The next few hours passed like a dream. The same fantasy blurring across my eyes, making me toss and turn, hugging myself and finding no comfort.

Ace was the first to find me, sitting on the ground by the fuse boxes with Peter. He had a flask in his pocket, and we passed it back and forth. We didn't know each other. We were on opposite sides of whatever this was. But, as if we, too, had been trapped in the simulation, we were suddenly directionless.

When Ace arrived, Peter tilted the flask up to chug the rest.

"I'm so fucked," he muttered. "Jeanine's gonna kill me."

"Is that her errand boy?" Ace asked.

He protested again, clearly not liking his new nickname, but I nodded as Ace helped me to my feet. Despite the dark, I could see the glimmer in her eyes. Carrick's knife was still in my hands. I didn't have to speak to tell her what I had done.

She pulled me close to her chest, and I sobbed into her shirt.

After a while, familiar faces joined us. Marcus. My father. Two or three other councilmembers, the only survivors of the bloodbath. They told us they had the hard drive with all of the simulation data on it. Not that it would matter—the Dauntless in the control room had woken up with a few dozen bodies underneath them, five unarmed and injured Abnegation under the barrels of their guns, and Jeanine pressing buttons frantically while cursing aloud that the Dauntless weren't firing. They would demand an explanation. Whatever fragile alliance had been formed between Dauntless and Erudite was now fissuring, and Erudite wouldn't dare activate the simulation again without shattering it entirely.

Jeanine and Eric were on the run, shielded by their small entourage of Dauntless. But they would be back. We needed to leave. Where, none of us knew. Down was a good place to start. As we filed onto the elevator, silent and breathless, Ace picked me up. I didn't have to say how fatigued I was. I leaned my head into her shoulder and tried not to cry again.

By the time we stepped out into the plaza, it was clear that nobody else knew where to go either. Hundreds of Dauntless, Abnegation, and factionless filled the square, milling around in confusion. I looked around desperately for a face that I knew. In the crowd of Abnegation, I saw Caleb. He grew pale when he saw my father's mangled hand, which he still clutched against his chest.

"Where's Mom?" he asked, his voice faint. "Dad? What's going on?"

"Natalie," whispered Dad. Nothing more. Maybe he could sense what I hadn't said yet.

"We stopped the attacks," answered Marcus. "For now."

"'We'," Ace repeated darkly.

"Abigail," said Marcus.

He moved towards Ace, reaching out a hand towards her arm, but she pulled away and drew me tighter towards her. Then she began to walk fast along the edge of the plaza, heading towards a side street.

"Irene is on her way to Amity," said Ace. "They agreed to give her asylum, maybe they'll take us too."

"Asylum from what?" Caleb asked, trailing after us pathetically. "Beatrice?"

I couldn't say anything. I stared at Peter, who jogged casually up next to Caleb and slapped him on the shoulder. I didn't know why he was still following along. Surely, Jeanine would find out that it was him that helped me shut down the simulations, and then he'd be in hot water. Caleb, too. They would know that he and some of the other Abnegation-born Erudite helped us turn on the elevator.

"You must be new here," said Peter. "Look around, smartass, we're at war."

Some of the other Abnegation left us, rushing to rejoin their families, and we were unable to get them to flee with us. Ace wasn't in a mood to stay behind and convince them, much less search for specific people to bring with, so we took off into the night. For a long, quiet time, we waited in a lonely train yard. The lockdown sirens still blared around the city, but they sounded like cries of mourning. Ace and I looked at the crescent moon. I tried to think about peace.

Yet my heart ached; I knew it was only a thought. Caleb and Dad were alive, and it should have brought me some comfort to look a few feet away and see the faces of my family, but next to them were Peter and Marcus. I would not feel at peace until I could reconcile the two—the knowledge that people like my father and my brother called themselves the allies of people like them, cowards and abusers, and here I sat on the edge of the tracks, watching them wrap each other's wounds in makeshift bandages.

