by IsYourH3artTaken
Trigger warning: brief allusion of suicide
Hiding In Plain Sight
10
Surfacing
I lose touch with almost every sense of myself when Alison's slender fingers reach out to clasp around my own, palm still icy and damp from touching the frosted rail of the Chasm, and all but drags me down a very narrow and lowly lit corridor. She doesn't say another word. The floor trembles above us as she pulls me deeper into the compound and I know that plenty of people are still awake in Dauntless at this hour - some probably don't ever sleep at all. Much like what I have or haven't been doing lately. But the hallway Alison navigates through, expertly as if she walks this same path a hundred times a day, is uncharacteristically deserted and the closer we get to that big metal door at the end of the tunnel, the more my stomach aches.
Early morning winter air fills my lungs and freezes them solid when Alison swings the unguarded door open, stepping out into the vacated street. If I wasn't fully awake before... I am now.
Alison lets go of my hand and I tug Eric's coat sleeves past my wrists, frigid gusts of wind biting harshly at my cheeks. And I'm barefoot.
"You heard what I said?" Alison begins carefully, words piecing together like mismatched puzzles.
I nod. "Yes, I'm... I'm sorry, it's just-"
"I know-" she cuts in then, smiling sadly as pellets of rain fall on our heads. "It's hard to understand when you're not... when you're not-" She swallows thickly and her eyes gloss over with a palette of emotion that she must've kept pent up for days. For weeks. Ever since the Aptitude test.
Divergent.
The words sits and stirs in my head. I have vague memories of when stories about the existence of Divergents started permeating around several years ago; it happened when I had just entered high school and back then it was all just rumors. Myths, even, and for the most part harmless, but the more articles the Erudite published about them and with their technology advancing the Aptitude tests every year, every faction became aware of what they were. Of what we were supposed to think about them.
They aren't normal or that's what the Erudite like to say, and that they don't belong... not in the factions or anywhere else. That means danger for our city, a systematic circle that has spun on it's ideals for years and years and anybody who falls into opposite categories has no place in our world.
But they're still people, like me. Like Alison. Like everyone else in the city and I realize that thought in itself must be a crime, treason against everything the Erudite has collected against Divergents over the years. Would they kill Alison just for being born the way she is? And me for knowing?
I don't like the answer that comes into my head. Not as I observe the edginess in the way Alison's fingers keep twitching as she periodically checks over my shoulder to the door in case someone walks out and discovers us.
"Did... did you tell anyone else?" I say after a beat.
"Just you."
"Not Danny?"
Alison vehemently shakes her head at that. "I don't want to distract him with this. He'd lose his mind... he'd worry so much about me he'd lose his own place in Dauntless." She wipes at her cheeks but the rain is coming down so hard now it's difficult to distinguish which are tears and what's from the sky. Her sleek black hair sticks to the sides of her neck and I shiver as water completely soaks through my clothes. "And he wouldn't care... he wouldn't care as long as I'm safe."
"Because he loves you."
A sob escapes Alison's lips, softly, one after another until they rack her whole body and become louder than the heavy droplets of rain hammering against the asphalt, like small liquidated torpedoes. She collapses against my chest and I hold her up with both arms around her waist. I start to worry that someone will spot us out here - a passing Dauntless patrol, members from neighboring factions, somebody - so I inch us closer to the alley wall away from the street but it's still so exposed, so out in the open.
Why does it feel like there are eyes everywhere?
She needs to go back to the Dauntless born dormitory, but not in this condition. She'll surely wake everyone in the bunk up, if they're even asleep like we're supposed to be.
"What if they find me?" Alison murmurs against my shoulder then, sucking in choppy breaths. "They're going to find me. They're going to."
"Initiation is almost over," I tell her. "If they had any clue about it, would you have gotten this far?" Alison doesn't say anything to that and just sniffs, her breathing coming in more steady intakes now but she's not yet in any frame of mind to be around other people. She might not ever be with this anvil hanging over her head like this since the Aptitude Test. Since the day she was born and didn't even know it... maybe none of us know who we actually are.
I run my hand over her wet slicked hair, slippery like oiled glass and keep my arms encased around her until she lifts her head from my shoulder.
"I'm not ready," she confesses. "For the final test. I'm not ready for it."
"Nobody is, but there's still time."
"I won't make it-"
"Stop!" The tone of my voice startles me even, as it does Alison and she blinks quickly in surprise. "You're gonna be okay. Whatever happens... you'll be okay because-" Because why? Because I know it for a fact? Because I can somehow be in that simulation room with her when the final test comes and make sure she passes? No... no, I can't bring myself to say any of that, even for Alison's sake, because it's not possible and at this point, I don't know what is. But I know what I can tell her - the first promise I've made in a long time and the only one I can imagine myself keeping. Trying to. "Because I'll help you."
However I can.
Alison crushes me to her then, arms tight around my neck and over her shoulder I can see the opaque sky lightening to a sheer powdery blue. A new day ahead of us. And one more lost.
It must be close to five o'clock in the morning when we eventually pull the handle to the alley door open and shuffle back inside the corridor, pausing after every dozen steps we take to listen in case a Dauntless patrol officer happens by. I've been seeing more and more tight knit security teams around the compound and outside of it too since the night Al died, but I don't know if those two occurrences have any correlation with each other and given that Dauntless lose a handful of initiates like that on a yearly basis, it feels odd that they would suddenly take up heavy surveillance now.
As crass as it sounds, if bravery and suicide are held in the same regard... why would they try to stop it?
The thought makes my stomach ache and as I lead a very sleepy-eyed and sullen Alison back to her dormitory by the hand, I think that it could've been her down in the Chasm. Free, the way a Dauntless always strives to be but will never really know unless they're... there. Has it ever crossed her mind? I can't help but play through the memories in my head when she lured me from my bunk out to the Chasm's bridge just hours ago... running her slender fingertips against the wet rail, watching the rippling currents below like it's the sun rising. I don't want to think about what could've happened if I wasn't there. It still can happen anyway.
No one predicted Al's death.
I'm shivering a little by the time we're at the Dauntless born's dormitory door and I nudge Alison ahead of me before somebody comes and realizes we left the premises. She turns around once she crosses the threshold, inching the door halfway closed so only her face hovers out between the gap.
"Thank you for listening," she whispers. "I've been keeping all these thoughts to myself and I-" she stops short and remembers we're back underground and surrounded by other open ears, and her eyes quickly skirt around the hall behind me before continuing. "I just needed someone to talk to. Someone other than what I see in the simulations, you know? I was going crazy in there-" she taps her temple then, "all by myself."
We all are, I think but don't say aloud.
"We're almost there," I murmur. "Almost."
Alison smiles sadly at me and I know she doesn't believe it yet. Maybe not ever and to be honest, I can't really say she's wrong for it because my own visions of the future haven't been so different at all. I stopped hoping for the best a long time ago.
I'm going to need much, much more than that.
The door softly clicks shut then and I turn to take my leave while the hallway is still vacant. I don't head back for the transfer class dormitory... I don't even really know which direction I'm going, all I know is that I want to walk and keep walking until the fog has lifted from my brain enough that I can go back to sleep or at the very least, lie still in my bunk. It's a bad idea since this is the time that a lot of senior Dauntless members get off from their overnight shifts while some are just rousing awake to begin theirs, but I've gotten away with worse before. It hasn't done a bit of good but nothing really has since the Aptitude Test.
