Please review! Any suggestion, literally any suggestion or desire you may have, put them in your review! XX Ae.


TOBIAS


/10 YEARS AFTER/

It's always the same shit every single morning. The alarm goes off at 6:30 am and in a matter of second the sudden realization that it's been 10 years since I last shared my bed with a human being strikes me. Every single morning. Have I already said that I am not a morning person?
Kicking away the blankets, I get into the shower. The water streams down my body and I try not to think what day today is. I press my forehead to the wall. As if pushing my head against something hard would make any bad though go away. Surprisingly enough, it doesn't work and I'm left with a small bruise in the middle of my forehead. Who cares, it's not like I do care about my body since she died. I'll add this bruise to list of the things I could actually care about (at least a little) if she were still here. But she isn't, which makes this thought terribly and painfully useless.
A second alarm goes off. I was forced to set it when I realized that otherwise I would spend my entire day thinking about the past. This also means it's already 7 am and I'm already late for work. Hopefully, Johanna will pretend not to notice it, I guess she knows I'm not thinking straight on this day. At the same time, I'm pretty sure that getting to work late when you are running for Maire doesn't make a good impression on anyone, me included, so I force myself to speed up a bit. I end up eating cookies in the tube, with a little toddler staring at me the whole time.

When I get to my office, I'm suddenly aware that anyone is staring at me. I guess they just want to check if I'm all right. Which, by the way, I'm not and have never been for the last ten years, but I guess I pretended well enough if they seem worried about my mental condition only today. I decided to stop by Johanna's office, just to ask a few things about the campaign and make sure she won't look at me like a poor and helpless puppy for the rest of the day. She knows I don't like being looked at like that, so I hope she'll behave and hide any feeling she might have. And I am not wrong. As soon as I get into her office, she yells at me for being late and says that I need to set a model for the others if I want to have a chance. I smile at her and just nod. She's right, after all. Come on Tobias, pull yourself together. And I head to my office.


It's now 7 pm. Despite the effort I've put since this morning not to think about what I have to do tonight, I've been fairly unproductive at work. I stared into the space for at least 4 hours, replaying in my head the events which lead her to her death. I should have been by her side, not just leaving her there with her little brother. I knew it, I felt it in my guts that she wouldn't let Caleb take her place in the death room but I didn't say anything hoping I was wrong or biased by my feelings for her. Except that I was right. That's the problem. I felt it but I didn't say a thing and now I have to live with the consequences of my decision. I run my hand through my hair and sigh.
Ten minutes later, I'm walking on a pavement, near the Hancock Building with a bunch of flower in my left hand. I take a deep breath because I know that within ten minutes I'll be at the top of the building, scared to death. But I have to, anniversaries have to be celebrated, no matter how painful or frightening this can be. As I start walking up to the stairs- I'm not definitely going to have a ride on the elevator- I think about that baby Johanna told me was rescued from the Fringe by the compound this morning. Angel or something like that. Poor boy, he's going to spend his whole life locked up in that compound. Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do because according to the agreement, we stay out of the compound's way just like the compound stays out of ours. I have a feeling it is not really like that, on their behalf of course, because many Divergents living in Chicago have disappeared for the last ten years, which means that the compound is not really leaving us by ourselves. I've been trying to track whoever steals the Divergents down for the last two years, but up to now we basically know nothing about either how they get in or how they know that person they're rescuing is a Divergent. Leave alone who does this, you know, who actually gets into Chicago and steals them from us. There is no evidence or clue we can work on because they leave none behind them, nothing we can use to know more about it. The only exception is a small footage that shows a person in black- presumably a girl- that our security system does not recognize when you run the frame we got out of it in a program of facial recognition. The technician told us that even if we did have her in the system, the program would not recognize her because she is totally in the shadow. Any of us thought it was worth a shot, but we didn't really expect anything out it. We weren't disappointed. She was in the same place and almost at the same time a Divergent was rescued three months ago. The end.
I'm out of breath, but I'm almost at the top of the building. Definitely not ready for mourning her once again. She died ten years ago saving all of us. Me. She died so that I could live, so that anyone in Chicago could live. Apart from her. Sometimes I have this feeling she never really planned to get out of it alive and that she took Caleb's place because she had planned to do so in advance. Unfortunately, these are questions that will never be answered. Holding the bunch of flower in front of me, I slowly rise my chin so that I stare at the moon in the sky. It's then when I feel a tear rolling down my cheek and falling down all the way to the pavement. I've never let anyone see me in pain after her death and I let myself express freely only when I'm sure I'm totally alone, like today. The choice of the building, of course, is not casual. It's the one that reminds me of her the most, thus the perfect one for her tenth anniversary of death. I kneel down and let myself sob for what feels like an eternity, replaying in my memory any moment I got to spend with her. Once I'm done, I raise again and leave the bunch of flowers on a corner of the roof, sure that nobody will ever come up here.
I know Tris would love this place and I wished she were here with me to see the skyline of Chicago. Tris. My Tris. I couldn't protect you and you left me alone in this world. I daydream about our children and her smile in the morning, about our life together totally aware that there is no hope that any of this will become real because she's gone, lost to me forever. I can have her in my heart, though. This is why I have never let anyone else take her place in my life. I've been alone since she passed away and I don't want any of this to be different. Really.
The point is, I decided long ago that I will remain alone to respect her memory. Or, even if I don't want to admit it to myself because it could be too painful, I still hope that one day she will just walk in from the main door.