And of the people that I couldn't see—Miriam, Ravi, Brighton, Amalka, Sajida, Judge Touma, Judge Bandele, god, so many people, were they even still alive? Maybe the hypnotized Dauntless hadn't executed them in the square, but what of the Dauntless that had always been conscious? Had they tried to fire? I had seen so many factionless bodies in the streets where the arrests took place. Were my friends there? Where would they go?

Where was Oona?

She saw me fire. Three shots between the eyes. I remembered a moment where I just stared at Sherlock's delicate silver glasses, shattered and smeared with blood on the floor. Ace's hand clasped with mine, and I saw the twisted wire frame pressed between our palms. She looked down. Maybe she saw a Choosing Ceremony knife.

How do you forget it all? I wanted to ask. How can you return to your head and kill her again, over and over and over?

I did not think it was early morning already. But soon, the lights in the train yard began to switch on. "Come on," Ace hissed, and led us through the shadows to a halted train car. She helped me on, then Caleb, Peter, and my father. She did not help Marcus. From the shadows of the car, sitting on empty produce crates, we watched brown-clad factionless workers begin to mill around the train yard. One of them came as close as the open car door and saw us, but Ace gave him a strange, intricate hand gesture and he nodded. Then he left us alone.

Soon the train began with a jolt. As it pulled away from the train yard, I saw the city behind us. It would get smaller and smaller until we saw where the tracks ended, the forests and fields I last saw when I was too young to appreciate them. The kindness of the Amity would comfort us for a while, though we couldn't stay there forever. The Candor were torn, the Dauntless shattered, the factionless angry, and the Abnegation leaderless. The Erudite...who knew what would become of them. The peace of the Amity would be a reassurance, not a solution.

I leaned against Ace's arm. Like another dose of truth serum, my limbs felt as if they were made of lead, but now, I couldn't speak. I hadn't said a word since leaving the Hub.

On the other side of the car, Peter was leaning casually against a crate, hands behind his head. How he could rest at a time like this, I didn't know. Marcus sat cross-legged on the floor, hands folded and eyes closed. He looked as if he was praying. Peeking from his fingers was the hard drive that contained the simulation data. Of course, the other councilmembers entrusted it to him, the dethroned leader, and he humbly accepted. But the tight, greedy grip said that there was nothing humble about it.

Caleb was helping Dad secure his arm to his chest in a makeshift sling. I couldn't hear what they were saying. I hadn't told Dad about Mom. But he knew. I saw it in his eyes. I saw the same thing fill Caleb's, and he looked at me for a second before crumpling against the wall.

I jerked my head away. Ace let me squeeze her hand hard enough to turn her fingers white.

"Your father told me what you did," she said quietly.

I didn't reply. What I had done. There was a lot of that.

"You sacrificed yourself for them." Slowly, she reached up to stroke my hair. "You saved us."

But not everyone.

"I didn't save Mom," I whispered. "I killed Sherlock."

Even though I said it, and even though I knew it was true, it didn't feel real.

Ace was quiet for a while. "I almost killed you," she said.

I said nothing.

"You let me."

I turned to face her, and her hand stayed, moving to my cheek. There were tears that I could not remember crying. Her eyes darted between mine.

"I'm feeling a lot of feelings right now, and I don't know how to handle any of them," she said in a tiny voice. I couldn't help but laugh.

"Maybe...maybe we shouldn't. Yet." I closed my eyes. "Can we forget? Just for now?"

"Yes," she said, and kissed me.

As the train slid out into unlit, uncertain land, we moved to the open door of the boxcar, feet dangling out the sides. And I leaned against her, and I tried to think of the wind in my hair; the lavender in the sky; the breath in my lungs. The truth of our hands together.

The sun rose.

A/N: I FORGOT TO POST THIS?

anyway. transcendent is done. holy shit guys, i'm so proud of myself, i haven't finished a longform fic since petri dish.

thank you all so much for reading, i don't really know what to say. let me know your thoughts! i'm considering rewriting insurgent as well but i don't know what will happen there. if that's something youre interested in, let me know what you'd like to see

thx for reading and stay fresh cheesebags *peace signs*