The girl has brown hair, and brown eyes. Her body's stiff now, not languidly moving against Tobias'.
The girl moves her mouth to say something, and it just infuriates Tris more to see that they can hear, they can speak and hear their own voice, and she can't. It's like they're mocking her, taunting her, angering her and thinking she can't fight back.
Finally, Tobias looks over to her, to Tris, to the girl who he promised he would never betray. 'Never' seems to be a longshot, especially with how Tris sees it. Tobias moves his mouth, and Tris can very much see herself ripping that mouth out of his face. Tobias pushes off the girl, and gets out of bed, and Tris spares herself the nuisance of knowing if he's completely naked or not, because his eyes don't even show a bit of regret, not a hint of begging for forgiveness, because his look is solid, complete, mock innocence.
He moves to hold her arm. His hand moves to grasp her own, and like hell would she let that happen.
He says her name, she knows he does, because she knows how her name looks like on his lips. She yanks her arm away, as if she came in contact with hot iron, even without him so much as touching her. She hates how she still remembers how he says her name, how such a traitor lets her name fall out of his lips.
"No!" She tries to say, but she doesn't know how it sounds like. She feels tears streaming down her face, but they can so much as boil with how much rage she's feeling, with how much anger she feels boiling in her veins. "You have no right to touch me, you hear me?!"
He says her name again, and it makes her so pissed, so angry, because it's like she's mocking her even more. As if letting her find him in bed with another girl isn't enough pain already.
"Just shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up, and get the hell away from me!" She doesn't know how it comes out, and she doesn't care, because all she wants is for him to die, for him to suffer, because he has no right to face her when he can't even apologize properly to his deaf girlfriend.
All she can hear is the high-frequency noise that she's been hearing ever since she was in the Erudite lab. And if anything, she thinks it got even louder, even squeakier and more annoying and-
Her eyes are closed, and the tears are streaming down her face. Curse her body for betraying her, curse that girl in bed with Tobias, curse Tobias, curse the fact that she still loves him, that she still cares about him, that she still wants to take him back.
Curse her weak heart. Curse it all!
She doesn't know how it comes out, but she feels her throat rumble, she feels her lungs pushing, and she knows she's shouting. She can taste the salty tears coming into her mouth, she can feel her heart breaking as if Tobias has her heart in his hands and is literally tearing it apart, and she can feel pain, pain, so much pain, and it's unbearable, it's beyond unbearable, and she wishes she could just die.
It makes her so angry. It makes her so furious, but all she can feel herself do is curl up into a ball and cry.
Because maybe, this way, she can keep herself together. Even if, like Tobias and his promises, it's a longshot.
His jaw is dropped down, slack on his face. He can't feel anything, can't see anything, can't hear anything else.
It's not real, it's just a sim. Then why does he feel so stupid, so regretful, so angry?
He takes a deep breath in, and breathes out, a strong exhale. He runs his hand through his hair, and he tries to look away, tries not to see Tris crumpled on the floor and curled into herself, tears streaming down her face endlessly. He tries to block out her sobs and cries and her pain that he inflicted, whether or not that was him.
It's just a sim. It's not real.
It's just Tris' imagination.
Still, he feels like it's he who did it, he, the one named Tobias Eaton, who was in that bed with that girl and betrayed Tris.
But it's just a sim, right? It's supposed to just be a test, but it feels like horror all the way.
No matter how hard he tries, no matter if he puts his hands on his ears or not, Tris' sobs prevail among any other sound around him, and it makes him think of the girl he couldn't keep from coming here that night, the girl that could be beside him and fighting and not having to go through this whole ordeal instead of seeing her greatest fear come to life and pierce through her like a bullet through her heart.
But this pain, this horrible thing that Tris is feeling, Tobias is sure a bullet to the heart would feel better.
In those moments, he feels like he's alive but dead. Dead inside, hollow and empty, while he hears her crying even harder.
It reminds him of himself, all the way back when he lost his sister.
"Ragh!" Tobias buries his face on the sheets of his bed, his fingers tangled in his hair that's drenched in sweat, and maybe tears and drool, but he can't find himself to care. "Agh!"
"Will you keep quiet, you noisy child?!" His father shouts as the door slams open.
Slowly, he looks up, his cries silenced. He trembles when he looks up, and when he meets his father's eyes it's like coming face to face with a killer, a murderer, and by the belt hanging from his father's fist, he doesn't feel a difference.
Gone is the soft and gentle expression of the father he used to know, gone is any proof that the father he knew ever existed, and instead there is a monster there, a person who looks like he isn't even human.
"I said keep quiet!" His father cracks the whip, slams the belt on a nearby something, but Tobias can't tear his gaze away from the death glare of Marcus Eaton.
