(Tris)
It’s not real.
None of it can be real.
I see her face, like I can reach out and touch it. That all I have to do is lift my hand to feel hers wrap around my fingers.
But I’m suddenly scared to, because I know she’s not really here.
And if she’s not really here, I do not understand why I think she is.
“Am I done yet?” I ask, feeling warmth spread down my neck. I think it is supposed to hurt, but the agony has subsided, dulling as my vision goes in and out of focus.
I force my eyes to stay open, though. Because If I close them , she will disappear. If I close them, so will I.
She bends down to me, her hand hovering over my face and her eyes-still the same- hold a silent ache, visible ache. I wait for her to touch me; for the mother who gave her life up to save her daughter to embrace me. I wait for it.
But she just lowers her hand back to her side and stands up.
“You’ve been so brave, Beatrice,” she says. “You’ve raged war after war. And I am so proud of you.” My mother smiles. “But you still have so much to live for. And you deserve the chance to after all of this.”
She takes a step back. Just a small movement, but it feels like she is creating an endless void among us, dissolving the bridge between life and death. “You deserve to find peace.”
A sob builds in my throat and hushes through my lips in a gasp, a truth I don’t want to face. Not after I’d just gotten her back. “Will…Will I see you again?”
She laughs, but there are tears in her eyes. “I don’t doubt it.”
“But…But you’re crying,” I say, because I can count on one hand how many times I have seen my mother cry and if this is to be the last time, I want to know why.
She shakes her head slightly, her lips breaking into a smile. “I’m not crying because I’m sad for you, Beatrice,” she says, her voice lightening as darkness swells around my vision; threatens to pull me down. She is fading, but I hold on.
I hold on so tightly to this last moment.
“Tris, I’m crying because I’m happy for you,” she says. “Because unlike me, you found freedom. And because of you, so many else have, too.”
And that is the last thing I hear.
That word.
That one word that has raged battles and stolen victories, taken lives in the name of it.
So simple.
So powerful.
Freedom.
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(Uriah)
In my mind, I see ash.
I see fire.
I see smoke and rubble.
And then there’s just nothing. Like I’ve turned to air and disappeared until I too, have become nothing. Until I float into some distant recess of my own head, unable to fight my way back to whatever reality is mine.
Am I even supposed to fight?
What am I fighting to return to?
Raining ash? Cascading rubble? Fire? I’ve already seen too much of that. I can’t remember when or where, but I just know I have. And that is not a world I care to revisit.
