Chapter 18 - Not Forgiving

—Tris

Every year on this exact date I am taken into custody of Candor. I celebrate how I'm back in Chicago for another year the day before, then I am put in handcuffs and wheeled down to a cell for a few hours before tried.

This year I plan to stand with my crutches. My first trial, I was brutally screamed at for falling to the floor and being unable to stand. Candor members did then actually stand up to West and got a rule passed that injured may sit.

I'm not in as much pain as I was yesterday, for the new cast doesn't squeeze my leg as much, and the swelling has subsided with painful intervals of icing my knee, foot and upper calf.

The same thing happens every year. They come into the cell, they wheel me out in the wheelchair, get me to the interrogation room, then this year I'm helped to stand on my crutches and once I'm stable they stick the needle in my neck and administer the serum.

All the guards disperse until West is the only one standing at the podium. It's him and I.

"What's your full name?"

Beatrice Prior.

"Middle name?"

Born Abnegation. They believe there is no point to a middle name. Transferred Dauntless.

"Date of birth?"

Born Abnegation, I don't know anything other than it's in the Winter.

"Age?"

Around twenty-five.

"Relationship status?"

I live with my boyfriend, Tobias Eaton.

"When was your last surgery?"

Five months ago in May.

"Are you in pain?"

All the time.

"What are you hiding?"

Nothing.

"What were you doing around the time of Winter, around the time of your birthday, seven years ago, when you would've been almost, if not seventeen?"

I don't know.

"What about the year after that, when you would've been eighteen."

I don't know.

"Nineteen?"

I don't know.

"Twenty?"

I don't know.

"Twenty-one?"

I woke up on a cold cement floor with two people asleep in the same room. One person per cell, there was someone directly to my left, then across the narrow hall to my left. It's the only vivid memory I have before recognizing my mother's voice to my left and passing out again. When I came to, she was pregnant, and not by my father who was diagonal to my left across the hall; not by the man she loves.

"What were you told about the years you were asleep?"

I woke up thinking I was still sixteen, still fighting a war in Chicago. My last memory until this day is David standing up from his wheelchair and shooting me at the Bureau. From that moment it goes right to when I woke up in the dark in that cell, thinking I was still sixteen. However, when returning to Chicago and adding up time, I was about twenty-one.

"How does someone wake up and not remember a specific five years of their life?!"

I want to know. I want to tell the truth. I don't know the truth, I don't know who I am. It kills me, every day looking at scars, looking at the brandings on my body, and not remembering where they came from. Do you not realize this eats me alive on the inside? Do you not see that I wish I knew how in fact I was burned to scar myself, cut from my ear to my jaw, how the word Divergent was branded to my leg before it was turned completely into scar tissue from bullets and a knife that I remember? If I could tell you what happened, I would. I wish I could tell, but I can't give away information that I dont even know for myself.

"Bullshit."

I don't know what else to say!

"You belong behind bars. Someone who doesn't even know the harm they posses, how can we let you go freely, and even let you be part of the ambassador's system. You're a disgrace."

I'm sorry you feel that way. I was diagnosed with memory loss, a cat scan in my file right there on your desk has been looked at and shows healing from a harsh blow to the back of my head. I'm lucky to remember anything.

"It's five specific years though. How can a random blow to the head perfectly erase five years to the precision that you remember an exact bullet and then it goes to a cell five years later. That doesn't seem weird or out of place to you?"

EVERYTHING IS OUT OF PLACE TO ME. How would you feel, walking along, barely knowing why half the stuff that happened to you did. I want to know, but I just don't. Yes, it sounds like it could have been some type of drug or something that gave my memory loss the precision that it did, but I don't know! I have memory loss! I don't remember! I'm sick of it being held against me.

"You're a threat."

So are you.

"Thank you for your honesty."

Everyone around responds with the same monotonous sentence.

I feel light headed as West walks away. I fall backwards into the wheelchair that is placed behind me just in time.

Amar kneels down to my level in the chair,
"You did good, kid."

Tobias never listens in on my trials, and I respect him for it.

Ever since my first trial where I was horribly mistreated, he cannot stand to see me interrogated for my innocence. I told him if he's going to fight someone and get arrested that it's best he doesn't come, but he always does and stands in the other room, waiting for me to finish. This year, however, he had a lot of work to get done while Josh was at my trial, so he stayed home and agreed to let Amar help me.

I'm breathing heavily as my leg throbs. The wheelchair has my left leg out straight in front of me as Amar wheels me out to Tobias, then the car.

Amar thinks it's great I told West that he is a threat. He thinks it's even more hilarious that after I called him out he ended the trial immediately.

"Tris, are you okay?" He asks.

"I don't know."

"Am I turning around and taking you to Erudite? Because I can—"

"Amar, it's fine. I'm just tired and I have to ice my knee."

"Didn't ice cause you a lot of pain?"

"It does, but it's not as bad as the swelling."

"Oh, that sucks," he keeps his eyes on the road.

"It does."

I feel myself nod off, as much as I can for being such a light sleeper.

I hear Amar get out of the car and next he opens my door. I jump with the sound, but am barely awake.

His arms go under my knees as he lifts me out of the car. Automatically, I resist and push at his chest in panic.

"Hey, Hey, you're alright. Four is on his way out to put a suitcase of your stuff in, and he'll grab your crutches. He said we'll leave your wheelchair here for now so you have it for moving tomorrow. I'm going to take you to your apartment."

My head lies against his chest, barely listening to anything he said.

He and George joke that they are Tobias and my parents, for the four of us are closely knit. We are always there to count on each other, even when it's minor things such as falling asleep in the car.

I hear Tobias's voice distant in the background, asking something. I feel his hand on my head, then I hear his steps go in the opposite direction.

I recognize the scent of our apartment, the smell of home. When Amar goes to set me down I grip whatever I can, another automatic fear of being thrown instead of placed gently.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he says calmly. I hear him sit on the floor next to Tobias and my bed he set me in. "I won't leave you until Four gets back either."

"Thank you," I manage to whisper.

"No, thank you. You stirred up a lot for the better today. You've got guts. I'll tell you, I'm going to miss you these next few weeks. You better not become a nose on me, Tris."

I smile lightly, slightly opening my eyes.

I don't understand how exhaustion takes me over so quickly.

Suddenly, my mind flashes.

I'm running, not training running like I use to in initiation, but running for my life.

I know this place.

But I don't know it at all.

There's a mass of people following me, screaming.

I think they're all behind me, until I run into someone.

They grab me, bridal style, and I'm thrown, head first, into the thick cement walls.

Those walls I know.

I woke up to them almost four years ago.

Those walls are not forgiving.

I scream.