We Can Be Mended (Divergent fanfic)

Chapter 29

I'm sorry for not updating in such a long time. I'm so busy and I really don't have any time, but I will try to update as much as I can.
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(Tris)
I stare at him. I am vaguely aware of my mouth hanging slightly open, but my mind is too distracted to close it. Tobias sits collapsed on the sofa beside me. I should touch him. I should comfort him. But I am thunderstruck.
I have seen him vulnerable before. I have seen into the deepest parts of him and I have seen how broken they are. But I have never seen him show that vulnerability on the surface. I do not know what to do. I do not know what to think. He has always put on such a brave face that if he can no longer manage it, then it can only mean one of two things. Either he has learnt to trust me enough that he will openly show me his pain, or when I 'died', I hurt him so deeply that he is no longer able to hide his damaged soul because he is in even more pain now, deep down, than he was when I met him. The latter is more likely and more painful.
I am still staring at him. I know that I need to move but all I can think is that I did this to him. I may have helped to heal his damages mind, but with my death, I completely shattered it. And that broke him.
I am worse than his mother.
Guilt pours through my veins with every beat of my heart, awakening my abnegation wired brain. My mind is still frozen, unable to comprehend what is going on, but my body somehow awakens. Shuffling closer to Tobias, I wrap my arms around his waist, pulling him into me. I can feel the muscles in his stomach contracting, hard against my own. His exterior is so strong, so unyielding. It only hits me now how alone he must have been for the last six years. I remember when I first joined Dauntless, how alone he was. Unable to trust anyone. I saved him. I saved him from being completely alone because I enabled him to trust me. Maybe not as much as either of us would like - we did always have a few trust issues. But enough for him to be able to love. I had always sought comfort in that fact. I justified my abandoning of him by the fact that, before I left him, I healed him. I thought that he would be okay because I enabled him to love again.
Only now does it occur to me how wrong I was. I helped him get over his mother's betrayal, yes. I taught him to love. I taught him to trust. But in doing so I forced him to break down the walls that he had built to protect himself. I forced him to be vulnerable and to open up to pain because I promised that I would always be there to protect him - to help him through it.
And then I left. I forced upon him the worst pain he could imagine - his worst fear in the world. And I was not there to pick him up when he fell.
I tore down his walls, only to be the one to stab him in the heart.
I have hated his mother for 6 years because she broke him.
But I destroyed him.