Just a short one-shot of Tobias Eaton's last day.
Fine Line
In years, Tobias Eaton had accomplished so much. He had grown back together with his mother, excluding his father as a figure of the past, as a demon he had finally conquered, and he never felt freer. Justice had never been served for Tobias, the abused son of the government official, and the surviving one of the duo of his lost love, nor was justice given to his mother, the woman whom faked her own death in order to provide safety and love which backfired on her own son and scarred him forever. He never got to say goodbye to either one of them, his father, whom died years later just outside the fence, nor did he get the chance to say goodbye to his girlfriend, Tris Prior, the one who would rather save her brother and hope to survive, but her lasts words to Tobias were a simple thought just shallow of a goodbye.
Tobias remembers when Cara informed him of her death. Christina and he exchanged a glance, one of pure disbelief and fear. Christina fell to her knees, unable to support her own grief, and Cara had to embrace her to keep her upright. Tobias had frozen in his place, his head being submerged underwater and the colors fading together into a beautiful but deadly spectrum of what he would now see the world as.
He said goodbye to everyone else though, it seemed; everyone else he lost in the war. He said goodbye to Uriah, one that he most definitely believes to this day he didn't deserve, and he watched his best friend's wife slowly sink into Alzheimer's fate and curse of being unannounced and forgotten, until there was nothing left of her but a small dim smile, and her husband's name escaping her lips.
She hadn't been dead long, a year most when his best friend collapsed in his arms on the train clutching his chest. He wheezed for his dead wife, repeatedly saying no, thinking maybe it would change the course of fate, given he was looking at Tobias when he was dying in his friend's arms.
Despite the fear and loss, and the hot fresh tears streaming down his face, Tobias spoke, "Go be with her and your brother."
His warm smile was melted into Tobias' mind forever, "And you were mine, too."
To this day, Tobias had been touched. All that was left to his name was really his apartment and his mother, whose days was numbered in hers as well as his had been; as everyone else's had come too short, they had planned. Everyone he lost in the war, he was ready to be with again. He could see his mother's sorrow filled face as his eyes began to fade with different colored spots of black and white.
"You can let go," she said to her son, no detection of losing her mind or control of her emotions any time soon, and he gripped her hand for one final squeeze, that took the life out of his eyes.
At first, all he registered was a gray blur, and then she came back into view, all memories of his life. From the time she jumped into the net, to the time he threw the knives. He saw her eyes illuminate when he had kissed her, saved her life. He saw her fearful, when he broke from the simulation his hand poised against the trigger, ready to fire and splatter her brains out.
He saw the light leave her eyes when she cried, and he saw the pain on her face when she was sad, remorseful, or sorrowful. He saw the look of betrayal on her face when she had worked with his father, but the looks of compassion when she ensured him he was not damaged, nor was he genetically altered to be a horrible person.
"You're whole," she said to him, "And you're the best person I've ever known."
That night was etched into his mind and it replayed every night, except their story got to continue in his vivid imagination, and it didn't just end when he woke up. It was like a movie on pause, something you could write like your own story, and he would continue to write their story for the next seven decades.
But now he saw her standing there, just before she had died before. No one else was in the room, not even the woman that bore his flesh and blood. The woman he loved more than anything, that he was sure of, stood there before him. Her hand was cool and solid as it touched his cheek.
"Tobias," she choked out weakly, almost with a giggle of laughter. "Finally, you're here."
"Tris," he spoke, softly. "You're here,"
She laughed at him, "I've always been here, Tobias. Except… now you see me, don't you?"
He smiled weakly, and he felt in his physical form it becomes stretched across his face, as if his final physical moments were completed. "I do see you,"
It took a few moments, but the two had finally been reunited. Everything in their life that lead up to this point where he held her in his arms again, worried that if he let go, he would have to go back to living a life without her.
He could finally breathe again, much like he did when he was a teenager. "I love you," he said.
"I know," she replied, smiling at his lips touched her forehead, her cheeks, equally, and then her nose, and finally her lips.
"Together?" She asked, although she already knew the answer.
"Always."
