Choose Your Own Adventure: Divergent

Peter Epilogue- 141

You look for Peter in the cavern, but he isn't there. Eventually, someone points you to a high-security cell, where he lies, bruised, blood all over him from a minor bullet wound.

"He was awake," the guards explain to you solemnly. "He should have stopped the simulation. He will face his justice."

You shove past them into the cell, flashing the pass Tris gave you to get in, and cup Peter's face in your hands. You remember him so vividly, the way he held you that night-

His strong hand moves to grab yours, lowering it down from his face. "You shouldn't be here, Y/N. It's bad enough anyone saw us together at the ball."

"Did you do it?" you ask, the question barely a whisper. "Were you awake?"

Peter's jaw clenches, and he nods. "They asked me to stay awake right before," he says, eyes still closed. "I wanted to tell you. I wanted to tell you so badly, but Y/N, they'd-"

His voice falters, and he pulls you to him, grabbing his fingers in your hair, pressing those spearmint kisses to your throat. His grip is tight, hungry, as though he has to drink in as much of you as possible before they take you away. "I need you to get out of here, Amity," he whispers against your hair. "Go now, before anyone sees you with me."

"No," you say, the word murmured against his ear.

"Then you're stupid," he mumbles back, but if anything, he holds you even tighter, kisses even more passionately.

***

The trial is barely a trial at all. The factions vote for capital punishment. He will face a firing squad by the end of the week.

You beg Tris not to do it, but her lips are tightly pursed together and a look of thunderclouds and violence descends on her when you talk about it.

"We must have justice," she snaps, pushing you off. "Y/N, I don't know what's in your head, but he's responsible for murder. Spend the rest of his life with him for all I care, but he is going to die, and he's going to die screaming in a puddle of his own blood."

She leaves you at that, and you run back to the cell. The guards instinctively part, and Peter turns from the cell window and runs toward you, wrapping you up in strong arms.

"Don't worry about me," he says against your ear, and your foundation breaks, and the tears break and you start sobbing against his solid body. He freezes, then shifts his hold, rubbing circles on your back. "Shoot, Y/N, I'm sorry. Look, don't be scared. You don't have to be scared."

***

The day of the execution draws closer. He's terrified, waking up screaming in a sweat every night, but he tries to hide it from you, snapping and teasing you and trying to put on his old bravado as if you don't notice the dark circles under his eyes.

"You're wearing that to my execution?" he jokes on the last day as you walk into the cell, wearing your Dauntless Ball dress, but his throat bobs up and down as he swallows. "Gonna seduce the guards into letting me go?"

He stands up abruptly, then walks over and smacks the bars of the cell. "Hey, get an Abnegation in here. I'm going to marry the woman."

Your eyes go wide. "What?"

He turns to you, avoiding your eyes.

"Can I?" he asks, voice softer than you've ever heard it from him, turning from the wall. "Can I marry you before I go?"

The lump in your parched throat is too big to speak past, so you answer by filling his doomed mouth with kisses, all until the official Abnegation officer- one of the survivors- arrives. He glares at the two of you the whole time, but you don't care, until you can say I do and Peter presses you against the wall and covers you in spearmint, hard enough to make the officer look away. You barely even notice when he leaves, the next night a daze. You sleep next to Peter's warm body, his strong arms gripping you until they all arrive.

"Time to go," he whispers in your ear.

He slides his rough hands to your waist to lift you up and away. You fight it, gripping his shoulders. He dips his head down to meet your eyes with his green ones and shakes his head. "Don't be scared, Amity. Look away and it'll be over before you know it."

You move to kiss him, but he lifts you up, passing you through the bars to Tris's guards.

"No!" you shout, thrashing against them, but they hold you in place, even as you rip and tear at their grasp. "Peter! Don't hurt him, please, please don't hurt him. Peter! Don't let them do it. Peter!"

"Look after her for me," Peter says, swallowing hard. When he looks up again, his eyes are taunting, and he turns his head with a signature scowl. "Right, then. What's the hold up, Stiff? Don't tell me you've gone-"

The shots fire as one, and as hard as you want to try for him, you can't look away as he topples to the ground, gasping for air, a wheezing sound that rips your heart in two.

"Hit his lung," a soldier reports, reloading and shooting again for the head. The noise rocks you to your bone marrow. BLAM.

This time, Peter's body jerks from the force, then makes no sound.

You scream, a keening, wordless shriek that doesn't stop as they drag you through the cavern, the other Dauntless looking at you. 

That's the psychopath's wife, they whisper among themselves. She must be glad he's dead.

Tris throws you into a room, pulling the door closed behind her. The guards throw you on the couch as your screams melt into hyperventilating gasps, the tears streaking down your face like a mask. You can't breathe. How can you breathe?

"This is my room," Tris says, and you can barely hear her, wide gaze fixed on the gray carpet in front of you as you heave. "You're going to stay here until you can get a hold of yourself, and then we'll reintegrate you into Dauntless. Just because you were romantically involved doesn't mean that you're guilty, too..."

The words break off into the shining scream of blood rushing through your ears, and you don't hear any more of her speech.

In the days to come, you won't eat, sleeping only when the exhaustion hits you so hard you tumble back onto the couch unconscious. It takes you a week of not moving at all to fully process what's happening, that the boy who took you to Dauntless Ball three weeks ago is dead, that he's never coming back.

As the fact surfaces in your mind, you realize that you can no longer stay in Dauntless, with these murderers that shot and killed Peter Hayes.

You go back to stay with the Factionless, and meet up with Molly and Drew who grieve the way you do. For a while, there's a plot to assassinate Tris, but that falls by the wayside as the three of you dig his grave. It's slow, but eventually, you realize that Peter's body is all that's left of him, and that killing Tris won't bring Peter back into the world.

The Amity have heard of your condition by now- the broken young wife of a war criminal- and reach out to "adopt" you into their faction. It takes some thinking, but, with the condition that they take in Molly and Drew as well, you accept. The sunshine of the farm slowly melts the pale out of your skin and fills your emptiness with freckles and the smell of growing things. The three of you work hard and room together. It's not perfect, but, years later, when they get married under puffy, white, flowering boughs of trees, you're right there with them.

"None of this would have been possible without Y/N," Molly says, nodding to you as she meets your eyes. "She's the reason we're here and not in Factionless."

"Cheers to a life well-lived," Drew says, raising his glass, and the Amity echo the chant. Then you are whisked away into a night of dancing under the stars, celebrating the people who have become your two best friends.

One night, years later, you say a prayer and feel Peter's spirit free itself from your tangled heart, swirling into the stars where he belongs.

You let him go,
and you know
he is free.

Advance to 144.