TRIS POV
Tobias's heart has a consistent rhythm beneath my cheek. I have listened to it whenever the opportunity has arisen, ever since I found out he was alive.
I wanted the same thing once, when he was controlled by Jeanine's serum specially made for the Divergent. He slammed me into walls and hit me repeatedly, and in the end when he had a gun pressed to my head, all I wanted was to hear his heartbeat.
Every time I hear it, it reminds me that I could have lost him forever, but he came back to me.
So as we laze around in bed, finally having time for ourselves on a Sunday afternoon between planning for the Amity attack and making the trip to Abnegation and back, I don't have to say anything. There is just Tobias, the powerful pulse under my ear, and a hand grazing up and down my arm.
And for once, I am beyond content.
"Are you asleep?" he murmurs after a while.
I open my eyes. "No."
I should be. These last several nights have brought nightmares with them, even with him here. That means a constant pattern of waking and worrying before I can rest again. Sometimes, I just watch him sleep in the dark until I can convince myself that he is actually there, that this isn't a dream.
That this isn't a simulation.
Jeanine is gone, sold off to the factionless where she will not last long, if she isn't already dead. And I am still caught up in the traumatic Erudite experience of not knowing what is real or not sometimes.
Tobias knows; he is too observant. "Aren't you tired?"
"Yes," I sigh. "But this is better than sleeping."
His shirt has ridden up a little, and I trace the flames on his side to distract myself from the incoming conversation. We still haven't spoken about my psychotic breakdown in the hallway that happened a few days ago, and I can tell that he can't hold back on asking about it any longer or he might explode with concern.
"Do the nightmares come around the same time as the panic attacks?" he finally asks.
That wasn't the question I was expecting, so it takes me a moment to formulate an answer. "It's not like that," I explain. "I don't think they're connected. I have nightmares all the time, but I only start having breathing problems when something specific happens."
"Like what?"
I pull away from him so that I can see his face. He watches me like he is trying to figure me out, his eyebrows drawn in and his eyes insistent. One time he did tell me that I was fascinating to him, and I wonder if that is still true.
"Like the other day, that happened after I got in a fight with Caleb." At his confused expression, I realize I never told him. "It was stupid; he thinks I shouldn't be with you, and I argued that he tried to help have me killed once and therefore should have no say in anything I do."
Tobias is annoyed, but doesn't dwell on my idiot of a brother.
"Anyway," I press on. "That's when I started thinking about my execution, and then it happened."
"Is that how it always starts?"
I frown. "No. The time before that I was going to interrogate Jeanine with Uriah, and one of the prisoners downstairs yelled something...inappropriate."
That word doesn't seem right to use, but he gets the message anyway, if his irritation is any indication.
"It was just a joke," I say. "But it was after Justin tried to..."
He brushes his thumb across my cheek repetitively. "You've been through too much," he tells me.
"I've been through just as much as anyone else." I shake my head. It makes me feel weak to be having these types of reactions when everyone else seems to be handling it the best they can.
"That doesn't make it okay."
The sadness in his eyes makes me shut mine.
"So how do you make it stop?" he asks.
I rub the emotion out of my eyes so I can focus on the conversation. "I don't. You do," I tell him.
Tobias stares at me blankly. "You lost me."
"Remember when I told you I saw a therapist in Amity?" He nods. "He told me that I should think of you whenever I start hyperventilating."
"Does it work?"
I bite my lip. "Sometimes." Pained by the memory, I look away before I add, "When you were gone, it made things worse."
He clenches his jaw with frustration, aimed at himself or me, I don't know. But then he wonders, "So when I hugged you the other day..."
"It's strange." I laugh briefly. "When it happens, I feel like I don't want anyone near me because it makes everything feel tighter. But when you were there, that's what made it stop."
After a pause, I duck my head, embarrassed by this whole discussion. It is humiliating to have to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder, like I am a child who cannot look after herself for long without her mind freezing up in a shocked state.
