Allegiant Alternate Ending: Tobias & Tris Live Happily-Ever-After

 Hope, family, and ultimately true love prevails in this alternate ending. In a world where living is already difficult enough...do we really need depressing fiction on top of that? I think NOT! I hope you enjoy this, and it helps you to feel a little better about spending numerous hours of your life investing in this terribly tragic love story. Please mind the fact that I started in the middle of a chapter, and did use some of Veronica Roth's original words. SO, credit goes to Veronica Roth for her original chapters, paragraphs, and themes. The rest is my original thoughts and writing.

 

Pg 474:  ALLEGIANT ALTERNATE ENDING

Continued from Chapter 50:

Tris: The green button. So much pain. But how, when my body feels so numb?

I start to fall, and slam my hand into the keypad on my way down. A light turns on behind the green button. I hear a beep, and a churning sound. I slide to the floor. I feel something warm dripping down my chest, and along the side of my face.

Chapter 51:

TOBIAS:

Evelyn brushes the tears from her eyes with her thumb. We stand by the windows, shoulder to shoulder, watching the snow swirl past. Some of the flakes gather on the windowsill outside, piling at the corners.

The feeling has returned to my hands. As I stare out at the world, dusted in white, I feel like everything has begun again, and it will be better this time.

"I think I can get in touch with Marcus over the radio to negotiate a peace agreement," Evelyn says. "He'll be listening in; he'd be stupid not to."

"Before you do that, I made a promise I have to keep," I say. I touch Evelyn's shoulder. I expected to see strain at the edges of her smile, but I don't. I feel a twinge of guilt. I didn't come here to ask her to lay down arms for me, to trade in everything she's worked for just to get me back. But then again, I didn't come here to give her any choice at all. I guess Tris was right-when you have to choose between two bad options, you pick the one that saves the people you love. I wouldn't have been saving Evelyn by giving her that serum. I would have been destroying her.

Peter sits with his back to the wall in the hallway. He looks up at me when I lean over him, his dark hair stuck to his forehead from the melted snow.

"Did you reset her?" he says.

"No," I say.

"Didn't think you would have the nerve."

"It's not about nerve. You know what? Whatever." I shake my head and hold up the vial of memory serum. "Are you still set on this?"

He nods.

"You could just do the work, you know," I say. "You could make better decisions, make a better life."

"Yeah, I could," he says. "But I won't. We both know that."

I do know that. I know that change is difficult, and comes slowly, and that it is the work of many days strung together in a long line until the origin of them is forgotten. He is afraid that he will not be able to put in that work, that he will squander those days, and that they will leave him worse off than he is now. And I understand that feeling-I understand being afraid of yourself.

So I have him sit on one of the couches, and I ask him what he wants me to tell him about himself, after his memories disappear like smoke. He just shakes his head. Nothing. He wants to retain nothing.

Peter takes the vial with a shaking hand and twists off the cap. The liquid trembles inside it, almost spilling over the lip. He holds it under his nose to smell it.

"How much should I drink?" he says, and I think I hear his teeth chattering.

"I don't think it makes a difference," I say.

"Okay. Well...here it goes." He lifts the vial up to the light like he is toasting me.

When he touches it to his mouth, I say, "Be brave."

Then he swallows.

And I watch Peter disappear.

********************************************************************

The air outside tastes like ice.

"Hey! Peter!" I shout, my breaths turning to vapor.

Peter stands by the doorway to Erudite headquarters, looking clueless. At the sound of his name-which I have told him at least ten times since he drank the serum-he raises his eyebrows, pointing to his chest. Matthew told us people would be disoriented for a while after drinking the memory serum, but I didn't think "disoriented" meant "stupid" until now.

I sigh. "Yes, that's you! For the eleventh time! Come on, let's go."

I thought that when I looked at him after he drank the serum, I would still see the initiate who shoved a butter knife into Edward's eye, and the boy who tried to kill my girlfriend, and all the other things he has done, stretching backward for as long as I've known him. But it's easier than I thought to see that he has no idea who he is anymore. His eyes still have that wide, innocent look, but this time, I believe it.

Evelyn and I walk side by side, with Peter trotting behind us. The snow has stopped falling now, but enough has collected on the ground that it squeaks under my shoes.

We walk to Millennium Park, where the mammoth bean sculpture reflects the moonlight, and then down a set of stairs. As we descend, Evelyn wraps her hand around my elbow to keep her balance, and we exchange a look. I wonder if she is as nervous as I am to face my father again. I wonder if she is nervous every time.