Dewdrops of rain leave a narrow strip at the bare heels of my feet as I slouch throughout the tunnels, still cold and slightly achey from my clothes being completely soaked through and right as I'm about to pass the room where Four taught us how to shoot a rifle the first week here, several voices float in closer from the opposite end of the hall so in a panicked haste, I jump into an adjacent tunnel, pressing my back against the stone wall in case it's someone that will get me into trouble.
"Why do I keep enabling your half-baked ideas?" A young adolescent voice hisses in the darkness. "I could've been warm in my bed, already into my fifth dream."
A girl shushes him while another guy chuckles. "The view made it all worth it, though, didn't it?" The second boy remarks.
"And the vodka."
"Yeah, yeah, and what will you say when Max finds out we snuck out and puts his foot in our ass?"
"Thank you, sir, may I have another?"
The small cluster of initiates burst into another round of hushed giggles, stumbling past me while they try to quiet themselves and I stick close to the wall should any of them turn tail and spot me, even though it sounds like they're a fragment of the Dauntless born class who are in the same league as me and decided to break curfew, and probably couldn't care less if a transfer is wandering out by themselves too. Only they've returned feeling invigorated - the same can't be said for me.
I wait until their voices and shoes thudding against the ground fade farther and farther into silence before gradually inching backward where I know they definitely won't see or hear me and turn away-
My nose smashes into a warm, rock solid barrier of muscle then, stopping me quick in my tracks and I jump back at the abrupt contact, caught off guard by the sudden collision and the searing difference in body heat. I'm still dripping from head to toe in rain water.
I feel even colder when I realize who's frowning down at me.
Eric's gaze scans down my soaked, waterlogged form and he runs a hand across his features like he can't believe what he's seeing right now at four in the morning. "Jesus Christ," he says through clenched teeth.
"I'm okay," I whisper, taking a single step back as if he knows I wasn't alone just by looking at my face. "I went for a walk and it started to rain-"
"Stop talking," he grinds out then, "and let me figure out what to do with you." His tone is a lot more biting that time and from the way he pauses afterwards, he realizes this too and he lets out a deep sigh when I don't immediately answer, but to be honest, him being angry at me is the least of my concerns anymore. I have to keep him - keep them all - away from Alison now.
"Sorry," is all I offer him next. "I had a lot to think about. I just want to sleep now." In all actuality, I don't but it's the next best thing I can think that will limit my time around him.
"The last round of simulations start in two hours."
"I know."
"You won't sleep five minutes in before the rest of them wake up, if that."
"Well, I don't really have anywhere else to go."
"I do."
His fingers nudge the small of my back to walk with him and I do albeit at a much slower pace, and I lag behind the swaying girth of his shadow while he leads me to what I guess is a common room or maybe even the medbay. There's plenty of dry, available beds there and it's only a few paces away from the canteen in case I get thirsty before I inevitably have to force myself up for my final week of practice simulation. I wasn't ready before. And I don't think I will be now.
My eyelids droop with weariness as Eric approaches a single door, producing a key from his pant pocket and the gesture seems too personal, too private that it sends a jolt of energy throughout my body and I find my eyes blinking in alarm.
"Where are we?" I ask.
"Your dorm for the night."
The door lock snick snick opens then and Eric stands aside, keeping his hand on the knob while he waits for me to enter first but I don't move my feet an inch.
"Which is where?"
"How about going in and finding out yourself?"
"Sounds like a trap."
"Charlotte," he hisses through a clenched jaw and in such a way that means 'it's too late to be arguing about this so do as I say,' but despite every bone in my body screaming at me to go back to the dormitory, or a rafter up in the Pit, or even back out to the freezing rain, I find myself crossing over into that unfamiliar apartment door.
It's surprisingly simple inside. The full sized mattress is only a few feet away from the sofa and built in the right hand corner is a kitchenette with nothing except a coffee machine and a small sink adorning the counter. Across from the entry is another doorway which I assume is the washroom - a very unassuming living quarters, but also fitting in all the ways that the Dauntless don't claim themselves to be, aren't bred to be homebodies. Why bother with a fully furnished home?
"This is your apartment?"
"Told you I don't sleep much," Eric says blandly then, echoing what he once told me of always being on the job and therefore, away from his own personal space but still, I can't help but feel uncomfortable and out of place with my damp hair dribbling tiny studs of water on the ground and my toes curl against the soft black carpet when I remember how cold I am.
"Thank you, but... I'd rather go back to my bunk."
"Too much noise down there. No one comes up to this level except me, so you're better off sleeping here."
No, I won't be, my mind wants to argue but I keep it at bay. "It's not that. It's just-" I shift my weight the longer Eric stares at me, waiting and watching for me to explain my discomfort. I don't know if I can. "You live here. It's... it's weird."
It's only a brief but tense passing beat when I spare myself a look over at Eric and in his eyes, he appears to pick up on what I'm trying to say, what I really think inside and he frowns so deeply like he's genuinely surprised that something such as that would cross my mind. Or cross his.
"That's not what I'm trying to do," he says quietly then and just the sound of his hushed voice sliding over my skin makes me shift my weight uneasily. I'd be lying if I say I'm not uncomfortable, not the slightest bit nervous but I also honestly can't bring myself to say it's from a place of fear either.
Am I scared of Eric? My heartbeat picks up whenever I see him and my chest aches like I'm hovering over a hollowed out floor with spikes nailed to the bottom, and of all the things I've learned while in Dauntless, one of the most useful is that the less you interact with Eric the better your life will be. So it must be fear then... because what else could it be? And the more I think about it, the more awkward I grow because I know deep, deep down that it's not fear, the farthest thing from it.
But thinking about what those feelings really are is worse - so much worse. So I don't do anything.
"Yeah... I know you aren't," I murmur, watching as pebbles of rain race down my bare feet and to the now soiled carpet.
My answer doesn't seem to loosen the tension or put his mind at ease because somehow the frown Eric wears looks like it's painted on permanently now. More than what he usually looks like.
"I won't argue with you," I relent after a moment even though I haven't moved an inch, but it's too late to be bickering over something so miniscule. "I'm not sleeping on the bed, though."
Eric lets out a short, tired sigh. "Are you always this stubborn or is it just with me?"
"Just when I'm kept away from my bunk." I think I see a hint of a smirk on his lips but I look away too soon to be sure. "But... thank you. I know it might not sound like it, but I really do mean that."
"Sorry, can you repeat that? I couldn't understand you when you're not trying to fight me on every little damn thing."
I can hear the subtle victory in his voice without even having to look at him and I can't stop myself from smiling a bit. "It's only because I'm letting you have this one. And... thank you."
Eric is quiet for only a moment and I feel his gaze on my face until he checks the time on his watch. "You have an hour and a half now. Sleep. I'll be back before your time slot starts."
His boots scuff on the carpet as he turns, then thud over to the door, hinges creaking softly with his exit and only when it clicks securely closed after him that I let out an exhale of relief. Peace and quiet again.
And solitude.
What I'm used to.
