TOBIAS POV

Fighting has become a second nature to me. The pattern of swinging fists and dodging them has become predictable in a way I wish it hadn't.

Catcalls and urgent shouts fill in the empty spaces between me, the other fighter, and the audience that encloses us. I don't even know my opponent's name, but in the midst of the muffled sounds around me, I can barely make out the name "Razor" being chanted.

We circle each other for a moment, on a mat in the center of the training room. All the sights blur until he is the only person in my vision. I study his face: the beard that doesn't look very clean at all, the ring through his eyebrow, the bald head—an ugly bastard. He must be over ten years older than me, and has been in Dauntless for much longer than that, but he will not win this fight.

I sidestep him carelessly when he throws a slow punch. The crowd boos—they bet good money on both of us, and I don't think that my screwing around is getting them any closer to an entertaining fight or their gambled money. But the brawl has to last longer than a couple minutes, or else then they would really be disappointed. They should all know by now what I can do, how I could end this fight in seconds, and they are fools if they bet against me.

While we dance around each other, my mind drifts elsewhere, as it sometimes does during these fights. I don't necessarily need to pay attention when I can predict my opponents' actions ahead of time, before they even think of performing whatever sad attempt they can muster.

I reflect on my pathetic day that consisted of working in the control room for most of it. However, I did spend time with Zeke, Shauna, and Uriah, who has fallen into our group since the war. He and Shauna bonded over Lynn's death, and Zeke and I have noticed his loneliness, so we let him accompany us everywhere, despite being younger.

I think that being tightly packed in our group keeps the demons of war away during the day. There is strength in numbers, I have found.

But the war that ended nine months ago always finds some way to creep into my brain, to fill me with regret and complicate my life now. If I'm being honest, I blame myself for what happened, for the lives that were taken. It was my fault after all, since I was the one who knew about the attack on Abnegation in advance and only went as far as to warn Marcus, who then refused to heed it. I gave up; I am responsible for thousands of deaths, and great, now I have a nervous ache in my stomach that will not help me win this fight.

Just as I come to my senses for a moment to dodge another hit, it dawns on me what today is. I didn't even realize that it was Aptitude Test Day.

And tomorrow is the Choosing Ceremony.

Which means Tris is choosing.

In my distracted haze, I take a blow to the mouth, which snaps me straight out of it. I breathe out, "Fuck," under my breath and shake off the shock of pain in the lower half of my face. I notice that Razor has a smirk on his.

With my arms raised into an offensive position, I find a wide gap where I target his stomach. He doubles over with a wheeze, and I finish him off with a loud hit to the temple, which leaves him crumpled on the mat. Likely unconscious.

People yell for him to get up while others cheer, and I don't waste my time to stay and see the aftermath. I shove my way through the awed audience and out of the training room, picking up my jacket off of a table along the way.

The cool, underground air makes me sigh in relief. The musty training room was overheated, and now cold sweat clings to my shirt and my body. I prod at my lip to test it, and sure enough it is painful enough to make me wince. My fingertip also comes away dabbed with red.

I just had to get far off track enough to think about her. How perfect. To this day, she is still causing me pain, directly or not.

The walk to my apartment is a quick, frustrated one. People keep their distance from me because of my presumably pissed off facial expression, joined by a bloody lip. Not to say that I'm very approachable on a good day though.

And when I insert my key into the lock of my door, I finally feel like I can be at peace for the rest of the night. At least, until I step inside and right on top of a note that was slid under the door while I was gone.

"Of course," I huff, bending down to pick up the piece of paper. Slamming the door behind me, I unfold the dirty, flimsy note and read the predictable words.

Tobias,

There will be some developments in the next few weeks that will make you rethink your hard set decision not to join us. As always, the door is open. This time will be different, and we will succeed.

—Evelyn

I scoff and crumple up the message before tossing it into a trash bin on the way to the bathroom. I could fill up that whole garbage can with the amount of these little recruitment notes she has passed along to me for the last nine months. They have only strengthened my resolve to not join her factionless cause, no matter how many times she has mentioned that there will be another uprising.

Mulling over the words of my next note to her—something along the lines of, "Kiss my ass"—I flip on the tap. My split lip hurts about as nasty as it looks. I don't have much I can do about it though, so I only wet a cloth and dab on it to clear it of fresh blood. Then I do the same to my knuckles, which are only tender because the tape I had wrapped around them protected them.

When I am finished, I meet my dark eyes in the mirror, noting that they seem different than they did years ago. They have seen death and real fear, and agony worse than anything I experienced during my childhood in Abnegation. They are hungry for more chaos because that is what they are used to. Maybe that is why I fight.

I never wanted to be a violent man, yet I can't deny that I am one now. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise that I finally found the nerve to end things with Tris; my inborn hostility would not be compatible with a relationship like that.

Bowing my head over the sink, I groan out loud. I don't want to think about her, no matter how much my time with her was the only part of my life where I felt truly happy—or as happy as one can be with an impending and later present war. But Choosing Day is tomorrow, and she will inevitably be returning to Dauntless. I can't ignore her as much as I want to. She will be showing up in my life every day for a while, and I will have to accept it.

