse he is alone and so deeply in love. I hope you enjoy this even though it is angsty. SID