At the bottom of the steps is a pavilion with two glass blocks, each one at least three times as tall as I am, at either end. This is where we told Marcus and Johanna we would meet them-both parties armed, to be realistic but even.

They are already there. Johanna isn't holding a gun, but Marcus is, and he has it trained on Evelyn. I point the gun Evelyn gave me at him, just to be safe. I notice the planes of his skull, showing through his shaved hair, and the jagged path his crooked nose carves down his face.

"Tobias!" Johanna says. She wears a coat in Amity red, dusted with snowflakes. "What are you doing here?"

"Trying to keep you all from killing each other," I say. "I'm surprised you're carrying a gun."

I nod to the bulge in her coat pocket, the unmistakable contours of a weapon.

"Sometimes you have to take difficult measures to ensure peace," Johanna says. "I believe you agree with that, as a principle."

"We're not here to chat," Marcus says, looking at Evelyn. "You said you wanted to talk about a treaty."

The past few weeks have taken something from him. I can see it in the turned-down corners of his mouth, in the purple skin under his eyes. I see my own eyes set into his skull, and I think of my reflection in the fear landscape, how terrified I was, watching his skin spread over mine like a rash. I am still nervous that I will become him, even now, standing at odds with him with my mother at my side, like I always dreamed I would when I was a child.

But I don't think that I'm still afraid.

"Yes," Evelyn says. "I have some terms for us both to agree to. I think you will find them fair. If you agree to them, I will step down and surrender whatever weapons I have that my people are not using for personal protection. I will leave the city and not return."

Marcus laughs. I'm not sure if it's a mocking laugh or a disbelieving one. He's equally capable of either sentiment, an arrogant and deeply suspicious man.

"Let her finish," Johanna says quietly, tucking her hands into her sleeves.

"In return," Evelyn says, "you will not attack or try to seize control of the city. You will allow those people who wish to leave and seek a new life elsewhere to do so. You will allow those who choose to stay to vote on new leaders and a new social system. And most importantly, you, Marcus, will not be eligible to lead them."

It is the only purely selfish term of the peace agreement. She told me she couldn't stand the thought of Marcus duping more people into following him, and I didn't argue with her.

Johanna raises her eyebrows. I notice that she has pulled her hair back on both sides, to reveal the scar in its entirety. She looks better that way-stronger, when she is not hiding behind a curtain of hair, hiding who she is.

"No deal," Marcus says. "I am the leader of these people."

"Marcus," Johanna says.

He ignores her. "You don't get to decide whether I lead them or not because you have a grudge against me, Evelyn!"

"Excuse me," Johanna says loudly. "Marcus, what she is offering is too good to be true-we get everything we want without all the violence! How can you possibly say no?"

"Because I am the rightful leader of these people!" Marcus says. "I am the leader of the Allegiant! I-"

"No, you are not," Johanna says calmly, "I am the leader of the Allegiant. And you are going to agree to this treaty, or I am going to tell them that you had a chance to end this conflict without bloodshed and you sacrificed your pride, and you said no."

Marcus's passive mask is gone, revealing the malicious face beneath it. But even he can't argue with Johanna, whose perfect calm and perfect threat have mastered him. He shakes his head but doesn't argue again.

"I agree to your terms," Johanna says, and she holds out her hand, her footsteps squeaking in the snow.

Evelyn removes her glove fingertip by fingertip, reaches across the gap, and shakes.

"In the morning we should gather everyone together and tell them the new plan," Johanna says. "Can you guarantee a safe gathering?"

"I'll do my best," Evelyn says.

I check my watch. An hour has passed since Amar and Christina separated from us near the Hancock building, which means he probably knows that the serum virus didn't work. Or maybe he doesn't. Either way, I have to do what I came here to do-I have to find Zeke and his mother and tell them what happened to Uriah.

"I should go," I say to Evelyn. "I have something else to take care of. But I'll pick you up from the city limits tomorrow afternoon?"

"That sounds good," Evelyn says, and she rubs my arm briskly with a gloved hand, like she used to when I came in from the cold as a child.

"You won't be back, I assume?" Johanna says to me. "You've found a life for yourself on the outside?"

"I have," I say. "Good luck in here. The people outside-they're going to try to shut the city down. You should be ready for them."

Johanna smiles. "I'm sure we can negotiate with them."

She offers me her hand, and I shake it. I feel Marcus's eyes on me like an oppressive weight threatening to crush me. I force myself to look at him.

