A/N: This has been on my mind since chapter 6 and I've been putting it off but I've been trying to write Allegiant 2.0's ninth chapter and this is clogging it. This one-shot follows the real Allegiant ending where Tris dies. I wanted to write something tackling Tobias' moving forward process.
I almost never write without any music on my background, and somehow these five songs fit the whole exploration of love, loss and life. If you want to listen to the songs which inspired this fic, it's on my Tumblr - herbrightoceaneyes.
Trace of You (Peter Bradley Adams)
"When midnight comes and finds me alone
Like the tides you turn and the clouds you roll
And I'm stuck in a dream that will not let me go"
She isn't gone, Tobias tells himself. One of these days she'll walk into the door of his apartment. She'll smile at him, and when he tells her how much she'd scared the shit out of him, she'll just laugh her airy laugh. She'll tell him everything's a joke, just her testing him and that he had passed with flying colors. She'll say sorry while her hand is on his - her small but strong hands that are meant for him and only him to hold and caress and kiss.
He can picture her already, curled on her side looking peaceful while she's off somewhere in the land of dreams. He'll lie next to her, put his arms around her waist and pull her warm body closer. She'll turn around once she feels his embrace and touch her forehead to his chest so she could feel and listen to his beating heart. She loves that. She always does that.
It can't be real. She can't be gone. She said she wants to be with him, that she wants a life with him, and he knows she meant all those words.
No, everything right now isn't real. It isn't, it just isn't.
Howl (Black Rebel Motorcycle Club)
"Your try so hard to be heard
You try so hard to not hurt
I give you nothing to doubt and you doubt me
I give you all that I have but you can't see"
Tobias stares at their picture. It is the only picture they have together taken when she was still an initiate. In it she's smiling, a tight lipped smile but her happiness is reflected well in her stormy blue eyes.
He wonders if she's happy seeing him like he is now - a broken empty shell of a person, useless and beyond repair.
She said she'll wait for him. She said that after everything's done and fixed they'd be together and they'll finally live as normal a life as they both could. But she ran into that damned room to save his worthless brother probably without even thinking about all those things she promised him; probably without even thinking about him, and it makes him so angry at her.
Tobias throws their picture across the room. It flutters in the air before finally falling on his dirty clothes carelessly discarded on his bedroom floor.
Fuck the government, it never really cared for its people. Fuck the Bureau for not intervening with their war. Fuck his parents for being selfish, manipulative and everything parents should never be.
He sleeps through gritted teeth, using a pillow to block out the light. Maybe if he pushed his face in it hard enough he'd die of suffocation then everything, all these will end and he'll stop being so angry at everything and everyone; he'll stop hurting. But he knows he will never have the guts to kill himself because even if she left him he knows that she saved them all, that she saved him.
Chasing Cars (Snow Patrol)
"We'd do it all everything on our own
We don't need anything or anyone
If I lie here, if I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world"
She smiles at him, her eyes bright and piercing. She kisses the skin in between his eyebrows, smoothing out the crease that has almost become a permanent fixture on it. She kisses his nose, his cheeks, his lips. She trails more kisses along the line of his jaw down to the hollow of his neck, and it takes away what little control he has.
Tobias turns them both around and he pins her to the mattress on her back. She laughs and he kisses her behind her ears. She sighs, a sound so contented and so relaxed. Her left hand pulls at his hair guiding him to where she wants him to apply his lips. She circles her right arm around his chest, her hand resting on the small of his back.
They're both breathing heavily, sharing the same air moving together and against each other. They've only done this once but everything seems and feels natural like their blood's calling for it. He slows them both down wanting to make everything last because he knows it won't. It's a dream and it will end eventually. Hell! If there was only a way for him stay to in that moment, that dreamstate, he sure damn will.
Still, even if he knows it isn't real Tobias let's the word slip, "I love you, Tris. Please don't leave. Stay with me." She touches her forehead to his and replies, "I can't. But please Tobias, remember I love you, too. Always." She kisses his lips - another night, another goodbye.
When he wakes up, Tobias trails his hand to her side of the bed wanting to feel her warmth but of course there's nothing else there other than cold, empty sheets. He can still feel her phantom touch, her skin on his own but he wants more. Always. More, more, more. He'll give up everything he has now just for one more kiss, one more smile, one more glance. Just once more.
Little Black Submarines (The Black Keys)
"Treasure maps, fallen trees
Operator please
Call me back when it's time
Stolen friends and disease
Operator please
Patch me back to my mind"
"You need to get out. Do something else other than work all day then go home at the end of it. We've all lost people and I know it's hard. I still miss my brother, still hurt every time I realize he isn't here with us anymore but they would not want us to remain stuck. They'd want us to move forward. Live our lives." Zeke had told him that this morning. He invited him to his place for a few drinks. Amar, George, Shauna and their other friends were going. He declined.
Of course, he knows Tris would want him to move forward and maybe someday he will but right now it feels like a betrayal. He doesn't want to let go of her, of her memories. It's all that he has now and he does not want to forget.
He remembers that time when they were both prisoners of the Erudite. He told her that if she dies, he dies, too. Why can't it be just that easy? Why didn't she take him with her? Life is a cruel bitch. It snatched her away from him and made him live this thing that resembles life but is not actually life. No, this isn't living at all. He's just pushing himself to move from one day to the next.
He's numb and empty and heavy as he goes back to the fear simulation room. The floors are dusty, a testament to its disuse. From his jacket's pocket he takes out the stolen syringe filled with the serum that'll take him to her no matter how temporary. He injects himself and the world fades to black.
Hear You Me [May Angels Lead You In] (Jimmy Eat World)
"And if you were with me tonight
I'd sing to you just one more time
A song for a heart so big
God couldn't let it live"
It's been two years and six months, 912 days to be more precise, that he has been living without her. It has been 912 days since she'd been gone. He's finally taking her back home. Strapped to the backseat of his truck is the urn holding Tris' ashes. It has been at the Bureau's morgue all those past days. He didn't know if he could make it through her funeral; he didn't even know what kind of funeral she'd like to have. It's something they never talked about. What they've talked about was the kind of life they wanted together after the mess they were all in was fixed. He wanted to live somewhere else, somewhere untouched by their war. She wanted to do the same. They just wanted a simple, quiet life - a home, normal jobs, children of their own once the time's right. It all sounded beautiful. Attainable.
They never got to see those plans through. They were never given a chance.
But he had realized that he still could live a life she'd be proud of, and that is what he has been trying to do for the past year. He'll honor her that way, by living as full a life as he can. He'd live the life she was denied to have.
If they still were living in factions, tomorrow will be a special day. Choosing Day. Three years ago, Tris jumped into his life.
Three years later, he's scattering her ashes not because he wants to forget. No, that will never be the case. He won't be able to forget her; not her smile, her stubborn streak, not the way she looks at him with all the love he'd thought he'd never, ever have. It's impossible. Scattering her ashes would be an act to remember her even more because that's what he choose. He wants to remember and he will.
Tobias smiles to himself. How could he ever forget someone who's very much a part of him? Tris will always live on. She'd touched so many lives, left indelible marks on all the people she'd ever loved and cared for, and because of that she'll never be truly, fully gone. The thought comforts him. He knows it won't always be like this, that there will still be days when he'll miss her so bad but at least for now he knows he can start moving forward.
He'll carry her in his heart. Always.