Chapter 21: Moment

I sit on the floor, talking to Zeke as he cleans the gears in Shauna's chair. She's on the floor next to him, handing him parts as he asks, volunteering her opinion in the middle of our conversation without an invitation.

It's a Sunday morning. I don't know why I'm aware of the day of the week. I haven't cared to know the names of days or months, or even years for a very long time. I just know today is Sunday. The one morning of the week that the Dhampirs rest.

"Caleb any closer to figuring out your brain?" he asks, handing a tool to Shauna.

I shake my head. "I don't know. I haven't been by to see him lately."

"What about Dimitri?" He tightens a screw near the base of the seat. "Anyone even seen that scowling bastard in the past week?"

Shauna and I both tell him no. I search the walls of Zeke's apartment for the familiar words and realize he's hung a painting over them.

"You don't fear God alone?" I tease.

He snorts, fiddling with a spring for the right wheel. "I fear God in the hands of crowds much more than I do alone. Alone I think he would join me for a beer and we'd hit it off."

"Only you would take God to a bar," Shauna says with a laugh.

I smile. It's a tight pull of my lips, but the emotion behind it is easy. "Zeke would probably take God on the tour of all his favorite sins and high five him as they committed each together."

Zeke throws his head back and laughs. "I do believe you're right. And I'd expect you to come with us."

Like I'd have a choice.

I watch them work together, allowing myself to feel the ache in my chest. What would life be like now if Tris and I had had time to become a team? I never understood her mind. I understood how she thought, but I always running to catch up to figure out what she was thinking. Shauna anticipates Zeke's needs, placing the right ratchet in his hand before he even asks. Would Tris and I have become like that? Or would she have remained a mystery I spent every day unraveling.

One sharp knock on his door announces Christina's arrival. She drops on to the ground beside me, legs kicked out and palms against the floor behind her.

"What, no blood boy trailing behind you today?" Zeke teases.

My shoulders tense at the mention of Adrian following her. It's been a few days since my odd dream in the garden with the less than human guest, but I can still remember it in vivid detail. He wanted to know about Christina. Oddly enough that didn't seem strange to me at all. My subconscious has been inventing boyfriends for her ever since I started the sims.

However, once I woke up I couldn't endorse the choice of male my mind had chosen this time.

I know the only reason Adrian invaded my subconscious was because I was preoccupied with keeping an eye on him. I figure it's purely coincidental that he has developed a fixation on Christina.

Christina makes a noise that sounds like she smashing glass in her chest. "He actually tried to run with me yesterday. Run. Him."

Zeke and Shauna find that amusing.

I find it disturbing. "Doesn't he have anything else he can be doing?"

"Not according to Guardian Tanner," Zeke says, putting the last screw in place. I raise a brow in question and realization dawns on his face with a nod. "Right, you've been busy training with all the other lackeys. Adrian is supposed to get out of his apartment and get fresh air every few hours."

"Why? If he's willing to stay locked up for his stay here, let him."

"He's not willing to stay locked up," Shauna says. Zeke lifts her off the ground and places her in her chair. "He keeps trying to sneak up top."

Again I see no reason to stop him, but this time I keep the opinion to myself.

Zeke sits on his bed, wiping the gear grease from his hands with a rag. "I'm still trying to figure out how he got down here in the first place."

"Me," Christina says.

She doesn't say it softly with guilt. It's matter of fact, clear, and confident. Her eyes narrowing in on mine, daring me to challenge her.

"He bit you," I say as if she wasn't there.

A heavy breath leaves her lungs and she shifts so her legs closer to her body. It's only then that I realize I haven't found time to stop and talk to my friend since that day. I made sure she was okay, but my focus has turned to training with the Guardians.

"He's the whole reason I went back out that day," she says, answering all the silent questions floating in the space around our heads. "When we grabbed the boxes from the first truck, I heard something in one of the big crates in the warehouse. It was a moaning…like when an animal has been left for dead and it's about to take its last breath. It distracted me all the way back to the Pit. I had to see what was in it. So I went back, popped it open, and found him."

We've all stopped moving. I think I've stopped breathing.

"He was weak. I had to help him stand. All I could see was the rest of us in his place. It wasn't until after I got him out that I saw the fangs."

"Why didn't you kill him?" I know how angry my voice is and I'm not sorry for it. I've altered the chemistry of my mind to fight these creatures. I understand her compassion to help him out of the box, but once she saw what he was—

"You weren't there," she says. "You don't know."

"He's got a point," Zeke says, leaning forward on to his knees. "How did you know he wouldn't…well do exactly what he did."

Christina's muscles are taut and she draws in steady breaths through her nose.

"Why?" I say, pushing her fear, prompting something that can help me understand. "Why—?"

The emotions within her explode. "Because he was tortured." She jumps to her feet, pacing back and forth like a caged tiger. "You didn't see it. None of you saw it. I found him a shirt and none of you could see it. But he was covered in gashes and blood. He was bent in an odd angle, too big for the box. He was shaking, terrified when I reached in." She stops, pointing a finger at me. "Don't you dare tell me I did the wrong thing. I don't care if he has fangs, wings, or if he sprouts a tail. Nothing deserves to be treated like that."

My teeth sink into the inside of my cheek. Everyone in this room knows how my father treated me. If anyone of us were to show compassion for being tortured like that, it should be me.

But I find no guilt in my heart as I put myself in her shoes. I would have gone back. I would have looked inside the box. I would have helped him out.

And the second I saw his fangs I would have snapped his neck and left him for dead.

My eyes meet hers and I know she sees the truth of my thoughts.

She doesn't look away as she finishes her story. "He was terrified to go into the Pit. He said he'd been trapped underground for too long and he wouldn't do it again. I promised him that I would take care of him. That he was safe. He was so weak by the time we got to the storage room that he lost it."

It's an amazing thing to see someone change. A teacher once told me nothing changes. That we grow, but we're always ourselves. Maybe some root of us remains. I'll always be cruel at heart, even though at one time my heart felt love. But I know people change. Just like paint chipping away from walls, or mountains slowly washing into the ocean, people think different thoughts, see new perspectives, and all at once wake up to be a stranger.

The mouthy Candor who knew every truth in front of her six years ago is gone. The mouthy Dauntless who secured a spot next to Tris is no more. This is a different person. Christina has compassion that would rival any Amity.

It makes me sick to my stomach.

"I have no love for the guy," she says. "Any sort of friendship we might have had ended when he bit me, but… I couldn't just leave him there to die."

I have a thousand words I want to throw at her but I swallow them back down.

Everyone seems to eat their words after that. The apartment swells with silence until Zeke finally releases a sigh. "I think it's about time for their services to be over."

It strikes me as ironic that we Dauntless sit in a room with words on the wall that reminds us to be pious and yet the only people in the Pit who observe church services are the ones with partial vampire blood.

He and Shauna leave first. I stand, waiting for Christina to walk out. She's holding the door open, looking back at me.

"He's stayed true to his word," she says. "He's only drank from whoever Eddie brings to him and from what I gather he has to practically be forced to do that."

I don't care. My eyes, the tension in my shoulders, everything but my lips tell her, I don't care how nice he's being now. I know he has the potential to be a monster.

She watches me as all the fight drains from her face. When she leaves I feel a sudden sorrow fall over the room.

If Tris were here, she'd tell me what I was missing. I honestly don't know. I only want to keep my friends safe. I only want to keep the monsters away. After a lifetime of torture, I can't help but be cruel in how I strive for that goal.

Why can't she understand that?

Why is it so wrong?

He bit her and she forgave him. I say I'd kill a monster and she's disappointed in me.

Why?