"Good-bye," I say to him, and I mean it.

Hana, Zeke's mother, has small feet that don't touch the ground when she sits in the easy chair in their living room. She is wearing a ragged black bathrobe and slippers, but the air she has, with her hands folded in her lap and her eyebrows raised, is so dignified that I feel like I am standing in front of a world leader. I glance at Zeke, who is rubbing his face with his fists to wake up.

Amar and Christina found them, not among the other revolutionaries near the Hancock building, but in their family apartment in the Pire, above Dauntless headquarters. I only found them because Christina thought to leave Peter and me a note with their location on the useless truck. Peter is waiting in the new van Evelyn found for us to drive to the Bureau.

"I'm sorry," I say. "I don't know where to start."

"You might begin with the worst," Hana says. "Like what exactly happened to my son."

"He was seriously injured during an attack," I say. "There was an explosion, and he was very close to it."

"Oh God," Zeke says, and he rocks back and forth like his body wants to be a child again, soothed by motion as a child is.

But Hana just bends her head, hiding her face from me.

Their living room smells like garlic and onion, maybe remnants from that night's dinner. I lean my shoulder into the white wall by the doorway. Hanging crookedly next to me is a picture of the family-Zeke as a toddler, Uriah as a baby, balancing on his mother's lap. Their father's face is pierced in several places, nose and ear and lip, but his wide bright smile and dark complexion are more familiar to me, because he passed them both to his sons.

"He has been in a coma since then," I say. "And..."

"And he isn't going to wake up," Hana says, her voice strained. "That is what you came to tell us, right?"

"Yes," I say. "I came to collect you so that you can make a decision on his behalf."

"A decision?" Zeke says. "You mean to unplug him or not?"

"Zeke," Hana says, and she shakes her head. He sinks back into the couch. The cushions seem to wrap around him.

"Of course we don't want to keep him alive that way," Hana says. "He would want to move on. But we would like to go see him."

I nod. "Of course. But there's something else I should say. The attack...it was a kind of uprising that involved some of the people from the place where we were staying. And I participated in it."

I stare at the crack in the floorboards right in front of me, at the dust that has gathered there over time, and wait for a reaction, any reaction. What greets me is only silence.

"I didn't do what you asked me," I say to Zeke. "I didn't watch out for him the way I should have. And I'm sorry."

I chance a look at him, and he is just sitting still, staring at the empty vase on the coffee table. It is painted with faded pink roses.

"I think we need some time with this," Hana says. She clears her throat, but it doesn't help her tremulous voice.

"I wish I could give it to you," I say. "But we're going back to the compound very soon, and you have to come with us."

"All right," Hana says. "If you can wait outside, we will be there in five minutes.”

The ride back to the compound is slow and dark. I watch the moon disappear and reappear behind the clouds as we bump over the ground. When we reach the outer limits of the city, it begins to snow again, large, light flakes that swirl in front of the headlights. I wonder if Tris is watching it sweep across the pavement and gather in piles by the airplanes. I wonder if she is living in a better world than the one I left, among people who no longer remember what it is to have pure genes.

Christina leans forward to whisper into my ear. "So you did it? It worked?"

I nod. In the rearview mirror I see her touch her face with both hands, grinning into her palms. I know how she feels: safe. We are all safe.

"Did you inoculate your family?" I say.

"Yep. We found them with the Allegiant, in the Hancock building," she says. "But the time for the reset has passed-it looks like Tris and Caleb stopped it."

Hana and Zeke murmur to each other on the way, marveling at the strange, dark world we move through. Amar gives the basic explanation as we go, looking back at them instead of the road far too often for my comfort. I try to ignore my surges of panic as he almost veers into streetlights or road barriers, and focus instead on the snow.

I have always hated the emptiness that winter brings, the blank landscape and the stark difference between sky and ground, the way it transforms trees into skeletons and the city into a wasteland. Maybe this winter I can be persuaded otherwise.

We drive past the fences and stop by the front doors, which are no longer manned by guards. We get out, and Zeke seizes his mother's hand to steady her as she shuffles through the snow. As we walk into the compound, I know for a fact that Caleb succeeded, because there is no one in sight. That can only mean that they have been reset, their memories forever altered.

"Where is everyone?" Amar says.

We walk through the abandoned security checkpoint without stopping. On the other side, I see Cara. The side of her face is badly bruised, and she’s pressing a handful of gauze to her head, but that's not what concerns me. What concerns me is the troubled look on her face.

