A/N: Because my OCD won't let me leave either story incomplete, as promised, here is the bonus chapter :) If you haven't read Memoirs, please do enjoy this chapter (although you'd appreciate it a lot more if you did). If you have read Memoirs, please feel free to read this chapter again ;)


50. Awakening

RAE

Imagine waking up in a strange place and not knowing where you are, or who you are, recognizing nothing but the sound of a familiar voice calling you home. Imagine being scared and then coming to from what felt like an ordinary night of sleep and crazy dreams only to be told that you've been here and yet not here for six weeks.

I wake up in a world that's completely different from the one I left behind. It must be different. It has to be different. Because I'm lying in the Dauntless infirmary with Erudite doctors asking me questions, a factionless nurse checking my vital signs, Abigail dressed in her Amity red and yellow, and my beloved dressed in no particular faction colour.

"I don't know," I say to their questions, and I almost don't recognize the sound of my own voice. It's raspier than usual. "Last thing I remember we were walking in a pack towards Erudite. Everything from there is just blank."

"That's ok," the female doctor who had earlier identified herself as Dr. Jimenez says to me. "It might take a while for certain things to come back. Although, the events just prior to the accident may never come back at all."

"You don't really want to remember that anyways," my baby sister says to me with a grin as she holds me in her arms; she's lying in the bed with me. Maybe she's right. I suppose I can appreciate the innocent calm that comes along with not remembering the ghastly moments that took place just before I almost died, although the gaps in my memory do frustrate me.

"How do you feel, Rae?" Caleb then asks me.

I feel like a truck ran over me.

"I feel fine," I say.

"We'll have to monitor you for at least another two weeks just to be on the lookout for any complications," Dr. Jimenez says. "But after everything's checked out you'll be free to go home, although you'll have to check in for physical therapy and rehabilitation five days a week. You'll find that tasks that were once simple have now become difficult. Your body will take some time to return to its prior state and it will require a lot of effort and patience on your part. How quickly and how much you recover depends on you, but based on your primary evaluation you're looking at at least four to five months of rehab."

"I give her a week," Alex mutters with a smirk. It makes me grin and so does Dr. Jimenez.

"You'll be needing round the clock care for a while," she continues. "Just until you've built back up your strength, and that includes being pushed around in a wheelchair until you get your walking legs back."

Walk? I can barely lift my own arm. Or speak. Or breathe.

"We all know how much you'll hate that," Four says to me, smiling. "But you don't have a choice."

"I draw the line at wiping my ass," I say groggily. "I'll be doing that myself."

"Actually, I'd like to be the one doing that," Jake says sultrily, and the sound of his voice makes my heart race. I blush on impulse. Everyone else looks at him wide-eyed after his lewd comment, but he's looking at me. Hiding a grin, he clears his throat and says, "What I mean is, I'd like to be the one responsible for her care. If that's ok with everybody else, of course."

But everybody else seems to mean just Four, because he's the one everybody else looks at for an answer. I'd laugh out loud if I had the strength to.

Before he answers, Four, my dad, looks at me as if looking for an answer from me, and I feel the colour rush into my cheeks. There's nothing I'd want more.

I nod.

"Ok," he says to Jake, and beside him Tris smiles knowingly.

"He hasn't left since you've been in here," Anna then whispers in my ear. I look up at Jake again and there's an indescribable look in his eyes. Something between wonder and gladness and longing. Something far greater than love if there even is such a thing. But it's powerful and it calls me to him. My eyes refuse to break away and it feels as though I'm floating toward him, though I'm not moving at all.

"I also approve," Alex then says from somewhere in the room.

"Nobody asked you," Abigail replies cheekily.

"Hey!" Alex then wails. "You're supposed to be on my side."

Everyone laughs, but I only know this because I hear them somewhere deep in my subconscious. I'm still looking at Jake, completely mesmerized, desperate to eliminate even the air between us.

"Let's leave these two alone," Tris says, glancing between Jake and me. I blush, embarrassed. Is it really that obvious?

"But I don't wanna go," Anna whines beside me. She's laughing but there are tears in her eyes. I wipe them away gently, heartbroken as I begin to imagine all that they must have been feeling for the past weeks. It would have driven me to hell and back, the thought of losing any of them.

"I'm not going anywhere, baby sister," I say to her. "I promise."

She smiles and hugs me softly. "I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you," she says to me over and over again before she finally decides to get out of the bed. And then I'm showered with tender hugs and soft kisses from everybody else before they all reluctantly walk out, glancing back with every step and smiling teary eyed at me.

It summons my own tears. I find myself thinking how incredible it feels to be loved, and greater still to be loved by this many people.

