Well, as promised, here's the next chapter. It's a bit of an anticlimactic dialogue thing, but I hope you enjoy it. I needed to write something easy after that last chapter. Thanks a bunch to entrada for reviewing!

-A.l.y.

Breaking The Habit

Chapter Twenty-One: Crash

Eric

The dream starts the same. I'm wearing test-subject white in an isolation tank, this time with an IV feeding Instigate in my arm. It runs through my veins in place of blood, makes my heart beat out a painfully irregular rhythm. My mother is absent, though: Christian stands next to me, hair and clothes dripping wet. In her hand she clutches a broken section of railing from the chasm. Her hand is bloody where it closes around the jagged metal. Tears, somehow discernible from the water, stream down her face, and she repeats "Why did you forget? Why didn't you come back for me?" until I'm going to die...

The lights flick on and I snap awake, breathing heavy, my heart pounding in my chest. The girl I was with last night (what was her name? Dammit, Eric, I don't know, one of those common Dauntless names, and stop fucking talking to yourself) seems to have left, but Asher perches on the dresser across the room, fingering the chain that controls the lights and twirling the spare key I gave her in her other hand.

"Oh, good, you're awake," she says, standing up. She looks far more alert than I do, though no doubt she was up to the same things last night after we parted ways. "Your little sex toy left about an hour ago. Boy, was she mad to find me sitting here. I'm surprised it didn't wake you up. You okay? You don't look so good."

"I'm fine," I say, but when I sit up the room starts to spin around me. I barely make it to the bathroom before the contents of my stomach make a sudden reappearance, followed by a round of dry heaving that's almost worse. Asher follows and dutifully holds my hair back, and for a moment I feel like my old self again, my initiate self, in the worst way possible.

"She had something on her," Asher explains. "I don't know what it was, but you shot it up with no hesitation because you're a fucking idiot. You drank, too, and took a lot of pills. Whatever it was, it didn't mix well with Instigate. You've been tossing and turning all night."

"Great." I replace my sixth and final lip ring, having taken care to clean each of them. "Wait, were you there the whole time?"

"Yeah. Sort of. I was going to go back to my room, but David was waiting to ambush me." She returns to her perch on the dresser, exhaling in a sigh. "He wants us all to exclude you. Thinks that maybe if you're alone you'll start to rethink your life. I think it's bullshit. If we just leave you alone with no support you'll only get worse. Why on earth did we have to be friends with someone who has morals?"

"Did he really say that?"

"Not in those words, but the sentiment was there."

"So you stayed here all night?"

"There wasn't much of a choice."

"You could've gone to Ivoree's."

"But she'd take his side. You've seen the way she looks at him. Trust me, I did not want to be here. I saw things last night that I'll never be able to unsee."

"You never had any problem seeing them before."

"That's a completely different situation. It doesn't count."

There's something off about her, but I'm so hungover and exhausted I can't figure out what it is. She looks normal—bleached blond hair parted semi-neatly down the center, eyes rimmed in dark kohl, dressed in one of her skimpy black outfits. She's being a sarcastic bitch as usual. But I know her too well to buy that nothing's wrong.

"What's up?" I stumble over to the dresser—no small feat for someone on the beginnings of an Instigate headache—and loop my arms around her.

"Nothing's up." She tries to squirm away, but I am insistent.

"Don't lie to me, Ash. I don't like it when you lie."

She bites her lip nervously. "You'll get mad at me if I tell you."

"No, I won't. Promise."

I can tell she doesn't believe me, and she's right not to. I may never truly get mad at her, but the wrong words now, when my physical state is so fragile, could easily set me off. "Fine. You keep saying all this shit about how you need to find yourself again."

"Yeah..."

"Well, I think you already did. You just refuse to admit it."

I'm stunned. I can't even pretend to not know what she's talking about, though I'll sure as hell try. The addiction-fueled part of my brain whispers that maybe she's just trying to piss me off. She's done it before. The semi-rational part, however, knows she's serious.

"What do you mean?" I ask, trying to control my voice.

"You're mad."

"I won't be if you explain yourself."

"Well, think about it. I haven't seen you this close to happy in years, especially after what happened during initiation—"

"Wow. Thanks for reminding me."

"Dammit, Eric, would you let me finish? Okay. So you're sort of happy now. I'm not sure how much of that has to do with drugs and how much has to do with you-know-who. But you shouldn't be trying to change it."

"Okay. Now I'm mad."

"I knew it!"

"But I understand what you're saying."

She freezes. I know she didn't expect that. But my bellicose nature is slowly slipping away, replaced with true exhaustion. I know how pointless it is to fight with her. My energy could be better used for other things.

"Well. Thank you for listening."

"No problem."

We've run out of words, so for the next hour or so we just stay there in total silence, arms around each other, and think of how things used to be.