Sorry for the long wait! Here's the last chapter of The One!
The next few seconds feel like long minutes for Tris. What everyone would tell her to be just three or five seconds feels like full half an hour for her.
The last thing she remembers was closing her eyes and reveling in the fact that yes, she can hear again, she can hear her sobs and she can feel the uncontrollable smile slithering itself onto her face, she can hear the way her clothes brush against each other, she can hear and everything just sounds way better than the high-pitched noise that plagued her ears once before. She remembers being slumped on the ground, curling into herself, sobbing because this happiness is the type that is buried deep in the heart, enough to push tears up to the surface. She remembers being so absorbed in that moment, then it happens.
It's like being shocked with a taser, an ultimate paralysis that renders an entire body useless and out of control. She tries to breathe, suck a breath in and feel it in her lungs, but nothing in her body is responding to her and she begins to notice the lack of a heartbeat hammering in her ear. The panic starts to surface then, because what should she do, what will she do, what can she do now? It feels like minutes before her body goes slack, and even without a heartbeat or a breath, she feels herself and she knows she's alive.
Then for so long, it's like she's just floating in darkness. It takes a while for her to absorb her surroundings and see the shards of what she'd guess to be the sim she had been immersed in. Time drags on as she floats in the space of a shattered reality and a finished sim, and it's like being alive but not really. She feels like she has no body, like she is only a soul, and she feels no heart beating through her at all.
Until one, strong beat returns to her, and life floods back into her. Eyes closed, she feels the beat of her heart at her fingertips, the blood rushing in her veins up and down her arms, can feel the cold steel of the table under her and the way a few of her hair strands tickle the ends of her face. She can smell the scent of a laboratory, and the scent of one person's rose perfume and another scent of another person's dandruff-free shampoo. She can smell a scent that oddly reminds her of Peter, and she can taste her dry mouth. Most of all, she can hear the hustle and bustle of the scientists around her, the flipping of paper and the swishing of clothes. She can hear the opening of the distant door and the momentary lessening of voices, and she can hear who she knew would be Peter take his place somewhere to her right. She can hear, and it's not just the high pitched noise anymore, and she hears Peter when he speaks to her.
"Welcome back, Stiff." In that moment, she opens her eyes that get blinded for a while in the bright whiteness of the lab. Her head twists to look over at where Peter stands, leaning on a nearby counter and looking down at Tris lying down on the examination table.
"Hi Peter."
In the observation room where the hologram has been turned off and all that there is in front of them is an empty room with the lights turned off, the deafening silence takes place of what used to be the sounds of Beatrice Prior and her simulation. In the room where Jeanine, Caleb, and Tobias stay in, the only voices that can be heard are the voices in the lab hustling and bustling to take care of Tris at her post-sim state. None of the three have spoken a word, neither have any of them uttered any kind of sound. They all stand, paralyzed, especially Jeanine and Tobias.
Then Caleb's breath fills the silence. As if breaking out of his trance, he jogs over to the lab door, unable to keep himself and his excitement on a leash. He knows Tris may not forgive him yet, knows that Tris may still hate him for siding with Erudite and doing the then Jeanine Matthews' bidding. Still, Caleb can't help but run over to Tris, to the sister he's always had and always loved.
The lab door opens and he steps inside, and when it closes, the observation room is overcome with silence.
Jeanine's eyes still stare at where the hologram used to be, eyes unbelieving and mouth slightly agape. The sim worked. Her hastily made sim worked. And Beatrice is still alive and can hear again and she saved Beatrice Prior. She looks like she couldn't believe this is reality, as if she expects some horrible thing to relapse because she knows she deserves it, she knows she deserves to be given the worst and to live in complete and utter misery after all she's done. She stares at where the hologram had been, not believing most especially that she is the one who appeared in the end, her voice the first voice Beatrice heard.
And she knows how the sim works. Jeanine knows how the sim she made works.
And Jeanine knows that nearly everything that appears in a sim is manipulated, though subconsciously, by the person the sim was injected into.