Slowly he closes the door and then Jake climbs into the bed with me, and I press myself against him trying harder and harder with each difficult breath to get closer, like I would crawl beneath it and cover myself with his skin if I could. He wraps his arm around me, but his hold on me is gentler than usual. I'm sure he could break me in half if he wanted to. I feel frail and weak, but safe as I look into those warm green eyes that remind me of cool spring days. I've missed those eyes.

"So I got shot?" I ask him, playfully frowning.

He nods. "Look on the bright side. You got shot in the best place there is to get shot in."

"My Aorta?" I ask, petrified.

He laughs. "Erudite headquarters," he says. "If you had gotten shot in Dauntless they probably would have tried to patch you up with gauze and tape like they did me."

Jake smiles sweetly, but I see his thoughts pierce through his eyes. Behind the carefree words lies the grave thought that I was lucky to have the city's greatest minds in charge of my care or I may not have survived. It makes me feel a strange sort of gratefulness. But I guess one can come to appreciate the bad things after having considered the detrimental.

Curious, I pull away the thin hospital gown and I trace my finger along the already healed scar on my abdomen. It proves to not be the strangest thing about my body. I'm noticeably thinner.

"I'm all skin and bone," I say softly, mostly to myself.

"Don't worry about that," Jake says, lifting my head. "I'll have you fattened up in no time."

I grin at his uncanny ability to put me at ease. "That should be easy. I'm so hungry I feel like I could eat an entire cow." Speaking of cows… "And Victor?" I ask, strangely concerned for the man who I know, without being told, is the one who shot me.

Jake's expression falls, taken aback by the unexpected question. "He's gone," he says, and I realize why I'm concerned. I'm not concerned for Victor. As abhorrent as he was, he was still Jake's father.

"Are you ok?" I ask carefully.

"He killed the first woman I ever loved and then tried to kill the second." Jake nods and levelly says, "Yeah, I'm ok." And I know better than to push the topic.

"Ok," I say and I snuggle closer to him. He relaxes and takes several deep breaths of my hair. Each breath sings I've missed you and every part of me screams I've missed you too although it shouldn't. How could I have missed him if I didn't even know that I was away from him?

And that's when I remember.

"Do you believe in ghosts?" I ask him, thinking of just where I was, or at least where I think I was, when I was gone.

"The creepy kind of ghosts or the good kind?" Jake asks with a smile.

"It's creepy either way," I chuckle. "But I mean, do you think that even after we're gone, we're still here?"

He thinks about it for a while. "Well if we are, that means that the ghost of every person that has ever lived and died is walking around somewhere. That's a lot of ghosts."

"Yeah. There's probably not enough space in the world for that. They'd keep bumping into each other. Can you imagine one ghost telling the other ghost 'excuse me'?" And I say excuse me in a squeaky little voice.

"Naw," Jake says. "They probably just walk right through each other." And we both snicker, wrapped in each other's arms and talking nonsense, like if we didn't just spend the last four years apart, like if we had never missed a beat.

"Why do you ask?" he asks.

"I had the weirdest dream."

"Yeah? What was it about?"

"I was with my dad. My dad dad," I say, hoping it doesn't sound too crazy. Jake simply nods. "I told him that I missed him so much, and he said that he missed me too. My mom was there with him. She looked just like me. Or maybe it's me that looks like her," I chuckle. "We talked and I told them about my life. I told them about Four and Tris… and about you, and I told them that I was so happy to be with them but that I wasn't ready to leave you all yet. I thought they would have been hurt but they weren't upset at all. They told me it was ok, and that they knew that I loved them and that I thought of them. They said that all they wanted was for me to be happy, and that they were grateful for the family I have here. And they sent me back."

I study Jake's eyes, filled with sincere curiosity, waiting for him to say something.

"You think it was real?" he asks.

"I don't know. It felt real. Do you?" It's silly of me, asking an Erudite if he believes in the scientifically improbable.

"I don't know. But I hope it was," he says.

"Why?"

"Because then you would have met your mother, and gotten that 'one more time' with your dad that you've always wanted. If it was real then you have the hope that they're never too far, you'll see them again, and I, my love," he says, kissing me gently on the nose, "I get to keep you for much longer than a hundred years."

I blush, grateful for every word that he just spoke, especially the last part of it. "You're still so unbearably poetic?"

"Always," he grins. "Speaking of which," he bites his lip. "I was thinking that when you woke up it would be too hard for you to navigate around Dauntless for a while. So… I bought you your dream house about a month ago. Off the compound. It's not too big, but it has a huge kitchen and a big yard to match. And it's green. I hope it's the right shade."

