A/N: Hello my loves! I'm SO sorry this took so long to get up! I'm hoping that I'm back officially now and will be updating more frequently! If you've waited this long and still like my writing and love this chapter, just know that I adore you and thank you so much!

Tobias

When we cross the threshold, Jeanine is there waiting for us.

She stands in the middle of the room, calm and collected, looking us over with an almost cheery confidence.

She is singlehandedly tearing our world apart, but looking at her it's obvious this is just a typical day to her.

I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't this complete lack of concern for the chaos she's creating.

It's clear that she doesn't really expect us to be a threat.

A fiery desire to prove her wrong burns intensely inside of me.

The control room is filled with equipment, equipment that I know wasn't originally in Dauntless.

It's too fancy.

Too Erudite.

It must have been loaded in fairly recently.

There are screens lining the room displaying various angles of the Abnegation sector.

Now we know the reason Jeanine doesn't feel the need to be there.

Why place herself at the scene of the crime when she can see all of her dirty work play out from here?

Several Dauntless stand sentry in the room, waiting for a command.

I look to Tris for confirmation that she sees them, too, but she isn't looking at me.

Her gaze is focused on Jeanine; her fists are balled tightly at her sides, her breath coming out in sharp gasps.

All the hurt and anger emanates from her so strongly that it's almost tangible.

To Tris, Jeanine is the ultimate source of everything bad that has happened to her in the last couple of months.

Jeanine glances between the three of us briefly, her eyes quickly assessing each of us individually.

Then her face takes on an uncharacteristic flutter of a frown.

For a moment, she says nothing.

The room is still and silent, but there's something about the still air around us that tells me we are on the brink of chaos.

The silence lasts another moment before Jeanine's voice finally breaks through the eerie hush.

"Get rid of them."

All at once, the room bursts into chaos, as though it had been on pause and Jeanine had suddenly pressed play.

The Dauntless are puppets, and Jeanine is their puppet master.

One of the Dauntless rushes me and I collide with the wall.

A groan of pain leaves my lips as the sting of the concrete radiates through my entire spine.

He holds on to each of my arms, holding me in place, immune to my struggling.

I look past him for a moment, desperate to see how the others are faring.

I see both Andrew and Tris struggling with each of their own Dauntless soldiers, Andrew having more trouble than Tris.

I lean my head back and then bring it forward sharply, knocking foreheads with the Dauntless.

He's dazed enough to lose his grip on my arms and I take the opportunity to inflict my own Dauntless-learned skills.

I hit him once, directly in the nose, and he stumbles back, eyes watering profusely.

"Tobias!"

I look up quickly at the sound of Tris's frenzied voice.

She's on the ground, a Dauntless guard on top of her, his arm pressing hard against her throat.

I run the length of the room, crossing the distance between us in seconds.

I quickly wrap my arm around her guard's neck and pull him up hard.

Tris lets out a gasp, reaching for her throat as I push the guard away from her.

I slam my elbow into his chin, hard, before pushing him back against the wall and using my hand to slam his head into the concrete as forcefully as I can.

His head hits the target with a sickening thud and he slides to the floor, unconscious.

"Tobias!" Tris's voice reaches me again.

"My dad!"

I whip my head around quickly and see Andrew kneeling on the ground, looking up directly into the barrel of a Dauntless soldier's gun.

I realize with one glance that he's too far away to reach.

I'll never get there before the Dauntless pulls the trigger.

"Andrew!"

His name leaves my mouth in a garbled yell as I start to run.

Tris cannot lose two parents in one night.

She won't come back from that.

I can't let that happen, I can't—

"Wait...Stop!"

Jeanine's conflicted shout startles me and stops my rushing thoughts.

Everything comes to an abrupt halt.

The Dauntless aiming his gun at Andrew immediately lowers it, turning towards her for further instruction.

The Dauntless that had previously attacked me is still nursing an injured nose, but he turns to Jeanine for instruction as well.

I stop running. Why did she suddenly stop the Dauntless from killing Andrew?

Jeanine shakes her head while surveying the scene before her, trying to compose herself, then lets out a frustrated sigh.

"The Divergent rebels I expected," she starts, making her way towards Andrew.

"…but you, Andrew? I would've thought you'd know better."

Andrew slowly looks up at her.

"You're destroying my faction, Jeanine. I don't have a choice."

"Destroying? I think that depends on how you look at it. There has to be destruction for there to be rebirth. Abnegation will come out of this better than it was."

