it's important to protect people

I wake up tangled in the sheets, my pillow damp under my cheek. The dorm, I think wildly, I'm in my bunk, and Tris, Tris-- I'm gasping, sobbing, choking on the noises scraping their way out of my throat. Thrashing tightens the fabric twisted around me until I fall off the bed, taking the covers with me and hitting the floor with a thud.

This isn't the dorm -- I'm not anywhere inside the Dauntless compound. Bit by bit, that comes back to me. I don't know how many nights this makes since I arrived in Darrow, and I don't know how long I just stay where I am, trying and failing to block the torture that my dreams have in store for me from my mind. Carved deep into me, they won't fade.

I dragged Tris to the chasm, I held her over it. It was all me. My nightmare turned me into Peter, my hands on Tris, all over her. They're shaking now as I stop short of covering my face and stare at them as if they belong to someone else, a monster. I didn't touch Tris, not like that, but I can still feel her mouth against my palm, and she was so small and so light, and I left her lying broken at the bottom of the chasm.

That didn't happen. That last part didn't happen. Tris is here in Darrow, I remind myself, digging the heels of my hands into my eyes, scrubbing at my face and pulling my knees to my chest. I didn't kill her.