Talk About It

Dreaded Words from a Monster

I really, really didn't want to let heavy sadness enter the conversation Christina and I were having. It had strayed off from topics that I knew needed to be discussed. The only way I could think of to bring it back to where I wanted it was to say the words I dreaded.

I said them. "Christina, how did it feel after Will died?" I made it worse. "How did it feel when Tris died?" Like I'd told her, I had no idea what I was doing. I was just going with what felt right, and even though I felt horrible, the words felt completely, unmistakbly right. I nodded inwardly to myself as Christina's face morphed from almost smiling to something past crying. I remembered the look on her face when she was talking about Tris. I swallowed a lump in my throat that felt all too real, not a figment of my imagination at all. Christina bit her lip. A small spot of red liquid appeared on her chin, but she made no move to wipe it off. In other circumstances, I would have started to seriously question what I was doing to this poor girl, but I didn't. Not at all. I just knew it was the right move. I waited for the silence to pass and the words to come out of the Candor-born.

"When I hadn't heard from Will, it was hard. I had no idea what to think, but my first thoughts were actually nowhere near that he was -" Christina choked a little - "dead. I thought it was just that he was somewhere else in the city. It really did not occur to me that he could have been shot. He was pretty much normal, not like Tris, and I was normal and I was alive, so I just thought he would be too, I guess. Then Tris came. When I saw her after the attack on Abnegation, everything was different, but then between us was exactly the same, you know? But I knew she had changed. And I knew she was lying when she told me that she didn't know what had happened to Will. I have been trained since forever to know when someone is lying, and I was one hundred and twenty percent sure that she was lying in that moment, but I didn't say anything because even experts can be wrong. Plus, I didn't want to push it because maybe she had just been misled by something. I - I realise now that it was sort of stupid, everything I did then, but I don't know. It just felt wrong. I didn't know what to do and everything felt like it had fallen apart and I was worried but didn't want to say anything and - and...I don't know. I guess everything was just building up and I knew it was about to fall on top of me. Somewhere in me, I knew something bad had happened to Will. I just didn't want to believe it, so I just pushed it away. When Jack Kang made Tris and Four - wait, I mean Tobias - take the truth serum, at first I was fine. I just wanted Tris to be okay and for Candor and Erudite to, well, not kill her. But then afterwards, when she said it - when she said that she - that she shot -" Christina stopped.
That was when the tears started, hard and fast, rushing the words and the breath away from her mouth.
Sobs.
Gasping.
Broken words.
Then full words in a broken voice.
I felt like a monster.