CHAPTER 13

The tents were being folded down and bags were being stuffed with all of our belongings. I was standing on the sidelines watching, Mason in my arms, as everyone was packing away everything so that we could continue walking again.

We set off in the early morning after we had eaten and I had fed Mason. Tobias and I hadn't mentioned to anyone about the night before, the night Tobias had proposed to me, we intended to later but for now we wanted to keep it between us.

We had been walking for about an hour when Mason started to cry again. Tobias glanced at me, watching as I bounced him around, trying to soothe him.

"Is he hungry?" Tobias beside me suggested, shifting one of the bags onto his other shoulder.

I shrugged, offering my chest to my baby. He seemed to be as he latched on greedily. Tobias chuckled and whispered. "He's going to grow up big and strong just like his mother."

My eyes widened as my gaze snapped to him. "You mean like his father." I corrected. He shook his head but was cut off by the shout from someone up ahead. We both turned our eyes towards the front of the group.

"Guys!" Thom called out and waved us forward with his hand. Tobias glanced at me and I nodded for him to go ahead. I stayed behind, walking as quickly as I could but careful so as not to bump Mason around, whom was finally calm.

Commotion was exploding a few metres away; I saw Tobias get angry and watched as he shoved Thom away as he tried to touch Tobias on the shoulder and as several other people held back his arms to prevent him from committing any other conflict. I watched as the boy I loved stormed off and sat quickly in the dust, his head in his hands. My forehead creased as I stepped into the crowd. My eyes automatically dropped to Evelyn who was lying in the dusty ground, her head in Edith's lap, her breaths shallow.

"What happened?" Thom just shook his head at me sadly and nodded his head towards Tobias. I nodded silently back and approached him. "Tobias?" I whispered.

He raised his head from his hands and patted the spot beside him for me to sit down. I obeyed him and sunk into his embrace as he wrapped an arm around my waist and held me tightly. "Oh, Tris…" he whispered into my hair, gazing down at our son.

"What happened, Tobias?"

"They, I think that my mother had a heart attack." I gasped. "She told me the other day, that she had been getting tight pains in her chest and had been short of air, but both of us just passed it off as tiredness from delivering Mason and from all of the walking we had been doing. But obviously it wasn't." He had begun to shake against me, his shoulders hunched.

"Oh, Tobias… I'm so sorry." I placed a hand under his chin, attempting to bring his gaze to me. "Hey, hey, look at me." He cast his dark blue eyes onto mine, smiling sadly at me. "I love you, you know that, right?"

He nuzzled into the crook of my neck, kissing the skin lightly there. "Yes, I do and I love you too. You always seem to know how to make me feel better."

I smiled softly. "Your mother will be alright, Tobias." He pulled away to peer into my eyes and I selfishly wished he hadn't, I just wanted to stay like that for the rest of the day; with our son in either one of our arms and Tobias nuzzled up to me. "I'll see about staying the night here." He nodded but didn't look satisfied. "Tobias?" I asked.

"I just want to keep moving so that we can get Mason home as soon as possible."

I placed a hand on top of Tobias', keeping our son firmly in the crook of my other arm. "I know and we will, we just have to be a little patient."

He nodded and kissed me, softly but passionately. I pulled away, kissing him lightly again before standing up. "Wait," he said and I turned back around. "I'll take of Mason while you're gone." Smiling, I nodded and handed him our baby and watched for a second as he kissed our son's forehead before wandering back towards Thom and Edith.

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"Tobias?" I whispered in the darkness while feeding Mason.

He lay beside me, a hand resting on my thigh. "Mm?" he mumbled sleepily.

"Are you afraid of dying?" I asked him quietly.

He sat up beside me, forcing me to look at him even though I couldn't really see a thing in the blackness of the night. "What's this about?" he murmured.

I shrugged, "Just the events of today got me thinking; thinking about what the future holds."

He was silent for a moment, thinking I suspected. "Well, in a way yes, but I suspect that everyone is afraid of death in some way. However, what I am mostly scared about is leaving you and little Mason on your own. You both are my heart, life and soul; without you I would probably welcome death if it came at me but now I wouldn't."

I smiled and whispered the three words we often repeated to each other, "I love you." Tobias offered to stay up for the first watch; he wanted to be alone with his thoughts. Evelyn was in a shaky yet stable condition at the moment and they weren't sure when we would begin walking again. I could see that all of this bothered him but whatever words of comfort I said to him, he wouldn't accept them. So I slipped under the covers beside my fiancé and son and fell into a restless sleep.

It had only felt like a minute that my eyes had slipped closed when there was a ruckus outside of our tent and then Thom calling out for Tobias and something about his mother.