"What is it?" I say.

Cara shakes her head.

“Where’s Tris” I say.

“I’m sorry, Tobias.”

“Sorry about what?” Christina says roughly. “Tell us what happened!”
“Tris went into the Weapons Lab instead of Caleb,” Cara begins. “She survived the death serum, and set off the memory serum, but she…she was shot. She’s…” Cara stutters before continuing, “her body is on a stretcher outside of the hospital…”

Before Cara can finish, I’ve hurled myself into a run. The world begins to blur together in a messy mosaic of dull colors. I ignore the burn in my legs, and the tears streaking down my face. A jagged rock catches my foot, and I slam into the frozen ground.

Tris is still alive, her eyes bright and her cheeks flushed and her small body full of power and strength, standing in a shaft of light in the atrium. Tris is still alive, she wouldn’t leave me here alone, she wouldn’t go into the Weapons Lab instead of Caleb.

I’m on my feet again.  

Chapter 52:

Tris:

There is nothing more disturbing than opening your eyes and seeing nothing. Nothingness doesn’t even have a color…it’s fascinating and terrifying at the same time.

I breathe in and breathe out. Even the expansion of my lungs is excruciatingly exhausting.

I feel it again. The tendrils of death, threatening to tear my soul out of this body. After sixteen years of living in it, I still don’t feel quite ready to give it up.

“Just keep breathing, Tris”, I think.

Suddenly I feel a stabbing pain in my ribs. When I try to coil away from the sensation, I realize I can’t.

I’m paralyzed.

 Trapped in my own fleshly prison. I begin to panic. I try, desperately, to bring my emotions into composure…

“Think about something else, Tris. Anything!”

That’s when he enters my mind…his long slender fingers, his back muscles contracting under my palms when we kiss, the taste of his soft mouth fitting to mine. Strangely, I feel peaceful.

He is mine, and I am his. Nothing else matters.

Tobias:

I am numb…unable to move.

Her blonde hair is tangled around her face, and crimson is dripping from her neck, face, and arm.

“Tris?”

My feet feel like they are set in concrete blocks as I take a step closer to her mangled frame.

Maybe if I close my eyes, I’ll wake up in a few hours. This is just a nightmare. It’s not real. Not my Tris.

I take another step. Blood puddles around my shoes.

It’s not real. 

But it feels so real…I must be in my fear landscape.

I will find a way out. I reach for her.

A shudder shakes my spine when my fingertips meet her cold body.

A moment later the realization hits me: Of course Tris would go into the Weapons Lab instead of Caleb.

Of course she would.

This is for real.  

 Something inside of me comes undone. My knees give out from under me. I don’t feel my body slamming into the hard, marble floor. A noise comes out of my throat. Was that really me? It didn’t even sound human.

Tris:

Suddenly I’m jostled out of my dreamlike reality. What was that noise? I try to open my eyes, but again, I see nothing.

Tobias:

From the corner of my eye I see a blurred figure moving towards me. Towards Tris.

When the figure’s hands meet her bleeding chest, my dauntless instincts kicks in. My elbow flies back, colliding with the face of the intruder, and I hear him cry out.

When a large tear finally falls out of one of my eyes, I see Caleb.

He’s trying to say something. I notice he’s wearing a pair of disposable gloves.

“Bleeding…her chest,” he gags on the blood flowing out of his mouth.

For an instant, ferocious anger wells up inside of me…until I realize the message he’s trying to convey.

I turn my eyes back to her small body and suddenly one of her fingers twitches. I shove my palms into my eyes, trying to focus through the tears. I lean towards her and see that her chest is moving up and down in a shallow, uneven rhythm. 

There’s still hope.

I almost slip on both Caleb and Tris’s blood as I desperately gather her up in my shaking arms. As the tangles of hair fall away from her face, I flinch. All the color in her cheeks is gone.

“Tris, you’re going to be okay” I whisper, trying to convince myself that it’s true. Blood smears onto my face as my lips brush past her forehead. Quickly, I pull myself back to my feet with her in my arms.

Thankfully, someone decided it would be a good idea to have the medical staff inoculated against the memory serum. Minutes later, I come crashing through the doors of the only operating room in the Bureau’s medical hospital. Someone else is lying on the table…I can’t make out who it is through all of the tubes on his face. I don’t care. The surgeon turns from the body to address me. There are two nurses in the room; I recognize them as former Erudites.  