It takes several minutes before I can get comfortable on the sofa and given that my clothes are still wet and I'm far away from my own cot, it doesn't feel right touching anything, let alone just being in this room but the scenario of me sneaking back to the transfer dormitory and Eric's inevitable reaction to it makes me cringe more than having to sleep in uncharted territory, so I end up laying precariously on the black cushions. I unbutton my jacket - Eric's coat, I mean - and let it fall to the edge of the sofa since my shirt underneath is only slightly drier than the top layer and it makes me feel better about potentially ruining any of the furnishings as I curl up on my side, arm underneath my head and force my eyes shut.
I think I fall asleep but it's hard to tell for sure whether it hit unconsciousness or I lie there for so long with my eyes shut that every function and sense except my own breathing gets blocked out and it's just an illusion of rest. My own limbo between dreams of a stable mind and the aftermath of sleep deprivation.
Is this what death is like?
I don't fear seeing that other side - if there's anything to see at all - but that thought hadn't entered my head until I came to Dauntless. Seen those blurred, crossing lines between bravery becoming the root of our happiness and glory in a self-executed death.
Those images shouldn't be floating and multiplying in my head like they are, at this time in initiation but they do.
I don't know how to stop it anymore.
The starkness of Eric's apartment walls is the first thing that bleed through my otherwise clouded vision when my eyes open again and right away I feel a heaviness on the crown of my head followed by something warm and callused ghosting along my forehead. A hand. Fingers large like Dad's... touch careful like Mom.
I'm not alone anymore.
The stark realization makes me remember where I am and whose sofa I'm laying on, and I lean up a little too fast on my forearms that my temple angrily pounds with blood. I wince and go to scrub the effects of a poorly timed nap from my eyes when a voice stops me.
"Take it easy," Eric says, sitting at one of the triangle corners of the coffee table, his hands folded together low on his lap. How long has he been there?
"I think I might have been better off just staying awake," I say off-handedly, pushing the thin black blanket off my knees and swing my feet down to the floor. A blanket? I don't remember falling asleep with that over me.
"I arranged today's schedule, so you're last on the list. They'll start shuffling the time slots again tomorrow."
I take a deep breath and stare at my hands. "Just one week left of this," I murmur, almost to myself. "It doesn't feel like it's the end." Or more like, I don't feel ready.
"What end?"
"Of initiation or... or my life."
An angry cloud passes over Eric's features then. "When are you going to stop assuming you'll automatically fail?"
"I'm just being realistic."
"No, you're sabotaging yourself."
"Maybe." I shrug then. "But you've seen my times, you know what the odds really are."
"No, I don't," he instantly rebuffs. "And neither do you, so stop obsessing over it. You can lose a hundred times in the simulation, but when you go into that landscape, you have to think you already have it beat."
"Is that what you did?"
Eric hesitates for a moment before he answers, not looking away from my face, but I do see the way his fingertips twitch just slightly on top of each other. "I did what I was supposed to. I fought like hell."
And there he sits to this day, one of the five leaders of Dauntless. The youngest any faction has ever known and he wears the badge like it's been there since the first day of his life, marked for strength. For notoriety. He was made to be here, in Dauntless, but that kind of path can't be carved out for everyone. If your faction of birth doesn't always mean it's the one for you then choosing anew must have very little meaning in the end also... unless you prove it. Unless it's not really the end.
Those are questions that morph the idea of sense and reality in my head and I wonder if this is something the final stage has created over time or just built on what was already there. And maybe this is what's been dragging me down all this time. Spread myself thin so instead of giving all I can into the simulations, it takes and takes from me. No progress.
I'm killing myself.
I think finally, at last, I understand what Eric has been trying to tell me.
"Thank you for letting me stay," I say to him. "But I've been here long enough."
Eric tips his wrist back then and checks the time on his watch. "You still have the rest of the morning if you wanted to sleep more."
"No, not to sleep..." Another tense pause engulfs us then so I do quick to pick up the discarded jacket at the foot of the sofa and shrug into it. "I don't think it'll look the best if someone sees me walking out-"
"Nobody comes up here."
"Yeah, I know, but a day will come when someone will and they're gonna-"
"They can't do anything. I'm the one who let you in."
"Doesn't matter. It won't stop them from saying or thinking something."
"You really think I give a damn?"
I sigh at his objection. "No, because then you wouldn't be you. But one of us has to care."
"Or what? What are you convinced is going to happen?"
My stomach drops at his words and my fingers freeze as they flick the zipper to the jacket all the way up. Alone here with you? The answer instantly forms in my mind, but gets tongue tied on the way down and dies just as soon before it can make a sound. Or did he mean what a person could think if they became vaguely aware that I fell asleep in his quarters, of that germ that can spread to every corner of Dauntless that a leader's relationship to an initiate isn't what it should be. Of what's appropriate.
I feel my neck growing uncomfortably warm so I zip the rest of my coat - Eric's coat - up underneath my chin and go on with slipping my shoes on next like he hasn't said anything at all, like I'm not visibly bothered. As if he lost his sight and suddenly can't see this because surely... surely he can.
"Don't make me say it," I manage to answer as I pass him toward the door. "I don't need it... not on top of everything else." My palm nearly rips the door knob out of it's hole as I twist it open, but I stop when I'm half into the hall, each foot on two different dimensions. "Thank you for the jacket. I'll... I'll bring it back soon."
I shut the door tightly behind me and cut it all the way back to the dormitory. My pulse hammers in my veins but I don't have to wonder why anymore.
It's as though I'm the only person remaining in the entirety of the compound when I return to the transfer's dormitory. The bunks are deserted, though clearly slept in, and through the maze of bunched up blankets and day old t-shirts on the floor, I find my own cot and just sit there for a moment. It's soft but still springy from my weight breaking it in and there's an unexpected comfort in the smell of the other initiate's worn clothing and bedding, a familiarity that feels much more welcoming than the blind vulnerability of Eric's quarters.
I can't hear anything going on in the corridor or above me and that's unusual given which faction this is, regardless of the hour, and I take to some of that being due to sleep deprivation and my nerves being strung out over the final few simulation runs approaching. For once... there's really no practice for anything. I don't think there ever was. It comes down to trusting what's being taught, in how your instructor teaches it, and in the thick of it, trusting yourself to remember.
Learn and let go.
I still have much to learn.
Four's pragmatic expression and squared off shoulders is the first sight that greets me when I come into the vacant waiting room and he stands in the open doorway with his hands on his hips. The initiates aren't the only ones wracked with fatigue - it's written in the lines around his eyes, in the taut stance of his spine and how it seems like he ages ten years in advance each time I see him. But he doesn't have a single question or concern in regard to my late appearance and gives even less knowledge to the fact that I wasn't in the dormitory the other night... if he does, he keeps it to himself. For that I'm grateful.
I climb up on the stony test chair and lie back without a word while Four goes about powering up the simulation computer. The injector tube dangles in his right hand as he works, full and sloshing with pearlescent liquid and I tap the sides of my shoes together, harder and faster to the beat of his boots as they thump closer to my chair. There's no going back. The beginning of the end starts when that needlepoint makes contact with my skin, purges reality from my conscious, projects my world to the back door to hell.
And I have to be ready to see it. Every time.
