A/N: So I've read a lot of Tris attempts suicide fics lately, and decided to toss my hat in that ring (after reading too much Camus). This is very short and the chronology is purposefully out of order. The only thing you need to know other than that is that it's set after Insurgent. Oh, and "avigation" means "aerial navigation". And now I'm going to go write a very happy chapter of Three Parts Dead...
The railing over the Chasm is mist slick and cold to the touch where she holds on. It's not much of a barrier, never meant to stop someone stepping over it, just enough to make them think before they leap.
And Tris has. Too much. She's weary from the memories that play over, stuck in a track they can't break free from. It's been three months since she spoke to Tobias. Five months since Caleb betrayed her. Six months since her parents died and she killed Will. The thoughts are still the same. The guilt and pain are different, but maybe not so much; she still feels the suffocating weight of them either way.
Seven months since Al died, here. He wasn't a coward. He was just tired. She's tired too. She understands now, why he did it.
Promises of tomorrow, of a better future fuel us. But there always comes a point when we understand that 'tomorrow' will not be easy, in fact it probably won't be any better than today. Time carries us to that point, and have to carry time from that point. We have to carry the weight that our time is finite, and that time will be filled with a futile fight against the inevitable, death.
And she's too tired for that. Has been for months.
The mist on her face feels like caressing fingers; loving, understanding, inviting. She's never been one for thinking twice, and even if she'd never admit it she knew when she came here tonight how this would end.
Her hands are steady as she climbs over the railing, and she hangs there for a moment, saying a silent prayer, seeking absolution, forgiveness for her sins, and comfort for those she's leaving behind.
Thoughts of Tobias pick at the back of her brain, and she smiles. She wants him to be happy, and he never could be as long as she's here. For what it's worth maybe she'd be happier if he left too. But she's always been the braver one between them.
When she lets go of the railing she feels like she's flying. It's exhilarating, just like jumping off a building for the first time.
She watches Tobias leave through heavy eyes and a fog of sleep. He's a form cast in shadow and light, head bowed and shoulders hunched as he's momentarily silhouetted in flickering fluorescent. When the door closes behind him she's engulfed by the dark again.
He's gone, and she feels it down to her bones, the finality of it. It feels like nothing. There's nothing left to hold on to. He can't forgive or forget Marcus. She can't change the past.
She puts her back to the door and him. There's nothing left to fight for.
Zeke's banging on the door to the Control Room again. It's locked, again.
One minute.
Two.
He clamps his hands over his ears, pinches his eyes shut, every muscle tensed, and prays the banging stops. All he hears behind his hands is the rushing of blood, like the rushing of a birds wings in flight. By the time he pulls his hands away he can't breath and his face is itchy wet.
No one notices the solitary figure clad in black ascending the stairs to the Pire.
Tori delivers the eulogy, her voice thick and a bottle clutched in her hand like a life preserver. She doesn't speak of the guilt and regret coursing through her as potent as the alcohol running in her veins. She doesn't mention either the mug of peppermint tea that cut gouges into the drywall of her kitchen this morning when she threw it across the room. There were too many memories in it.
Love doesn't die. We like to pretend it does. We like to think we can kill it in torrents of words; smother it in betrayals; drown it in errors; let it bleed out from a million wounds.
But the permanent, persistent ache in your chest when you think about the person you thought you didn't love anymore no matter how many days and weeks and months and years it's been tells you otherwise.
The Pit is large, but not large enough. They eat at different times, stick to different footpaths. Neither wants to see the other, but even in a crowd of hundreds he thinks he could pick out her slight figure; she knows she could feel his eyes on her like a physical thing if he did.
There are twelve spiderwebbed cracks in the ceiling above Tobias' bed. His eyes trace them until the his lids are too heavy with alcohol to stay open.
He could leave, he should leave. But he won't.
Because she's still here, and she's always been his reason for staying.
She betrayed him by allying with Marcus behind his back.
He betrayed her by telling her he'd be her family now and then abandoning her.
Christina's indignant where she sits across from Tris, muffin in bits and pieces the same way she wants Tris to want to eviscerate Tobias.
It's okay, Christina can be mad for her. She's tired and anger takes too much effort.
Uriah is quiet, taking in the way Tris' shoulders sag, the way her thin, small hands are wrapped around her elbows like she's cold. The way the notches of her spine stick out with her head bowed.
He hasn't seen her eat in a while, and this morning like so many others the plate of food Christina slips in front of her remains untouched. He looks like he's in pain; the pain she should be feeling, but is too tired to feel anymore.
Neither of them say anything when she walks out of the dining hall, alone, again. It's the only thing she craves anymore.
Tobias is not quite sure how Zeke managed to get him to the bar. He's not sure how many drinks there were between when they arrived and when he punched his best friend in the face. A lot, probably. It's the first time he's felt anything in a while. Three months to be exact. He even knows the hours and seconds since the last time he felt something besides numb cold.
The knuckles on his right hand are split open and bleeding between the lines on his palm, coloring life and fate and love crimson. The rough walls of the Pit etch new lines into his other hand. It's the only way he can stay upright as he stumbles to his apartment. He's alone and adrift with nothing left to anchor him against the thrashing tides of life pulling him every which way.
He trips over a rock, goes down hard on his knees and stays there, breath coming in short, sharp bursts. Zeke's words about getting over Tris by getting on top of a new girl replay in his head and his stomach heaves.
Tris stops talking at some point, right along with not eating. The meals she shares with Christina and Uriah and silent and tense, the same way the ones she shared with Tobias before he walked out of her life were.
Faction before blood.
She has neither. And the knowledge that she's completely alone is profound. She has friends, people who care about her, but it's not the same, and no one who still has family - by blood or by choice - would understand that.
She doesn't want to play pretend anymore. She's okay being alone. Better being alone. So she eats at odd hours, and stays in her apartment, only coming out late at night when the Pit is empty and she can watch water roar through the Chasm in peace.
Solitude and liquor, that's all he wants. That's all he'll admit to wanting anyway. The fact that he's been watching Tris from the bottom of the Chasm every night for the last week is evidence he's unwilling to acknowledge.
He can't have her, but he can't let her go either. He can't let her go because he loves her, but he can't have her because love isn't enough. Love is the sum of trust and affection and lust, and having any one of those factors poisoned poisons everything. It would be easy to blame Marcus, but it wouldn't be honest.
He couldn't trust her. He couldn't break down the walls her betrayal built. He couldn't stop punishing her for it. And he wanted to. More than anything he wanted to; wanted it with greater desperation than he wanted her to value her own life when she didn't.
He can only look at her for seconds at a time, so he doesn't see her climb the railing. But he does see her arms outstretch. He sees her take flight like the birds he used to watch darting through the rain out his bedroom window when he as a child, playful and free. He's sure he can hear her laugh like she did when she fell into the net.
His mouth is open in a soundless scream, silence more powerful and painful than anything he could vocalize.
Tobias hears Tori's voice, hears the voices of Christina and Uriah lost in the crowd below him, their voices lifting up as one, carrying him like wings to what lays beyond, to freedom from the weight he carries, knowing tomorrow will never be better.
Tris was always built for flight, but he can fly away too. He hopes whatever is outside the fence is better than what's left here, the same way she did when she spread her wings and took flight for the last time.