I've always been selfish. It's something I accepted about myself a long time ago. Maybe it had something to do with growing up in Candor, where I wasn't allowed secrets, where I felt like nothing that belonged to me was truly mine. I made up for this loss by constantly clawing toward anything and everything I wanted with an unstoppable desperation and determination. Friends. Clothes. Makeup. Boys. If I wanted it, it was mine.
I carried this attitude with me into Dauntless. I wanted to be Dauntless, and nothing would stand in the way of that. Not being beat up by initiates twice my size, not being forced to hang over the Chasm by my fingertips, not being subjected to swarms of simulated moths with sandpaper wings scratching my skin. Nothing. And when I saw her, I knew I wanted her as my friend. Something about the look in her eyes drew me to her, and her stifled upbringing made her vulnerable, desperate for someone to call a friend. So I made her my friend.
When I first saw him, I knew I had to have him. His deep, blue eyes left me even more breathless than jumping into the net had. I pursued him in the way I had always pursued the boys I wanted- with sarcasm, witty remarks, typical Candor charm. When he did not reciprocate- much less appreciate- my attempt at drawing him in, it caught me off guard. I had never been rejected by a boy that harshly before. He told me to keep my mouth shut when I had been raised in a culture of constantly keeping it open. I wasn't sure how to come back from that. After that, I was entirely in my head- maybe for the first time ever- thinking about the way he had spoken to me, what he had said, if and how I should apologize to him in private later. But any plan I may have had to reconcile with him dissolved at dinner, when I saw the way he looked at her. She was oblivious to it, obviously, but it was clear to me that he was infatuated with her. And when she had unexpectedly quipped back at him after he snapped at her, he didn't treat her with the same dismissal and disinterest he had treated me with. She could have jumped out of her seat and jabbed her fork into his shoulder, and he would have just tilted his head, maybe with a soft smirk across his full lips, staring at her with unconditional adoration. Nothing could get in the way of that.
I had to move on before I got too attached. I met Will, and decided he would do. Will was good for me. He was deadly smart, endlessly curious, and unusually kind for someone who grew up Erudite. Being with him made me kinder. He looked at me the way I had always wished a boy would look at me- his soft green eyes saw me and only me, and he loved me for all I was, selfishness and Candor-ness and all. And before long, he made me forget about all the other boys I had pined after. My own adoration for him grew more and more unconditional by the day.
And then, she killed him.
He had loved her- in a different way than he loved me, of course- but it was still love. He had protected her, stood by her, been nothing but kind to her. And what did she do to thank him? She shot him in the head. We never had the chance to say goodbye to each other. I never had the chance to tell him how much he truly meant to me. And then, she had the nerve to lie to me, to tell me she had no idea what had happened to him when, in reality, she was what happened to him. Without me, she would have been too small, too quiet, too harsh to make any friends in her new faction. All she had was because of me, and she thanked me by killing Will. My Will.
I learned why she did it. My heart told me it wasn't really her fault, that he had been trying to kill her, that she had no choice but to kill him and was tearing herself into pieces over the guilt she felt. But unlike her, I had never been the type to listen to my heart. I was good at ignoring it.
And then, she died.
In a way, it felt as though she had never existed, as if she had been a creation of our collective imaginations. No one that selfless, that brave, that intelligent, that full of heart and soul and energy could truly exist. But his grief said otherwise.
My love for Will and his love for me was nothing compared to how much Four loved Tris. He lost himself, destroyed himself in his grief. The strength and fierceness I had observed in him throughout initiation had been drained, as if it hadn't been at all real to begin with, as if everything he was had been an extension of her that had died along with her. He began to shrink in on himself, his mind in a forever haze, his eyes permanently stained red. And all I could think of was how perfect this was, how I would finally have the chance to be with him now that all distractions were out of the way, how I deserved him after she had taken Will from me. Like I said, I've always been selfish.
It took a few years. A few years of hesitancy, of eventual friendship, of being a shoulder to cry on, of putting up with all of it. And then, he kissed me, and became mine. Mine. Mine, as I knew he was from the start, as I had claimed him the second I laid eyes on him. I finally felt as though these seemingly endless few years had been worth it if the pain they had inflicted meant that I could have him all to myself.
At least, that's what I thought at first.
I am programmed to see the truth, and the truth was that he was not mine and never would be. He hugged me, he held my hand, he kissed me, he went to bed with me at night. But his heart wasn't in any of it, his grip never tight enough, his kiss never hungry enough. He avoided calling me his girlfriend at all costs. Whenever I felt like things were going in the right direction and tried coaxing him beyond kissing, he would push me away with a sorry smile and an apologetic excuse. At night, he would wait awake hours, staring at the ceiling until he thought I was asleep, and then he would roll over and sob into his pillow, gripping the sheets like a little boy, shaking the bed as he tried his hardest to restrain the volume of his cries.
And I would think about the flag. That stupid fucking flag.
The flag was hers. She had spotted it, she had fought for it, she had earned it. And I took it from her with no remorse.
I had won the flag. And now, I had won Four. But neither of them would ever truly be mine.