My mouth opens but I don't know what to say. There's so much more to it than just the fact that he remembered that even though it was something that I had only mentioned in passing countless years ago. He was planning for me to wake up even though they were warned that I might not.

"You really knew I'd wake up?" I ask, my eyes flooding with tears.

"I was sure of it. It was just a matter of when." With earnest eyes he says, "I swear, sometimes you don't know how strong you are."

But he is the strong one. I can't imagine what it must have been like day after day, just waiting.

"Neither do you," I say.

He shakes his head. "I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"You're the strong one, Rae," he says firmly. "You know, one of the reasons I got close to you was because I could breathe easily around you. You never judged me. You never criticized me. As confident as you were you never looked down on me. You built me up when all I'd ever been was broken down. I felt safe and free for the first time in eight years. That freedom made me open up in a way that I never had and every day that I let you in I fell deeper and deeper in love with you, and then you loved me back though I never understood why. Apart from the fact that you were more than I could have ever dreamed of, I was afraid of the evil parts of me that you swore never existed. And at first I thought you just couldn't see it because you could kick my ass if I ever dared to try and lay a hand on you." He laughs a little. "But then there came a point where I started to see what you saw and I started to feel strong, but I didn't deserve to. I still don't. Not after I've spent my entire life running like a coward."

I wince and my breath catches. I had told him he had chosen the easy way out when he left me, that he was a coward. But I was wrong, and I regret those words more than anything.

"Jake, I'm sorry. I never meant-"

"No. It's not just that," he interrupts. "It was even from the very beginning. You didn't hesitate when Tris was in trouble. My mother was being strangled to death and I just stood there in a corner and hid."

"You were eight years old, Jake," I say forcefully, grabbing his face between my palms with what little strength I have. The guilt is unmistakable in his eyes, and it fills me with as much pain as it did the first time he told me that he had still blamed himself for her death, the day we made known our every secret.

"So were you," he says softly.

"I had a gun in my hand, and the man trying to hurt her was not my father. And you had no way of defending yourself. If he knew that you had seen him he most likely would have killed you too. What you did was smart, Jake." He's always been smart. It makes me wonder how I missed his Divergence. He practically spelled it out for me. He was trying to make me see.

"But I'm supposed to be brave too, and I'm not." He looks away from me.

"Really?" I ask, pulling at his chin. "The man who stood up against hundreds of Dauntless for me, shot a traitorous Dauntless leader in the head, betrayed his own blood in order to defend what was right, and then planted himself by my side every day and every night for the past six weeks without fail isn't brave? Isn't strong?"

He shakes his head a little as he takes my hand from his chin and presses it against his lips. "Can't you see, Rae? You're the one that makes me strong. Everything that I have ever done that has been worth doing is because of you." And he looks deep into my eyes and says, "You're the one that makes me strong."

And staring back I say, "Well then listen to me and find the strength to forgive yourself." I lace my fingers with his. "Because it wasn't your fault and there's nothing you could have done to stop him. Not in that moment. But you stopped him when you could've, and he won't hurt anyone else ever again."

Jake squeezes my fingers and lets out a breath as he hangs on my words. I know it'll take a while for him to completely believe them, but I'll be here to remind him of them until he does.

"And you make me strong too, you know," I add. "Don't you dare deny it."

"Ok," he says, giving in to a smile.

"Good," I say. "Because I might need to feed off you for a while." And then I chuckle lightly. I'm too weak to do anything at all.

"The only thing you need to do is relax and let me take care of you."

Jake's face becomes serious again and he gently passes his hand against my hair and down my back. My hands wander too, tracing the hard line of his jaw and down his neck, admiring every curve and handsome element of his face. But even his handsomeness doesn't hide the tiredness in his eyes or the dark circles that cloud them. And judging by the rest of him, he needs someone to take care of him too.

"How about we just take care of each other?" I suggest.

He nods. "We made a promise. Remember?"

We did. The night before we attacked Erudite we had made confessions and we had made promises.

He confessed that as weak as he had felt without me, he thought that I was strong enough and that's why he left. And maybe I was, but he had left his mark on me. More than a fingerprint, he was branded into my flesh. Mere strength was not enough to make me let him go because I didn't want to be mended. I wanted him. He was my choice, and he always would be.

I told him that it was stupid of him to think that he needed me more than I needed him, and that although he never meant to, he hurt me in a way and in a place that no else ever could, and I cried as I confessed how terribly and how deeply he had wounded me. And then all of a sudden I couldn't stop. It's like I opened a door that had years of pain hidden behind it. And with every ounce of my strength gone I lay limp beside him and I cried profusely. It was painful in a way that I never knew pain could ever be. And it made no sense because he was right there with me, holding me.

