And I stand in the hallway, alone, grinning like an idiot.
Because you’re from Abnegation,” he says, “and it’s when you’re acting selflessly that you are at your bravest.
I look filthy,” I said. “But thank you for lying about it.
Memories happened in flashes, not as drawn-out as reality, and it seemed strange that something so important, so essential to a person, could disappear so quickly.
I used to think that when people fell in love, they just landed where they landed, and they had no choice in the matter afterward. And maybe that’s tue of beginnings, but it’s not true of this, now. 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.
I think of the motto I read in my Faction History textbook: Faction before blood. More than family, our factions are where we belong. Can that possibly be right?
Before you, I only went on group dates, and they were usually a disaster. They always ended up with Zeke making out with whatever girl he intended to make out with, and me sitting in awkward silence with some girl that I had somehow offended in some way early on.
He would let Vas get a few close calls in, let him get cocky. Cocky meant sloppy, and sloppy meant Akos might live.
In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ll pretty much go with you anywhere.
The man whose knuckles I know better than his embrace.
All the way home I thought about what Amar said, about every relationship having its problems. I thought about my parents, who argued more often than any other Abnegation parents I knew, who nonetheless went through each day together until they died. Then I thought of how strong I have become, how secure I feel with the person I now am, and how all along the way he has told me that I am brave, I am respected, I am loved and worth loving. “And?
Don’t pretend,” she says, sounding a little breathless. “You know I’m not. I’m not ugly, but I am certainly not pretty.” The word “pretty,” and all that it represents, seems so completely useless right now that I have no patience for it.
When the will to live failed, the body still fought.
You’re supposed to be dead,” I say, flat. It’s a stupid thing to say. Such a stupid thing to say to your mother when she comes back from the dead, but it’s a stupid situation.
Lazmet smiled. “And you have more than one mark on your arm. How encouraging, to realize that you are not a complete idiot. Congratulations, Akos Noavek. You are not boring.
I don’t have to worry about little Kereseth-Noavek spawn running around someday, do I?” She yawned. “Because I really don’t want to.
We have to edge them out of the rankings. That will damage their futures. Permanently.
Some people might leave you... But it doesn’t mean you’re worth leaving. It doesn’t mean that at all.
It’s a little rudimentary, but this book helped to teach me what it is to be human,” he says. “To be such a complicated, mysterious piece of biological machinery, and more amazing still, to have the capacity to analyze that machinery! That is a special thing, unprecedented in all of evolutionary history. Our ability to know about ourselves and the world is what makes us human.
Life damages us, every one. We can’t escape that damage. But we can be mended. We mend each other.” – Tobias Eaton, Allegiant.
But dealing with situations like these, Sloane knew, was just a matter of knowing the right procedures. She had learned how to disappear after Cameron died and her mother burrowed into bed and never came out again. You dealt with it the same way you dealt with the cold when you didn’t have the right jacket: you let the chill pass through you, digging deep into your bones, until you no longer feel it.