In the days that follow, it's movement, not stillness, that helps to keep the grief at bay.

He holds my face in both hands and kisses me back. I press into the distance between us until it is gone, crushing the secrets we have kept and the suspicions we have harbored-for good, I hope.

Sometimes, all it takes to save people from a terrible fate is one person willing to do something about it. Even if that "something" is a fake bathroom break.

Did you just make a joke, Tris? We should have you on painkillers more often if your going to start cracking jokes.

Christina and I don't speak, but I know our thoughts are the same, fixed on Uriah, on his last breaths.

The night air slips into my lungs, and I feel like it is one of my first breaths.

I find my anger ebbing away, and I'm lost in muffled grief again, this time not just for Tris, but for Uriah, whose smile is burned into my memory. My friend's brother, and then my friend, too, though not for long enough to let his humor work its way into me, not for long enough.

I don't know how long it takes for me to realize it isn't going to happen, that she is gone. But when I do feel all the strength go out of me, and i fall to my knees beside the table and I think I cry, then, or at least I want to and everything inside me screams for one more kiss, one more word, one more glance, one more.

I need to deny them the power to control me. I need to know I am stronger than they are.