we mend each other

I have a new name, which means I can be a new person. Someone who can cut back. Someone who’s finally ready to fight. Four.

I left Abnegation because I wasn't selfless enough, no matter how hard I tried to be. That's not entirely true.

“This isn’t about you, remember? It’s about her. Doing something she would have liked to do, something she would have been proud of you for doing. Right?” That’s it. I can’t avoid this, I can’t back out now, not when I still remember her smile as she climbed the Ferris wheel with me, or the hard set of her jaw as she faced fear after fear in the simulations. “How did she get in?” “Face-first,” Zeke says.

It sounds like the Dauntless, calling me to them.

I am no longer Tris, the selfless, or Tris, the brave. I suppose that now, I must become more than either.

“Then everyone can call you Six.” “Four and Six,” I say.

I don't know how long it takes for me to realize that isn't going to happen, that she is gone. But when I do feel all the strength go out of me, and I fall to my knees beside the table and I think I cry, then, or at least I want to, and everything inside me screams for just one more kiss, one more word, one more glance, one more.

I was almost dead, but instead I am alive. Because of Peter. Of all people.

x

Will, with the crease between his eyebrows, with green eyes like celery and the ability to quote the Dauntless manifesto from memory.

I wish I could; I wish I could move, but I just stare at her and wonder how long I have been this disgustingly selfish.