Chapter Text
Phoebe Prior
When people talk about losing someone, they don’t talk about the waiting. I think it might be part of the bargaining stage of grief. But no one prepares you for it; no one tells you that your mind might never comprehend something that you have seen with your very eyes, and that in between lapses of crying or numbness or anger, that there is hope. Not even hope — a fantasy. A stupid and impossible scenario where you turn a corner and suddenly, that person is here again, and there’s a tearful reunion, and you learn that even if they were dead, it’s okay now, it’s over, and they’re alive now.
Maybe I should’ve known better than to agree on this rendezvous point. Abnegation, B Neighborhood, where most of the council’s families lived, including mine. Now it sat abandoned. The few surviving council members had not been foolish enough to return. Anything not tied down was stolen. Dauntless patrols roamed the husks of buildings at night, but during the day, it was a ghost town. And even still, I sat on the front steps of what used to be my house, waiting to see my family turn a corner and walk towards home.
But I promised Oona I would be there. So I stayed.
It was a long and painful wait. At first I had been afraid that a stray patrol might come by and arrest me on the spot, though I could pass easily as a factionless squatter — hair hidden underneath an old baseball cap, my face smudged with grease from the train ride over, my figure drowning beneath mismatched clothes that were too big for me. Although food at the Hive was abundant, I had lost a lot of weight, and of course I hadn’t slept in ages. I probably looked like death. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Oona didn’t recognize me and failed to approach.
Eventually I registered the tingling sensation of being watched. Judge Morris had actually taught me about that — the human brain was so good at recognizing changes in our environment that, even if the stimulus was so subtle as to be nearly imperceptible, the alarm bells would ring that something was new. Some people called it the sixth sense, others a gut feeling, yet others paranoia. But don’t ignore it, Morris had told us. Follow it.
I closed my eyes. I listened closely. The chill of late September was settling in. With it, a gray sky and a harsh wind. The smell of smoke from burned husks of homes. The flapping of fabric from blackout curtains, exposed by broken windows.
My eyes flew open. There it was. A nearly unnoticeable sound, a lighter type of fabric, something silky and thin being whipped by the breeze. I looked down the street, and I saw a girl wearing a long black coat and white scarf. Sure enough she was watching.
I stood up. After a moment locked in stillness, I raised my hand. It put me more at ease to see that she was completely alone — I had half expected her to show up with a legion of Dauntless in tow — and I started towards her. She just stayed still, waiting until I was a stone’s throw away from her. When I saw her hand moving to her purse, I stopped.
It hadn’t occurred to me that she might be armed. But if she had a firearm, she didn’t show it then, just adjusted her bag as if afraid I might grab it.
I took a deep breath. “Hey, it’s been a while — ”
“You wanted to talk,” she said coldly. “So talk.”
Her eyes were bloodshot and red. Had she been crying? Or was she drunk? I didn’t think Oona liked alcohol. But lots of things had changed. I thought about Morris and Bandele in the interrogation room, two former friends with the yawning gap of civil war between them. I wondered how Bandele had managed to cross it. He’d made it look so easy.
A gust of wind threatened to tear my hat away, so I took it off and tucked it into my jacket. “I think I’ve done enough talking for the both of us,” I managed. “I wanted to check in with you. See how you’re doing.”
“Do you actually care?” Oona sneered.
“Yes,” I said.
“Why?”
“You’re my friend. I still care about you.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said. “After what you said? After what you did? Who in their right mind would believe that you care about anything but yourself? How can you care for someone that you torture every single day?”
I was silent. So was she, as if the sudden barrage of questions was a test of my defenses. After a moment, Oona took a step forward, gripping the straps of her purse.
“You’re delusional,” she told me. “Something in your brain, it’s not right. If you took just one sane second to think about what you did to the city — what you did to me, our friends, our faction — you’d realize that there’s something deeply wrong with you. You need help. And if you cared at all about anyone, you would’ve turned yourself in weeks ago. Long before you ruined anything.”
The unspoken word lingered between us. Divergent. The poison in the water, the root of all evils, the disease that needed to be purged. It was now no surprise to me that Jeanine and Morris were so familiar with Oona. They had been drip feeding her lies all throughout initiation.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Oona asked.
