Becoming fearless isn’t the point. That’s impossible. It’s learning how to control your fear, and how to be free from it.
People, I have discovered, are layers and layers of secrets. You believe you know them, that you understand them, but their motives are always hidden from you, buried in their own hearts. You will never know them, but sometimes you decide to trust them.
I fell in love with him. But I don’t just stay with him by default as if there’s no one else available to me. I stay with him because I choose to, every day that I wake up, every day that we fight or lie to each other or disappoint each other. I choose him over and over again, and he chooses me.
For a few minutes we kiss, deep in the chasm, with the roar of water all around us. And we rise, hand in hand, I realize that if we had both chosen differently, we might have ended up doing the same thing, in a safer place, in gray clothes instead of black ones.
You nearly died today,? he says. ‘I almost shot you. Why didn’t you shoot me, Tris?’ ‘I couldn’t do that,’ I say. ‘It would have been like shooting myself.’ He looks pained and leans closer to me, so his lips brush mine when he speaks.
If I don’t survive,” I say, “tell Tobias I didn’t want to leave him.
His absence will haunt their hallways, and he will be a space they can’t fill. And then time will pass, and the hole will be gone, like when an organ is removed and the body’s fluids flow into the space it leaves. Humans can’t tolerate emptiness for long.
I think we cry to release the animal parts of us without losing our humanity.
Sometimes people just want to be happy, even if it’s not real.
His fingers slide into my hair, and I hold on to his arms to stay steady as we press together like two blades at a stalemate. He is stronger than anyone I know, and warmer than anyone else realizes; he is a secret that I have kept, and will keep for the rest of my life.
I hear my heartbeat. I have been looking at him too long, but then, he has been looking back, and I feel like we are both trying to say something the other can’t hear, though I could be imagining it. Too long – and now even longer, my heart even louder, his tranquil eyes swallowing me whole.
You die, I die too.
Eric called Al’s suicide brave, and he was wrong. My mother’s death was brave. I remember how calm she was, how determined. It isn’t just brave that she died for me; it is brave that she did it without announcing it, without hesitation, and without appearing to consider another option.
I was so afraid that we would just keep colliding over and over again if we stayed together, and that eventually the impact would break me. But now I know I am like the blade and he is like the whetstone- I am too strong to break so easily, and I become better, sharper, every time I touch him.
Just as I have insisted on his worth, he has always insisted on my strength, insisted that my capacity is greater than I believe. And I know, without being told, that’s what love does, when it’s right-it makes you more than you were, more than you thought you could be. This is right.
If we stay together, I’ll have to forgive you over and over again, and if you’re still in this, you’ll have to forgive me over and over again too. So forgiveness isn’t the point. What I really should have been trying to figure out is whether we were still good for each other or not.
Can you tell me where to find Tobias’? I ask. When I imagine his face, affection for him bubbles up inside of me and all I want to do is kiss him. ‘Four, I mean. He’s so handsome, isn’t he? I don’t really understand why he likes me so much. I’m not very nice, am I?’ -Tris.