Rebecca Ch 15

AU Note: So, I posted the wrong chapter yesterday…my bed. It was funny though because I got like five reviews saying, "You posted the wrong chapter! How could you? That was so mean!" After I got over the shock of not having posted the right chapter I found it really funny. I'm so mean to you all aren't I? Sorry, it's up now.

Anyway, I'm goin to need you all to be big girls (and boys if there are any) because this is the chapter where everything starts to go downhill for Rebecca and America and Maxon and our poor Sam gets sucked into it too. Put your big girl pants on, we're going for a ride. Yeehaw!

Without further Rebecca Ch 15, my dearies.

"I think I knew it for a while now, I just didn't want to admit it," I said looking at the screen but talking to Sam.

"I don't see how anyone could have known that about her. She just seemed so…perfect for him. Besides the whole getting his father mad enough to whip his own son and threatening to destroy the country and possibly putting us through a rebellion that causes a civil war."

"I'd almost want the rebellion over this. This will ruin her. Ruin them. After this, who is he going to marry? America and Kriss will be hung along with the king. America made him promise not to marry Celeste and Elise is so caught up in grief she doesn't know right from wrong. He'll have no one! Some job we're doing at helping his choice!"

"Rebecca, stop. Our job was never to help him, it was to expose everyone even remotely connected to the Selection. We did that with Celeste, with Elise, with Kriss, but once we find out womething about her it's hard. I don't think we ever expected to care about one of these girls. I don't think we wanted to, but now we do. We still need to hand all the footage over though. We need to show them what is really going on in the palace. I'm sorry, Rebecca. We have to."

"No, Sam. Please don't. Just delete the footage. They'll never know. Please! Don't do this to her. She's my friend. She's my friend Sam. Don't kill her. Don't let them hang her." I didn't really know what I was saying. I heard my voice, I felt Sam kneel down beside my body, where I had collapsed onto the floor, but I didn't feel his hand wiping away the tears. I couldn't. I just heard my friends voice playing over and over again in my head.

"I can't see you anymore Aspen. We shouldn't have kept meeting. We shouldn't have kept meeting. We shouldn't have kept meeting."

She had done something punishable by death. She had vheated on Prince Maxon. One of my only true friends would die because I showed the nation that video, "Please Sam, just delete it."

"I can't, Rebecca. All of the footage is immediately sent to Gavril."

I wanted to punch him, yell at him, tell him to find a way to take it back, to delete it. Never to be seen again. Instead, I dissolved into fits of tears, Sam rocking me back and forth like I was on a boat.

We had been in the infirmary, helping out after the rebel attack that Kriss had took part in. She had found him on one of the cots on the floor. He needed stitched on his arm from a graze of a buller. I had noticed that he didn't give her a button, even though she got one from alost every guard, but I didn't think much of it. He must have already give her one without me noticing. I did notice that it was the handsome guard that was stationed outside her door.

After she was done tending to him, they had a hurried, whispered conversation that I couldn't hear. I thought nothing of it, America often whispered to the guards when they were injured, but she wasn't using that gentle voice she always had with them. She didn't have that sisterly look in her eye, she didn't touch him like he was her brother, like so many of the guards had called themselves. She looked at him like he knew things about her no one else did, like she knew what his biggest secrets were, and when she talked to him her eyes were filled with grief and sorrow, like she was tearing out a piece of herself.

I hadn't thought much of it, until Sam had appeared at her door and asked if he could borrow me. Of course she had said yes with that friendly smile that told me she was happy for me. I had imagined that that was the look she gave to her younger sister. Actually, I had no doubt in my mind that it was that exact look.

After a while of crying, I got up and, without telling Sam where I was going, ran towards her room. I had just enough time to calm myself down and throw some water nto my face so she couldn't see I had been crying.

When I entered her room, she was sitting by herself looking at a stack of papers on the table in front of her. I sat down on the couch next to her and litened to the crackling fire in front of us.

"I always liked sitting by the fire. When I was younger, my father would go and get branches fro mthe woods behind our house and out them on the fire. We would make popcorn out of some of our corn and tell stories. I didn't know that those slumber parties were to keep us warm when my family couldn't afford heating."

"America?"

"Yeah honey?"

"Did you ever love someone besides Maxon?"

She seemed to think about it for a second, "Where is this coming from? Are you and Sam okay?"

"Yes, or, at least I think. Did you?"

"Yes, I did." She loved him. For that reason, everything I had learned from that one whispered conversation seemed so much worse.

"Can you tell me about him?"

She seemed to think about it for a second. She seemed worried, but not for herself, but for me. She was worried for me.

"His name was Aspen. He used to be one of my brothers friends before my brother started trying to climb the ladder and left him behind. He's two years older than me and very handsome. When I was helping my brother move into his apartment, one of his ways of climbing the ladder although I didn't know it at the time, Aspen was there. I guess we were both naïve to think tht Kota was just trying to be independent and that he wouldn't leave us behind.

"Once we found out we were both wrong we took solace in eachother. We would meet after curfew in the treehouse in my backyard and we fell in love, or at least, what we thought was love. Then the Selection came along and he asked me to sign up so he knew that he wasn't holding me back from having my needs taken care of. We broke up before my name was drawn, and I gladly went to the palace to forget about him.

"Then, I met Maxon and, well, you know the rest."

I bit my lip, "You know, it's funny all the stuff you hear around the palace. All the rumors and stories you don't want to believe."

"What don't you want to believe, Rebecca?" she asked. She used the most gentlest voice you could ever hear in your life. Yes, this is what May felt like when she still had her sister at her side. America smoothed my hair, pulling me into a hug like a big sister would give to her little sister after a rough day at school, "You know you can ask me anything."

"Why didn't you tell me about Aspen?"

"He was a thing of the past."

"Really? Because the guard that usually guards your door is named Aspen. Because I heard you talking to him yesterday telling him you couldn't see him anymore." I jumped up from the couch, away from her embrace. Away from the person I now knew to be a lie.

She looked shocked then scared then impossibly, immensely upset. She got up shakily from the couch. Tears dripping down her face. She reached for me, called my name even though I was less than three feet away from her, "I'm so sorry, Rebecca. I didn't mean for you to get caught up in that. I just wanted it to end. I wanted it to be finished. I wanted him to move on, ask Lucy out. I wanted closure. I'm so sorry! You weren't supposed to hear that. You weren't supposed to hear that."

She collapsed int sobs and I found myself crying too, "Why would you do that to Maxon? How could you?"

"I'm so sorry. Aspen was something from home, something from the life I knew before the Selection, something from the old me. I wanted so desparately to hold onto that old me, the one that didn't care about protocols and princes and politics. He was part of that old me, but once I started to love MAxon it wasn't the same. I avoided him for the longest time and I had just gotten up the courage to officially end yesterday. I'm so sorry. You weren't supposed to see."

I walked away from her, away from her crying apologizes and her continuous sobs. "Do yourself a favor America. Tell Maxon before Friday. Otherwise you'll cause him a lot more sorrow than you did me."

She dissolved into harder sobs. And I left her there.

AU Note: I neeed some tissues. WHY DON'T I HAVE TISSUES IN MY ROOM?!

Anyway, chapter countdoen-4.

Don't cry.