Truth (a Divergent Fanfic)

Chapter Thirty Five

“Three things cannot be long hidden - the sun, the moon and the truth.” ~ Buddha

We can see the whole thing through the Erudite security cameras. Tris is there, Jeanine is there, Tobias is there, standing next to an older woman to whom he looks shockingly alike. She makes some sort of announcement while Tobias looks on stonily, Tris with an air of disgruntled unease and Jeanine as though she is above the entire situation. Me, I struggle to update the sound system to play at the same time as the vision. The screen in the Erudite auditorium crackles for a few seconds and then clears, a woman’s face appearing. My first thought is that wow, she is beautiful, my second that she looks like Tris. I feel my face flush - why do I even notice these things? We’re in the middle of a rebellion, for gods sakes - and Callie looks at me strangely, but I turn the volume up and motion back to the screen where the lady has begun to speak.

“Hello,” she says, “My name is Amanda Ritter. In this file I will tell you only what you need to know.” Yeah, because that’s worked out great so far when Jeanine tried her hand at leadership. 

“I am the leader of an organisation fighting for justice and peace. This fight has become increasingly important - and consequently, nearly impossible - in the past few decades.”

At first, I don’t understand. Then images, horrible, mind-twisting images are projected across the screen. I have to look away, turning my face against Callie’s shoulder for protection.

“You do not remember any of that,” she says. “But half of the people in those pictures, committing those terrible acts, were your neighbours. Your relatives. Your co-workers.” What? As horrific as this society may be, I am quite certain that nothing as violently terrible as those images has ever occurred here - even when Jeanine was fighting to take control.

“The battle we are fighting,” she continues, as though she is talking about her Sunday dinner and not countless of innocent lives, “is not against a particular group.” She pauses for effect here, irritating both me and Callie beside me. Just spit it out. 

“It is against human nature itself - or at least, what it has become. We have formed your society in a particular was in the hope that you will rediscover the moral sense most of us have lost.” Yeah? Well, great job there, geniuses. You’ve killed a lot of innocent people in your search for morality and I’m pretty sure that’s not how it’s supposed to work - but then again maybe we’re just your lab rats, because you don’t seem to care.

“Once the Divergent become abundant among you, your leaders should give the command for Amity to unlock the gate forever, so that you may emerge from your isolation. 

So that’s the plan? How will that work now your lab rats have killed off most of your valuable experimental material, Amanda? Huh?

“I will join you, be among you. In a few moments, I will wipe my  memories of this world, and take on a new identity.”

“My name will be Edith Prior.” she says. Prior. Tris Prior. “And there is much I am willing to forget.”

The video stops, leaving us all without answers, all without a way of knowing what’s supposed to happen now. I watch as Tris takes Tobias’s hand, holding on tightly, shocked at the mention of her own surname. There is one single, solitary moment of silence before the noise and the chaos begins, my speakers squeak and I turn the monitor off.

*****

We are up on the top of the fence and we are free. Callie and I can hear the seagulls and robins and starlings chirp playfully and happily as they soar overhead. The fence, while it is a boundary and a restriction, is our escape and our freedom, but that’s what love does - it turns the world as we know it upside-down. And I much prefer this new view to the old one.

My eyes take in every detail of my girlfriend’s face as the wind blows her frizzy caramel-gold hair violently across her face. She laughs, a mix of girlish giggle and throaty chuckle, and a million new sparks of hope, light and happiness find their way into the world - if only we could all bless others with a laugh like that. It sounds crazy but I know what I’m talking about because right now, listening to her laughter echo off the poles and the sharp, defined lines of the fence, I’m ecstatic and catastrophically in love.

Suddenly daring, I lean out against the metal barrier - the only thing between me and the open sky - and close my eyes, feeling the wind on my face as it stings my lips and plays with my long, tangled hair; it feels so wonderful and so liberating that I want to stay here forever, where no one knows who I am to cares which gender I prefer. My slightly rounded stomach is just visible through my jumper, protruding ever so slightly from my normal form against the railing, so I can’t quite lean out as far as Callie is, but I try; I let all my doubts, worries and insecurities go, and I try. I am fool enough for one second to believe I could actually freeze time here forever and stay here with just Callie and the breeze, but time must move on, and already the wind is helping to nudge my eyelids open.

When I look sideways, hoping for another chance to admire my beautiful best friend (maybe even to hear another lifesaving laugh), my eye beholds nothing but the harsh, ugly metal fence, cold and lonely we are together without out celestial-like companion. Where is she?

And then I feel a pocket of air on the back of my neck, warmer than the iceberg of the bracing wind and blowing in the counter direction, and I all of a sudden know she’s behind me, even before I feel her hands appear (one after the other) around my waist. I breathe out slowly, trying to neither lose my control nor to give away how much I long to just lose all control and kiss her senseless right here, right on the mouth. But I don’t have to keep restrained for long because that’s exactly what she does to me. And it’s a light sparkly kiss that echoes her laugh - I can taste the hope as it infiltrates my mouth from hers.

“So, we’re going to leave, huh?” She plays with the bottom strands of my silky hair that fall right down to my mid ribs. She is, of course, talking about the offer Tobias made; he, Tris and some others are leaving soon, taking the train outside the fence to see what lies beyond it in hope of that better world that the video talked about - and if we like, Callie and I can go with them.

I shrug, my back against her body. “Maybe. I don’t know.” There are pros and cons to both options that I haven’t even begun to think about, nor do I want to right now. Callie wraps her arms around me and hugs me close and I close my eyes, relishing in her tender touch as her fingertips drum against my hipbones - and I can feel the rhythm of the beats run right through me, parallel to my accelerated heartbeat. And as my blood thumps it’s way to my face, and my cheeks become redder and redder, I just squeeze my eyelids tighter together and lose myself in my world, because she is all of it.