Instead I just let the silence stretch out between us. It's the only adequate response to what he just told me, the only that does the tragedy any justice instead of patching it hastily and moving on.

I should probably be afraid. But instead a hysterical laugh bubbles inside me, because I just remembered something: Maybe I can’t hold a gun. But I have a knife in my back pocket.

He's one of the last friends I have," she says, her voice breaking. "I don't know if I'll ever be able to look at you the same way again.

It's when you're acting selflessly that you are at your bravest." --Four in Divergent

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 just one more kiss, one more word, one more glance, one more.

You don't have to tell me everything right away, but I have to tell you everything right away? Can't you see how stupid that is?

I wake wondering how I did not notice, every day I sat across from her at the breakfast table, that she was full to bursting with Dauntless energy. Was it because she hid it well? Or was it because I wasn't looking?