“Well,” she says factually. “You’re not.”
My instincts were right: She is worth trusting. With my secrets, with my shame, with the name that I abandoned. With the beautiful truths and the awful ones. I know it.
I touch my lips to hers. Our eyes meet, and I grin, and kiss her again, this time more sure of it.
It’s not enough. I pull her closer, kiss her harder. She comes alive, putting her arms around me and leaning into me and it’s still not enough, how can it be?
I walk her back to the transfer dormitory, my shoes still damp from the river spray, and she smiles at me as she slips through the doorway. I start toward my apartment, and it doesn’t take long for the giddy relief to give way to uneasiness again. Somewhere between watching that belt curl around her arm in my fear landscape and telling her that selflessness and bravery were often the same thing, I made a decision.
I turn at the next corner, not toward my apartment but toward a stairway that leads outside, right next to Max’s place. I slow down when I pass his door, afraid that my footsteps will be loud enough to rouse him. Irrational.
My heart pounds when I reach the top of the stairs. A train is just passing, its silver side catching moonlight. I walk beneath the tracks and set out toward the Abnegation sector.
Tris came from Abnegation—part of her innate power comes from them, whenever she’s called upon to defend people who are weaker than she is. And I can’t stand to think of the men and women who are like her falling to Dauntless-Erudite weapons. They may have lied to me, and maybe I failed them when I chose Dauntless, and maybe I’m failing Dauntless now, but I don’t have to fail myself. And I, no matter what faction I’m in, know the right thing to do.
The Abnegation sector is so clean, not a scrap of trash on the streets, sidewalks, or lawns. The identical gray buildings are worn in places from where selfless people have refused to mend them when the factionless sector so badly needs the materials, but neat and unremarkable. The streets here could easily be a maze, but I haven’t been gone long enough to forget the way to Marcus’s house.
Strange, how quickly it became his house instead of mine, in my mind.
Maybe I don’t have to tell him; I could tell another Abnegation leader, but he’s the most influential one, and there’s still a part of him that’s my father, that tried to protect me because I’m Divergent. I try to remember the swell of power I felt in my fear landscape, when Tris showed me he was just a man, not a monster, and that I could face him. But she’s not here with me now, and I feel flimsy, like I’m made of paper.
I walk up the path to the house, and my legs are rigid, like they don’t have joints. I don’t knock; I don’t want to wake anyone else. I reach under the doormat for the spare key and unlock the front door.
It’s late, but the light is still on in the kitchen. By the time I walk through the door, he’s already standing where I can see him. Behind him, the kitchen table is covered with papers. He’s not wearing his shoes—they’re on the living room carpet, their laces undone—and his eyes are just as shadowed as they are in my nightmares about him.
“What are you doing here?” He looks me up and down. I wonder what he’s looking at until I remember that I’m wearing Dauntless black, heavy boots and a jacket, tattoo ink on my neck. He comes a little closer, and I notice that I’m as tall as he is, and stronger than I ever have been.
He could never overpower me now.
“You’re no longer welcome in this house,” he says.
“I . . .” I stand up straighter, and not because he hates bad posture. “I don’t care,” I say, and his eyebrows pop up like I just surprised him.
Maybe I did.
“I came to warn you,” I say. “I found something. Attack plans. Max and Jeanine are going to attack Abnegation. I don’t know when, or how.”
He watches me for a second, in a way that makes me feel like I’m being measured, and then his expression shifts into a sneer.
“Max and Jeanine are going to attack,” he says. “Just the two of them, armed with some simulation syringes?” His eyes narrow. “Did Max send you here? Have you become his Dauntless lackey? What, does he want to scare me?”
When I thought about warning the Abnegation, I was sure the hardest part would be getting myself through this door. It never occurred to me that he wouldn’t believe me.
“Don’t be stupid,” I say. I would never have said that to him when I lived in this house, but two years of intentionally adopting Dauntless speech patterns make it come out of my mouth naturally. “If you’re suspicious of Max, it’s for a reason, and I’m telling you it’s a good one. You’re right to be suspicious. You’re in danger—you all are.”
“You dare to come to my house after you betrayed your faction,” he says, his voice low, “after you betrayed your family . . . and insult me?” He shakes his head. “I refuse to be intimidated into doing what Max and Jeanine want, and certainly not by my son.”
“You know what?” I say. “Forget it. I should have gone to someone else.”
I turn toward the door, and he says, “Don’t walk away from me.”
His hand closes around my arm, tightly. I stare at it, for a second feeling dizzy, like I’m outside of my own body, already separating myself from the moment so I can survive it.
You can fight him, I think, as I remember Tris drawing back the belt in my fear landscape to strike him.
I pull my arm free, and I’m too strong for him to hold on to. But I can only muster the strength to walk away, and he doesn’t dare shout after me, not when the neighbors could hear. My hands shake a little bit, so I put them in my pockets. I don’t hear the front door shut behind me, so I know he’s watching me go.
It wasn’t the triumphant return I pictured.
I feel guilty when I pass through the doorway to the Pire, like there are Dauntless eyes all over me, judging me for what I just did. I went against the Dauntless leaders, and for what? For a man I hate, who didn’t even believe me? It doesn’t feel like it was worth it, worth being called a faction traitor.
I look through the glass floor to the chasm far beneath me, the water calm and dark, too far away to reflect any moonlight. A few hours ago I was standing right here, about to show a girl I hardly knew all the secrets I’ve fought so hard to protect.