The mid-afternoon sun's rays scorch the entirety of my room at home in the Merciless Mart, lighting the white fibers on the carpet with heat like matchsticks to the point where it's uncomfortable to walk barefoot or just sit on top of my bed facing the big glass window as I do each morning. It's so demobilizing that it takes me double the usual time to dress for school - Mom used to call my name impatiently from the foyer if I was thirty seconds tardy coming out of my room for any kind of appointment. She never likes to be late.
Now I don't hear anything.
When I'm washed up and ready to meet Mom and Dad by the front door, the outline of both their bodies sitting side by side at the glass dining table freezes me in my tracks. Their backs face me. Confused, I gently close the door behind me and walk around the table, their eyes full of vibrancy but attention diverted somewhere far off where I can't see. Can't go.
Mom checks the time on her wristwatch like she's still counting down the minutes when my first class of the day begins while Dad takes heavy drags from a half smoked cigarette. He taps the ashes on the table top and I can hear the embers hissing against the surface like he's pressing it against my flesh. I sit down without a word opposite of them, letting out a breath when they still don't look at me, don't acknowledge my company but I don't wonder why. This is how we are now.
"Mom?" I begin, trying to control my fidgety hands. "I'm ready to talk now. I... I want to talk. I know I haven't really been acting like your daughter since Colette left and I'm sorry. I love you... you know that, right?"
Mom stares blankly ahead; a mirage from a daydream, a figure from a child's drawing taped to the wall.
"Mom?" I try again carefully, hopefully.
Silence.
Dad finishes his cigarette at long last then and relaxes into his chair, arms folded against his chest as though he wishes he was somewhere else.
"Do you forgive me?"
"You don't belong here anymore."
I don't know who spoke first but the weight of their words is like looking straight into the sun, where I have to shrink back against it's girth, turn away from it's blaze and remember I'm scaling up against nature's creation. And a parent's honesty is one and the same.
My fingernails dig painfully into my knees as Mom and Dad stand up, retrieve their things from the table, and walk hand in hand to the front door. The knob twists softly then slams shut.
I'm left alone in a museum of who I once was, what was important to me a long time ago, what I belonged to and as I sit there motionless like Mom and Dad were just seconds before... I realize that they had done no fault. They didn't lie to me.
They're right.
I don't think I belong here anymore either.
"You made it."
A mimicry of my sister's flinty voice wakes me from a self-induced trance, pulling my hand away from my temple and when I glance at my left side, the chair is empty. Every seat is. I don't understand... where'd everyone go? The Choosing Ceremony was just beginning and I was drifting off into my thoughts waiting for them to call my name, finding shapes and figures in the back of an Amity boy's orange knit sweater. Did I sleep-walk through it all? I brace my palms on the arm rests to push myself up, intending to find out where Mom and Dad went, but a blueish grey cloud passing over my head makes me look up.
My sister.
She stands there expectantly in Erudite attire and smiles once our eyes meet. "You don't know how happy I am you decided to come with me. You'll like it at Erudite. Library is unbelievable-" The clank clank of her heels drum against the floor as she leads us down the auditorium stairs. "Food is hit or miss, depends on whose in the kitchen. And don't ever drink the soda... it will send you into an early grave-" She stops short then when she realizes that I'm not following and turns back to me. "What?" She says when I continue sitting there and frowns at my perplexed silence. "What?"
My fingers curl into a momentary fist before releasing. No stinging, no ache. No sign of blood being shed.
Colette sighs then. "Are you scared about passing initiation? I told you I'd try to help however I can."
"I... I chose Erudite?"
"Does it matter?" She crosses her arms in a manner that makes me think she's turned into Mom. "You already made your choice. You already know where you belong."
"No," I say, letting out the driest laugh. "I don't."
"So that's it? You've changed your mind then, and you're just gonna live on the street?"
"I didn't say that-"
"So what is it?" Colette angrily drops her arms to her sides again, eyes glossing over to an almost inhuman black. "You have to make up your mind. You've had what, seven years to decide and look, you're still playing mind games with yourself. Tell me this, Charlotte- actually, no, tell yourself this and be honest: what do you want to do?"
"What do want me to say, Colette? That I've had this miraculous plan since the day you left? That I know in my heart I belong with you at Erudite or somewhere else, picking flowers with the Amity? I don't. I don't know anything anymore... and you know what? I think... I think I'm fine with that. Maybe... maybe it's where I need to be right now."
A little lost and a lot of lonely. If I can't find peace where I am now, no other faction will be able to gift it to me either.
The Choosing Ceremony room has erased itself into a foggy black nexus, a stygian mirror missing our reflection but I can still feel the cold, hard truth of both our feelings ricocheting back at us. My sister stares at me, blankly, curiously... like this is the first time we're meeting and since she left us for another faction, maybe it is. We've both changed since then. Always related by blood, but disconnected everywhere else.
"You promised me," Colette says and retrieves a knife from the pocket of her navy blue blazer. The one we're supposed to use for the Choosing Ceremony. "You promised me."
She flicks the knife into the air and my hands shoot up in a flurry to catch it.
"Now keep your promise."
I look up again but Colette is no longer there, and instead I'm teleported in front of the Choosing bowls overflowing with blood. Crimson ribbons dribble down in long, narrow strips from the table to the bottom edge of the floor and I watch on in a haze as they gradually begin to pool toward my shoes. My fingers squeeze around the handle of the dagger and I wince when I notice a deep set gash in the center of my palm, staining my fingers red and droplets splash onto my pant leg. The more I bleed, the more the ceremony bowls fill and stream out onto the ground.
Hands of all sizes, shapes and temperatures push me forward and my pulse sky rockets as they force me closer to the bowls. Closer to choosing a new home. Or my own demise.
I feel faint with how much blood I've lost now and I try to free myself from the unseen hands but it's no use. "No, wait... stop it. Stop!"
But they keep pushing and fear nearly engulfs me whole. I can't do it. I'm not ready.
I'm not ready to choose.
So I flip the knife handle so the razor point tip is directed at my heart and push. I'll die before I'm thrown into something I don't believe in.
I wake up like someone has slammed my forehead against a brick wall and I sit up so fast my eyes dilate painfully from the overhead light fixture. I push the back of my hand against my cheeks but it comes away surprisingly dry, while my other palm is cupped over the space where the simulation knife pierced only seconds ago like I'm trying to keep the last drop of blood in. Slowly, I pull my fingers back, spreading them, and my skin is clean.
Nothing. No blood.
I exhale, not out of fear but not quite relief either.
"Am I going to have to put you on suicide watch?" Four asks tersely from the computer table.
"That's a thing?"
"No." The corner of his mouth twists and curves down then, like he's disappointed the Dauntless don't take more precautions against others taking their own lives. "But it should've been."
"Maybe they did once," I reply and slide down from the chair. "And the results were the same."
Four has nothing to add to this, which is strange considering his status and years of experience here, but my brain is too shot to ponder over it any longer so I make way for the exit.
"Do you want to know your time?" Four questions when my fingertips touch the door knob.
I pause and spare a glance back at him. "Did I do worse?"
"No."
"Then... then no."
I open the door, step out quietly, and shut it firmly after me. If my times aren't getting lower, then I don't want to exert myself in figuring out how to control the circumstances, shift the tide whenever the serum drags me under... and if they're somehow improving...
