Woot another chapter! Don't get too spoiled though- this two-chapters-one-week thing is not gonna be the new normal.

But this is kinda a thank-you present for all the awesome reviews I've gotten! Seriously, guys, they mean a lot to me. I tried to PM all of you that left reviews, but if I forgot, I am sososo sorry. And guests- while I couldn't respond individually, just know that all of your feedback and kind words mean a ton to me.

Keep reviewing, guys! It's awesomeeee! c:

Of course: Blah, blah, Veronica Roth, blah, blah, blah, owner, blah...

This chapter is sad, obviously. But enjoy.

"This morning, there was an accident while your parents were driving to work. Your mother is in critical condition at the hospital, but your father… he… he didn't make it."

Tris's mind clouded over with fog as she tried to process what Oblivern had just said. She heard the words- father, mother, accident… but she couldn't seem to understand what he was saying. What he seemed to be saying couldn't be true. It just couldn't.

"Beatrice? Do you want to sit down?" Oblivern was smiling a smile that was probably supposed to be comforting but, through the white haze in Tris's mind, just looked constipated.

But Tris was just starting to take in what Oblivern had said before. Her parents had been in an accident? And her dad was—dead?

Dead. Dead. Deaddeaddead. The word echoed through Tris's mind, each repetition like a sledgehammer to her heart. How was it possible that her dad, so full of life and humor and energy and love, could be dead? She'd seen him just that morning…

Oh. God. They're last conversation had been trivial, silly. She haden't even had a chance to say that she loved him one last time. And now she never could.

Tris crumpled to the ground, tears streaming down her face, like some great dam of emotion had been broken with a single thought. She heard a horrible, gasping sob, like an animal being tortured. It took her a moment to realize that that sound was coming from her.

"Hey, shh, hey, hey…" Oblivern, it seemed, had come around her giant desk, breached the impossible divide between teacher and student, criminal and judge, and was patting her shoulder awkwardly. She smelled of vanilla and some flowery scent- old lady perfume. If the situation weren't so dire, Tris would have been focused on how awkward it was. "Don't- don't cry," the principal was saying, stiff and cracked like she was trying to make it soothing but just breaking it in the process.

Tris thought she might say something like "it'll all be OK," but that would only make it worse. It was not 'okay', and it never would be 'okay' again. Her dad was gone, and her mom was hovering in between life and death.

Tris stared at the lunch tray Miss Gigi had brought her. The cafeteria food, which at best was just bad, now looked as unappetizing as possible. And anyway, Tris wasn't hungry, and she doubted that she ever would be again. It was like when she got the news, the part of her where she cherished her parents had been sliced out, leaving at first a blinding pain, and now a crushing emptiness, a void, like everything inside of her had been sucked out.

She preferred the pain. It was better, she thought, to feel pain than feel nothing at all.

Tris didn't have any tears left to cry. She didn't know how long she had sobbed there, on the floor of Oblivern's office, but eventually, Oblivern awkwardly half-shoved, half-carried her out to the reception office, and sort of pushed her onto the vinyl sofa. She had kept crying for a while, until the blinding pain faded to a throb, which turned into an ache, which then faded into the void.

She had been a different person, a normal girl with two parents and nothing worse than a mean girl to think of. And now, she was alone, alone with Caleb in a world where everything was different.

"Hey." A soft, familiar voice made her glance up.

It was Jasper, his hair bright against his paler-than-usual face.

Immediately, Tris felt a rush of embarrassment, and then shame. Embarrassment because she knew she looked like utter shit, and shame because… how could she feel shame about how she looked when her parents where-where- No. She couldn't revisit that word, that word that was like a twenty-ton block dropping on her heart.

"Hi," Tris started to say, but her voice came out in a broken whisper, a sad, cracked, withered version of her old voice.

Jasper plopped down next to her, the Styrofoam cushion making a sighing sound as it flattened out even more to accommodate the addition.

There was a long silence. Tris soaked up the warm smell of the boy next to her, and his quiet stability.

"I'm not gonna tell you its all gonna be fine, or something," Jasper said finally. "'cuz it's not true. What is 'fine', even?" he laughed, bitterly, and there were tears sparkling in the corners of his eyes. "Fine is some stupid thing made up by people who didn't have their lives ripped into little tiny shreds in a second. Fine is a dumb thing we're supposed to emulate even when fine isn't possible."

Tris turned to look at him, really look at him, for the first time. There was a certain sadness beneath his delicate features, a broken, stitched-together aura that seemed to float off him. Maybe it was just now. Maybe it always had, but Tris had never thought about it.

"What happened?" She asked.
Jasper sighed, a long broken exhales. He gazed off at something in the far distance, and then shut his eyes. "It was four years ago. My dad, my mom, me, and my-my older sister and brother were all in the car on the way to visit a college that the twins were interested in. They were in 11th grade. Not here, but in another town. It was raining, and the road was slippery." His voice was flat, even, like he was reading aloud from a story about someone else, or maybe a robot. "We were on the highway and some drunk driver lost control of their car and rammed it into ours. We spun off the road and rolled down a few feet. My sister, mom, and dad were already gone when the ambulance showed up. My dad held out until the helicopter ride to the hospital."

"And- and you?" Tris didn't want to hear anything else, didn't want any demons to hover around her friend. But she knew that she couldn't tell him to stop, because it was too sad.

"I was lucky. Sitting on the side in the way-back, the third row of seats. I was banged up pretty bad- a concussion, some broken ribs, and a lot of cuts and cruises, but the real damage wasn't something the doctors could fix." He shrugged. "My Aunt and Uncle live here, so the lawyers sold our house to pay for all the medical stuff I needed, and I moved in here."