"Well," Tobias says. "I'll help you when I can, but I won't always be there. I think you need to find other ways of confronting it."
It doesn't seem like an option right now. Bettering myself, taking time for my mental health...these aren't things I can simply drop everything else for.
"Maybe I can see a doctor one day," I suggest, not very committed.
"When this is all over, we'll find a way through it."
I trace his tattoo again with my fingertips. "I don't like promises about the future," I whisper. The clouds up ahead are looking too dismal as time passes.
"Me neither."
We let silence flow between us as he starts to get restless. I can tell that there is something he wants to say, something that might cause problems because that is the only reason he is holding back. While our relationship is strong, sometimes that strength can be brutal. Sometimes, we rip each other to pieces and prove that that brutality can make us so fragile.
"I heard what you said the other day," Tobias begins. "About Evelyn."
I still my hand, trying to remember anything significant I said about her. Then I recall when he would have overheard such a conversation, and I know it must be when we were in Abnegation and I mentioned something about her to Christina.
"Oh," I say, not knowing where he is going with it.
"I told her she wasn't my mother, that night in the factionless when you got back from Amity," he continues. "I severed all ties with her. But hearing you say that she was going to die...I knew it all along, but now it's real."
A stab of guilt hits my stomach. I feel insensitive. Here I am casually dropping the subject, when of course he would have mixed feelings about this; it is his mother we're talking about, no matter what. He may not love the person she is now, but at some point he did. At some point, she was the only tether he had to sanity.
"I'm sorry," I admit, though he doesn't seem angry with me. "I didn't mean to—"
He interrupts, "It's not your fault for speaking the truth. She is going to be dead by the end of this, and I am going to have to come to terms with it."
It is a fact that seems to twist and tear at him from all different angles by the way he says it.
"You know that when she found out I was dead, I didn't see her cry once?" He scoffs lightly. "No emotion whatsoever. When Edward was killed, I watched her sob over his body."
It takes a special kind of insanity to abandon your own son and find another, undeserving one. Evelyn is not someone who is pleasant to be around, so I suppose that is why she can only find people who will care about her for short periods of time before she must replace them.
"She is cruel, Tobias," I say. "Maybe not in the obvious way your father was, but some of her methods are worse."
Because he has always been self-deprecating, and the last thing he needs is someone who knew him for half his life to come along and make him feel like nothing again.
He rolls over onto his back and sighs. Clearly it is too much of a burden right now—with the whole faction riding on him—so I decide to change the subject.
"You never talk about when you were factionless," I state.
"I figured that you didn't want me to," he replies.
Based on my behavior over the last couple of weeks, I can see where he is coming from. But I don't want him to ever think he can't talk to me.
"I do," I encourage him. "You can tell me anything. Always."
Something lingers ominously in the back of my mind, something that I haven't yet told him. I worry about it, but then again I was never an honest person, so maybe I am just being paranoid that there is something missing.
Tobias lets his hand wander up the back of my shirt, where he rests it. It eases my unidentified nerves. "There isn't much to say. The factionless didn't distribute food equally, so I starved. It was bitterly cold." He pauses and adds, "I don't think Evelyn will be able to keep them together for long, under those conditions."
"Didn't you say you slept on the ground?"
He thinks back to his interrogation, when he mentioned it, and frowns. "I found an old apartment away from the center of it all, so that I wouldn't get caught without my mask on. But yes, I did sleep on the floor. Let's just say it was miserable."
"But you did get caught, right?" I ask. "You never would have given yourself away to Cassie because you wouldn't have trusted her."
That would have been simply stupid to believe in a girl he had only met once to not give away his status.
"Yes, she did catch me. But I lied, and she believed it and promised not to tell." He bites his lip before adding, "If she is gullible enough to fall for my mother's propaganda, it's no wonder she fell for mine."
