We don't know what's happened out there since they put us in here, or how many generations have lived and died since they did.We could be the last people left.
That night we push our cots just a little closer together, and look into each other's eyes in the moments before we fall asleep. When he finally drifts off, our fingers are twisted together in the space between the beds. I smile a little, and let myself go.
To me, when someone wrongs you, you both share the burden of that wrongdoing - the pain of it weighs on both of you. Forgiveness, then, means choosing to bear the full weight all by yourself. Caleb's betrayal is something we both carry, and since he did it, all I've wanted is for him to take its weight away from me. I am not sure that I'm capable of shouldering it all myself - not sure that I am strong enough, or good enough.
I can't tell him I need him. I can't need him, period -- or really, we can't need each other, because who knows how long either of us will last in this war?
There are so many ways to be brave in this world. Sometimes bravery involves laying down your life for something bigger than yourself, or for someone else. Sometimes it involves giving up everything you have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved for the sake of something greater.
They try to make you think they care about what you do but they don't. They don't want you to act a certain way. So you're easy to understand. So you won't pose a threat to them.
I breathe in. The water will wash my wounds clean. I breathe out. My mother submerged me in water when I was a baby, to give me to God. It has been a long time since I thought about God, but I think about him now. It is only natural. I am glad, suddenly, that I shot Eric in the foot instead of the head.
He touches my face, covering my cheeks with his hands, sliding his fingertips down my neck, fitting his fingers to the slight curve of my hips. I can't stop.
I decide to keep the shirt to remind me why I chose Dauntless in the first place: not because they are perfect, but because they are alive. Because they are free.
I know that change is difficult, and comes slowly, and that it is the work of many days strung together in a long line until the origin of them is forgotten.
Don't pretend", I say Breathily. "You know I'm not. I'm not ugly, but I am certainly not pretty." "Fine. You're not pretty. So?" He kisses my cheek. "I like how you look. You're deadly smart. You're brave."
I know some things--I know that I'm not alone, that I have friends, that I'm in love. I know that I don't want to die, and for me that's something--more than I could have said a few weeks ago.
His eyes search the crowd until they find my face. My heartbeat lives in my throat; lives in my cheeks. "I still don't understand," he says softly, "how she knew that it would work."
How is it I know this little about the boy who says he loves me -- the boy whose real name is powerful enough to keep us alive in a train car full of enemies?
The man running toward me is not a man, he is a boy. A shaggy-haired boy with a crease between his eyebrows. Will. Dull-eyed and mindless, but still Will. He stops running and mirrors me, his feet planted and his gun up. In an instant, I see his finger poised over the trigger and hear the bullet slide into the chamber, and I fire. My eyes squeezed shut. Can't breathe. The bullet hit him in the head. I know because that's where I aimed it.
I want some kind of reminder that while wounds heal, they don't disappear forever- I carry them everywhere, always, and that is the way of things, the way of scars.
He is a part of me, always will be, and I am a part of him, too. I don't belong to Abnegation, or Dauntless, or even the Divergent. I don't belong to the Bureau or the experiment or the firnge. I belong to the people I love, and they belong to me- they, and the love and loyalty I give them, form my identity far more than any word or group ever could. I love my brother. I love him, and he is quaking with terror at the though of death. I love..