Pretty Little Divergent

Chapter 36 - Control

TRIS POV

Earlier today, there was an announcement during lunch. Turns out, I don't need to train to become a leader anymore due to Max's death.

Do I even want the job? To be completely honest, I don't think I even have a choice. A leader dies, another one steps up, and it just so happens to be me.

After Tobias and I finish eating, he drags me towards the train tracks. He draws himself into a train car as it passes and pulls me in after him. His fingers slide down my arms, and he holds me by the elbows as the car bumps along the steel rails. I watch the glass building above the Dauntless compound shrink behind us.

"Where are we going?" I shout over the cry of the wind.

The wind pushes strands of my hair loose and tosses them over my face. Then it hits me. We're on a train riding out of Dauntless. He must be taking me to see him mother with him.

"What makes you think we're going anywhere?" Tobias asks, sinking to the floor and pulling me down with him.

I raise me eyebrows at him. "I'm being serious. We're not going anywhere," he continues.

Wait, what?

"Then why-"

"I just thought we needed some time to think." He presses his palms to the sides of my face, his index fingers slipping just behind my ears. "Alone."

He pulls my mouth to his, and I am glad the wind is so loud that he can't hear me moan. But eventually I pull back, and search his eyes for any truth. But I don't find any. Looks like we're really not going to see his mother. It's like this secret was a wall between us, and the wall just got even thicker.

"We could be alone without having to randomly ride a train around the city." I pick a hair off of Tobias's jacket. It's dark, like his hair, but too long to belong to his head. "You know, in our apartment."

"You mean where A can hear us?" Tobias says. "Definitely not."

"So.. You came out here to talk about A?"

"Not just A." He tilts his forehead down to rest against mine and pulls me closer. His skin, his whole being, radiates invigorating heat into me, despite the crisp air in the train car.

"I want to talk about you as well."

"Me? Why me?"

"I want to know if you're okay."

Quietly, I laugh, but it sounds more like a groan. "Why wouldn't I be okay?"

"Because our situation is serious, Tris." I bite my lip. "And at the moment it's like we have no way out."

He's right.

"You're strong, I know that more than anyone." He takes my hand, and I try not to notice his words. "I'm strong too, but I still jump every time my phone goes off, Tris."

My teeth sink into my lip a little harder.

"And if I'm scared even though I'm strong, you must be too."

"So what if I am?" I try to concentrate on the strength in his hand, and not the wobble in my voice. "So what if I'm scared? It's not like you can do anything about it."

"No, I can't." I look away from him and beyond the train car. I watch the buildings, which are now the size of a fingernail, get smaller by the second. My eyes skim the tiny structures containing the lucky people who don't know what it's like to be scared every time they get a text.

What are the other factions' views on cell phones, anyway? When I was in Abnegation, I was wary of them, and never even touched one until I jumped into Dauntless.

Weird, isn't it? I jumped on and off of a moving train and a building multiple times before I even got to touch a cell phone?

I guess that's just the faction system.

"And it scares me. I hate being in a situation and not.. being able to get out of it."

It's only now that I really understand what my fears are. I'm not really afraid of drowning. I'm afraid of not being in control. And apparently, so is Tobias.

I want to scream. I want to tell him I'm afraid too. Then we could be afraid together. But now that I think about it, that won't help the fact that we're afraid.

Because if you do something slowly, or unrecognised by anyone else, it doesn't change the fact that you've done it.

"Well," I say, pulling my hand away. "This isn't a simulation, Tobias. Divergent or not, you can't just manipulate real life and you can't be in control of everything that happens!"

Tobias points at me, and I feel like I'm a child again, getting scolded. "You know that's not what I mean."

"But it is, though." The temperature in the train car seems to have dropped twenty degrees in a matter of seconds. Tobias lets his hand fall to his side, and I wonder when the next time I hold it will be. Probably not any time soon.

What did I do in my fear landscape to overcome that fear? I broke the glass. I destroyed the thing that mitigated me of that power and I gained my control back.

In my current situation, what would represent the glass? What is the thing that I need to break, to destroy, in order to create change? It's A.

I believe we are never completely powerless. That there is always something, no matter how little, we can do to change our situation completely. Leaders, usually political ones, just want us to think that we are ineffectual. Inert. Incapable of effectiveness. However, that is a lie.

The truth is that even the little things we do, I have realised, can have a big impact on everything. One way or another, we all contain power. Everyone.

We just need to figure out how to act on it.

Suddenly, the train abruptly comes to a stop. The jolt is enough to knock us both off balance. His first instinct, it seems, is to clutch my elbow to keep my upright. However my first instinct is to keep myself upright.

Selfish much?

"You okay?" I ask.

"Yeah." He wipes his hands on his jacket and stares out of the train car.

"Why did it stop?" Of course, I don't expect an answer, but what he does next gives me one.

"Look." He points, and my eyes follow his finger.

I don't know what to expect, but when I look out, I don't see the city in small. Instead, we are faced with a wall of a grey house, only slightly wider than the width of our living room. On it, someone has spray painted the words:

THIS WALL IS CONCRETE
BUT YOU ARE NOT.
SO LETS SEE WHAT IT TAKES FOR YOU TO BRAKE
-A

"Whoever this A person is really doesn't have a thing for spellings, do they?" Tobias jokes.

"Or grammar." I pause. "But I don't think the fact that they don't know how to spell 'break' means they can't break us."