“Please! Help her! Do something!” I scream with a hoarse voice, attempting to push Tris into his gloved-up hands.

“Son,” he begins, “there has been a large number of casualties today. There’s a long line in front of you…” he sets his tools down.

I cut him off, “Oh, God! She’s only sixteen! Sixteen!”

I begin to lower Tris to the floor as I continue, “and…I…I love her.” The last words can barely make it past the lump in my throat, “my Beatrice.”

A sob threatens to rip through my throat. I won’t cry. If I lose control now, I’m afraid I will never be able to get a grip on it again.

But the tears are running down my face; dripping onto hers.

The man in blue scrubs is still staring at me. “I will see what I can do. But first, I must finish here.”

“Yes! Thank you…” my eyes meet his. He doesn’t even need to speak because the look in his cold, brown eyes fills the silence.

It may be too late.

******************************************************************************

I try not to notice the large number of eyes that follow me as I pace the cold, clean floors of the hospital. These people don’t know who I am anymore….all they know is they woke up in chaos and pain.

Several people float in and out; asking for updates. The only person I can bring myself to even look at is Christina. Her eyes are puffy and the corners of her mouth are turned down. Sometimes I forget that I'm not the only person who cares for Tris. She sits on the floor and watches me pace. 

"They're going to unplug Uriah," she states dryly.

I turn towards her and slump down onto the floor beside her.

My voice is hoarse, "I can't leave. Please offer my sympathy to Zeke and his mother."

Her hand pats the top of my knee as she says, "Okay, I will."

We both stand, and I watch her leave. I wonder why the news about Uriah didn't even touch me with so much as a sting...then I remember that I've been absolutely numb for hours.  

Moments later, I notice someone walking towards me out of my peripheral vision. When I turn my head and see Caleb holding a bag of ice to his enormously fat lip, bile creeps up into my throat. Maybe Tris thought his life was worth sacrificing her own for..but I, as sure as hell exists, do not. It looks like there's something he wants to tell me. My jaw locks, and I give him a warning glare.  He takes a step towards me.  I raise my hand to stop him from coming any closer.

"Just don't," hisses past my clenched teeth.

"Tris wanted me to tell you that she didn't..."

Before he can continue, I cut him off. 

"Shut up!" I scream, lunging for him. 

Slamming him into the wall, my hands lock around his throat. It's only when I hear the gasp of a little girl standing next to her mother that I momentarily regain my self-control. I forgot that we weren't alone. 

Sucking in a breath, I release my grip and step away from him. 

"She didn't want to leave you," he finishes.

My voice cracks, "then why did she?" 

A long moment of silence follows before he turns and exits the building. 

****************************************************************************

I watch the clock for what feels like an eternity. As time drags on, I can’t keep the memory from resurfacing.

When her body first hit the net, all I registered was a gray blur. I pulled her across it and her hand was small, but warm, and then she stood before me, short and thin and plain and in all ways unremarkable-except that she had jumped first. The Stiff had jumped first.

Even I didn’t jump first.

Her eyes were so stern, so insistent. Beautiful.

*************************************************************************

But that wasn't the first time I saw her. I saw her in the hallway at school, and at my mother's false funeral, and walking the sidewalks in the Abnegation sector. I saw her, but I didn't see her; no one saw her the way she truly was until she  jumped.

I suppose a fire that burns that bright is not meant to last.

******************************************************************************

Suddenly the door to the to the operating room begins to open. My stomach drops. Turning towards the wall, I slump forward. My shaking hands sprawl out and I catch myself. I can't bring myself to the look the surgeon in the eye. What will I see if I do? The truth? I'm not sure I want to know the truth. When I feel a large warm hand touch my shoulder, I instinctively coil away. 

I thought heights and small spaces and my father with a belt in hand was terrifying...but those things don't hold a candle to what I'm feeling in this moment. When my lungs begin to scream for air, I realize that I have forgotten to breathe.

Suddenly the words, "Be Brave", echo in my mind. That's what Tris would want me to do.

I suck in a deep, painful breath...and turn to face my greatest fear.

Chapter 53: Three Years Later

Tobias:

With raw emotions, I recall that day… almost three years ago.

The day I almost lost Tris.

Finding a blood donor was difficult. They used the word “O-negative” when trying to explain to me why I couldn't give my own blood to her...but I didn't and still don't know what those words mean.

It seemed appropriate that her brother was the only person who could  donate to her on that fateful day.

