Disclaimer: Disclaimed. SOTD: Icon For Hire/Iodine.

Chapter 4

Fingers smooth my hairline; when she talks, cool breath dusts my cheek. "Tobias. . . . I didn't mean to frighten you. . . . Please wake up."

"Mmmmm," I expell, refusing to open my eyes.

"Tobias . . . look at me." I don't move, but her thumb wiped away a tear. "Tobias, I know you're awake. Please look at me." When I don't respond, she shifts closer to my tense frame, and whisperss into my ear. "Please."

My eyes open, but I unfocus them and stare at the ceiling. I can't look at her, I can't, 'cause then she'll be real, and then I'll really be crazy.

"Tobias? What's wrong?"

"You're dead," I ground out through my teeth. "You're not real."

"Toby . . . I am real."

"I was at your funeral, Tris-" I winced at her name, and the rest of my sentence came out clipped, neutral. "-I punched your brother in the face."

"Yeah, that was kinda funny." She said, and her face interrupts my vision. "And I am dead-"

"Then how are you here?!" My voice was sharp, urgent. A single tear fell one eye before she burried her face in my neck.

"I'm your ghost, Toby."

My neck felt wet. She was crying. My hand went up and cupped her back.

"I forgive you," I whisper to her, and she gasps. "Even if you are just a dream."

I guess she dismisses that last comment, because she sits up and presses her lips to mine. My other hand goes to her neck, and she makes a noise, a don't stop, her hands tangling in my too-long hair.

I press my hand firmer into her back, and roll, so she's underneath me; she gasps against my mouth. She tastes like salt.

One of her hands moves to my neck, pushing me closer, and when my hands lower to the last button on her shirt, she gasps and then disappears.

Did I just wake up?

She wasn't real. I'd resigned that no, she wasn't real, but it still felt like electroshock on my brain, the realization.

She isn't real. She isn't real. She isn't real.

No Tris.

I lean back on my bed, placing my hands over my eyes. She isn't real. She was never real.

I sigh, and my head pulses. Breathe, Tobias.

"Sorry!" Exclaims a voice, and I sit up straight, peering in the corners. "Sorry, sorry, sorry!"

"Tris?" I throw my legs over the side of the bed, looking in her direction.

"I am so sorry, Tobias, I swear, I didn't mean to Wisp out like that!" She steps into my view, smiling a sheepish smile. She walks over and wraps her hands around the back of my neck, sitting on my lap and crossing her legs over my back.

"Wisp?" I ask.

"Um, yeah. Wisp. It's like . . . teleporting. Between Death and Life. Like, places, I'm really dead."

"Oh." I whisper, and she looks up at me.

"What?"

"Nothing." I say, and a smile fights its way onto my face. "Nothing."

Her eyebrows come together, but my head dips and our lips press together. "Hey, Tris." I say against her mouth, and for once, it doesn't feel like my heart squeezes when I say her name. "You're alive," I say. "You're alive."

"No." She disagrees. "No, Tobias—I'm haunting you."

My eyes open and gaze into hers, and I pull back a bit. "Always." I promise.

She nods.

"Always."