Then I'll know when the times comes.
Being adjusted as the last run-through on the schedule, it's peaking close to the hour where dinner is freshly served in the cafeteria when my feet eventually drag themselves out to the Pit stairwell. I don't know how I've managed to stay mobile after nearly twenty-four hours without a full night's rest coupled with catapulting through two simulations, one after the other - my own body must've grown accustomed to skirting by based on the bare minimums now but I can't stop myself from wondering how much longer it'll be for the rest of myself to catch up to my brain in deterioration.
I tuck my cold hands in the conjoined pockets of my hooded long sleeve when I come up to the mouth of the Pit, seeing other initiates and senior Dauntless members alike filling the space below like books on a shelf and I think about staying to find Brandon or Alison - especially Alison given the previous night but with every move I make, thought that forms, and words I have to create it feels like I have to peel myself off from the floor. I'm haggard. I'm no use to anyone, nevermind myself, in this state.
Needing sleep, I head back for the dormitory-
"Charlotte?"
Mom? I think to myself, half turning toward the Pit again but common sense and realism overtakes the fantasy; the hope that enters my chest.
"Charlotte!"
The voice's call makes my sneakers pad rapidly to the railing and I lean over in time to see my sister looking back up at me, accompanied by three other people in Erudite clothing. Max and Eric are with them and it dawns on me that they must've been conducting another visit. That's already twice in one week.
But unlike the first and last time I'd seen her since her own Choosing Day, Jeanine Matthews is not present among the tour group. At least not in this part of the compound... from what I've seen, she has clearance to go into any part of Dauntless. I wonder what's brought them back again, so quickly and at such a later hour of the day.
Colette says something inaudible to her faction companions then and strides toward the spiraling staircase, up to me. Her slender heels tap apprehensively against the stone path, taking such tiny steps as much as her navy pencil skirt will allow her to make but as I scurry down the staircase to meet her, the faster she moves too. Jogging and then running until her arms wind around my shoulders and I'm smashed against her chest.
Soft strands of her hair brush my cheek and she lets out the deepest exhale.
"It's you," she breathes. Her fingers curl into fists on my back as if she's holding onto a specter, like she's trying to capture moonlight. "It's you... "
I smile against her shoulder and pull back slightly so I can see her face better. The same. She still looks exactly the same as when we parted seven years ago... just a little taller. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again. Did... did Dad tell you to find me?"
Her hands abruptly fall back to her sides at that and she frowns. "No. Why would he? I haven't seen him since-"
"I know, since Choosing Day. It was the same for me too but-"
"You talked to him?"
"He came here." Her eyes glaze over with surprise then but I explain the situation more before she feels swept under. "He's worried about you. About what's going on over there at Erudite and what it's going to mean for you. He told me to talk to you."
The crease that wrinkles Colette's brow smooths a bit but the cloudiness in her eyes remains. Not from confusion. She knows exactly what I'm talking about.
"Feels like Dad is always one step ahead, doesn't it? Some things really do stay the same." She peers down over her shoulder then at the other Erudite members who are engaging in conversation with Max. "I don't have a lot of time, but I have to say this now. Is there a quieter place?"
"Not real-" Just one location comes into mind then and even though there is a slight chance Colette will protest at it, it's the only option I can think of where we'll have complete and total privacy. Without another word, I lead her by the hand into the winding tunnels and she follows on with no question.
Only when we come up to a narrow passageway with nothing but a solid metal grate on the ceiling at the end does she release my grip and stare in disbelief at the long, harrowing ladder nailed up toward the silo.
"There's nowhere to go but up," I say in lieu of an explanation when her expression deflates.
Colette sighs then and braces one palm on the wall while she kicks each foot back to remove her high heels. Treacherous means of transportation in a place like this. "I honestly don't know what else I expected," she murmurs, almost to herself.
I hold onto her shoes for her and linger close at the base of the ladder in case she loses balance as she inches carefully up the rungs, her form fitting pencil skirt limiting her mobility but she manages to push the hatch open when she reaches the top. The sharp currents of wind whistles even from at the bottom of the silo so I tuck Colette's shoes inside my shirt for safe measure before climbing up myself.
The sun is melting below the horizon, bleak but impossible to miss like a blood stain on a white shirt that's almost completely washed out.
"Dad really came to visit you?"
I turn to find Colette standing by the ledge overlooking Chicago, her arms around herself to shield against the wind. "He couldn't stay long," I reply. "It was first time I've ever seen him nervous. I think he meant to see you first, but something startled him, made him think coming here might've been safer than going to Erudite."
"He was right." She faces me then, hair blowing around her neck. "Soon nowhere is going to be safe."
"It's because of the Divergent, isn't it?"
A look of pure panic crosses her features. "Oh, god, are you-"
I shake my head, but she doesn't appear comforted by that at all. "No. No, not me... but I know about them. I know they exist." And I know someone who is but I won't put Alison's name or Colette's wellbeing at risk because of it. "I think it's why Dad came here. Because of the Erudite's articles."
Colette's mouth twists into something between a bitter grin and scowl. "They're scared. That's why they publish them, why they've been gunning hard against Abnegation. This city has lived for centuries off the faction system, based off an ideal they every able body will fall into a sub-catergory and keep the guise running like a machine. Divergence kills tradition, upsets the status quo, and that scares people."
"How would they know? If all that sets us apart from me, you, and them is what happens in here-" I touch my fingertips to the side of my head. "How would they know unless someone tells them?"
"You have to see. See inside their head. It's the only way to know."
"But that's not possible, not after the Aptitude test-" But the Aptitude Test isn't the only simulation we'll be subjected to this year. There is still the fear landscape... and whatever else the Dauntless have on course for us next. "Is it when they put us under? When our minds go to the unreachable?"
Colette nods. "It's Erudite made. Most of them are now. What we took during the Aptitude test, what they'll give you during your exam, and-" She swallows thickly then. "When they come for Abnegation and take their place as governing faction."
"The Abnegation are charitable, but they won't give away their position like that."
"No, they won't and the Erudite know this."
"But they won't be the first to fight either. They aren't the Dauntless."
And they have been entering the Dauntless compound more and more every week, closer to the end of initiation, to the day where we'll be at our most vulnerable. Where the inner workings of our minds will be flayed open for all to see. I exchange meaningful yet mute stares with my sister, who stands firm against a Dauntless backdrop, a prime example of what it is to be a successful member of Erudite; me, from another dimension.
"I think," Colette starts to say precariously, like these might be the last words from her lips. "I think both Dauntless and Erudite will have more to celebrate next week after initiation. Be careful of what they give you. We're not abiding by Candor's guidelines anymore - there's more to fear now than a simple truth serum."
"What more? What can be worse than sending us through hell disguised as an obstacle course?"
"Fear is just your own brain losing will to fight. They've released a serum that overrides that part of yourself... but not the rest of your body. Not yet."
"You mean... total control over a person?"
She nods, solemn and ashen. "I don't know when or what exactly for, but..." She pauses to gaze down over the ledge into the city street where I'm sure there's plenty of Chicago citizens returning to their home-fronts or elder Dauntless patrolling the threshold. "Jeanine personally funded the serum's trial period when their visits to Dauntless began."