This time I feel no jealousy when he speaks of her. She is just a girl—a foolish girl, even though I'm pretty sure that she is older than me—and she happened to give us what we wanted. She was a tool, nothing more.
Still curious about her, I dart my eyes away and question, "So she just...tried to kiss you out of nowhere?"
Tobias laughs to himself. "Yes," he answers.
"And why didn't you let her? Didn't you want her to think she was still on your side?"
His eyes hold something I don't understand, maybe something that can't be explained, and my own lock on them because I can't dare to look away. "I was going to. But as she was about to...everything was wrong. She was too tall and too timid and she wasn't anything like you, and I knew I couldn't bear it, not even for a second."
It is at times like these that I forget how Tobias seems cold to any outsider. He would not admit what he just said to anyone other than me, and the way he will ramble off his emotions or opinions on rare occasions—like it is not commonplace for him to trust anyone enough to share what he feels—makes me feel honored to be privy to those secrets.
"I understand," I say, trying not to smile. Tobias's loyalty is something so pure that it could never be bought or replaced. "Like I told you once, when Justin kissed me, all I could think about was how wrong it was."
Immediately after I speak the sentence, I flinch. Somehow I had been so caught up with Tobias's resurrection that I forgot to deal with my confused views of Justin. My friend, my admirer, my attacker. He couldn't get what he wanted from me so he decided to take it by force.
It just proves that Dauntless hasn't really changed in the ways that matter. There are still Als, unstable and Dauntless trained and ticking bombs, waiting to be set off when something doesn't go their way. This faction breeds bullies; its competitive nature is prevalent even in times like these when it is crucial that we pull together.
If the factions do survive the war, then I hope the leaders can create something better from the ashes, something aligned with the Dauntless manifesto.
Tobias grazes the bullet wound in my waist, and I gasp, my body tightened up in shock. Except, there is no pain following the touch.
"Does it hurt?" he asks, concerned.
"No." I shake my head at my strange reaction. "Just a habit, I guess."
He stares down at it. "It looks like it healed well, despite what you said about not taking care of it."
I bite my lip, self-conscious. For some reason, I want to pull my shirt down or demand him to look away.
"It's ugly," I finally remark.
He raises an eyebrow. "What?"
"I'm covered in scars." They have all been accumulated over the last couple of years: the bullet wounds in my waist, the one in my shoulder, several scattered wounds from fighting during initiation, the slits on my wrist. I will always be inferior to him, but the additional physical imperfections don't help.
"So am I."
I sigh. "That's different."
"How?"
Opening my mouth to retort, I realize that I have nothing clever to say. Maybe it is just that all of my scars, inside and out, are visible and boldly obvious. Tobias's scars aren't on display because he has figured out how to hide them, just as he has mastered the Dauntless art of controlling his fear.
"I don't know," I mumble.
"Scars fade with time," he reminds me.
"Not all of them."
He agrees, "No, not all of them." He moves so that he is positioned over me, and he bends down to kiss the tip of my ear where he once threw a knife. "But some scars are good."
His lips trail down to the tattoo on my collarbone, and I smile when he reaches the ink that represents him. I pull him up to me so I can kiss him, but he denies me, retreating in a teasing manner each time I get close. When I finally let out a frustrated sigh, he laughs and gives in.
Then he kisses all of my scars, good and bad, until I feel beautiful.
And I decide that while some scars may not fade, they can still heal, one moment with him at a time.
I am in the middle of knocking on Christina's door when it flies open.
"I need food," she announces in a mock happy manner, shutting the door behind her quickly.
I laugh at her false smile. "Your family again?"
"Three women in one apartment is insanity, let me tell you." She sighs and says, "Sorry. I am starving though, so do you mind if we head to lunch?"
"That's where I was going." I bite my lip before I gather the courage to ask, "What happened with your dad, anyway?"
Christina never talks about her father; I would assume that he is dead by the sound of it, but then again I think she would have given me her opinion on my own grief over my parents if he was. Maybe she would have commiserated with me sooner after I shot Will.
