Gone
Cara's words still echo in his head. "I'm sorry." That was all anybody ever said to him now. "I'm sorry for your loss." They weren't sorry. They were glad she died, because her death meant that they could live. Their insincere apologies wouldn't fill the hole in his heart.
"She didn't survive." It was so cold. So clinical, uncaring even. He didn't believe her. She was lying to him. Or he was in a simulation. Tris couldn't be dead. Maybe Cara was thinking of someone else. Maybe he'd misunderstood her. Tris wouldn't leave him. They were going to be together forever, she'd promised him. She never broke her promises. He tried to scream but no sound would come out. He was choking on the air that seemed to tighten around him, just like the box in his fear landscape. Tris would know how to save him. He had to find her. Cara must just be playing a trick on him. An awful tasteless prank. He couldn't move or speak. Crying would make it real and he couldn't live with himself if it was. It couldn't be real because Tris wouldn't do that.
Except that wasn't true. This was exactly what Tris would do. How many times had she tried to sacrifice her life for others? Too many to count. Were they grateful? Was it worth it? Her life was worth more to him than everybody else's combined. She didn't see that. It wasn't her sacrifice to make. She didn't have to deal with the pain and the loneliness and everybody telling her to move on. He did. And he couldn't.
Christina hadn't stopped crying since. Everybody was surrounding her, supporting her. She kept saying how much she missed Tris. She didn't even understand what he was feeling. Nobody did. Not even his friends would come near him because anyone who tried had their head bitten off (not literally although he wished that he could do that sometimes). He felt so angry all the time. Angry at everyone that moved. Especially Caleb. The one time that he had seen the boy since Tris' death, it took five other Dauntless to keep Four from killing him. She had died for this miserable coward. He'd never done anything worthwhile in his life, and yet she gave hers up for him. He didn't deserve to know her. He didn't deserve her love. Why didn't she just let Caleb die like he was supposed to?
His mother had called him Tobias while they were sitting in the dining hall eating. His friends were trying to pretend that nothing was wrong; joking around like normal, but anyone could see that it was all a front. They had all loved Tris. When his mother said his name, he snapped.
"Never call me that. She's the only one who can call me that. My name is Four." The others at the table winced as he threw down his food and stormed out. Christina followed him out to where he sat in the pit, legs dangling over the edge of the chasm.
"I miss her." Four said staring off into the distance.
"I know." Christina replied. "But this is not healthy. She would hate to see you this way. We understand that you're mourning, but you have to let yourself feel. It's the only way to get over it. Talk to me. Let it all out." Everybody had been so supportive of her, letting her lean on them but she saw that Four was suffering a lot more. Maybe he needed someone to be there for him as well. His relationship with his parents was strained at the best, and he had nobody to rely on. Tris was his family and now she was gone.
"You don't understand. I hate her so much for doing this to herself. She never understood what she meant to me. I can't forgive her, but at the same time I hate myself for it. She's done something so brave and selfless and I'm such a hypocrite for hating her for it. She was the strong one; I needed her so much more than she ever needed me. Now she's gone. I can't let myself cry because if I start crying I will never stop."
Christina pulled his head to her shoulder and he immediately burst into noisy gasping sobs. His entire body was trembling as she tried to lessen his pain as much as she could.
"It's all my fault. I should have been there with her. I should have known. I should never have let her go. Maybe if I was nicer to her, I never managed to work on my kindness. If I'd shown her how much she was really worth, maybe she wouldn't keep trying to sacrifice herself. She said she wouldn't leave me. Why did she lie to me?"
Christina looked into his pain-filled eyes and felt her heart tug. Silent tears were running down her cheeks, but she had to keep control of herself. Now she had to help her friend grieve the loss of the love of his life, she could think about her own loss later. She was handling it, she had accepted Tris' death and she was coping. He wasn't.
It had been a month. Or had it? He'd lost track of the days and nights. Why should he care? Since he had been fired for not showing up to work, he had barely moved from their bed, only leaving when he was physically forced. He hadn't been sober for almost as long. It had started with a couple of drinks. Just to take the edge off the pain. It was the only way he could sleep without her face haunting his dreams. The mornings when he woke up were the worst. There was that moment where he looked for her and then remembered everything and the pain was as bad as the first time. This was only made worse by the hangovers.
After he realised that the best cure for a hangover being more alcohol was actually false, he turned elsewhere to forget. A boy from his training class had started selling him the drugs. It was good; it made everything okay for a while. They cost a tonne, but Four couldn't bring himself to care. If this was the price of forgetting the pain, just for a while, he would be willing to pay.
He'd flirted with the idea of taking the memory serum, but knew that he didn't want to forget Tris, only the fact that she was gone. He couldn't bring himself to do it. It would be a waste of everything they had shared, her memory would be destroyed. Her sacrifice would be forgotten. That could not be allowed to happen.
He spent months feeling numb. He spent all of his money on drugs so his landlord chucked him out because he couldn't pay the rent. He didn't care. His moved back into his old house that his parents had both vacated. All of his friends were getting engaged and married and having children. They constantly tried to set him up on dates, but he was rude to the girls until they left, knowing that his meddling friends wouldn't allow him to leave. He didn't want another girlfriend. He didn't want to replace Tris. She was irreplaceable. That devious sparkle in her eyes, her selflessness and bravery, how he felt when he saw her smile. Nothing could ever be the same.
It took years, but eventually he sobered up after an overdose scare. Christina had finally stopped being sympathetic and had yelled at him. He was so reminded of Tris in that moment that he promised to get clean. And he did.
He got a job, moved into a new apartment. He acted like he was okay. He would never get over the pain of losing Tris, but now the memories made him smile. He remembered everything, from the way he'd felt when he pulled her from the net to when they were screaming at each other. He wanted to do something good with his life. Something she'd be proud of, instead of wasting it away on drugs as he had been.
He set up a home for abused children. He knew how they were feeling, having experienced the abuse first hand. He saved so many lives and he didn't even know the extent of the impact he was having. He provided a father figure to hundreds of children over the years, even though he never had his own. He saw Tris in so many of the children. Her bravery. Her defiance. How she was so impossibly stubborn. He learned so much from them, as they did from him. Mostly, he learned that his guardian angel was up there smiling down on him. And one day, he would join her. He was content with that.