"Well, I guess that it really does depend on how you look at it." Andrew replies, shaking his head.

Jeanine's lips curl into a smile as she glances at the screens behind her.

"You don't see it now," she says with a nod of her head. "But all of this…" She turns her gaze back to us, her eyes falling on Tris.

"It's for the greater good."

"Whose greater good?" Tris scoffs.

Jeanine watches her for a moment, tilting her head.

"Beatrice Prior." She says slowly, making sure to pronounce every syllable of her name.

"Such foolish ideals of power and importance from such a little girl." She smiles again, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes.

Tris's hand twitches towards her gun.

"It's a shame really." She says with a sigh. "You could've done so well in Erudite."

"And what gives you that idea?" Tris asks through her teeth.

"Because you're so much like me."

The words are barely out of Jeanine's mouth before Tris is flying across the room towards her.

I don't even have time to shout her name before she reaches her, pointing her gun directly into Jeanine's face, her hand shaking slightly.

It's only a matter of seconds before the Dauntless soldiers realize what's happening and rush to Jeanine's aid, exactly as they are programmed to do.

The scene playing out before me is enough to make me panic: Tris pointing her gun at Jeanine while three guns point back at Tris.

It would be funny if I weren't so utterly terrified.

I don't think.

I just raise my gun in response, aiming at the guards who are aiming at Tris.

"Shut it down." Tris says, her voice shaking as much as her hand.

"Shut the program down, wipe it, and I'll let you walk out of here alive. This is your only choice."

Jeanine watches her for a moment, tilting her head.

"What makes you think you'll pull the trigger before they do?" She nods towards the soldiers.

Tris lifts her shoulders in a shrug.

"I don't, but if I know him the way I think I do, Tobias is standing just beyond them and the second anything happens to me you're a dead woman."

I can't deny that she's right.

Jeanine looks up at me for a moment and then lets out a small sigh.

"It's a beautiful thing to be ready to die for what you believe in, Beatrice. You and I are alike in that way, too."

A shudder runs through Tris's body at the comparison.

Then, she drops her gun.

It clatters to the floor, the sound bouncing off the walls in a dull echo.

For a moment, they just stare at each other, Tris's breath coming out in quick short gasps.

Then, as if a switch clicks on inside of her, Tris lunges forward, hands outstretched, reaching for Jeanine's neck.

I don't give the soldiers any time to react before I start shooting.

This is Tris's battle.

She chose this and all I can do now is try and protect her as well as I can.

I fire once, twice, a third time and the soldiers fall to the ground in sequence.

When my eyes finally find Tris again, she's across the room, locked in combat with Jeanine, who doesn't seem to be faring well against Tris's anger-fueled pummeling.

Andrew is on the other side of the room, pressed against the wall, one hand clutching his side.

I move towards him quickly, kneeling down beside him.

"Are you hurt?"

"Just a scratch." He says quietly.

My eyes move over him quickly, searching for his self-proclaimed "scratch."

That's when I see the blood seeping through his t-shirt and onto his hand.

"What happened?" I breathe.

Andrew shakes his head.

"I'm fine." He says quickly.

I give him a look that says I don't believe him, then try to get a better view of his injury.

"Really, Tobias." He insists.

"We need to focus on other things right now."

I lift my eyes to meet his and then nod slowly.

"You're right. We do."

"Do you think that you could shut down the program?" I question.

He glances at me, then over at the equipment for a moment, taking it all in.

He nods slowly.

"I could figure it out, but I'll need a moment."

We are quickly running out of moments, but I nod in agreement anyway.

"Tobias…" Andrew says my name slowly, his gaze on the other side of the room.

I lift my head and see Tris, standing over Jeanine, a gun in her hand.

I know she already dropped hers, so she must've picked up another one at some point during the struggle.

I've never seen Jeanine look so desperate before.

She looks up at Tris, a hopeless plea for her life fixed in her eyes.

"You'll never shut down the program without me. I designed it, it's flawless and it's impossible to—"

"I'm willing to bet we'll find a way. You're not the only Erudite in the room." Tris says through her teeth.

Jeanine is scrambling now, looking for something — anything — to use as leverage.

She locks eyes with me for a moment, shaking her head.

"I won't be the end. If you think I don't have a failsafe in Erudite, you're wrong. I already told you that I was willing to die for this. Do you really think I wouldn't have plans in motion for this exact reason?"

Tris shrugs her shoulders, holding the gun steady.

"No," she scoffs.

