A/N Sorry for the long time with no update. I was focusing on my other story, Dauntless Romance, which you should go check out if you like this story. It has fifty something chapters, so if you want something to hold you over to the next update, that would be a good choice :) I also have four The Fault In Our Stars fanfics, if you've read that book. The song is Touch by Daughter for the part from Tris's POV, but the Tobias's POV is Still by Daughter.


Tris's POV

There are twenty of us, but the only sound is our feet against the rock bottom of the tunnel that leads to the Pit. It is the very same tunnel that almost all of us walked through on our first day of initiation, the day that we chose to be Dauntless. We are almost all former Dauntless, all dressed in black, but not for the sake of Dauntless. This is different. Tobias grips my hand, a look of pain etched across his face, one that matches everyone else's.

This is Uriah's funeral.

Zeke leads the group, his shoulders hunched in pain. He pauses before we enter the Pit, his body tiny compared to the tremendous cavern behind him. He takes a deep breath and turns to face us. He smiles painfully.

"I don't think that any of us ever could truly call ourselves Dauntless. We wore black, we pretended to be brave, we made stupid choices and called it dauntless, but none of us were truly Dauntless in all that it was meant to be. Uriah was." Zeke says. His voice falters over Uriah's name, a choked and painful sound coming out of his throat. "That isn't to say he was perfect, or he always made the right choices, or that he didn't have fears. It is only to say that Uriah was brave in the proper way. He was an amazing person. He was all that I want to be. He was my brother, and I love him." Zeke finishes, each word clearly a struggle for him to say.

I clench my jaw as he speaks, a constricted feeling wrapping around my chest, tightening every time a different memory of Uriah finds it's way into my mind. Tobias's hand squeezes mine tightly, but I barely feel it. I can hear Christina softly crying beside me, little shutters raking through her body.

Zeke turns back around and walks into the poorly lit Pit. The glass ceiling doesn't provide it's usual light, thick grey clouds blocking any sunlight from reaching the the Pit.

We all follow him to the very center of the Pit, where a huge pyramid of wood has been stacked up on the cold floor. We form a oblong circle around the pyramid, about twenty feet away. I take in a sharp breath as Uriah's mother, who stands diagonal from me in the circle, begins to sob. Her cries echo through the Pit, bouncing off the walls and trapping us in her prison of pain.

Zeke steps forward, his face twisted in pain, and drops a lit match onto the wood. It catches almost instantly, igniting a blaze that warms me from this far back. "This fire represents Uriah. It will burn out, but while it burns, it is greater than all of us will ever be." Zeke calls out, his voice more powerful when he yells than it was before.

Everyone's eyes fixate on the fire, hypnotized by the flames, but I don't think anyone is truly seeing the fire. Instead they are remembering Uriah. We are all together in this room, but at the same time we are alone in our own world of pain.

I remember the train ride back to the Dauntless compound after capture the flag. It was the first time I had tasted what being Dauntless might be like. The loud laughter and bold actions of the night, finished off surrounded by friends, tired but utterly content. Uriah was the one who gave me that taste. He had squirted the paintball at me, and I had smeared some of it across his face. He had accidentally sprayed his mouth with the paint. I didn't know what all that those simple actions would lead to, but I wish that I had. Maybe I would have appreciated it more.

A single word slips out of my mouth and into the silence. "Thank you." You could use a thousand words to describe a person, but in the end none of it will matter. When they're gone all they leave is a trail of memories and emotions. When they're gone all you can do is thank them for all that they gave you.

Zeke looks at me from across the fire, his face breaking, his strength disappearing. He repeats me, louder. "Thank you."

Quietly, solemnly and only once, the rest of the circle quietly says thank you. Not an echo, because it isn't all at once, but everyone says it.

And as quickly as it began, it's over. People begin to turn and walk towards the stairs to the glass building above, leaving to catch the train. It wasn't a traditional funeral at all, but I feel that Uriah would have liked it. He always loved the Pit.

As they walk away, I keep my eyes focused on the flames. They're a good representation of Uriah. As they dance before my eyes, the thought I've been trying to push away slips into my mind. It's a simple fact that everyone seems to ignore; Uriah fought bravely for what he believed in his entire life, but after willingly entering numerous dangerous situations in the name of what he believed, he died for something so stupid.

He died because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. An entire life of being Dauntless, of being devoted and prepared for the one moment he would show how brave he could truly be, and yet when the end of all the struggle was just around the corner, salvation so near that you could taste it on your tongue, he died.

It makes me angry, and my chest constricts like suddenly there isn't enough air in the world. It makes me shudder, taking hold of me and making it difficult to breath. I break my eyes away from the fire, afraid of what might happen if I watch it for any longer.

I expect to see Tobias beside me in the empty Pit, but he isn't. I don't know where he went. I didn't even see him beside me during the service; I wasn't paying attention. I twist in a circle, but I don't see him at all. I suppose he got caught up in the crowd as it left, and he must already be on the train on his way home.