Tobias - no, Four - looks no different than how he always does. His face is stoic, emotionless, as if he feels nothing in response to what had just happened. His eyes look straight ahead, off into the empty, lightless room beyond the pane of glass in front of them, not shocked or surprised or unbelieving. His face shows no reaction, and yet his eyes shows so much if just looked into.
In his eyes there is the tiniest bit of tears, a slight glassy shine that could only be seen after a double take. Behind the glassy exterior there is relief, and a little bit of fear, and a million other emotions that cannot be shifted through, that are like hair strands stuck together by dried sweat. He stands there with feet and shoulders square, looking off into the room in front of him, and yet it looks like he looks farther beyond the wall of the room behind the pane of glass.
Jeanine and Four stand side by side, a few inches separating them, the room so big yet so small at the same time. Jeanine is small in the room with a dark floor and dark walls and a dark ceiling, her eyes laying bare her emotions for anyone to see. Four, beside her, is like a rock standing still and rock. His eyes don't give too much away, like a knight with his armor up, and in the room he looks strong, he looks big, he looks like a pillar that won't drop no matter how much damage is dealt to him.
Then the door to the lab opens and the observation room fills with a scent that is distinctly Tris.
When she steps out of the lab (and oh does Tris enjoy hearing the schwoo of the automatic door), Jeanine and Tobias' heads twist to look at her, both pairs of eyes trained to her own.
For a second, she thinks she's overwhelmed. Because Tobias is right there and she misses him but she hates him though she only hates him for what he did in the sim, which he didn't do at all. Then Jeanine's also there who she hasn't quite decided how to feel about, because she likes the way Jeanine's lips had warmed her sticky skin, likes the sweetness and softness of Jeanine's voice when she sang. Tris likes Jeanine's soft touches, and those watery gray eyes that are so uniquely Jeanine Matthews. For a second, Tris is overwhelmed by everything, but just as quickly, the wave of thoughts goes away.
"Tris."
His name is on her tongue, but a different one rolls off, and it feels just right when she says not his real name but his alias.
"Four."
She relishes the way her name sounds on his tongue, the way he says her name like a holy mantra. She revels in the way his arms feel around her small frame, enveloping her enough to carry her off her feet. She bathes in his intoxicating scent that she breathes in while he holds her in his arms, and everything with him just feels so easy and so right.
When he puts her down, his eyes are raw, with no walls up and all his armor down. When she looks into his eyes with her feet on the floor, she sees how he lays his soul down for her to see, sees how he stands naked in front of her, no facades and no masks. And she loves him, loves him so much.
Besides, it was just a sim. None of it was real. This, the way his hand fits snugly at the small of her back, this is real.
"Beatrice." Jeanine's voice breaks into her as quickly as Four's touch did.
"Jeanine." Tris doesn't know if she sounds too hopeful, or if she should have more venom in her voice, but when she turns to Jeanine she can't help all the thoughts that smash into her, she can't help how she feels at the sight of Jeanine Matthews, scared and surprised and a tiny bit happy, just inches away from her. "Thank you."
And Jeanine doesn't expect it, with the way her eyes widen before they aren't wide anymore, especially with how bright Tris smiles at her.
"You're welcome, Beatrice." Jeanine replies in such a soft voice, that everyone in the room is actually surprised that Jeanine Matthews can speak at such a soft and kind way.
Everyone, that is, except Beatrice Prior. She's heard Jeanine like this before, and it sounds like music to her ears, and it makes her smile.
Suddenly Tobias' touch isn't as important as Tris though it to be.
The inches between them lessen and lessen as Tris walks over to Jeanine, and Jeanine looks unbelieving that any of this is really happening and it tears a bit at Tris' heart that Jeanine could think that she doesn't deserve anything good. quicker this time, Tris closes the inches between them until she's standing in front of Jeanine.
Their eyes lock, and the fear fades away from Jeanine's watery gray eyes.
"Hi."
"Hi."
In that moment, Jeanine knew she had not lost the One.
The end. Thank you for being patient and thank you for reading!