"I'm sure you have plenty of back-up plans. I'm just having trouble caring at the moment. I will shut this program down and I will continue to stop any plan you've put into place."

Jeanine lets out a soft little sigh.

"Why are you so determined to see evil and destruction where there is simply a need to rebuild? To start all over again?"

"Without Divergents. Right?"

"To create and maintain a perfect society there have to be sacrifices, Beatrice. You would understand that if you just—"

"You made me feel like I was nothing!"

Tris's voice echoes off the walls, reverberating back to us over and over again.

"…But that's not true, is it?"

Jeanine stares up at her, her breath coming out in short huffs.

"I think you knew that and you were terrified of it, because the truth of it all is…I am something. Isn't that right?"

She straightens her arms a little bit, tightening her grip on the gun.

"I'm Divergent. I make my own decisions, and when I pull this trigger, I want you to know exactly where it comes from."

She takes in a deep breath.

"It comes from me." She finishes.

I see her finger move to rest on the trigger, determination in her face.

"Tris, wait!"

The words tumble out of my mouth quickly.

She doesn't turn around to face me, but her finger hesitates over the trigger.

My stomach is in knots and my throat is so dry that I can hardly swallow.

Thoughts are racing through my brain at top speed and I can't quite make sense of any of them.

I just know one thing.

I can't let her do this.

Not again.

Suddenly, I am bombarded with flashing images of the look on her face when she was standing over Peter.

The desperate way her voice called out his name, the things she said to me when we were back in Abnegation…

"There's no coming back from this. I broke the ultimate rule. I'm different now…I'm dark and how…how could you love me like this?"

Killing Peter was self-defense.

But this? Killing Jeanine? That's revenge, and I can't her let do it.

I can't let her have this on her conscience on top of every other terrible thing that has happened tonight.

It will ruin her, and I know it with every fiber of my being.

"Tris, just wait!" I say again.

Her hand starts to shake, but she still doesn't turn to face me.

It's Jeanine who focuses her gaze towards me.

"Tobias…" Jeanine says, her voice taking on a strangely soft quality.

"You know what this is going to do to her…what it will do to both of you. Don't let this happen."

It takes me a moment to realize the reason for the shift in tone is desperation.

She's begging me for her life now, fearing that Tris has gone too far.

That she's in too deep.

For the first time, Jeanine and I fear the same thing, and she's right.

She's right.

I do know.

I do know what it will do to us.

I also know that one way or another, Jeanine Matthews has to die.

We've already committed so many sins tonight.

Can I let Tris commit one more for the greater good?

Slowly I make my way over to them, one hand reaching for the gun shaking in Tris's hand.

"Tris," I say softly.

"Give me the gun."

She shakes her head slowly.

"No." She says firmly.

"Tris…I can't let you do this. Not again."

Jeanine's eyes are moving quickly from me to Tris and back again.

"Please. Tris. Just give me the gun."

She looks at me out of the corner of her eye and shakes her head again.

"This has to end." She breathes. "W-w-we have to end her."

"I know." I say, nodding quickly. "I know that. But it's not going to be you that does it and it's not going to be right now. Do you understand me? Tris, give me the gun."

"I can't." she breathes.

I understand.

She has been terrified of Jeanine for years now, the same way that I have been without ever really knowing it.

She's lived her whole life terrified of being different and now she has a chance to end it all, for herself and for the others.

She wants to end it.

Only I can't let her.

I reach for my own gun, still in place at my side.

We both know Jeanine has to die tonight, but I refuse to let her continue to hurt Tris, even in her death.

It takes me only a moment to pull the gun out of its holster and into position, the barrel pointing at Jeanine's forehead.

Jeanine looks up at me for a moment, shock written all over her face.

Shock because I didn't talk Tris into a peaceful resolution, shock that my Abnegation roots won't prevent this.

I don't wait.

I pull the trigger.

The room is filled with the deafening crack of the bullet.

The light leaves her eyes so quickly it's almost as if it was never really there at all.

I drop the gun, the clattering sound it makes echoing in my brain even after the sound has ceased.

Tris looks up at me, eyes wide, her own gun still shaking in her hand.

"Hey…" I breathe, shaking my head a little bit.

"It's okay. It's over. It's okay." I reach out for her, my hands clasping her cold ones as I wriggle the gun from her grasp.

I pull her close, resting one hand on the back of her head as she presses her face into my chest.

"It's all going to be okay, Tris."

I blow out a breath.

"It's all going to be okay." I say again, probably more to convince myself than her.

After a moment, she pulls away, her eyes moving around the room.