"I-I'm sorry," Tris said, laying a hand on Jasper's arm. She had no idea what to say, what wouldn't be shallow and clichéd and hurtful.

"Thanks," Jasper said. But then he shook himself, and said in a decidedly different voice, "This is not about me. It's about you. And you need to know that fine isn't ever going to be possible- but- we're humans. We can evolve. For a while it's gonna feel like being in the ground with them would be better, but that's just part of the process. You just need to trust that you can bounce back."

"Th-thank you." Tris shut her eyes. She still didn't want to think about what had happened, but Jasper had been honest with her, and kind, and blindingly vulnerable, bearing a part of himself that Tris hadn't even known existed, and she was grateful for that, if anything.

"Anytime," Jasper replied, with blue eyes burning with feeling. "Anytime."

He turned to walk away, stopping only once to give her a sad smile. Tris sank back into the chair. She knew that eventually she would have to deal with what had happened, really deal with it, but for now, she felt only a crushing emptiness and a drumbeat pulsing through her head, a slow, heavy funeral march: Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone.

She was just starting to float back down into her murky pit of nothingness when Miss Gigi tapped her on the shoulder. Her eyes were blinking rapidly behind her bejeweled purple reading glasses, and she kept brushing back stray bits of orangey frizz. She was a picture of awkwardness when she said softly, "Beatrice, your brother just heard the news. You too might want to talk."

Caleb? Tris sat up, looked around. Sure enough, there was a low, guttural whimpering coming from Oblivern's office. He must have come in while she was talking to Jasper.

"Yeah, I'll go," she heard herself say in her withered, empty voice. She rose to her feet, wobbling slightly, and slowly walked into the office. Caleb was clumped in the chair, his arms resting on his knees and his head pillowed on his forearms. Oblivern hemmed and hawed awkwardly, pursing her lips and fixing her hair. Tris felt a twinge of pity for her. Consoling teenagers had never been part of her job description.

Tris stepped toward her brother, and it occurred to her that she had no idea what to say to him. She had never seen him so… broken. The boy in front of her was not the pulled-together, sophisticated, popular boy she had known. He was just a broken, hurt kid. Slowly, almost nervously, Tris pressed her hand onto his shoulder.

"It's gonna be okay," she said softly. "In the end."

Caleb raised his head to look at her, tears shining in his eyes. He had never looked so sad.

"C'mon." Tris took his hand, and gently lead him out of the office, to the sofa where she had been sitting.

Caleb sat down, and slumped over again, his eyes tightly shut. Tris let herself lean into him, into his soft, warm torso, for once appreciating the strength that another person could lend. Sensing her presence, Caleb sat up, and looped his arm around Tris's arms, letting her lean on his shoulders.

Because in the end, they were siblings.

The hospital was miserable. The lobby had smelled of disinfectant of sickness, even underneath the inspirational posters and faded sofas, and the further into the building Tris went, the more depressing and sad it was. The one exception was the Labor and Delivery Unit, where streams of happy women and family streamed in and out. Tris watched a heavily pregnant woman waddle in, holding another small child's hand, with a man- presumably her husband- beside her, a sharp twinge pulling at her heart. She longed to back to the days of being a little child with her family, back when she had one.

"Hey, Tris?"

Tris turned. Four, who had volunteered to drive her and Caleb to the hospital, tapped her on the shoulder. For the first time, she was too distraught to revel in her contact with the boy.

"Yeah?" She whispered, too drained to raise her voice.

" Uh, we're at your mom's room."

Tris stopped, stock-still. She had been told by the doctors that her mother was pretty banged up, and comatose, but she hadn't thought about what that would mean for her mother, her caring, sweet, energetic mother. Not gone like her dad, but not really there either.

"Ok," she said finally, "lets go in." She glanced towards Caleb, but for the first time in her memory, he was totally silent. His eyes had a hooded, shut look, and he had not uttered a word since their exchange outside Oblivern's office.

Tris moved forward and slowly opened the door to a small room, somewhat dingy and crowded with beeping machines and humming tubes. And in the middle, was her mother.

"Mommy," Tris whispered, almost unconsciously, rushing forward to kneel next to the bed. Her mother's skin was waxy and pale, at least in the areas that peeped out from bandages and casts. Tubes were stuck in her like she was some kind of human pincushion, and one of the many machines seemed to be monitoring her heartbeat, a low, steady line.

Tris choked back tears at the sight of her mother like this. It wasn't right, to see your parent to lifeless, she thought. It wasn't okay to have the roles reversed like this. She was meant to be hurt, and her mom taking care of her, not vice versa. Tears formed in the corner of her eyes, and rolled down her cheeks, unbidden and yet unstoppable. Caleb was crouched next to her, one hand gently rubbing their mother's hands- poked with tubes but otherwise still hers, still the nurturing hands of their childhood.

A slight scuffling sound made Tris look up.

Four had tripped over something in the corner, and was red-facedly getting to his feet once again. Tris looked at his face, at his blush and his bright eyes and pale skin, and made a decision.

She got up slowly, giving the zombie-like body that was once and might still be her mother a long look, and then walked over to Four.

"Hey," she said, in a voice she didn't know she had. "You wanna go do something?"

So? Thoughts?

Note: Thankfully, I have never suffered a loss like Caleb and Tris have here. I tried to write as realistically as I could, but know that it is all method writing. Literally I have no idea.

Just know that I write based on how many reviews I get. Ya want an update? Write a review.

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