My first Divergent fanfiction! I've always liked Caleb and wondered how he felt for what he did and what happened to his sister.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own anything.
Peace. That's all he wants. Is it really that much?
He's not supposed to miss her. Not after what he did.
But he can't avoid it either. He was his sister, after all— or she used to be, at least, before they started growing apart.
(But maybe they were never close in the first place.)
He can see the looks on other people's faces. Some are directed to him, some are lost in the nothingness of their thoughts.
Caleb prefers the first one. They burn through his soul with pure, unadulterated hatred and rage. But it's still better than the second kind. They seem a little lost, and a bit crazy —they don't seem dangerous at first glance, but they make him feel like shard of glass are embedded in his heart— and they remind him of what he has lost.
(Maybe he wears a matching look in his own eyes.)
The worst one, to him, is Tobias. All he does these days is sit in front of a cup of coffee and stare at nothing —perhaps he is looking at his own demons— and it physically pains him to think that, if things were different, the two of them could have been family.
But this is how the world works, you either win or lose, and nobody has won here.
So they sit in front of equally cold coffees and stare at nothing and everything at the same time, and there are times where Caleb wonders if he should go and sit in front of Tobias' table.
He always dismisses the thought quickly.
Caleb doesn't walk home that night. What's the point, anyway? He doesn't want to sleep. The nightmares already chase him when he's awake. Why give them the chance to monopolize his dreams too?
He walks to what used to be his house before the war. Before his sister turned into another enemy.
Everything is exactly the same way it was the day he transferred. The dishes are still in the sink and the chairs are in their exact spot, and Caleb almost expects his sister to enter in the kitchen and start preparing dinner with him while their parents set the table.
He reaches out, almost like he can caress Beatrice's cheek, but the memory fades into the cold of the night before he can close his fingers around her, trying to keep her with him.
As he turns around, the images of his parents disappear into thin air and it suddenly hits him— he has no family anymore. He's on his own.
He does the only logic thing— he runs.
He runs and runs until his lungs feel like they're on fire, until he can't feel his legs anymore, until he forgets about the family he used to have.
(But they are burned into the back of his mind.)
Caleb doesn't even know where he's heading to, but he doesn't care either. He just wants peace, peace, peace, is that too much to ask?
The stars shine brightly, eternally married to the sky, but he can't see them; not when his eyes are clouded with tears and his mind is clouded with memories.
He trips with something (he will never discover what) and lands into the grass, his tears wetting the ground under him.
He lets the sobs take over his body, shaking him and making him lose his breath. He deserves it, he deserves every single bit of suffering, he deserves to cry every night and wake up to a nightmare every day.
(Or so he believes.)
He turns around, facing the stars, and their lights blind him for a moment —but only for a brief moment— before he can look at them properly and appreciate their beauty.
He wishes to be one of them. Always there, always shining, doing nothing but lightening the world and seeing everything under them. Condemned to an eternity apart from the world, maybe, but that's better than suffering on Earth.
His sister's face crosses his mind again (it never left after the war), and his heart stops for a second, guilt filling his thoughts, like every time he remembers what happened to her. What happened to them.
He never was a good brother, he gets it. But it's not like Abnegation allowed him to show his affect towards her.
(But that's only the excuse he says to himself to feel better.)
In his mind, Beatrice and Tris are different persons. In his mind, Beatrice is the little girl that walked next to him to school every morning. In his mind, Beatrice is the girl whose hands disappears when he grabs hers, because Caleb's hands were always big and Beatrice's had always been small. In his mind, Beatrice is the sister he wishes he could have known better.
In his mind, Tris is the girl with short hair and tattoos that held a gun when they attacked his faction. In his mind, Tris is the girl that died instead of him, because she was selfless even when she didn't show it. In his mind, Tris is the sister he lost forever.
Maybe she was both. Maybe she was none.
As he stares as the sky, the stars stretched above him and the breeze gentle against his skin, he decides he doesn't want to remember his sister as the quiet girl who left Abnegation after him. He doesn't want to remember the silent nights when they washed the dishes together. He doesn't want to remember Beatrice.
It's not realistic.
But he doesn't want to remember the brave girl that fought against him. He doesn't want to remember the restless nights when he wondered how she was doing even after he betrayed her. He doesn't want to remember Tris.
It's too painful.
So he doesn't remember. He closes his eyes, instead, and tries to count the stars without looking at them.
He just hopes that his sister —Beatrice or Tris, it doesn't matter anymore— could forgive him. Wherever she was.
The sky is dark and the stars shine bright as a smile graces his lips.
He has found peace, at last.