"My parents got divorced when I was...ten, I think? Anyway, they were like most Candor couples. Too stubborn to do anything but argue their side." She clears her throat and continues, "I saw my dad occasionally, but we weren't close. After I chose Dauntless, he didn't want to speak to me."
I frown. I can't imagine being at odds with my parents, especially now that they aren't here anymore. If I could go back in time and change anything, one of those things would be to talk to my parents more often, learn about my real mother and father and make it count before I was orphaned.
Also, I can't imagine the concept of divorce. It is something foreign to the Abnegation, and it hasn't been too common in Dauntless where marriages aren't as frequent.
"I'm sorry," I eventually tell her. Then, because I can't help myself, I add, "We didn't even have divorce in Abnegation."
Christina turns to me, her eyes bulging out of her head. "Really?" she asks. "Wait, I thought Four's parents got divorced."
"No," I correct her. "His mother faked her death." Must run in the family, I think to myself wryly.
She facepalms herself. "Oh, right."
We enter the Pit, which is peaceful now that the Abnegation have left. I mean, if anything in Dauntless can be classified as peaceful. But there is something about the open space that is tranquil, as if things are starting to shift back to normalcy, though we are far from it.
"It's weird," Christina comments with a shake of her head. "My parents fought so much, and it made me hate the idea of marriage at first. Now I do want to marry someone, anyone," she laughs.
My mind immediately focuses on Tobias. We discussed the topic once, before he left for the factionless. I had always assumed that marriage was something we wouldn't get to experience because of the trials of war constantly throwing down obstacles in our path. But every day now, it grows more and more relevant. It is an anxious wait, since we could be barreling towards our deaths and the faction's demise for all we know.
It may never happen, yet I get a thrill out of picturing a simple wedding ring around his finger, a concrete symbol that he is mine and only mine.
But I don't want Christina to interrogate me about this. It is a dream, one that I can't have her getting me excited about. So I keep the conversation about her before she can mention anything.
"Well, we should find you someone, then," I remark.
She makes a disgusted face. "The problem is there aren't any Dauntless guys worth pursuing, to be honest."
I have to agree, but I don't want her to lose hope. "There are some decent guys. Like..." My list comes up short. "Uriah."
It yanks an amused chuckle out of her. "Oh God."
Even though I find it funny too, I don't chime in. Uriah may have some childlike qualities to his personality, but that plays a major part in why he is my replacement brother. The war took almost everything from both of us, yet he still finds ways to make me laugh. And when life is too heavy—like when I lost Tobias—he knew that his understanding was needed instead.
There aren't many people like Uriah, who know how to dissolve escalated situations and make people feel all around better.
"Hey," I defend with a laugh. "He's handsome."
"Yeah, and he's also like the brother I never had. Or child."
She notices my wince at the word when she mentions siblings despite my efforts not to react.
"What is it?" she asks, stopping me and growing concerned.
I look down at my feet. I don't have to tell her everything—or anything—but sharing something so personal such as this to anyone other than Tobias when that has been difficult enough...
"I owe you an explanation," I tell her. "About the other day. Sometimes I get panic attacks, and that's what happened when I couldn't breathe. I was talking to Caleb before the onset."
Christina nods her head, surprisingly nonjudgmental for once. "Well, I figured that wasn't for no reason, but I didn't want to push you on it."
"I appreciate that," I say sincerely.
"What did Caleb say exactly?"
I worry my lip. "Nothing of importance. We just ended up arguing, but I couldn't help but think of Erudite."
She tucks her hair behind her ears and jokes, "Well, I think you know my opinion on him."
It makes me grin. Christina has despised Caleb ever since his betrayal, along with just about everyone else. Sometimes that makes me wonder if I made a mistake extending forgiveness to him in the first place. Or maybe, it was too early. Some days, I am not even certain that my forgiveness was genuine, just desperate.