So why did it still hurt, I had wondered.

Tell me what to do, Jake had cried. Tell me what to do. I'll do anything.

And somehow I knew what to do.

Make love to me, I said.

Are you sure? he had asked me.

Yes.

And we did. We had made love face to face, skin to skin, with knotted fingers and looking into each other's eyes the whole time. We were exposed and stripped down in so many more ways than one. I saw his every thought the minute they would flash through his mind, and I knew that he could see mine.

There were no barriers, no fears, no insecurities. Just the unwavering conviction that he was what I wanted, and that I was what he wanted, and that no matter what happened, how hard it was or how long it took, we would fight our way back to synchrony. And as we made love the tears kept flowing and my lips trembled, but not from pain. But because for the first time in a long time I felt whole again, through and through and all the way down to the very tips of my toes. I felt us come back together again. With every slow and deep slide of him inside me I felt his spirit reconnect with mine and that is what I needed because that is where I was broken. That is where he was broken.

The Abnegation might overstress the power of touch and the significance of being inside someone and letting someone be inside you, but they are not wrong about it. It is not just metaphorical. Beyond all the physical parts of it, there is something spiritual. A power that is strong enough to heal even the soul and bind two people in a realm beyond our own when you strip down all that you are and you let yourself feel it, when you let yourself surrender to it.

I am in him and he is in me. I will forever be his and he will forever be mine, no matter what. That was our promise.

"And I'll enjoy keeping that promise in the comfort of our new home," I say wittily.

"Our new home," Jake repeats and then he grins. "I won't lie to you. I absolutely love the way that sounds."

"As do I," I blush. "So is this your way of asking me to move in with you, Jake? Buying me a house? Ever so subtle," I tease.

He bites his lips and smiles nervously. "Alex and Four have already agreed to help me move your things, so that's not really optional at this point," he says. He reaches behind him and pulls out a tiny black box from his pocket. Gracefully he sets it between us, and before I can register what's actually happening he says, "I'm asking you to marry me."

I forget to breathe and I'm sure he notices.

"I know it's sudden," he says, "and we just got back together and things are still complicated between us. And I know I can't just expect us to pick up from where we left off and-"

"-and I just woke up from a coma," I interrupt with a wide smile.

"And you just woke up from a coma… and your reasoning and cognitive abilities might be compromised at this point therefore making any decision you make questionable," he smiles sweetly. "But as complicated as all of this is, it's not. I love you, Rae, and I've been through enough to know that I'll never stop. You will always be the one I want to spend every minute of the rest of my life with." And sliding his thumb against the trail of tears on my cheek he says, "You don't have to answer me now. I just want you to know where-"

"Yes," I blurt out, not having thought about it, not having needed to.

"Really?" he whispers, almost as if in shock that I would say yes. But how I could ever say anything but?

"It's only ever been you, Jake… And it will always only be you," I say to him, pouring my heart into every word. "I love you."

Tears swim in his eyes as he lifts my lips to his, and they meet in a sweet and gentle kiss. "I love you too. So much," he says.

And we lay there, lost in each other's eyes, wrapped in each other's arms with nothing but a ring and a promise between us. My heart races when all of a sudden I feel overwhelmed by the strong, unprompted resolution that I don't want to be anywhere else in the world but right here, right now, with him. And it makes me finally understand all the things that Jake has ever thought about. All the different ways he could have ended up if he had done one thing different. A different place, a different person, a reality altogether different from this one where this perfect moment, the one we're living and breathing right now, does not occur.

It makes me regret nothing. Because when I think about where I may have been right now, or where I would be tomorrow or what the rest of my life would have been like if I had never met him, if I had never loved him, if I had lost him for good somewhere along the way, it threatens to stop my heart.

It makes me grateful for the moments and the people that have made us, everything that has brought us to where we are right now, both wonderful and unspeakable alike. Because God forbid I be anywhere else.

I close my eyes as he presses his forehead against mine. I breathe in deep and there's certainty in the air, that same certainty of safety and strength and amity that I always felt every time he was near me. I have no doubt that we could take on the world and have our way with it.

"We're gonna be ok, you and me," I whisper against his lips.

Jake smiles and I feel the curve of his mouth against mine. "No, baby," he says and he shakes his head slowly. "We're gonna be so much more than ok."

He presses another sweet kiss to my lips and I melt into it, not daring to pull away. And I know with all my heart that we're right where we should be, and that together we'll walk right into that spectacular tomorrow that's only ours to claim.


A/N: Stay tuned for the Epilogues ;)