A/N: Hola, estrellas! I bring you another Divergent one-shot inspired by another practically unknown holiday: International Spinal Cord Injury Day, falling on September 5th. I actually posted this on time, I'm surprised.
When I first read about this holiday, I immediately thought of Shauna, and the injuries she sustained in Insurgent. I've always loved to write about people with disabilities - it increases their representation in writing, and it forces me to face any misconceptions I might have had about their respective conditions. So, Divergent and paraplegia? It was perfect.
This story isn't a one-shot like the others, though, mostly because of its length, and the time it will take the complete the other parts. This story will be six chapters long, written from Shauna's third-person limited perspective, covering her journey in healing.
The title of this story comes from the song Symphony, by Clean Bandit, which this story is partially inspired by. I felt the song represents Zeke and Shauna's relationship very nicely.
I really don't want to get sued, so, first things first, Divergent and all its characters belong to the wonderful Veronica Roth! Please, if you haven't, read at least Divergent and Insurgent before you read this story, You won't understand it otherwise.
Hope you all enjoy the first chapter!
The first thing she sees is white.
It's so far from the usual dark hues of her home, that her first instinct is to reel back. But she can't - she's lying in a bed, she realizes, and if her back goes any further into the mattress, she'll probably fall right through.
Her vision is blurry, and she blinks furiously, trying to get rid of the bleariness. She's weak right now, vulnerable to the attack of any opponent while she tries to regain her regular vision. She left behind most of her physical weaknesses long ago, with the help of a kind, quiet blue-eyed boy.
Her heart aches a little at the thought of the boy, now a young, but hardened man, but she forces her anger at him to rise up again, wiping out any shred of sympathy.
He's Divergent. He's not fully Dauntless. He could belong somewhere else - his loyalty could be somewhere else. He's dangerous.
(But, her mind whispers, he's still the boy who taught you how to fight after everyone else had gone to bed. He's still the one who you ranted to about your feelings for that oblivious idiot-)
She blinks again, pushing her conflicting emotions out of the way. There's no time for them right now.
She attempts to push herself onto her elbows, but fails, involuntarily crying out as a sharp, throbbing pain ricochets through her lower back. She tries to move her legs, only to find that she can't.
What in the world-?
The beeping of the heart monitor beside her bed suddenly becomes twice as loud.
Why can't I move my legs?
She tries, in vain, to suck in some air to appease her suddenly empty lungs. But she can't take a full breath, not with the panic threatening to overwhelm her.
What's wrong with me?
The last thing she sees is her dark-skinned boyfriend, bursting through the doors of the room she's in.
The next time she wakes up, the ceiling is familiar.
There's a jagged line of slightly protruding rock that runs above her bed, presumably the corner bed in the infirmary, based on the location and angle of the edge, that's been there as long as she can remember. And the entire rock ceiling is a shade of dark gray, the same kind of rock that made up her old bedroom's ceiling, on which she stuck glow-in-the-dark stars when she was five.
She remembers that she woke up once before, but she can't quite remember what happened. She remembers panic, and her boyfriend, and white, so much white.
Suddenly, her view of the rock ceiling is abruptly cut off, the concerned face of her boyfriend being the cause.
"Shauna?" He questions, and, even as disoriented and confused as she is, she can hear the fear and relief in his voice, warring with each other for dominance.
Her throat feels like it's been sanded with sandpaper, parched to the point where she wonders how long she's been out, how long it's been since her throat has felt the touch of water.
Unable to reply, she lifts her hand, gesturing at her throat, hoping against hope that Zeke understands.
Zeke, to his credit, picks up what she wants far quicker than most Dauntless would expect him to. For all of his mischief and antics, he can be quite perceptive, she has learned.
As soon as she feels cool glass in her hand, she cranes her neck and brings the glass to her lips, gulping down the water as fast as she can. The cool liquid soothes her throat almost instantly, bringing her immense relief.
Once she places the glass down on the small table beside her bed, she opens her mouth for the first time. "Zeke," She croaks, her voice still recovering from disuse. "What happened?"
Her boyfriend's eyes water, his lips tremble, and she instantly regrets asking.
"When-" He clears his throat. "How far back do you remember?"
She thinks for a moment, reaching back into her memory for the last thing before the blackness. There's the first time she woke up, but that hardly counts, she reasons, since all she can remember of that is blurs of colors and emotions.
