So, this chapter's pretty short, and there's really not that much going on yet. I just kinda needed it to transition into the next part and I promise there will be more in the chapters to come. Anyway, disclaimer hasn't changed, and leave reviews on your way out!
Chapter 3: Truth
It was all just a string of impossibilities. I couldn't be here in the Abnegation sector; Abnegation didn't exist anymore. I couldn't be considered a Dauntless anymore; that faction had fallen alongside the rest. Uriah couldn't be here; he was dead, and I of all people had to know how true that fact was. So then, wasn't there only one explanation for this all? It was a dream, twisted in some cruel way to look, to feel like the fear landscapes we had abandoned, pulling on the past, on my guilt. But, dreams were also only temporary, ended with pain or shock. However, this time, encountering Uriah should've been enough to jolt me out of this, which it wasn't, nor was a hard yet discrete pinch on the leg enough to change anything. So it was all I could do to take in the cool air, feeling as it tickled my throat, as if trying to dispel my fears during Dauntless initiation yet again.
"Come on, Four. Quit being a pansycake. This isn't a dream or simulation or something like that." A shadow of a smile played at his features, quirking up the side of his lip. "And I'm not a ghost here to haunt you if that's what you're worried about. Well, not really."
The only thing he didn't realize was that the problem wasn't so much of him being a ghost; it was him being here, in the land of the living. It was beyond the definition of unreal, bringing back to prominence the thoughts, the regrets, I had tried already to keep repressed since that disaster. And, though the shadow of responsibility would never disappear, I'd thought the brunt of it, the sharp sting of this accident, had been dulled by the years, but it had returned now in full force, pulling the words from my mouth. "Uriah, I'm so sorry. I never meant –"
"Seriously?" he cut me off with a sarcastic laugh I fully expected never to hear again in this lifetime, one of the few voices I wished were never silenced. "You're gonna start apologizing for that? Would you let it go already? I mean, it was an accident. No one could've seen it coming, and neither could you. Besides," he leaned casually against the plain, gray brick building, spreading his arms to gesture around us, "things are different here."
The space between us was punctuated by silence long enough to regain some semblance of composure. Or at least be sure I didn't sound like a complete bumbling fool. "That much is obvious. But do you mind explaining how?" After all it just made no sense. Chicago had changed, reformed into a normal city rather than some science experiment in the factions. Quite a prosperous city, healing, trying to hide the old wounds inflicted within, impossible though that would be to entirely erase. "What the hell happened here?"
"I would just say the factions exist, but I know you're not an idiot, and I'm not in the mood to tempt fate or anything like that. Truth is, here, they were never gone in the first place." He paused dramatically, letting that sink in.
"But they were gone; we made sure of that. Everything at the Bureau." Painful images flashed through my mind: another cold and desolate winter, her small body on a metal slab, pale and fragile in a way it hadn't been in life. "That wasn't for nothing."
"Maybe that's what it seems like to you," he answered cryptically, "but to everyone else here, none of that ever happened. All the stuff you remember is like a different reality. "To these people," he nodded to the wary Abnegation around us who tried to throw subtle, suspicious looks our way before resuming walking, eyes trained towards the ground, "this is the only way they've ever lived. Jeanine wiped out their leaders a few years back, as you remember, with the help of the Dauntless, who are, by the way, under the thumb of Eric and his protégé, Peter. But –"
"Uriah," I stopped him, a warning tone creeping into my voice. Seeing him was one thing already, but Eric was dead, killed before my eyes, and Peter remembered nothing about himself, save his name. I pinched the bridge of my nose, looking down at the ground, a habit I must have picked up during initiation somehow, as if that might somehow provide clarity. "Would you quit it and just answer my question sometime soon?"
"I guess I could," he mocked, but continued more truthfully at my hard glare. "You remember that wish you made last night?" At that, I fixed my attention more fully towards him. Of course I remembered: that unspoken want to have left Dauntless if it meant she was alive. That longing to be able to have one more kiss. But how could he know that? I'd never trusted anyone with those thoughts, much less someone long gone. At seeing my further confusion, a corner of his mouth twitched up again in characteristic mirth. "Because it just came true."