"Dad…" She says softly.

I follow her gaze to see Andrew working with the equipment.

His hands move quickly, flying across various keyboards and screens like he's known this equipment his whole life.

It feels like hours, but it's only minutes later when Andrew looks up at us.

"It's done." He says.

I glance up at the screens now and watch as the Abnegation streets become an even more chaotic scene as the Dauntless wake up from their serum-induced state.

"Did you wipe the program?" I question.

Andrew nods slowly.

"It's gone."

For a moment we stand there in silence, the three of us contemplating the pivotal events of the last few hours.

After what feels like an eternity, I finally break the silence.

"We've got to go." I say, my voice hoarse.

"We've got to move. I believe what Jeanine said about having plans in place. There's no way she'd go to all this trouble just to let it all be ruined by her death. She's smarter than that."

Andrew nods.

"I agree with you. We'll go to Amity as planned. Marcus will lead the rest of the Abnegation there in due time."

I nod for a moment, my eyes on the floor.

How did we ever end up here?

"Dad!"

I look up quickly at the sound of Tris's agonized scream.

Andrew is on the ground now, clutching at the same wound in his side from earlier.

Tris rushes to his side, just barely managing to hold him up.

She looks up at me, distress and horror evident on her face.

"We've got to get him help. We've got to get him to a medic…" She's panicking now, and I can see the fear in her eyes.

Her words trigger the faint memory of a gun going off in the hallway.

Shauna.

Zeke.

They all need a medic.

"Okay…I know." I breathe, nodding as if I have a plan.

"Just…let me think for a minute."

I close my eyes, willing a plan to formulate in my mind, but I come up completely blank.

When I open my eyes again, I see a mass of black flooding into the room.

It takes me a long moment to register that they are members of Dauntless.

It's not a large group, maybe a four or five people, but I only recognize one.

"Uriah!"

"Tobias?" He says my name, obviously bewildered.

I nod quickly.

"Yes."

For the moment, I don't care where they came from or why. The only thing I care about is getting Andrew, Shauna and Zeke medical attention, and getting it fast.

"Uriah, do you trust me?"

"I…"

"I know you must be a million different kinds of confused right now, but I need your help and I need you to trust me. Can you do that?"

He glances from me to Tris, and then nods slowly.

"We need to get to Amity. All of us."

"Amity? Now? Why?"

"You just have to trust me," I insist. "Please? Your brother's life could depend on it."

He nods quickly.

"Okay. Yeah. What do you need?"

"I need you to help Tris get Andrew to the train." I glance at the three Dauntless standing behind him.

"And maybe your friends can help me with Shauna and Zeke."

"Yes, of course." He says quickly crossing the room to get to Tris.

I lead the other three Dauntless members out into the hallway, sending two of them for Shauna, leaving one of them to help me with Zeke.

I don't know how long it takes, having lost all sense of time, but at some point we reach the train tracks and it feels like a miracle.

We board the train together, a strange group of scared individuals.

I stay pressed against the wall, my eyes not leaving the unconscious Zeke.

I have never wished for him to be here and making light of the situation more than I do right now.

At the other end of the train is Tris, talking in low whispers to her father, trying to keep him awake and engaged.

"Are you ever going to tell me what happened?"

I look up and find myself watching Uriah, but his gaze is focused on his unconscious brother.

I let out a small sigh.

"Yes. But I don't think I could relive it just yet."

Uriah nods slowly.

"What's in Amity?"

I shrug a little.

"Safety, for the time being. Medical attention. A place to stay until…"

"Until what?"

I let out another sigh, shaking my head slowly.

"One step at a time. Okay, Uriah?"

He doesn't respond, but somehow I know he understands.

Our world is broken now.

I used to think it was strange not knowing who I was or where I fit in. Now, I suppose, that's going to be how everyone feels.

At least everyone from Dauntless and Abnegation.

A new world is on the horizon; I can feel it bubbling just underneath the surface, mysterious and a little foreboding.

I have no control over any of the broken pieces.

Tris looks up at me from across the train, and for a fleeting moment our eyes lock.

Looking at her, I know that I must find a way to put all these broken pieces back together.

For her.

For us.

I am no longer Abnegation, factionless, or even Dauntless.

Right now, I am just Tobias and she is just Tris, and together we have to make this work.

Somehow.

We have to make this work.

I turn my head to the window and watch as the cityscape gives way to the telltale signs of the Amity fields, where we will take our first steps towards whatever our future holds.

Together. Always.