I shake my head, wanting to move past it all. Thinking about hyperventilating makes me worried that it is going to happen any moment without a forewarning. That is how it happens after all.
"It's not a big deal, but I really don't want anyone to know about it," I plead.
She pretends to zip up her lips. "Since when have you ever known a Candor to gossip?"
We continue on our way to the cafeteria. As we step inside, my stomach growls at the smell of food, and my eyes drift towards our usual table to see what is being served.
Shauna is there, along with Cara; Zeke and Uriah must be patrolling up on the roof or somewhere outside today. But they aren't alone.
"Of course," I deadpan. I suppose that is the punishment I deserve for digging it up again.
Christina sighs when she sees Caleb sitting among them. "We can sit somewhere else," she offers.
"No. This is my faction, not his."
Stubbornly, I stalk over to the table with Christina on my heels. When we sit down, Shauna and Cara say hello, and Caleb watches me with wide, doe-like eyes.
"Cara," I say, refusing to even glance his way. "It's been a while."
"It has," she nods. "How has it been, getting leadership off your shoulders?"
It would be a dangerous thing to ask if I had unwillingly stepped down. But she is clever enough to see that I accepted the position out of a sense of duty, not enjoyment.
I tell her, "Well, I haven't exactly escaped it, as hard as I have tried."
She taps her fingers on the table. "I've been wanting to ask you something about that, if it's all right. You would know much more than I would."
Before I can encourage her to continue, she inquires, "What is being done about the other factions that are still under factionless rule?"
It is plain to see that Cara still understandably cares about Erudite. The many times she has been displaced have done nothing to hinder her obvious love for her faction, even after its corruption. She wants to go home, rebuild, strengthen Erudite to what it used to be, free from the factionless. And I empathize with her more than anyone.
"Well," I say. "Amity is the priority for right now. But after that, I think we are planning to retake the other factions. I'm sure that Erudite will be first."
She seems satisfied. "I know it will take time. It is just agonizing not to know."
"I understand."
Shauna can't help but ask, "Do you know when the Amity attack will happen?"
"Four is going to a meeting later today to talk about it." I shake my head, finally reaching for a roll. "They don't have everything worked out yet."
"Clearly," Caleb blurts out. He covers his mouth right after, like he can't believe he said it.
All eyes snap over to him. My gaze burns into his challengingly.
He stutters out, "The Abnegation should not have been sent to where they have no protection. That was not a wise—"
"Maybe, like I have said several times before, you don't know everything," I chastise, turning my head away. Only a couple of years ago we were at a much different dinner table, and the scolding would have been the other way around. It feels liberating to have it this way.
"And if you had cared about Susan, then you wouldn't have let our Abnegation upbringing hold you back for this long. Don't try to blame Dauntless for your own mistakes."
Because that is what this is really about. If Caleb had any care for Abnegation at all, he would have opposed Jeanine's massacre. No, he doesn't have any love for his faction except for its monotony. But even Susan wasn't enough for him to be bold, to discover any shred of bravery in himself.
My brother has always been this way. He has helped strangers around him, and he has turned his back on his family, his neighbors, trying to justify it with talk of the greater good.
Maybe I shouldn't be so tough on him. Maybe that is just who he is, and at some point I have to accept it instead of wavering back and forth on whether or not I can be his sister.
"I don't think she should be explaining our war tactics to you either," Christina adds. "You might just betray us."
"I wouldn't—!" He cuts himself off and lowers his frustrated voice and begs, "Beatrice, I'm sorry—"
"Are you," I say flatly. This will not be the last time he will treat Tobias the way he does, nor the last instance he tries to dictate my life. He is not sorry.
He denies, "Yes, I am. I'm just trying to look out for you, and I don't care if I'm bad at it. You have to know that I have your best interests—"
"I just don't know anymore, Caleb," I sigh.
The lunch table falls quiet, but the silence doesn't last long when cups and hands begin pounding on the table. Everyone in the room turns to face the front, where Tobias, Tori, and Mike are gathered.
