A/N: first time writing a Divergent fic, so i'm sorry if i get any of the character's personalities wrong. so how this story came about was that i was halfway through Insurgent (i'm up till the "i just don't want to lose you" part, and though my exams start in 5 days, this plot bunny of mine popped up about What Tobias Would Do/How Tobias Would React about Tris' nearly attempted suicide. aaand, yeah (: I couldn't get past this so i just wrote this up today! i hope you like it, and reviews would certainly be lovely!
Disclaimer: i try impossibly hard to mimic Veronica Roth's style of writing, and i doubt it's working! other than that, i don't own anything related to the Divergent trilogy and my lovely otp!
The scream, a cry so angered and anguished, is distinctly familiar in my mind. I recognize it easily, because it is exactly what that's brewing in my chest right now. A while later and I realize that the scream is mine, though I never did notice it escaping my lips. The wooden interrogation chair of Candor's amphitheater hurtles towards the ground - a beautiful sight - but my throat burns during the process. My battle cry continues until the chair shatters like brittle skeleton, splintered at the edges but intact in the middle.
Then I wonder: What will happen to human cellulite, human bones, human matter? What will happen to me? Will my brain explode upon impact, or will my bones splinter just like the chair? Will my eyes and nose and ears bleed matter, just like the blood that will gurgle at the back of my throat?
I remember Al. How he looked when he was hauled from the chasm, dead on the cool, solid rock of Dauntless ground. Body bloodless and blue, limbs mangled as if he formed a human pretzel. Joints dislocated in awkward directions not humanly possible. Dead, all completely dead. All because of me.
The only difference between then and now is that he had fallen hundreds of feet into the chasm, bashed against rocks by the crushing current of the water. It's no wonder he ended up looking like that. I am only twenty - or maybe a hundred and eighty, I don't bother counting - feet from the floor below me. There is no bashing water or giant rocks to destroy me like it destroyed Al. The rush of air won't crush the bones in my chest, since it needs a terribly high velocity. So I don't know.
I don't know what will happen to me. I don't know how I will end up. There are so many questions in my head, factual Erudite questions about the natural law and order of calculative physics. I can't answer any of them because I'm too stupid to learn, but maybe that's how things are meant to be. The wonders of not knowing, the intense tug of diving head-first into areas of the unknown. That is what's so wonderful about this, that I will not know. That is what pushes me to try and see what happens.
I don't think about Christina, or about Tobias. I try not to think about my mother and father. I rely on not thinking about the fear, the part of me that squirms at the thought of leaving them. Leaving Dauntless, leaving Christina, and leaving Caleb... Leaving Tobias. I try not to think about the tears they will shed, the tears hewill shed, if they even do, and focus on the guilt that consumes me. The guilt, the favorable Dauntless rush of adrenaline. I focus on Al, and my parents, and Will. I focus on avenging their deaths, which I am the culprit.
Maybe courage, and dauntlessness, and the bravery that we have all been arguing about, maybe it comes in death. Maybe it is the ability to have the will to take your life, the ability to own up to your deepest regrets and your gravest mistakes, and be unafraid to pay for those sins, whether or not the people you love allow it to.
Maybe that is what being Dauntless means, and Will was dauntless. Al was dauntless. If selflessness was, too, an act of bravery, of dauntlessness, then so were my parents. So I am too. So I am Dauntless. And within a step of the ledge, "am" will become a "was", and I will be dead. There is always power in self-sacrifice.
The gusts of wind slam into my body, and it feels like a cold hard slap to my face. It stings, but that doesn't matter because the rush is better. It's exhilarating to stand on the edge, barely inches between life and death. It grabs onto my loose clothes, like a sail catching wind, and I teeter.
It should scare me, and yet, it doesn't. My muscles should be tight, completely rigid and prepared for the pain at the end of the fall, but I remain relaxed. I remain calm. I am not tense. I am only ready. I am only accepting. I am tired of being Tris, the divergent, the killer, the traitor. I am tired of my existence itself, and I have evolved. Every part of me has evolved, over time, over guilt, over affirmation.
One step... One step to end this. I have tried many times, in this same situation, but I remember my parents. First, I try to hold on to the love of their sacrifice for me, long enough to put me back on safe ground. As I have said, I have changed. Now, the love of their sacrifice leaves me with longing to be reconciled with them.
Guilt has changed me, and it's no different from growing into new skin from the old. The bigger ones, with the bigger problems, and the bigger triggers. Also, the bigger burn out. The emotional longing trumps all. I didn't know that then, and I didn't want to know that then, but now I do, and I embrace it like love has always embraced me. In the forms of my parents, my brother, my friends, and Tobias.
Tobias... I feel him somewhere, and he calls my name. Tris. It shakes. A part of me withers with my will. A part of me wants to return. Return to him. Tris, please!Tobias begs, and I can hear the thickness in his throat, the tears too. I can hear them.
Dry tears gather in my eyes, and I turn as if I know that he's there. He is, eyes swollen, demeanour vulnerable and helpless, as if he will crumple on the ledge beside my feet. I am not worth his tears, or his love. What am I, compared to him? He is a survivor, as well as dauntless, in escaping Marcus. And I, I am not the Tris he fell in love with anymore. She was worthy of him, but I am not.
I don't want to lose you, Tris.His voice quietens, barely a whisper now. The quiet in his tone is not like other times, the ones where he retains his anger, the ones which scare almost everybody. No, it is, instead, the kind I have felt before. The kind that your words are too brittle and your voice is too thin, and you fear that if you speak too loud, your voice will crack and break, and tears will stream freely down your cheeks. A weakness that you don't care enough to conceal.
I lift my eyes to his. A tear trickles down from his deep sockets. I love you, Tris. Please... Another tear. Is a part of the Tris that he loves, that he deserves, still in me, somewhere? If it still is, I love him too. I know I do. And that is why the ends of my lips curl into a smile that the Tris before used to smile. I take a step, and as I hear his broken cry and feel his slender fingers brush futilely at my wrist, I close my eyes, and I fall.
oh-oh! Poor Tobias! :( don't worry! this will be continued! TBC! and devoting time to writing (as a relaxer from studying, or a distraction) makes me hope that i don't retain for the year. but writing is a part of me, and so- I hope you enjoyed this! reviews would be extra lovely, like telling me your favorite sentence or paragraph, or (constructive) criticism is fine! (:
