I wake to sun shining painfully on my face. Through my closed eyelids, the red glow seems to burn the inside of my skull. I roll over so my back is to the window, and realize that my head is pounding. With every beat of my heart, I feel a vise tightening around my skull, threatening to split it.
I open my eyes a bit to see that a glass of water and the bottle of aspirin sit on the bedside table. I push aside the pain in my head and sit up, take two more of the pills, and take several large gulps of water.
I wish I still had some of that pain medicine left, I think to myself, remembering how it quelled the pain from my bullet wound at Amity headquarters.
I hear a knock at the door. Struggling to find my voice, I manage to say, "Come in." It comes out as a raspy whisper.
Christina opens the door and I instantly know that she feels about as bad as I do. Her eyelids droop over her dark eyes, her short hair sticks up at awkward angles, and she walks slowly, with one hand pressed to the side of her head.
"Oh, thank God," she says, snatching the bottle of aspirin off my bedside table. She takes a few of the pills, then downs the rest of my water. Collapsing on the bed facedown, she groans loudly.
"I'm never touching that stuff again," she says, her voice muffled by my comforter.
"Everyone says that," Tobias says, appearing at the door, that small smirk still on his face. "You'll be fine. Just keep drinking water. Do you want anything to eat?"
I shake my head gently, and Christina makes a noise that sounds like a large dying herbivore, which makes Tobias laugh out loud.
"Well, I got you some basics; bread, eggs, milk, stuff like that. It's all in the kitchen," he says. "I've got a meeting with Tori and Harrison, but I'll be back in a few hours."
Tobias kisses me gently on the lips, grins at the back of Christina's head, then leaves the room.
Christina crawls up the bed, lays next to me, and begins to snore. I think I fall asleep too, but I'm not sure. As the sun begins to set, I sit up, take two more aspirin, and feel well enough to get in the shower.
I walk down the hallway and into the bathroom. I turn on the water in the shower stall and stare at my face in the mirror. I hardly recognize myself. My short hair is teased into rats' nests and my eyes are red and puffy. As I peel my t-shirt and jeans off, I see that my body is covered in bruises, most likely from my fight with Tori. I peel the bandage away from my bullet wound, and am relieved to see that at least that is beginning to heal. The bite wound Tori left on my hand, however, looks both bruised and shredded, and I decide to get some antibacterial ointment for it after I shower.
I step into the warm water, letting it wash the dirt and sweat from my body. Once my muscles begin to relax, though, I can't seem to keep the images of the horrors I have seen from my mind any longer. They rush through my head like a video on fast forward. My mother's body crumpled on the pavement. The crease between Will's eyebrows. My father clutching his stomach. Tobias's hand around my throat… The video goes on and on, and I surprise myself when a loud sob escapes my mouth. It seems to have broken a dam and I can't hold myself together anymore. I sit on the floor of the shower stall, hugging my knees, and let myself sob until I can't breathe. Then I just sit there, feeling the warm water hitting my shoulders, trickling down my back. I pour shampoo into my hands and scrub my scalp, then watch as the soap swirls around my feet and down the drain.
When I finally step out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around my body, Christina is sitting on the sofa in the living room. She stands, walks toward me, and places her hand on my uninjured shoulder. I know she heard me crying, but she says nothing. She just squeezes gently, then walks into the bathroom. I hear the shower turn back on as I walk into the bedroom. Then I realize I have nothing to wear. All of my clothes are still in the dormitory, eight floors down and at the end of a long hallway off the Pit.
Exasperated, I sit down on the bed. Just then, I hear the door open, and Tobias walks down the hallway. He stops when he sees me, and I pull the comforter up over my body, even though I'm already covered by the towel. My cheeks burn.
"You… want me to go get your clothes?" he asks.
I nod. "Yes, please."
He leaves again, quickly returning with a stack of my clothes and a stack of Christina's clothes from the dormitory. I snatch a pair of black denim jeans, a black camisole, and my undergarments from my pile, then Tobias leaves the room to let me change.
I pull the tight jeans on carefully over my bruised thighs, and remember them being looser when I purchased them. My muscles have gotten quite a bit bigger since then. When I finish dressing, I knock on the bathroom door to let Christina know about the clothes Tobias brought for her, then meet Tobias in the living room.
He looks at me with a small smile, and I suddenly wish I had grabbed a t-shirt or sweater instead of the camisole, but I push the feeling away and sit next to him on the sofa.
"How did the meeting go?" I ask.
"Evelyn has apparently been going on some sort of rampage. The factionless are out of control, and a lot of them have already left the city," he says.
"A rampage? What do you mean?"
"She tried to shoot Harrison when he went back to collect more Dauntless from Erudite headquarters. He says she's lost her mind. She thinks you and I made that video up. 'Why else would the woman be named Prior?' she says." Tobias looks exasperated. Tired.
"She must be related to me," I say. "It's not exactly a common name."
Then I remember something my mother said to me during the simulation attack. "I was only safe because my mother was a Dauntless leader."
"My grandmother…" I say. "My mother's mother was a Dauntless leader. Maybe that's who Amanda Prior is." As soon as the words leave my mouth, though, I doubt that theory. My mother would have taken my father's name at their wedding, so this woman must actually be related to my father. My father, who grew up in Erudite.
"No," I say. "She was Erudite."
"Your grandmother?" Tobias asks, clearly confused.
"Yes, but my father's mother," I say. "He grew up in Erudite."
"Everything seems to come back to Erudite, doesn't it?" he says sighing.
"It makes sense, in a way. Caleb and I both have aptitude for Erudite. What are the chances of both of us having aptitude for the same faction if it's not in our blood?" I ask.
"Your faction isn't about blood," Tobias says. "It's about what you believe. What you feel." He touches the tip of his index finger to the ravens on my collarbone. "What your heart tells you."
His finger leaves fire in its wake, but my mind is too full of jumbled thoughts to fully enjoy it. I look up into his eyes, and instantly understand what he means. My heart tells me I couldn't be anything but Dauntless. Couldn't be anywhere but here. With him.
"I know," I say. "What else happened at the meeting? What is Dauntless's plan?"
"We decided that tonight, after dinner, we're going to tell everyone everything," he says. "We're going to give all of the Dauntless the choice to stay here or to go outside the fence. Being Dauntless is about being free, right?" he says, smiling at me. He knows that's the reason I chose Dauntless over Abnegation, and his reason is more or less the same.
"Right," I say.