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Twenty-Four

-ERIC-

The Erudite arrived like a flock of birds, among the Dauntless clad in black swarming the infirmary. I have to push my way through the crowd to even lay eyes on her. I feel the heat of people's glares and stares on my back and neck, knowing they blamed me for why Lian was in the infirmary, when it was really supposed to be me. I didn't know why she had jumped in front of me and taken the bullet, although I was only feigning on a beginning of a possible answer. But it scared me to admit the answer, because I was more than feigning on feeling the same way for her.

I wondered if Max blamed me as well. I wondered where was he at, probably right at Lian's soon-to-be bedside, waiting for the Erudite to finish up with her as she's pulled out of surgery.

I felt an acidic taste in the back of my throat, and I rub my temple, sighing. Max probably wouldn't let me anywhere near her, and I didn't blame him. And then... I knew, if she was unable to meet the physical demand of Dauntless, she couldn't be a member of the faction. She knew that, and she still took the bullet for me.

I slam my open palm into the wall, biting into my lip to retract my grunt of frustration, narrowing my eyes as I could only feel completely and singularly alone, and it frustrated me. I stare at an empty bed, and that's when I see her.

They slowly cart her body on a gurney, her chest slowly rising and falling with each breath she takes. I watch as they ease her stiff figure onto the bed, hearing the steady beep of a heart monitor, and one of the nurses connect an IV to her wrist, steadily giving her morphine to numb the pain I can only imagine she feels.

This doesn't help my conscious anymore than it needs to be. I hear murmurs from behind me as people see her, with her pale cocoa skin revealing shadows under her eyes, most likely from exhaustion. Her bare arms rest at her sides, her fingertips curled slightly to embrace the blanket that keeps her warm.

Max, just as I predicted, was by her side, sitting in a chair and looking as if he had aged twenty years in the past two hours. I couldn't blame him.

Lian was his only child and his daughter, and she was his only family, as far as I knew. I finally push my way to the door, grabbing the handle and twisting the knob. I push it open, slowly but surely as I still feel people's glares. If anything, the glares and dirty looks seem to increase, but this isn't the first time I've gotten those. I can deal with those, just as I always have. Nothing really changed, not really.

Why was it that even as small as she looked or as broken as she looked, she still seemed to look as beautiful and stern as she had when she was fighting, or when she was in her fear landscape?

If anything, seeing her like that attracted me more to her, more than a sadistic need, more than a way to make her pain entertain me. She needed to be a Dauntless, she could be, and I had pretty much taken that away from her.

Especially with the opening in Dauntless leadership. There was only one female leader, and despite how awkward or unfair as that was, she was stepping down due to her becoming pregnant.

If Lian ranked high enough, which I knew she was, Max was considering her for leadership. And everything I had seen from her showed that she would be a great leader. And that was coming from me, considering the only reason I had taken leadership was because Four wouldn't. He would be a good leader, he could stop what was coming because he was Abnegation. He would think of the greater good. But he hadn't taken it, and to keep someone who wasn't worth being a leader, I took it.