"We- We were spying on Jack." She recalls, hesitantly. "He was meeting with Max. Lynn shot him." She pauses. Her memory becomes blurrier at this point, harder to recall. But the pain, the agonizing pain, that she felt, is crystal clear. "We fought. Someone shot me."
"That's right." She can pinpoint the exact moment that Zeke cracks, that the façade he's undoubtedly been putting on shatters into a thousand pieces. His tears finally overflow, pouring down his cheeks in a display of emotion stronger than any she's ever seen him display before. "I- I thought we'd lost you."
"Hey." She reaches her arm out, tentatively placing her hand on top of Zeke's. "I'm still here. No Dauntless traitor can take me down that easily."
Her words cause Zeke's lips to quirk up in a smile. Tears still stick to his cheeks and hang from the underside of his chin, but at least new ones have stopped falling. "Of course not. Woe to any Dauntless traitor that tries."
His humorous words startle a laugh out of her. It's weak, a reflection of her strength right now, but it's there.
When she looks back at Zeke, though, that hint of the usual, silly person he is is gone. His face has flattened into a somber look once again. The look is strange on him, wrong, in a way. It is the expression of a far older man.
This is what war does, she thinks fleetingly. It destroys everything in its path. Even the smallest things.
"Well," He continues, never tearing his brown eyes away from her own blue ones. "After that, we took you to Candor for treatment. The rest of Dauntless held a meeting. They decided that we weren't safe in Candor any longer, and that we should come back home. They also elected new leaders, so we could execute Eric. They are Tori, Harrison, and-" Her boyfriend pauses there, looking hesitant to tell her the last name.
"Who is it?" She presses him, searching his face as though they hold the answers. Zeke doesn't respond, and she can feel her ire rising. They don't keep secrets from each other. "Spit it out. You're not going to make the news any easier to take by keeping it from me."
Zeke squeezes his eyes shut, but responds nonetheless. "And Four."
Four. Tobias. The one person she doesn't know how to interact with, not anymore. The one person who pulls such confused feelings from her.
Four. Her enemy. A Divergent. Someone with more than one place to which they belong. Someone different. Someone dangerous.
Someone determined. Someone thoughtful. Someone loyal. Her friend, once upon a time.
She purses her lips. "Why did they choose him?"
Zeke sighs. For a second, she feels sorry for him, sorry that he will have to choose between his friend and her.
But he knows the right side, a voice that sounds like her mother whispers in her ear. If he picks the wrong one, it's his loss.
"I'm not arguing with you on this right now, babe." He drags his hand down his face, and, for the first time, she notices how dark the circles under his eyes have gotten. "Anyways, Eric was executed, and we're at Dauntless now." He finishes.
"Great." She doesn't say anything else, and neither does he - there is simply nothing else to say, she supposes.
How wrong she is.
"Shauna." After a few minutes, her boyfriend speaks up again, only, this time, his voice is resigned. Almost defeated. It's the tone he uses when he has to tell her something bad. "The doctors-"
"What's wrong?" She interrupts, not in the mood for any softening Zeke might try to do. She already feels like an invalid; she doesn't want to feel coddled, too. "Just tell me."
Zeke sighs again, and she can feel her stomach drop when she notices the new tears glimmering in his eyes.
Something is very wrong.
"Could you try moving your legs for me, honey?" He still keeps his voice soft, comforting, but at least he doesn't draw it out. The request is strange, but she shrugs it off.
She goes to follow his directions, preparing to shift her legs to the side.
But they don't move.
She stares, bewildered, trying again and again. Nothing happens.
She can feel her breathing pick up, can hear her heart monitor beeping more frequently, and, yet, all she can do is stare at her unmoving legs. Move, she pleads with herself. Please, move.
But they remain in place.
A hand settles itself on her arm, and she turns her head to look at its owner. Zeke meets her panicked gaze, his sorrowful eyes confirming what she doesn't want to believe.
No. No, this isn't real. It isn't. It can't be.
"Shauna." He whispers. "I need you to calm down for me, alright? You're going to pass out if you don't calm down and breathe."
She hardly registers his words over the roaring in her ears. "Zeke, what's going on?" Her voice is desperate. "Why can't I move my legs? What's wrong with me?"
Her boyfriend hesitates, but, maybe seeing her silent pleas, speaks. "Babe, the bullet- it hit your spinal cord." He swallows, with some effort. "You- It paralyzed you. From the waist down."
And her world comes crashing down.
The next few hours are a blur.
After Zeke breaks the news, she finds that she doesn't have the will to do, well, anything.