Turning off the light in the bathroom, I head out to the living area of my apartment, where I change into comfortable clothes to sleep in. If Tris is going to stubbornly stay in my head tonight, then at least I can shorten her temporary residence in my mind by falling asleep early.

Once I am in my bed and all of the lights are off, I try to relax under my blue quilt. But it only invites thoughts about Tris in. Could she have changed? Could her breakdown have flipped something inside her that made her return to her old self, the one I loved?

That last time I saw her, I thought that she was too far gone to come back. She looked so frail, on her childhood bed, dressed in gray that buried her in dullness. She was so shut off from the world that I still don't know to this day if she even knew that I was there. All she did was finger the bandage on her wrist and stare out her window at the moon that cast eerie shadows in the room.

Caleb had sent me a note earlier that evening, through factionless messengers. It's Beatrice. It's urgent, he wrote. And even though I was supposed to have moved on since it was a month or two after our breakup, I was there in Abnegation in the middle of the night right after I received it, without question.

When I arrived, he briefed me on the situation. I had figured that sending Tris back to Abnegation would be dangerous and not beneficial for her mental state—she was already messed up from the war—but I had no idea what it would lead to.

Caleb was in hysterics and on the verge of tears, which was odd because after his traitorous actions, I didn't think he cared about his sister. He explained to me that he came home to find Tris cutting gashes into her wrist with a kitchen knife. Terrified for her wellbeing and worried that she would try something like this again, he turned to me for help.

"Please do something," he begged. "You're the only one she would ever listen to. You have to help her. Please."

Without a plan in mind, I climbed the stairs to her bedroom and entered. She was lying unresponsive on her side and didn't seem to notice my presence, but I sat on the bed near her feet and faced the same window that she faced. Together, we sat and didn't acknowledge the other.

I mean, what was I supposed to say? I hadn't seen her since I broke up with her after she incinerated any trust I had in her. And I suspected that I had something to do with the current mental struggle she was having. A simple, "Hey, how's it going?" wouldn't work to break the ice. An apology wasn't something I was willing to offer; she broke my heart too. Besides, our former relationship wasn't the reason that I was there.

I was there to make sure she wasn't so far gone that she would take her own life to prove it. Because deep down, I still have an affection for her that wouldn't allow me to just leave her behind to harm herself.

I barely recognized her. The woman I loved was not the shell of a person I was glancing over at then. It crushed me to see what Tris, who was once capable of anything, even capable of making me stronger, had crumbled down into.

She was gone.

And yet I still hadn't—haven't, if I'm being honest—given up on her.

"Don't do this to yourself, Tris," were the only words I offered her that night before I sat with her for hours until she drifted off. I don't know if it did anything for her, but I know that she isn't dead. Hopefully she found a way to dig herself out of the hole she fell into. And if so, good for her.

But after seeing what she had been reduced to, I don't see her true self ever making a reappearance. So I bury my earlier wishes of her ever making a full recovery down inside myself. There is no chance of us again.

Recalling that night has only stressed me out; it has not helped to lull me off to sleep deep in thought. I kick the covers off and sprawl out on the bed, sighing irritably. These unresolved feelings are going to keep me up all night unless I focus on something else.

So I push myself out of bed and to the kitchenette, where I take a water bottle out of the refrigerator. Lost in my contemplations, I forgot to hydrate after the fight tonight, but I definitely notice my dry mouth now. I drain half of the bottle on my way to my computer on the other side of the room.

Figuring that I will distract myself from tomorrow by using the computer, I sit down in front of it and pull up the recent news. I haven't checked it all day, but nothing really happens in the city anymore besides laws being implemented. I almost expect to see nothing new.

Until I read the headline: WOMAN FOUND DEAD, DECLARED FIRST SUICIDE SINCE LAST YEAR

For a split second, I panic. My mind was just barely reminded of this topic, and my heart pounds in protest to stop me from reading any further.

If the victim is Tris...

I shake my head because I just can't believe she would do this, right before she would be set free from Abnegation. I pray that I am correct before reading the first part of the article.

21-year-old Rebecca Jacobs of Amity was found hung from a tree in the Amity orchards at 6:00 A.M. this morning. Analysts from Erudite are investigating, but they have labeled her death as a suicide and have determined that she died hours before she was found.

I frown. I have lived in this city for nineteen years, and the only suicides that I am aware of are those of Dauntless initiates. Those are not broadcasted—only the Dauntless knew of Al's death last year—meaning this is the first suicide outside of Dauntless in decades.

It would be one thing if this was a while back, after the end of the war. Or if it was her Choosing Day. People have their reasons, so it must have been personal to her because nothing else comes to mind.

I read further because I can't comprehend this tragedy.

"It was so unexpected," her sister told Candor reporters in between sobs. "Rebecca was so happy. I never would have thought she would do something like this. It's so unlike her."

As I suspected, something is wrong here. I don't know if the Erudite know something that they didn't report, or if my bias against them is clouding my judgment. But I have always been suspicious of people, and I know something strange happened. And I know they have to be involved somehow.

For now though, there is nothing that can be done. When I turn off the computer, I promise myself that I will keep an eye out and look into the matter if something else occurs.

But I have to concentrate on training right now. Choosing Day is tomorrow, after all.

And I can already tell, it is going to be a wild ride.