"What's going on?" Shauna asks nobody in particular.
I try to get an idea of that from Tobias. I smile softly at him in encouragement—I know he doesn't like getting up in front of people—but he looks distressed. In fact, he seems sickly disappointed in something, and he lowers his head so that he doesn't have to look at anyone or anything.
"Something is wrong," I state under my breath.
Tori steps forward. "We received this video from the factionless an hour ago. We have decided to remain transparent with you about the current state of our city, and therefore we are going to play it. Fair warning that this is graphic, so it would be wise to remove any children from the room."
Several parents obey her, standing up and leading their children out of the dining hall; with the unavoidable mayhem all around though, I'm sure that most of them have already been exposed to worse than whatever is in the video. Then the screen at the front of the room—the one they use for the rankings among other things—turns on.
Evelyn is directly in front of the camera. From the snow-covered fields, I guess that she is probably in Amity. "Citizens of Chicago," she begins. "Many of you are already aware of what we do to those who foolishly rebel against the factionless. This is a reminder, in case you have forgotten."
She steps away, and the camera focuses on a row of Amity tied to stakes. I count ten of them, and then my hands fly to my mouth in shock when I realize that I know one of these faces.
"Dez," I gasp out.
Christina somehow hears the airy whisper and panics along with me. "Oh, no. Oh God, no."
Somehow I thought she was safe there. Somehow I didn't even consider that of course she would get herself into trouble; she is a fiery person, the most bold Amity I have ever met.
My body naturally reacts to what is about to come. I stand on shaky legs, my palms pressed to the table for support. A gagging feeling rises in my throat, but I force my eyes back up to the screen.
The Amity on the screen sniffle and sob as they accept their fate. Then Dez's strong voice calls out over them, "We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage—!"
The factionless open fire. And Destiny, the lone, determined initiate from Amity, is limp on the pole, her body littered with bullet holes and her face marred to the point of unrecognizable.
Dez, the girl I personally took under my wing to ensure her stay in the faction she believed in more than anything.
Dez, the girl who kept getting up no matter how many times I pummeled her on the training room mat.
Dez, the girl who harbored me for months in defiance of the city's laws, knowing that it meant certain imprisonment for her.
The gunfire ceases, and the video stops. A choking sound builds in my throat. Through my blurry vision, Tobias stares back at me, and I know now that his expression bears some sort of guilt because we all could have done something and yet we couldn't have.
The noiseless dining hall suddenly erupts in enraged battle cries, and all I can do is turn around and run. Run away from the pain and the torment and the murderous fury.
But eventually, it catches up.
I don't know how long I lie there.
The sky darkens outside as another storm rolls in, and my pillow is wet beneath my cheek. By the time it becomes something like twilight judging by the shadows on the wall, the tears are dry and I have none left.
Time passes slowly when I think of Dez tagging along with Christina and I to the training room, but quickly when I am too numb to consider anything at all.
I don't know when exactly Tobias comes home. I don't even hear him open the door or kick his shoes off or even walk across the room. All I register is his arms sliding around me and his face pressing into the back of my neck.
We don't say anything, not for a half hour or so if time is something I can measure anymore. He certainly doesn't need to; I can feel his empathy in his embrace. And him just being here is everything I need and more.
He could have told me to leave the dining hall. He could have sheltered me from that video, hidden the vile truth in order to protect me from any more hurt. But he didn't—he has never coddled me and I'm glad.
Because I needed to see it for myself. I needed to watch them devastate even the most innocent in this world so that when the time comes, I will not hesitate.
This is who the factionless are. I knew it all along, and yet I had to see the final instance of insanity for myself, like staring into Jeanine's eyes at her most broken point.
Tobias's chest rises and falls against my back and is the only thing to keep me somewhat rational as I stare across the room at a speck on the floor.
When I finally do speak, I am surprised at what comes out.
"I can't have kids," I sniffle.