"How do you know all this?"
"Because I helped create it."
This must be it, I think to myself. This is why Dad was urging for me to find Colette, to talk to her, warn her or just dig through the near unrecognizable folds of her scholar trained brain and discover why the spines of our society - the head and heart - are splitting at the seam. I don't think I can do it alone though. Not at this capacity, when half my mind is being transplanted continuously in the simulations and now it will be cut into three; one with my sister, one with Alison, and the other with Mom and Dad who seem to be stuck in between their own version of limbo. Everywhere except with me.
Whatever is going to come after initiation, what's meant to, I'll do it by myself. I have to. It feels like it's already been decided.
"When it happens," I say quietly. "We'll just have to trust we'll know what to do. It's all we can do, without making it worse."
"I've waited this long," Colette answers. "I can wait a little more."
"What was it that Dad always said? Improvise... adapt, and... and-"
"Overcome. Improvise, adapt, overcome."
"Yeah, that's the one."
"I don't know where he got his proverbs from," Colette cracks a smile then, her eyes downcast and distant as though picturing his grizzled face in that constant state of stoicism. "But god, they used to annoy the hell out of me. I miss it now."
"Me too. I wonder what he'd tell us if he was here."
Colette's exposed shoulders shrink under the weighty gusts of wind growing stronger the darker the sky gets and she checks the glass face of her wristwatch. She lets out a soft and slow exhale so I know the time's come again. I have to watch her leave me.
"Jeanine is going to expect us back soon."
"Are you going to be okay over there? Surrounded by all those people... by her."
"And I'm one of them, remember?" She gives a joyless, dead smile then. "I think it's getting to the point where Erudite is no longer the riskiest place to be. It's right here, under the Dauntless' roof." She must mean the final stage of initiation or the fact that the Dauntless have welcomed Erudite into their halls where their compounds have become one and the same now. "Don't lose sleep over me. Save yourself, every thought, every grain into passing your test... so we can see each like this again."
I'll try, my head answers but can't express it into words, not even for her. What does it honestly mean anyway? I could humor her into thinking I'll put everything I am into that landscape and drag myself out of the totaled remains because the working parts of my brain, the sides that still have will and control, are stronger than the ones that can't be helped. Who made me like this to begin with. It's a lie because even though I can still do all I can once the final test comes, it doesn't mean I'll make it through. I could fail and this will all be for nothing.
Nothing.
So that's what I say: nothing. I only walk by her side back to the hatch, climb down first, and wait at the bottom for her to follow.
She clutches onto my arm while she slings her high heels back over her feet and it takes her a minute for her to adjust to the feeling of being at an incline again.
"Do you think they'll send you here again?"
"I don't know," Colette confesses. "If so, Jeanine won't arrange anything sooner until after the-" she suddenly swallows thickly and I wait for her to continue, but she doesn't. I guess she'd rather not dwell too much on the future either. "I don't want to give them reason to watch you more than they already do," she reveals after a long beat. "The way that man was looking at us made me think they're already suspicious."
"Max?"
"No, the younger one. The guy with all the piercings."
I almost stop walking when Eric's calculating stare visualizes in my head but I force my feet to keep moving. Since entering his quarters, just hearing the drop of his name makes my neck flush with an unbearable surge of heat I've haven't felt before and it's not necessarily the kind that's so horrible. Not anymore.
But I'm with my sister still, in the Dauntless halls, floods of their senior members at every corner and having anyone know what goes on in my head when I'm around Eric might be a little something like premature death so I scrub those feelings from my face and from my heart as I escort Colette back to the Pit. Max and the other four leaders of Dauntless are still engaged in long winded conversation with the Erudite tour group but I notice multiple pairs of eyes watching us up on the top railing. They whisper and stare.
My stomach begins to hurt when I imagine them leaving, my sister having to go with them and there's nothing I can do to stop that.
"I love you," Colette says out of the blue then, still looking down at her awaiting faction, but once she feels my stare she turns and smiles sadly. "I'm sorry I didn't say that often or tell you before I left."
"We're sisters. You didn't need to."
"But we're living apart now and if I don't-" She stops and closes her eyes then, shaking her head almost violently as if to ban unwarranted thoughts of the future, of what could happen, from her head. "Just... I'm sorry, Charlotte. For a lot of things."
"Me too."
She hugs me tight to her chest, arms encircling around my neck and I feel the weight of them press desperately against the back of my head, but I hold onto her waist, smooth tufts of her hair tickling my cheek. The only part of her that still smells like home. I never want to let go.
"I love you more," I whisper into the navy blue colored fabric of her dress and hope she hears, and from the way her shoulders relax, she does.
For the first time in seven years and the last for who knows how long, we part ways. I remain up on the staircase and look on while she rejoins her faction mates and together, they make way for the exit but I turn away just as soon as Colette reaches the colorless mouth of the tunnel. I watched her leave me once.
I don't know if I can handle it again.
I'm breaking a good habit of the early stages in the making by deciding to pass through the cafeteria without waiting in the serving line for a tray of food. Not a tin of water or even a slice of bread. My head and my heart is stretched full already and with everything I've learned tonight from my sister, I think I have enough to stew on for the night, for the next, and however many others there will be under the Dauntless roof.
If Eric finds out I haven't ate - and he always does somehow - he'll be angry and that's not exactly something I want as the paperweight to my intrusive thoughts to top off the evening. For every night. I have to get out of here and back to the transfer dormitory fast before anyone-
"Hey, Charlotte, we saw you in the Pit earlier with your twin-" The pleasant tone of Noah's observation catches me off guard mid-step and is promptly cut off by Safiya slapping her palm upside his buzzed head.
"How can they be twins if they had different transfer years, dumbass?" She snaps.
He only shrugs a shoulder in response, disregarding her comment and directs his gaze back to me standing there by their dining table, a little puzzled at his remark. "What's it like having family in different factions now? I mean, technically, they can't be your family anymore, you know because of-"
Safiya jumps in at that comment too, though. "Being in another factor doesn't mean they're dead to her-"
"Jesus, Saf, why don't you step down from your soap box and let her answer?"
More than a dozen of different conversations go on at once during dinner in the cafeteria but that paranoid mass living in my head, growing bigger and stronger, tells me to fan out the flames of Noah and Safiya's argument before someone takes notice.
I settle in beside Brandon then, who appears like he'd been pondering his overflowing dinner plate instead of savoring it. "It's- it's fine," I cut the middle of their bickering, uneasy and surprised by how quickly and hotly the atmosphere turned. The Dauntless version of chit-chat, I guess. They'd make many friends down at the Merciless Mart. "Nothing's really that different. I mean, yeah, we're miles from each other now and I miss them every day, and there's nothing I can do or say to help that, but... but, it's not different because I love them. No matter where they are or what they do. Even if they weren't my family, I think I still would. It's just one of those things where you know something or someone is meant for you."
This might be the only thing that will ever be mine and now that it's spread apart, out of my reach, I honestly don't know what to do, who I am and how to get myself where I'd like to be. I've entered purgatory.
And if that's better than the hellfire of hallucinations that I've encountered and are going to keep coming, I have to press on as well.
