Tobias POV

I return to Amity in distraught. I need to wait for one week. Never had I thought that one week would feel eternal. But if one week will save her life, then it's worth it. I just need to convince people here they need to fight back. Getting people to fight in Amity will be difficult though.

The first thing I do when I return is run to Johana's office. She's working at her small desk, concentrating, which is why I feel bad for slamming my hands onto her desk, making her jump a little. "What in the-" she begins asking.

I cut her off, "You said that the Amity would fight back against the Erudite if we have a bigger chance. Well, I just got the factionless to join the fight."

She widens her eyes, obviously surprised. She narrows her eyes and looks at her side, thinking. My heart drops when she begins to shake her head. "The factionless won't be much help," she explains.

"They've been stocking up supplies," I reason with her. She bites her bottom lip. I have to give her another push. "Do you know how many Abnegation members died? All because of the Erudite?"

Johana stares at me for a long time, and I end our conversation with, "Just go to Abnegation and see what the Erudite has caused," before leaving.

Tris POV

Peter leads me to a lab. I meet Jeanine there, who smiles with satisfaction. "Hello, Beatrice." I'm not even going to bother getting her to call me Tris.

Without returning her greeting, I wordlessly sit on the chair in the middle of the room. "The serum," Jeanine says, eyeing Peter. He steps forward and fumbles with a black box on a desk, taking out a syringe with a needle already attached to it.

Peter starts toward me, and I hold out my hand.

"Allow me," I say.

He looks at Jeanine for permission, and she says, "All right, then."

He hands me the syringe and I shove the needle into the side of my neck, pressing down on the plunger. Jeanine jabs one of the buttons with her finger, and everything goes dark.

My mother stands in the aisle with her arm stretched above her head so she can hold the bar. Her face is turned, not toward the people sitting around me, but toward the city we pass as the bus lurches forward. I see wrinkles in her forehead and around her mouth when she frowns.

"What is it?" I ask her.

"There is so much to be done," she says with a small gesture toward the bus windows. "And so few of us left to do it."

It is clear what she's referring to. Beyond the bus is rubble as far as I can see. Across the street, a building lies in ruins.

Fragments of glass litter the alleyways. I wonder what caused so much destruction.

"Where are we going?" I say.

She smiles at me, and I see different wrinkles than before, at the corners of her eyes. "We're going to Erudite headquarters."

I frown. Most of my life has been spent avoiding Erudite headquarters. My father used to say that he didn't even like to breathe the air in there. "Why are we going there?"

"They're going to help us."

Why do I feel a pang in my stomach when I think of my father? I picture his face, weathered by a lifetime of frustration with the world around him, and his hair, kept short by Abnegation standard practice, and feel the same kind of pain in my stomach that I get when I have not eaten in too long—a hollow pain.

"Did something happen to Dad?" I say.

She shakes her head. "Why would you ask that?"

"I don't know."

I don't feel the pain when I look at my mother. But I do feel like every second we spend standing these inches apart is one that I must impress upon my mind until my entire memory conforms to its shape. But if she is not permanent, what is she?

The bus stops, and the doors creak open. My mother starts down the aisle, and I follow her. She is taller than I am, so I stare between her shoulders, at the top of her spine. She looks fragile, but she is not.

I step down onto the pavement. Pieces of glass crinkle beneath my feet. They are blue and, judging by the holes in the building to my right, used to be windows.

"What happened?"

"War," my mother says. "This is what we've been trying so hard to avoid."

"And the Erudite will help us … by doing what?"

"I worry that all your father's blustering about Erudite has been to your detriment," she says gently. "They've made mistakes, of course, but they, like everyone else, are a blend of good and bad, not one or the other. What would we do without our doctors, our scientists, our teachers?"

She smooths down my hair.

"Take care to remember that, Beatrice."

"I will," I promise.

We keep walking. But something about what she said bothers me. Is it what she said about my father? No—my father is always complaining about Erudite. Is it what she said about Erudite? I hop over a large shard of glass. No, that can't be it. She was right about Erudite. All my teachers were Erudite, and so was the doctor who set my mother's arm when she broke it several years ago.

It's the last part. "Take care to remember." As if she won't have the opportunity to remind me later.

I feel something shift in my mind, like something that was closed has just opened.

"Mom?" I say.

She looks back at me. A lock of blond hair falls from its knot and touches her cheek.

"I love you."

I point at a window to my left, and it explodes. Particles of glass rain over us.

I don't want to wake up in a room in Erudite headquarters, so I don't open my eyes right away, not even when the simulation fades. I try to preserve the image of my mother and the hair sticking to her cheekbone for as long as I can. But when all I see is the redness of my own eyelids, I open them.

"You'll have to do better than that," I say to Jeanine.

She says, "That was only the beginning."

Tobias POV

The next morning, I wake up at the sound of soft knocks on my door. Actually, whoever is knocking has been knocking for a while, and frankly I'm getting fed up with it. I grudgingly get out of bed. The morning is a pain.

I open the door, and to my surprise it's Johana. "Good morning," she says.

"Morning," I mutter.

"How is your day so far?" she asks.

"I just got up," I say flatly. "What do you want?" If I don't ask that now, she'll never say what she really wants to say. That much is obvious.

"I went to the Abnegation last night," she quickly says. There's a mix of terror and worry in her eyes. "What happened there is horrifying, and I'm going to ask the council to change its decision today."

I feel relief and thank her. She says, "I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing this for the faction system," and walks away. (This is just how I imagine she would react. I don't know why) Why can't people just accept a thank you nowadays?

Later on that day, she announces in front of a crowd she must've gathered earlier that day, "The Abnegation have allied with the factionless," she says. "They intend to attack Erudite in two days' time. Their battle will be waged not against the Erudite-Dauntless army but against Erudite innocents and the knowledge they have worked so hard to acquire." She looks down, breathes deeply, and continues: "I know that we recognize no leader, so I have no right to address you as if that is what I am," she says. "But I am hoping that you will forgive me, just this once, for asking if we can reconsider our previous decision to remain uninvolved."

There are murmurs.

"Our relationship with Erudite notwithstanding, we know better than any faction how essential their role in this society is," she says. "They must be protected from needless slaughter, if not because they are human beings, then because we cannot survive without them. I propose that we enter the city as nonviolent, impartial peacekeepers in order to curb in whatever way possible the extreme violence that will undoubtedly occur. Please discuss this."

Rain dusts the glass panels above our heads. Johanna sits on a tree root to wait. Whispers, almost indistinguishable from the rain, turn to normal speech, and I hear some voices lift above others, almost yelling, but not quite.

By the end, over half has agreed to join.

Dear fellow readers,

Sorry about not updating for a while you guys! Like I said, I've been busy, lazy, and tired. Anyways, the movie was alright, but it. Did. Not. Follow. The. Book. At. All. Seriously, did the writers even READ the book? Well, thankfully they're changing writers for Insurgent.

If any of you guys are reading my other Divergent fanfiction (Allegiant-Part 2), then I'm telling you now that I will be updating tomorrow! :)

Hope you guys liked or are at least satisfied with this chapter! Please Follow/Favorite/REVIEW!:)