Note: All characters and story in general came right from Veronica Roth's head, not mine. I only expounded on her idea. Also, ALL of the words in regular Italic font belong to Veronica Roth – her exact words. Whenever you see regular font you are seeing my wording. Also, the bold Italic words are mine and are meant to be read with typical italic flare. The first few chapters are here almost word for word from her book because I thought it was necessary to lead up to the change.

CHAPTER 57

TRIS

THEY KEEP ME under observation for only one more day. While I'm there they take me for a few more tests and ask me endless questions that I answer to the best of my abilities.

The day I'm released is the day of Uriah's funeral. The use of the Bureau was offered for it but Hana thought it would be best to have it back in Chicago, at the Dauntless headquarters. It may have been an experiment of the Bureau, but it was all we knew. To us it was home, is home. His funeral is unlike any I've ever been to before. It's somber and quiet, not wholly unlike Abnegation, but the mood is so much more than Abnegation's funerals. There's real emotion here, it's tangible.

They had him cremated, so I can only look at the ceramic urn and pull memories of his face and his smile. I think about his easy way of talking to anyone, anywhere, anytime. He was full of life and he had so much more to give. He wasn't supposed to die.

It's hard to know that I never got to say goodbye - that I wasn't there in the end. On the other hand, all there would have been for me to do would be to sit and wait and watch - like I had been doing until our attack. He was never coming back, and I think I knew that on some level. Still, things seem a little dimmer without his very big presence.

They have some food laid out after a service, but none of us have that much of an appetite. We say our goodbyes and give our respects to Hana and Zeke before walking out.

"I know Zeke's still weird around you," Christina says to Tobias, slinging an arm across his shoulders. "But I can be your friend in the meantime. We can even exchange bracelets if you want, like the Amity girls used to."

"I don't think that will be necessary." I can see a ghost of a smile on his face. Tobias, Four, was so serious and so solitary in Dauntless that I sometimes forget he had friends. They were few, but they were all he had and trusted before me. And now one of those friends is shutting him out.

Eventually Zeke will be able to move past his anger (misplaced anger), but in the meantime, Tobias will not be alone. We told each other once that we would be each other's family, but I think it's farther reaching than that. He and I are family; we are a part of each other. We've been woven together and are now inseparable, but it doesn't just have to be the two of us. He and Christina may not have been friendly in the beginning, but she has been brought into our family too. It's not faction before blood, and maybe it never was. It's about people, the people you let yourself get close to and who you let get close to you. It's not because you have the same aptitude or the same genealogical structure. It's because we are all dependent on each other. None of us is too smart or too brave or too selfless or too kind or too honest. It may be buried, but we all possess some part of all of these, and we all need each other to coax them out.

We walk down the stairs and out to the street together. The sun has slipped behind the buildings of Chicago, and in the distance I hear a train rushing over the rails, but we are moving away from this place and all that it has meant to us, and that is all right.

There are so many ways to be brave in this world. Sometimes bravery involves laying down your life for something bigger than yourself, or for someone else. Sometimes it involves giving up everything you have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved, for the sake of something greater.

But sometimes it doesn't.

Sometimes it is nothing more than gritting your teeth through pain, and the work of every day, the slow walk toward a better life.