I should probably leave too before it gets dark, but I can't bring myself to leave the fire alone, to leave what is supposed to represent Uriah alone in this empty shell, a product of a lost world.

Instead, I sit down a distance from the fire and watch it. I'll stay here until it burns out in the morning. I won't leave it alone.

I'll be here for this part of Uriah, a part of him for all the pain and emotions surrounding it, until the last flame has died out on the bed of ash.


Tobias's POV

"Thank you." I hear a small voice whisper right beside me. The two words catch like fire, thanking Uriah for all that he gave.

Guilt crushes down on me, suffocating me in a blanket of hatred. They shouldn't have to thank him; he should still be alive. There is a fire twenty feet away from me, but I'm still drowning in hatred for myself.

I killed him. And here I stand, alive, as all who love him mourn, unable to do anything to fix my actions.

I twist around and turn my back to the pain and hurt, walking to the first hallway I see. I don't think anyone sees me. I can't stay there any longer; I have no right to be there. I could have prevented this. I can't mourn at the result of my own actions. I can't stand there and pretend that all of this isn't my fault.

I stumble through the walkway until I reach the end where I sink to the ground and rest my head against the rock. The guilt and pain fills me like rain in a cup, filling until it overflows. I begin to shudder, my fists shaking in agony.

I open my mouth and scream, trying anything to push this feeling out of my body. It doesn't work. I scream, and cold tears begin to pour down my cheeks. My scream echoes through the hallway long past the time my mouth closes, and I slam my head back against the rock.

I killed him.

And I can't do anything about it.

I pull my knees to my chest and rest my head against them, channeling all that I can in an attempt to forget what I did to Uriah. I know that forgetting is wrong, and disrespectful, and weak, but if I don't, I don't know what I'll do. I've already broken. I don't know what else I have left to do, any other choice. I am too weak to remember any longer.

I try to unmake the world, to make everything inside of me black and silent and uninhabited. I try to return to a time before I ever met Uriah, to a time when my mind was nothing more than blank, to live in the vacuous uncreated space before I ever opened my eyes.

It is the sound of footsteps that prevent me from my impossible task.

I open my eyes and lift my head, turning to the left where Zeke walks towards me. His eyes are cold, clearly still holding the pain they did earlier, but now there's a lot more hate as well. He glares at me as he reaches me, his entire body tense. He stares down at me, his lips turned into a disgusted frown. "You." He spits out.

"Zeke-" I begin, not knowing what I'm going to say other than that I'm sorry, which has never, and will never be enough.

"Shut up!" Zeke yells, his voice echoing down the abandoned hallway. "You, you despicable human." He snarls. "You killed my brother, and you don't even have the decency to stay through his funeral." He says, his voice colder than I've ever heard it.

"I know." I shake my head rapidly back and forth, tears beginning to push their ways out of the corner of my eyes.

"NO!" Zeke roars. I shudder. "You don't know! If you knew, you would have stayed!"

"What can I do to fix this?" I ask weekly, knowing that there will never be an answer.

"What can you do?" Zeke hisses incredulously. "What can you do? I don't know! Can you bring my brother back from the dead?" Zeke yells, taking a step closer to me. "Can you do that?" He shouts, slamming his foot into my side. His face contorts in anger and pain, and he continues to yell, but there are tears pouring down his face. "Can you bring him back?" He screams, kicking me again with no force held back.

I let out a choked sound as his foot hits me, no matter how hard I try to hold it back.

"Did that hurt?" Zeke snarls, kicking my again. "Did it hurt like when you killed my brother? Did it?" He screams, kicking me over and over and over.

I don't try to stop him. I deserve it. I deserve to be kicked and punched and hurt until my outside is as broken as my inside.

"Is there anything you can do?" He continues to scream, kicking me again. "No! There isn't! There never will be!"

He twists around and begins to walk away, his sobs echoing around the hallway and filling my ears, reminding me over and over of all that I have done. He stops just before the corner and turns to face me again. "I hate you." He says. "I hate you. There will come a day when I don't hate you, there will come a day when we can hang out again. There will come a day when you think to yourself, 'he's forgiven me.'" Zeke says through his harrowing sobs. "But just know, I will never forgive you." He yells, his face red with anger and hurt. "You're too good of a person for me to always hate, but nobody is good enough to be forgiven for killing someone. Not even you. I will never forgive you. Never."

Zeke disappears around the corner, but his sobs still reverberate through my head. I cannot escape them.

Pain radiates from my side, but the physical pain isn't anything compared to the feeling overflowing inside of me. I go back to my position from before, my head resting against my knees, but this time I force myself to do the opposite of before, my own punishment.

I force myself to remember everything about Uriah. Meeting him. Initiation. The way he fought. The way he looked at Marlene. His laugh, loud and clear even in the darkest times. I force myself to relive all of it.

I force myself to remember every reason I have to mourn, every reason I have to never forgive myself. Each memory is more painful than the last.

I hate myself.

I hate myself.

I hate myself.

It suffocates me.

It burns.