“Ask me a question,” I replied.
“Oh, golly, where do I start? Why now? You never answered that. Why, all of a sudden, are you crawling back for forgiveness? Do you even understand why I’m angry with you? How could you think I’m still your friend?”
“Is it really so outlandish for me to check up on you?”
“That’s not an answer.”
“You’re in pain. You’re suffering.”
“Yeah, and whose fault is that?” Oona let out a harsh, humorless laugh. “You really don’t get it. I’m wasting my time here. You belong in a psych ward, Phoebe, and I mean that with all the care and compassion that I have left. It’s for your own good.”
She turned to walk away. I bit my bottom lip, trying to hold back the argument that was already brewing in my throat. Of all the responses that I had predicted of Oona, I didn’t expect to be so quickly dismissed. She seemed convinced that I was out of my mind. I was like a wild animal, unable to hold an intelligent conversation, much less be reasoned with. I had vowed only to let Oona ask the questions. But like many of my promises to myself, this one crumpled like paper.
“Do you know why I killed him?” I snapped.
She stopped. But she didn’t turn around.
“He shot my mother,” I told her. “Point blank. Cold blood. She wasn’t even armed.”
“That’s a lie,” Oona retorted.
“She was bleeding out on the floor. She couldn’t have aimed a gun if she wanted to. I saw it with my own eyes, Sherlock looked between me and her, and he shot her.”
“So you killed him?” She spun around, advancing on me. “That’s all it took?”
It was like she’d struck a match next to gasoline. Any semblance of patience I had left burned up in a rush of flame. “That’s all it took?!” I exploded. “How would you react if someone killed your mom in front of you? Your MOM! Not your summer camp boyfriend, the woman who raised you!”
“I loved him!” Oona shouted.
“And I loved my mom! But now, she’s gone forever! Because your boyfriend shot an unarmed, wounded woman — can you forgive that? Can you look me in the eyes and tell me that you still love that person?”
“You’re a filthy liar,” she hissed.
“Why would I lie?”
“Because it’s what you do.”
“Who told you that? Morris? Or was it Jeanine?”
“Sherlock would never hurt anyone. He only wanted to protect me. You’re trying to turn me against him, and he isn’t even here to defend himself.”
“What do you know about Sherlock? You dated him for, like, three weeks!” I threw my hands in the air, frustrated. “Next you’re gonna tell me that you know more about my brother than I do, someone who shared a freaking bedroom with him for sixteen years!”
At the mention of my brother, Oona’s face went white as a ghost. She opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it again like she was trying to catch a breath of air. My face was hot and my fists were tight as I took a step forward.
“Let me tell you something,” I snarled. “I reached out to you because of Caleb. I saw his things in your room, I know he’s been seeing you, and I know exactly what he wants out of you. You don’t deserve that treatment. I wanted to talk because I was worried about you, and I wanted to make sure that you’re okay, but you’ve given me my answer. You’re not okay. You’re not even cool. You’re just worse.”
“At least your brother can be reasoned with,” Oona retorted.
“My brother is a victim of propaganda, and so are you. Great, you’ve made me get all preachy, like I said I wouldn’t. I’m never gonna change your mind, am I?” I asked, giving a dry laugh. “We’re gonna die on opposite sides of a civil war we know nothing about. I’ll keep running in fucking circles until someone puts a knife in my heart for real. You’ll keep spouting trivial nonsense to make the factions feel like progress is actually happening.”
“Trivial?” she echoed. “Do you know what you’re talking about?”
“There are people dying — ”
“Yeah, you’ve mentioned. The factionless are dying. You know what else? People die in the factions too. In fact, people die every single day. Life isn’t fair, and death isn’t justified. You can’t change that.”
“But I can try,” I said.
We were standing almost eye to eye now. I was close enough to see the new pink scars on her hand — and, when her jacket sleeve shifted, the faded white ones around her wrists. Oona inclined her chin.
“You’re doing a terrible job,” she told me.
As she reached for her purse, I saw her withdraw a sleek silver cell phone. I knew it was my only chance to make myself scarce before the authorities showed up, but I couldn’t just leave her. I had seen how deeply the roots of faction propaganda had dug into Oona’s heart and mind, and it curled my stomach to think of what it was doing to her.