I remember watching the life-giving fluid run through the IV tubing into her veins. After all of this, Caleb really had redeemed himself. He was able to give back a portion of what he had taken when he betrayed his own sister prior to the incident: hope. 

The proverb “Faction before Blood” became an ironic reminder of what he used to believe. After the transfusion, I decided I could stomach the thought being in the same room with him. Still, I couldn't believe my own ears when I walked past him and heard the words, "thank you," slip out of my mouth. 

I remember the moment the doctor told us Tris would survive, the long-lost light in Christina was rekindled. For the first time since Will's death, her smile made its way to her eyes.

Somehow, in the long, hard months of change to follow, Zeke and Christina found each other. Zeke had lost Uriah, Christina had lost Will. At first, their relationship did not involve a romantic element. Instead, a simple understanding; an agreement that they would always be there to help the other person be strong. No matter what was to come...together, they would get through it. 

Turning my attention to our ten-month old daughter, I let out a jagged breath and push the memories out of my mind.

 She stands with Tris’ hands surrounding her miniature frame. I watch her blonde curls sway in the breeze, brushing her porcelain-pale skin.

“Natalie,” I say. The tiny child’s big, clear gray eyes find mine.

I’m glad she looks more like Tris than me. She’s beautiful.  

******************************************************************************

The day Natalie Prior-Eaton was born I made a promise to myself. I promised I would use my strength to protect my family, not bring them harm like Marcus chose to do to me. I purposed to use my role to empower my daughter, not tear her down. She can be whoever she wants. There are no factions or genetically pure versus impure. All that exists now are individuals.

 People.

 No more experiments. 

 While everyone on the outside had to start over, the city of Chicago continues to live peacefully oblivious as to what is on the other side of the fence. 

As Evelyn reaches to take the child from my wife, a warm heaviness settles in my heart. Caleb wasn’t the only one who was given a second chance. Evelyn really is a fantastic grandmother.

I step toward Tris; sliding my arms around her lean waist. I press my mouth to the bullet-graze scar on the side of her face. Her warm breath tickles my ear.

"Get a room!" Christina yells from across the street. I ignore her and Zeke as they walk by hand-in-hand. 

 I move my lips down Tris's throat to just below her prominent collar-bone. My face lingers there for a moment before she lifts my chin up so she can look me in the eyes. 

 These scars have become a daily reminder to both of us.

Seize the precious moments you have with those you love, because you never know when death itself will come knocking on your door.

******************************************************************************

As distant stars begin to dot the pale-blue sky, I find Tris, and together we open the door to Natalie's room. We interlock hands and step forward to kneel beside her crib. With a thumb in her mouth, the child turns her sleepy face to watch us. I stick one of my fingers through a gap in the wooden bars and her petite hand latches onto it. I know that the gesture is a baby’s natural response, but my heart still jumps a little.

“Ready?” Tris asks.

“Ready,” I whisper.

 “Now I lay me down to sleep,” I begin. 

“I pray the Lord my soul to keep,” her soft voice continues.

“If I should die before I wake…”

Our voices mix together in a familiar chorus, “I pray the Lord my soul to take.”

Tris squeezes my hand, “Amen."

Natalie's eyes have fallen slowly shut, and her long golden eyelashes brush against her flushed cheeks.  I watch her tiny ribcage rise up and down. 

I never cease to be amazed at the sight of this young, beautiful life. This child is proof our love. The bond between Tris and I is so strong...it continues to grow stronger every day. Only death can separate us, and even then the legacy of our love will continue to live. 

Tris:

Today, on the three year anniversary, I still remember clearly.

It was strange to watch an entire population rebuild their identities after the memory serum infected their minds and wiped away everything they had ever known or believed. Some people changed; in a good way. Others didn’t. Like Peter, for example. I watched many of his old, cruel tendencies return. I suppose even our most advanced technology does not have a power to alter who a person really is; who they were always meant to be.

Maybe a person needs to wake up every morning and decide, “Today will be different”, and fall asleep with the determination to open their eyes tomorrow and do it all over again.  It’s a day-to-day war between who you are and who you want to be.

With this in mind, I know it’s not going to be easy rebuilding not only our world, but our minds…to no longer fit into categories. It’s going to be difficult to protect our daughter, whose mind is untainted by our old patterns of thinking.

 It’s going to take courage.

While this new life is empowering, it’s also terrifying. But there are two words from my old faction that I still strive to live by in these moments of such uncertainty:

Be brave.

The End