Everyone at the table doesn't seem offended or disgusted that I'd expressed my feelings in such a manner, so openly and intimately, under the Dauntless compound in front of those who were born into it and by all accounts should be insulted at a trainee who just expressed affection - maybe even regret - at her divided family, people who are just exactly that. People, with no association with me anymore. The Dauntless borns don't say much, just vaguely nod their heads and chew their food slowly in consideration. How can they argue, if they were in my shoes, that they'd think any different? I thought I would.
But I've only made a circle since transferring. No forward, no back.
I hope that after the final stage, after the Erudite commences whatever they hope to achieve with our governing faction and with the rest of the city, that the penultimate change won't be so terrible. And I can still find peace.
I decide at the last minute to abandon the initial plan to hunker down in the transfer dormitory and stay beside Brandon at their table, which has grown considerably subdued in terms of volume in conversation, but that has played a major part in why I'm still even here. The white noise of their voices melding together, soft and deep, crude and understated is like rain battering against the roof, footsteps against the concrete sidewalks of the city streets - sounds that comfort me and ground me to reality without having me partake in it.
Alison sits across from me the entire night, fingers around her fork in a white-knuckle grip and it looks like she only rearranged the contents of her tray instead of taking a single bite from it. But she smiles when we make eye contact. It's not completely forced.
She's another, if not the biggest reason, why I stay. I can't describe to her what my sister told me about the Erudite and their plan because I don't fully understand it myself yet, but her inclusion as a Divergent means she's at risk every day. All the time. The Dauntless leaders can find out the truth about her at any given moment and if I want her to see that final curtain call to the fear landscape, I have to shelter her from the ricochet, from the suspicious eyes that scour the Dauntless ranks. Erudite minds living under the Dauntless symbol.
I'll find some way to keep her afloat, even if it means drowning myself.
It must be close to eleven o'clock at night when Brandon and the others finally call it a day and retire to the Dauntless born dormitory. Whether to actually sleep or just drink themselves into unconsciousness, I don't know, but I don't hang around this time to find out which it is and bid my goodnights before retreating to my side of the dorms.
My breath come out in short, steamy puffs from the cold so I dig my hands deep in the warm pockets of my coat-
The coat.
Eric's coat, the one I said I'd give back to him. That was almost ten hours ago.
I haven't seen him since going up to his apartment this morning and my feet stop in mid-stride to the transfer dormitory without realizing it. I have to give it back to him, if he'll take it but he will because I'll make sure he does, even if it means throwing it at his chest and running. But that is the worst case scenario.
Waiting until tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that sounds like better idea but I don't know what the simulation schedule is going to be like and I might not see him very much, maybe not at all until the final test. If I think hard enough, I can vaguely trace the path he took to his apartment and be quick to leave it with him if he's there or just fold it in front of his door if he's not. It's the middle of the night. The Dauntless are either drinking in their apartments or down in the Pit and if I'm careful enough, nobody will notice me go up to his floor.
Almost backing out by the idea of someone actually seeing me go to his door, I turn and shadow the memory of where he lives, taking care to not walk so loudly and stick to the particularly dark edges of the corridor. When I'm almost halfway to his door, my stomach begins to ache and my neck heats up like the Dauntless scullery despite the chill in the air so I hurry to unfasten Eric's coat so I won't have to face him for long. Get in, get out.
No... I won't go in at all. Just make him take back his coat and then-
I get startled by the door swinging open ten seconds after I knock, Eric's physique filling up the frame and the brightness of his apartment behind him in contrast to the unlit hallway makes my pupils dilate painfully. He's here. He's actually here and I didn't expect him to be, hoped he wasn't.
There's no going back now.
I hold out the jacket to him with both hands. "Thanks for letting me borrow this, but I think it's better I give it back now, you know because... it's just better if I do it now."
Eric's hard blue stare briefly scans over my face and he doesn't say anything right away to that, but he does accept the coat, the heavy and thick material bunched in one of his big fists as he takes it from my hands. He turns back into his apartment like he remembered he left the faucet tap on or something, leaving the door ajar. Maybe he actually isn't in there alone-
"Come in," I hear him say while I think I ought to leave now while it's easy to and the task is done but then he adds, "and close the door."
That makes my mind whirl like a harsh slap across the face, but nevertheless, I find myself stepping in and shutting the apartment door. I feel strangely exposed and unstable without the cover of the bulky jacket now, the nip in the air leaving my hands cold and slightly shaky. I don't know what to do with them so I subconsciously wring my fingers together.
"I'm not sleeping on your sofa again," I say, not moving more than three steps away from the door.
"I wasn't offering," Eric answers, throwing the coat over the back of the couch and begins to undo the buckle of his utility belt, the gesture making me shift uncomfortably. Slowly he drags the belt out through the loops while looking at me. "But if that's why you're here-"
"No. No, it's not."
At the opposite end of the room, the bathroom door is open halfway, the light switch left on and I can hear the faint hiss of running water. I feel even more ready to bolt now as I realize he was in the midst of a shower before I came knocking and from the looks of it, clearly means to proceed with it. He has the jacket back now - I don't need to be here. I shouldn't.
My stomach rolls with unbearable heat when he shrugs out of the steel grey tactical vest he wears sometimes over his shirt and he also tosses that over his sofa directly on top of the coat.
"Heard about your little reunion in the Pit."
"You mean my sister?"
"Yeah-" he props a foot up on the coffee table and starts to undo the laces on his boots. "How did that go?"
"How did that go," I repeat, taken aback by the casualty of the question. "As much of a surprise like you not yelling at me for it."
"You caught me in good mood." He kicks off his boots, now just in a form fitting black shirt and his training cargos. "So how long are you going to stall?"
"Stall what?"
"Talking about your family."
"I wasn't trying to-"
"Then tell me."
"No."
"Why?"
"Because."
"That's not an answer."
"Alright, alright, it's just..." I sigh, my feet wandering toward his sofa and I sink down on it. "I guess it's been so long since I've talked to my family I don't know how to describe it anymore. I know how I feel, I just... can't say it." It's not a complete lie. But it's not just Eric I have to keep at bay more at ever now... it's everyone. For Alison and for my family. "What's your family like?" I ask after a moment.
"They're at Erudite."
Oh, I think to myself. He was a transfer in his day too. "Has it been awhile since you've seen them?"
"Longer than you've seen yours."
I catch the connotation in his words and don't press for a third question about his family; it's too early for that and maybe I don't even have the right to know, won't ever. Maybe the root of his transfer is like mine or he could've been worse off, and by those circumstances, I don't blame him for not wanting to speak much about it. It's like popping the stitches on a fresh cut and watching it bleed all over again when somebody asks.
"See, you don't want to talk about your family either," I murmur.
"I don't need to."
"So why are you asking about mine?"
"It seems to help you with whatever you feel after the simulations."
There's nothing I can think of to combat his remark because honestly... it's true. Of all the times I can think of coming out of a hallucination and he was right there waiting for it, my heart hung a little lighter in my chest.
"I'm happy, though," I say at my lap, half to myself and half to Eric. "That I talked to my sister. She left so long ago and I couldn't even say goodbye then, and I was so angry at everything - at everyone... it fills like I skipped over a part of my life. But seeing her again, I felt like myself again. Like I was back home. That's bad, isn't?"