It isn't right, given the situation. My friend is dead—they massacred her, a teenager, in a girly yellow dress—and all I can think to say is something about myself and my future.
But if I have learned one thing, it is that grief is complicated, and sometimes even twisted. It is a contesting emotion that never seems to make sense or remain consistent. And I know that it doesn't have to because it is valid as long as I am feeling it; it is one of the last things that makes me human.
Maybe the dreadful fact just dawned on me again in this moment because I am being reminded of everything I have lost. Maybe I see fading faces that will never return—my parents, Will, Marlene, Lynn, Dez—and I know that there is no possibility of filling the void they left with any other love. Because for some unbelievable reason, a part of me thought that at least at the end of the road, I could have new people to love. I thought that having children could help patch up the hollowness I feel and replace the loss with new beginnings.
But I can't.
Tobias hasn't shifted behind me, but by the uneven pause in his breathing, I know that he is awake.
"Please say something," I beg miserably. "I know we never really talked about it but you have to say something—"
"Who told you that?" he asks carefully.
My body trembles with held-in emotion. "One of the infirmary doctors ran tests. The infection damaged my reproductive system."
His thumb brushes in a back and forth motion across my arm to soothe me, and it doesn't really faze me. Anxiously, I await his reply. A month ago I didn't have as much care for my infertility because it wasn't relevant. He wasn't alive, and all chances of a family were smothered in an instant.
Now, that light at the end of the tunnel is back, but it is far too distant, and I'm not even sure if it exists or if it is my hopeful imagination.
"I promised myself I would never have kids," he tells me. "When I was younger. I saw too many similarities of myself in my father, even the little ones, and it frightened me so much that I had undoubtedly decided that there was no possibility where that circumstance would turn out decent."
He holds me tighter as he remembers snippets from his childhood that can't be pleasant. "I didn't know what it was like to be loved by a parent; I didn't understand love in general, or how to be the person my father found satisfactory, how to live up to that image he told me I would never become. Then I met you."
My heart aches as I listen to him. All I can see is the little boy he was, curled up in a closet as his father yelled at him from the other side that he would never be enough. He heard it so often that he believed it, still believes it to this day to some extent.
"I've told you before that you changed my perspective on a lot of things," he continues. "I want it all with you, whatever I can have."
I close my eyes and let the building tears out. Guilt folds over me in waves, crashing down again and again because he didn't want this, and then he did, and now it is impossible because he is with me.
"Tobias—" I whisper, my voice breaking.
"But if that isn't something that can happen, then I will always be okay with you and you alone." He kisses my shoulder through the fabric of my shirt. "I love you, and that is something I am beyond fortunate enough to have."
I sob, and he gathers me up again, guiding me so that I can turn to face him. He lets me bury my face in his neck and clutch my fingers in his shirt, and he doesn't even mind when I cover him in my tears. And it makes me feel like an ungrateful, selfish person to be upset when I have all I need and more in him.
"Tris," he murmurs when I quiet down. "When it's all over, I'll find the best doctor there is in Erudite. Not everything is certain."
No, it isn't, but the past has proven that I can extricate myself the farthest distance away from its influence and still never be safe.
"This is years away too. We have time," he reminds me.
I squeeze my eyes shut and see Dez. It is vivid enough to convince me that that could be the fate of every faction soon. "We have no time."
Tobias sighs in reluctant agreement. After a minute of basking in the silence together, he kisses the top of my head and says, "Then we have to make the most of what we have."
My hand slides between his, the one that isn't holding me steadfast to him. And when I feel his pulse beneath my cheek, I know that we have come too far to settle for a dismal ending.
Maybe one of us will die, or both of us. Maybe we will be imprisoned under a factionless tyranny. Maybe we will suffer through it all and be too weary and shattered from the events that have transpired to care about what happens around us.
But Tobias and I are obstinate, and we are Dauntless. And I know this:
We will not go up in flames without a fight.