Just then does Tobias realize the softest of his sobs, and tries to stop it. He tries, and when the silence comes and he doesn't sniff again, Marcus steps close to him and he tries to stay put, but his body pushes him further back until his back collides with the wall.
Marcus is so close, his breath is hovering on Tobias' face.
"If you so much as let another cry come out of that little mouth of yours, I will punish you with this belt. Is that clear?"
Tobias nods, fear keeping him frozen and unable to think.
"And your sister is not a topic we may discuss. She is out of bounds. Clear?"
Tobias nods again, quicker this time, and he waits for what feels like an eternity until finally, Marcus steps out of his room and closes the door.
Tris' crying bombards his hearing and proves that it can't be ignored. When he finally forces himself to come out of his shell and look back to the hologram, he chances a glance at Jeanine, whose lips are pursed and whose eyes are trained down.
When the light hits her eyes, he sees it glisten, and he knows she's keeping herself together, so he forces himself to do the same.
With pain and a deep breath, he looks back to the screen, where Tris is still crumpled on the ground, crying.
Tris sees nothing but the darkness behind her eyelids, smells nothing but the scent of her skin that she deeply buries herself in, tastes nothing but the tears that stream unceasingly from her eyes, and feels nothing but the sting of her cheeks and the never-ending flow of her tears. She shuts her eyes so tightly, as if the tighter she closes her eyes, the more her tears will be kept in, the more they might stop flowing. She shuts her eyes close, as if that could force out the infuriating image she had seen.
Curse Tobias Eaton. Curse him for everything he ever said, all the lies he told her. Curse that liar.
Curling deeper into herself, Tris thought she felt her heart ripping itself away from her completely, as if someone literally buried their hand in her chest and severed her heart's connections to all the veins and arteries it's connected to. She feels as if someone actually broke through her ribs and is pulling her heart out, painfully, in the slowest, most agonizing pace possible, while crushing it just as brutally.
It's so painful. And it makes her furious that he still has this effect on her, that after he betrayed her like that he still had a hold on her enough so that it feels like he's killing her. It angers her that she can't even bring herself to stand back up, to face him and punch him and just give him what he deserves, and it angers her that he makes her so weak, that even her strong will fades at his gaze.
Curse that Tobias.
Tris wonders what made her love him at all.
He never really cared about her, did he? He was always just guarding her as if she was a puppy, as if she didn't know how to take care of herself, and curse her for actually submitting to that. Oh how she hated herself for letting him do that to her! She should never have become Dauntless, or rather, she should have chosen someone else to keep her eyes on, someone else who wouldn't see her as a girl, someone to protect, someone to shield from danger, someone to keep from pain and loss and everything.
How could she have been so blind? And that would be saying something: she's literally deaf, but she seems to have been blind as well.
To some extent, she didn't even know the difference between what is and isn't real anymore. Either way, she couldn't make herself care. So she just curls deeper into herself if it's even possible, as if it can keep her from bursting, because she sure as hell feels like there's nothing left for her but to explode and implode all at the same time. Into her inevitable oblivion.
She never notices how the sound of her sobs infiltrate her ears, how she can hear the not so subtle hum of machines, how she can hear her clothes brushing the floor, and she never pays attention to the click of a pair of heels until a soft voice speaks, and she finds herself looking up from her little ball of comfort into watery gray eyes.
"Beatrice." A voice says from the hologram while Beatrice lifts her head and stares at the person who owns the voice.
Beatrice sits on the floor of where they had first met—in the office of the machine everyone knew as Jeanine Matthews—staring up with her puffy red eyes and tear-stained cheeks to the woman who stood a few feet away from her. A woman who all Jeanine can say, looks exactly like her before she 'lost' Beatrice.
The girl's eyes widen. Her mouth is agape and body struggles to keep herself from shaking. The girl pushes herself enough so she can sit upright and bring her hands to her mouth, a fresh wave of tears threatening to spill from her eyes. To Jeanine's surprise, though maybe the changed look in Beatrice's eyes are enough to explain it, the tears spill and yet Beatrice does not collapse in a fit of sobs as she had, and when the girl closes her eyes and finally lowers her hands to hold herself upright, on Beatrice's lips is a smile.
The Jeanine in the simulation rounds the glass table over to Beatrice, and she's wearing a soft, bright smile as she crouches beside Beatrice and put an arm around the girl's shoulders. The blue clad woman rests her cheek on the girl's head, whispering words they all wanted to hear, especially Jeanine who stands frozen, unable to believe what it all could mean.
"Yes Beatrice, you can hear again."
From the tips of her vision, she could nearly see Peter smirking smugly before exiting the room over to the laboratory, either to assist the scientists or to leave her, Tobias, and Caleb alone, she didn't know.
Thank you for waiting, and I will upload the next chapter within this month or the next. :)