"You're asking me?" Eric snorts a little then, like he can't comprehend why someone is questioning him about happiness.
"Yes, hazardous as it sounds, I'm telling one of the leaders of Dauntless that I don't think I'm happy in Dauntless. You really don't have anything to say to that?"
Eric thinks for a moment and I try not to stare at the five o'clock shadow covering the expanse of his jaw under the bright ceiling light. It looks like it's been at least two days since he shaved... I think I like that look on him.
The bass of his voice paired with the unwarranted observation of him makes me blink quickly and I force myself to look into his eyes again. "I don't think you're unhappy. You've just stopped running from your fears."
"I don't understand what-"
"You've avoided facing your family for this long and when they're in your fear landscape, you turn your back on that too. That's why you fell in the rankings, because of your guilt. Not because you couldn't do it."
"I shouldn't have done it," I whisper. "I shouldn't have left my parents the way I did."
"It's already done."
"Yeah, I know. It's just a bitter pill to swallow."
"So what, you think living Factionless will make them proud of you?"
"No... No, I'm saying that-" I take a deep breath and run my hands over my cheeks then. "I should've done a lot of things better and I guess I'm still having trouble coming to terms with that. I might not ever and... and I don't like that."
"Get used to it," Eric replies without any real edge. "Those are the breaks of living."
"In Dauntless?"
"No, anywhere."
Guess he's right, I think to myself, my fingers curling over my knees and I wonder if in some alternative reality, in my purest dreams come true, how my old self would've fared here: the good me. Whole and happy and willing. Would she have threaded her courage and kept going forward or would she be as I am now? Just barely breaking her hand up through the maze of wires she calls her mind? Maybe I'm just not made for this. And maybe I am.
"Stop thinking," Eric says from the bathroom door. He stands at the threshold, about to enter but watches me over his shoulder with his forearm resting up on the door frame. It looks like he's been standing there a while. "Go to sleep."
"There's another thing I don't like," I say quietly as my back melts deeper into the cushions and Eric raises his eyebrows. "I don't like the way you read me."
"I can cut you right here and now, if it'll make you feel better."
"No, thanks," I say and slip my feet out of my sneakers so I can pull my legs up on the sofa. "I think I can manage that on my own."
The joke must fly over his head because all Eric does is frown and duck into the washroom, door clicking shut as the whistle of running water resumes. The sound of the spray makes my eyelids heavy and I tap the pads of my fingers against my legs, thinking I should put my shoes back on and go to the dormitory like he said, especially now that he's clearly indisposed and can't say or do anything to distract me even though he doesn't distract me whatsoever... but my eyelids fall lower and lower. The fluff of the sofa envelopes me like a warm hug and smells exactly like Eric.
I switch off without trying.
Heavy weighted footsteps against the floor is what startles me awake again, lifting my cheek from the couch cushion and I blink the dryness from my eyes, straining in the white light. Eric, fresh out of a shower, flips a switch on the wall closest to the entrance and blankets the whole apartment in darkness, but even under the absence of light, I see the planes of his bare chest, the fact that he's changed into a pair of looser and thinner sweatpants compared to his cargos and that beads of water trickle down from his neck to his pectorals.
I sit up, awake and alive more than ever.
"I thought you weren't sleeping here again," Eric says first.
I can't tell if he's taunting me or not but my face feels too warm for comfort to stay and figure out which it is. "Well, now I really won't since a guy with cinderblocks for footsteps lives here."
Eric smirks at that and instead of going to the bed, comes over to the sofa. It's big enough for four people to sit at once but regardless, I find myself inching over to make space. His knees are spread and he rests his arms up on top of the cushions and I wonder why he doesn't just go to bed himself... I should really put my shoes back on and leave him to it but I can't. I can't move.
"Thanks for listening to me," I say into the pitch darkness but a silvery, blueish hue from the back window lights up Eric's profile. "I don't know if I've made any sense all this time, but you've listened through all of it. It helped... I think it's helped anyway, so... thank you."
"You're welcome," he answers back. "Go back to sleep."
"I'm leaving soon. Just-" I lean my head against the armrest and sigh in comfort. It's warm here... it's the only warm place. "Give me five minutes."
The last thing I remember is the weight of Eric's arm settling over the top of my cushion and thinking how much softer his sofa is compared to my own bunk, and that maybe it won't hurt to rest my eyes just for a minute. Only for a minute.
When consciousness rouses me again, I'm met with the sight of a paper white room with a black square drawn in the center... except it's not. I'm lying on something springy but warm, too warm and with what feels like a stone wall at my back. Lifting my head, I rub some life back into my eyelids and my stomach plummets when I realize I'm still inside Eric's apartment. On his couch. And where is-
I almost jump off the cushion altogether when I see the man in question lying asleep next to me and the strange, pale formation that greeted me when I woke is just his arm tucked underneath my neck, the black abstractions tattooed on his arms running all the way at his wrists.
"It's better than sleeping in the dormitory, isn't it?" Eric murmurs in the dark, sleep-addled still but woken by my abrupt movement.
"No, it's worse. I had more leg room." I make a point in bumping my socked foot against his bare one and through the dark, I see him grin. "I'm gonna head out," I say.
"Why?"
"Because it's late and I need to rest more."
"Looks like you slept fine right here."
"I am- I mean, I did, but not for the whole night-" I pause to suppress a yawn and lean up get my shoes from the carpet.
"You can if you close your eyes," Eric whispers, then presses the palm of his hand to my forehead, gently pushing me back down to lie on his arm again. "-and shut your mouth."
Despite the hour and his actions, a giggle escapes me before I can stop it because gone is the one of the five leaders of Dauntless, known through infamy and remembered by fear and in place is Eric. Just Eric. I don't know what that means now or what it intends in the future, if there is one, but what I do know - what I feel is that I've grown to appreciate it and everything he has done to help me live with this incurable malady that I call my mind.
So I don't argue with him and lay my cheek against his forearm, curling into myself as I feel the rise and fall of his bare chest gradually slow. The solid muscle in his arm is like pressing my face to the white tiled floor of the Merciless Mart but his body heat more than makes up for the otherwise unorthodox sleeping arrangement and I find myself growing drowsy again.
But when my eyes snap open in what seems like only minutes later, my heart pounds in my chest as I realize the severity of the situation, whose arm I'm sleeping on and who I've spent more hours with than I can bear to count. No more. It can't be like this anymore.
I have to channel everything I have into seeing the final test, for Alison, for Mom and Dad and to see my sister again. And because... more than anything in the world, I want to stay here all night in his presence where I feel safe - where the machinations of my thoughts spin just a little quieter, but that's something that can only exist for one night. And that night is already coming to an end.
So as slowly as I've ever moved, I sit up without waking Eric, retrieve my shoes and clutch them close with both hands as I shuffle to the front door. My stomach is in tight knots with each step and I spare myself one last glance at his sleeping silhouette before I have to return to the dormitory. And it has to be soon - daylight is only hours away.
"G'night, Eric," I murmur into the room and close the door behind me.
A/N: Thank you for reading! I can't believe I'm getting close to the end of the first book/movie, but I'm excited to go into the second. The end of initiation is next, but there's gonna be a tiny delay in events after the fear landscape so the assault on Abnegation won't start right away.