Tobias POV
Slipping through her slightly cracked window, I land on her hard wood floor with small thud. Waking her up she turns on the small lamp beside her bed.
"Tobias? What--" She stops talking when she walks over to me, seeing what I look like now. Battered and bruised. Black and blue. Open and bleeding.
"My god!" She exclaims in a whisper, covering her mouth with her hands. But soon runs to her connecting bathroom, grabbing first aid kits and other things she'll use to clean me up. She's done this more times than I can count, so she's used to having to run to get the same things each time.
"What happened?" She asks, taking my mind off of the pain that's going to come next.
Tris has been my best friend for as long as I can remember, my neighbor for the same amount of time. She's the only person who knows the abuse I endure, and the only person that I trust. Even though we were young, when my mother left she was there. She's always been there through everything for me.
Since our houses are so close, we built a small 'ramp' I guess you could call it. So that if I needed to , I could come to her when my father beat me.
"He got drunk. And realized how much of a failure I am... again. How I'm a awful excuse of a son." I tell her, letting the hot tear drop from my eye. I could say that the tear was caused by the stinging of the peroxide on my wounds... but it's from the pain of his words. The pain of this life I was given, the father I was stuck with.
"Tobias, look at me." Tris says, moving my chin when I won't look up. I stare into her grey-blue eyes and that's where I find my safety.
"You're not a failure, and you are a wonderful person. He's the awful excuse of a father, and especially when he can't see the real you. The amazing you." Tris tells me, as she bandages my fists- which are cut and bloody from my effort to fight back. Her words almost bandaging my heart.
"Why do you do this? Care for me like this?" I ask her, and it's the first time I've ever asked in all the years she's known. All the years she's cleaned up my blood.
She sets down the once white washcloth, and sits down on the wooden floor in front of me.
"Because I care about you. I don't know why, and I don't know when it all started. It wasn't out of pity, or the guilt that there's a bleeding boy in my room. I care about you... simple as that." She tells me, her words warming anything cold inside me. Melting away anything frozen within me.
I smile small, "I care about you too." I tell her and she smiles too.
She looks into my eyes, the gestures with her head. "Come on, let's lay you down." She says helping my up on her clean sheeted bed, my blood turning the white a stained crimson color.
"Your bed--"
"Is fine." She cuts me off smirking, then returns to soaking up the blood on my face and stomach with the wet washcloth.
Looking up at her as she hovers above me, cleaning me up I see just in the small ray of light how breathtaking she truly is.
"You're beautiful." I whisper and her hand stops the cloth, and she looks me in the eyes. Almost as if she was trying to search for something.
There's an emotion shown in her eyes, but I can't read it. Maybe it's because of all the pain I'm in, or maybe just the fact that I can't read everything.
"I know your father can't... but I can see you for who you really are Tobias." Tris says, sitting down on the bed beside me. The bleeding beginning to stop.
"What do you see?" I ask her, feeling her lay down beside me on her bed, turning the light off. Leaving her resting in my arms, on the bed, in the dark.
She leans up on her elbows to look at me, and even in the dark I can see her eyes- bright like their own kind of light.
"A man who has fought for everything he has, everything he is. A man so strong he's overcome things that people can only dream of overcoming." She whispers, and that's when I do it. That's when the feeling I've felt for over three years takes the wheel, and I kiss her.
Taking her head in my hands, cradling her cheeks in my palms I kiss her lips softly. And the most shocking thing... she kisses me back. She kisses me like she was waiting for this, kissing me the way I'm kissing her right now.
Pulling back I see her smile. "You have no idea how long I've wanted to do that." She whispers against my lips.
"I see you for who you really are too." I tell her, and she leans back a little.
She smiles wide, "And what do you see??"
"An angel. A saving grace, a woman who has taken a broken man into her arms and repaired him. Fixed him and made him new." I admit, saying all the things I've thought for so long.
"I love you." Tris whispers to me, her voice cracking as a single tear runs down her cheek. Stopped by my thumb and I smile.
"I love you too my beautiful angel."
A/N: Hey all!! I'm am sooooooooo proud of this one-shot! Best one I've written so far and my favorite! I was crying as I wrote this and listened to the song. This song... no words. I thought of four and tris when I heard it. It's so beautiful and I hope you like this one-shot.. because I am just so proud! :)
