Allegiant (Divergent, #3)

by Veronica Roth

We are not people who touch each other carelessly; every point of contact between us feels important, a rush of energy and relief.

“They released some kind of manifesto this morning. They call themselves the Allegiant.”

“Chaos and destruction do tend to take away a person’s dating possibilities.”

“I didn’t know that idiocy caused people to just start spontaneously bleeding from the nose.”

wonder if fears ever really go away, or if they just lose their power over us.

I don’t know how it would feel, to hate your own history and to crave love from the people who gave that history to you at the same time. How have I never seen the schism inside his heart? How have I never realized before that for all the strong, kind parts of him, there are also hurting, broken parts?

Caleb told me that our mother said there was evil in everyone, and the first step to loving someone else is to recognize that evil in ourselves, so we can forgive them. So how can I hold Tobias’s desperation against him, like I’m better than him, like I’ve never let my own brokenness blind me?

“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,” I say. “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.”

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,” I say, “I think you’re still the only person sharp enough to sharpen someone like me.” “I am,” he says roughly. And I kiss him.

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 true 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.

“Sometimes I just feel like I’ve lost all my friends,” she says. “You haven’t lost Cara,” I say. “Or Tobias. And Christina, you haven’t lost me. You’ll never lose me.”

She turns to me, and somewhere in the haze of grief we wrap our arms around each other, in the same desperate way we did when she told me she had forgiven me for killing Will. Our friendship has held up under an incredible weight, the weight of me shooting someone she loved, the weight of so many losses. Other bonds would have broken. For some reason, this one hasn’t.

We stay clutched together for a long time, until the ...

I remember him standing that way during initiation, as he watched us fight each other, so tall and so strong I never dreamed he would give me more than a cursory glance.

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.

And I don’t want to die anymore. I am up to the challenge of bearing the guilt and the grief, up to facing the difficulties that life has put in my path. Some days are harder than others, but I am ready to live each one of them.

“About when to let others sacrifice themselves for you, even if it’s selfish. They say that if the sacrifice is the ultimate way for that person to show you that they love you, you should let them do it.” He leans one shoulder into the wall. “That, in that situation, it’s the greatest gift you can give them. Just as it was when both of your parents died for you.”

“It’s what you deserve to hear,” I say firmly, my eyes going cloudy with tears. “That you’re whole, that you’re worth loving, that you’re the best person I’ve ever known.”

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.

He lies down next to me, and I run my fingers over the flames wrapping around his rib cage. He is strong, and lithe, and certain. And he is mine. I fit my mouth to his.

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.

“The physical technique is important,” I say. “But it’s mostly a mental game, which is lucky for you, because you know how to play those. You don’t just practice the shooting, you also practice the focus. And then, when you’re in a situation where you’re fighting for your life, the focus will be so ingrained that it will happen naturally.”

I cycle through the things you’re supposed to say at times like these, the apologies and the sympathy, and I don’t find a single phrase that feels right to me. Instead I just let the silence stretch out between us. It’s the only adequate response to what he just told me, the only thing that does the tragedy justice instead of patching it up hastily and moving on.

The muscles in his jaw stand at attention. He has never struck me as a warm person, but he’s never been cold, either. That is what he’s like now, a man encased in ice, his eyes hard and his voice like a frosty exhale.

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 I 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 keep finding myself stifled by the company of others and then crippled by loneliness when I leave them.

“You think I’m not asking myself that question?” Caleb says. “She loved me. Enough to hold me at gunpoint so she could die for me. I have no idea why, but that’s just the way it is.”

I know why she wanted to tell me that she didn’t want to leave me. She wanted me to know that this was not another Erudite headquarters, not a lie told to make me sleep while she went to die, not an act of unnecessary self-sacrifice. I grind the heels of my hands into my eyes like I can push my tears back into my skull. No crying, I chastise myself. If I let a little of the emotion out, all of it will come out, and it will never end.

I press my palm to the panel covering the mirror upstairs, and push it aside. Though the light of sunset is orange, creeping across the floor and illuminating my face from below, I have never looked paler; the circles under my eyes have never been more pronounced.

“The person you became with her is worth being,” she says. “If you swallow that serum, you’ll never be able to find your way back to him.”

The tears come again, like when I saw Tris’s body, and this time, pain comes with them, hot and sharp in my chest. I clutch the vial in my fist, desperate for the relief it offers, the protection from the pain of every memory clawing inside me like an animal.

She’s gone, and crying feels so useless, so stupid, but it’s all I can do.

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. But sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it is nothing more than gritting your teeth through pain, and the work of every day, the slow walk toward a better life. That is the sort of bravery I must have now.

“I don’t think I can do it,” I say, and though my voice is steady, my body is shaking. “Of course you can,” he says. “You’re Four, Dauntless legend! You can face anything.”

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.

Suddenly I want to take it back, but it’s too late, I am already diving toward the ground. I’m screaming so loud, I want to cover my own ears. I feel the scream living inside me, filling my chest, throat, and head. The wind stings my eyes but I force them open, and in my moment of blind panic I understand why she did it this way, face-first—it was because it made her feel like she was flying, like she was a bird.

Caleb smiles at me, cautious.

“Yeah, sometimes life really sucks,” she says. “But you know what I’m holding on for?” I raise my eyebrows. She raises hers, too, mimicking me. “The moments that don’t suck,” she says. “The trick is to notice them when they come around.” Then she smiles, and I smile back, and we climb the stairs to the train platform side by side.

Since I was young, I have always known this: Life damages us, every one. We can’t escape that damage. But now, I am also learning this: We can be mended. We mend each other.