“I still care about you,” I called out. “Don’t let them manipulate you. You deserve the truth, Oona.”
She glanced back for just a moment before raising the phone to her ear. Her eyes were cold as ice.
I turned and ran.
-
Peter, Sajida, and Miriam were already packed and ready to go by the time I reached them. They had been camped out in a strategically-chosen vantage point, my neighbor Susan’s old house, the barrel of Miriam’s sniper rifle barely peeking from the curtains of a second story window. Now the weapon was slung over her shoulder, and she handed me a black face mask as I rounded the corner.
“We should go,” I said breathily.
“I noticed,” Miriam replied. “Ravi will be here, less than two minutes.”
“Oona has her own backup,” said Sajida, leading us down the stairs. “Some civilian Dauntless — one’s a guard from the Institute, I recognized him. He has to be calling in others.”
I had suspected. At first I felt dirty, like I was cheating somehow, by bringing backup to my rendezvous with Oona. But Sajida’s first canvas of the area revealed a similar setup in the remains of Marcus Eaton’s home — at least two Dauntless, though others could be lurking just as Sajida was; and the signal of a digital recording device, nestled into a pocket of Oona’s purse. Every word I said to her was now immortalized. What was done was done.
“This is off topic, but,” said Peter.
“Not now, Peter,” said Sajida.
“ But, ” Peter continued, nudging Miriam with his elbow, “where did a maid learn how to use a .338 Arcano LR Tactical?”
Miriam raised an eyebrow. “If I told you that I seduced a Dauntless sharpshooter, offered to bear his child in exchange for lessons, and killed him afterwards, would you believe me?”
“Holy shit! Are you serious?”
“No.”
Sajida stopped us at the door with a shush and a pointed glare at Peter. She peered out, checked that the coast was clear, and waved us to cross. Sirens wailed in the distance. Several blocks down, I heard the growl of a motorcycle engine. Even though I should’ve been focused on following close and keeping my head down, I couldn’t help but look around as well. No signs of Oona. Like a ghost who appeared only for me, and vanished as our group dashed across the street to shelter.
As promised, Ravi pulled up seconds later. He seemed to acquire a new automobile every time I saw him, and this was no exception — this one a sleek black sedan that made no sound as it rolled to a stop next to us. It looked very expensive and very new, not at all like a getaway car. Peter called shotgun, and Miriam casually ignored him, getting into the passenger seat anyway. I ended up in the back between Sajida and a now-disgruntled Peter.
“How did it go?” was the first thing Ravi asked. “Guessing by the fact that you needed a quick getaway, not great.”
In the front seat, Miriam was taking off clothes. She shed her leather jacket, revealing a navy blue sweater beneath, and then slid on a pair of sunglasses.
“No. Not great,” I said quietly.
“Damn.” Ravi was also wearing sunglasses, but through the rearview mirror, I could see the dejection on his face. “Listen…it was worth a shot, alright? I wish I could talk to her too. But, y’know. After the fight we had, after some of the things she said…she’s in real deep.”
“I know.” I bit my lip. “Thank you guys, anyway. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” said Sajida.
“No, I will. I put you guys in danger, just so I could talk to someone that I knew wouldn’t forgive me. I don’t even know what I was trying to do with her. I really thought she’d be more understanding, but she was just totally dismissive, she wouldn’t believe that Sherlock could hurt someone.”
“It is pretty wild,” Peter commented. “In Upper Levels we actually voted him ‘Least Likely To Commit First-Degree Murder Against An Enemy Of The State’.”
“Full of surprises,” said Miriam flatly.
Sajida put her hand on my shoulder. “This isn’t your fault,” she said. “She doesn’t even know she’s being brainwashed. That’s the danger of the faction system — you’re fully convinced that you’re a free thinker, and that your beliefs and biases are all your own.”
“Maybe you should’ve talked to her,” I muttered.
“I don’t know her like you do,” said Sajida.
I looked out the window. House after identical abandoned house glided by, their windows dark, their doors caved in.
“I don’t think I know her at all,” I whispered.