Her mother, Lynn, and Hector rush in a few minutes after. She learns that they were at breakfast, in the dining hall, when she woke up. Her mother and Zeke practically had to drag Lynn out of the room, they say, to get her to eat.
They already know about her... condition. Her mother fusses over her, crooning about how her poor baby will never be able to walk again. Lynn throws her arms around her neck and refuses to let go, apologies spilling from her lips about shooting Max and consequently landing her where she is. Hector sits opposite to Lynn, not saying much, which is unusual for him, but he's there for her nevertheless.
She plasters a smile on her face when they come in. She reassures her mother, who is on the verge of tears, and tells Lynn that she forgives her. That's true - there is nothing in her that believes that this is her sister's fault. And she runs her fingers through Hector's hair, in a way she knows he likes.
She puts up a mask for her family, because she knows she has to be strong for them. They're still at war, after all - they can't be distracted by her physical and mental condition, not right now.
For how well they all know her, the only person who notices the hollowness of her smile, the fakeness of her upbeat voice is Zeke, who leans on the wall near the door, watching her with a sad look on his face. She can tell Lynn suspects, but her younger sister is seemingly distracted by something else, and doesn't put the pieces together.
As a matter of fact, her whole family seems distracted. Quietly, she notices how much more emotional her mother seems. How subdued Hector is. How Lynn's eyes are rimmed with red. She notices that Zeke occasionally kicks the wall, lightly, but with a certain grief embedded in the motion.
The absences of Uriah and Marlene are also hard to miss.
She can tell that her family is putting up a mask, too. They're trying their hardest to make sure she notices none of what she has. And, under normal circumstances, she doesn't think she would have. But there's an emptiness that's been festering inside of her, ever since Zeke told her about her... diagnosis, and she supposes that these observations are filling the space her emotions would usually take.
She would call that emptiness denial, if there was anything to deny. She still doesn't want to believe it, but her battered heart has no argument against the words of everyone she knows and loves, as well as the doctors. Against what her mind knows to be true.
Finally, she can't take it anymore. She's tired of her family's masks. She interrupts her mother's words, blurting out, "Where are Marlene and Uriah?"
And the room falls dead silent.
She looks at her family, trying to put the pieces together. Hector ducks his head, looking ready to start bawling. Lynn glares at her, but she can see past her younger sister's anger, right to the raw pain that fuels it. A few tears slip down her mother's cheeks. And Zeke - Zeke squeezes his eyes shut, like he's willing his own tears to not fall. He's wearing the same expression he wore when he told her the bad news, not even an hour ago.
And, instantly, she knows that something has happened. Something that involves either Uriah or Marlene. Or possibly both.
"Tell me." She demands, quietly, but, in the silence of the room, it feels like she's yelling.
She knows that she probably can't handle it, especially after what's happened to her. But as her mother opens her mouth, probably to tell her exactly that, she shoots her a deadly glare.
It doesn't matter if she can handle it or not. She needs to know.
She has to know what happened to her friends. Uriah, perhaps even more troublesome and charismatic than his brother. Marlene, the sweetest girl she's ever met, the girl her little sister loves.
(Because how could she not know about that? She isn't blind, she sees how Lynn looks at Marlene, when she thinks nobody is watching.)
She needs to know how much stronger she will have to be.
Perhaps they see the steel in her gaze, her refusal to let them leave without telling her what has happened to her friends. Maybe they decide that she, too, deserves the right to know about it. Or they may have come to the conclusion that it's better that she hears it from them, and not from some random Dauntless walking the halls. Whatever the reason, they tell her the story. From start to finish.
Since she got the news about her paralysis, she never thought things could get any worse. She never thought she could sink any lower than she already had.
As usual, she is wrong.
A/N: This chapter is quite a downer, sorry about that. But I wanted Shauna to sink to rock bottom before she could start rising and overcoming, because even though I have not sustained a spinal cord injury myself, I understand that it would be difficult to get one. Her struggle to work with and accept her new disability is the main focus of the story, and, right now, she's losing.
If you can't tell, I made it so she woke up sometime after Marlene's death, because Tris made it seem like she hadn't woken up yet in Insurgent, while she was deciding between Marlene and Hector.
Please let me know if you see any medical inaccuracies. I tried to make this accurate from a medical standpoint, but I'm not a doctor, so I might have gotten some things wrong.
And that's it! I'm working on the next update for the Fourth Eaton, I promise, but school has just started up again, so things are a bit hectic.
Gracias por leer, mi estrellas, y hasta luego!