Chapter 1
Tobias POV.
I keep seeing her everywhere, though I know she's not anywhere.
Every morning I wake up wishing that it's all a bad dream, that she's still alive, but I know it's not true. Christina tells me that I'll pull through, figure out a way to live without her, but that's not true either. Tris Prior was the best thing that had ever happened to me, and, even though it was two years ago, still haunts me in my nightmares.
She didn't deserve to die.
It should have been Caleb, he was the one that was supposed to die after all, but she decided that the man that she had been despising ever since he betrayed her and sided with the Erudite, didn't deserve it.
But she did?
I go through my morning routine through muscle memory alone, my mind elsewhere, thinking about her, longing for her, longing to join her, but that can't happen. She would want me to live, despite how much it makes me suffer. I have been thinking about her to much recently, but it's impossible not to. Not when I've been seeing her so often, in my dreams that sneak into my real life when I am not paying attention. The only reason I ever leave the house is to go to my fear landscape. And even then, it's so that I can see her, even if it's just her dying over and over again. Today I am going to do something different, I am going to the Dauntless Compound.
The buildings flood my surroundings as I walk. I go the same path I take to the Dauntless Compound, but this time, instead of going straight to the fear landscape room, I wonder the halls. Without thinking, I go to the training room. I run my fingers along the stone walls as I make my way to there. I am surprised to see that all the equipment is still there. I remember how Tris was the first person to hit the target throwing knives, I remember how I put my hand on her stomach. I lower my face into my hands. I should leave, but I don't want to, I can't, I have to do this.
I find my way through a small crowd of people as I walk to the Chasm and find the door that leads to the bottom. I walked with her this way, holding her hand. I lean against the wall for a second and a small sob escapes me.
Why am I doing this to myself?
I compose myself and keep walking. As I reach the bottom of the stairs I almost break. I run the tips if my fingers along the hand that she held when I first brought her down here. My entire body aches. There are tears on my cheeks, but I don't wipe them away. One of the last times I saw her cry was during an argument that I wish we had never had.
It was all my fault.
I sit down on the rock where we had our first kiss and stare up to the Pit. If she was alive, she might have been sitting with me right now, we would have moved on from all the horrors that happened to us and lived a new life, but she's dead, and she's not coming back.
She's not coming back.
I see a piece of paper falling from above me, from the Pit. At first, I think that it's just one of the discarded scraps that people throw into the Chasm, but then I see that it is attached to a string. I look up. Someone, I can't tell who, they are too high up, stands at the railing, holding their hand out. When the piece of paper reaches me, I take it and the string drops and the person at the railing runs away. I unfold the paper and stare at the writing.
At the place that relates most to your first fear in the landscape. At the time you first told her what was going on. Tonight. Alone.
The handwriting seems vaguely familiar. Whoever it was, knows what my fear landscape contains, and there's only one person that I have ever shown it to. On the other side of the page, I notice a patch of Dauntless flames in the same formation that is tattooed on my rib-cage, and… three ravens. How do I know that they are ravens? Because I've seen the exact same ones.
On Beatrice Prior's collarbone./p
I look back up at the Pit, at the spot that the person was standing. "Tris…" I whisper.