Wendy can’t lie, can’t respond, so she freezes. She can feel her blood pounding through her ears and the air escaping , as her wide eyes flit backwards and forwards in an attempt to read Seunghoon’s expression. Her jaw is still hanging agape, and all of the hectic breeze filters in, making cold and dry. They’re still in the midst of chaos but all Wendy can do is stare.

His grip on her rigid shoulders softens a bit, and she finally exhales, all of her breath anxious and groggy. It seems like he got the message. Scratch that, he probably got the message days ago.

He his head onwards, away from all of the faction chaos as if momentarily it didn’t exist. “Go on.”

Like prey escaping from predator Wendy thankfully nods and detaches herself. She bounds off, not really sure where her boots were leading her but anywhere away from the centre of town. Everyone else had filtered towards the centre of Amity whilst she scuffs her feet against ground that’s more on the outskirts, more rural. And once she steers across a few corners, blasting a few bullets at a few black and white uniforms and arriving at a familiar area, there’s no singing, there’s no laughter. It’s like it’s a completely different place. The array of huts has been torn down. The earth’s messily dug up, blown in chunks and scattered all across everywhere, every inch hummed over by firm smoke. She hears crackling sounds too, maybe, if she can step away from the sound of her heartbeat clogging up her ears.

Wendy darts her head across her surroundings like a trained canine, eyes glazed over and blurred by the of fire along the tops of all the huts that were still partially standing. There’s certainly blood, certainly death, many innocent Amity bodies blown to unsuspecting pieces probably just in the blink of an eye. So she swallows, trying not to let weak tears get the best of her, pacing forwards with force in her step. Around her the pain just seems to multiply, but luckily there’s only lifeless bodies around concentrated areas - the areas worst affected by the explosions. So for the most part, there’s life. People in yellow and red seem to huddle together as she walks past, she hears sobs and coos and lets her blurry eyes watch them. They’re all nursing each other in a way that really reflects Amity, and it’s all because of injury or heartbreak. Wendy prays to whichever God that Seulgi’s amongst these Amity, because even though they’re in pain, they’re still living.

But she makes her way past the huddles of people, not noticing a single sharp, bright, monolidded eye or a single flurry of long chocolate hair. Her heart’s still thumping away in her ears, so much she’s worried it’ll burst out of her body, and she’ll be just as blown apart as the surrounding deceased. There’s a shaking in her limbs and the taste of blood in . Fire’s still burning her eyes, and smoke’s still clogging up her system.

“Don’t cry, darling.” She suddenly hears from what seems to be underneath the ground, so it’s not directed at her, and for some reason she can’t mistake it for Amity. It sounds too menacing and insincere to be properly comforting. And then she hears a whimper, ducking her head towards the earth, and the whimper registers as both husky and feminine.

Wendy feels pulses all over her body, she knows exactly who it is.

Wendy manages to jump down into a large dent in the ground, and is surprised to see that underneath the exploded earth there’s a simple underground passageway. But she doesn’t think too much of it at the time; she guesses all factions have their secrets. The pestering voices get clearer, and when she supposes she’s near enough she shouts before she even sees. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Soil gently trickles from the top of the passageway, and she exhaustedly brushes it from her platinum blonde bangs before letting her eyes adjust to the scene before her. A crowd of Candor men are all around something (something she knows), all too close for comfort and a few probably groping their subject. Wendy feels bile rising in as they all instantly turn to her, lust too strong in their eyes to even see straight. Between their heads, she can finally see Kang Seulgi, petrified.

The majority of the soldiers look terrified by Wendy’s alert glare, but the tallest one’s surely cheeky. Wendy watches in true disgust as he traces his greasy hand over Seulgi’s cheek before advancing on the Dauntless.

“Don’t you dare.” She hisses, her lips curling. She can’t quite catch it, but he murmurs something probably dirty or sinister to his peers, and she’s already just about had it. Taking the tall guy by the collar and pointing a gun to his ear, she barks into his face, “Don’t forget I’m fully trained, most likely the best trained you’ll find, and I could easily shoot you all down in one.”

They all stay silent, and she’d originally let them go scot-free if it wasn’t for the scared look in Seulgi’s teary eyes in the brief second they exchanged eye contact. Wendy tried not to look at her too much because it would surely soften her, and this was a time when she couldn’t be soft. This is war, she reminds herself slightly bitterly, just as she tenses her fingers and lets herself pull the trigger on the erted Candor’s head.

The feedback of the bullet rattles and hurts her wrist. The soldier’s head drops lifeless to the floor in her peripheral vision. It gives Wendy the impression of a puppet whose just been dropped, if she’s to make any part of this scarring situation comedic. And instantly, all of the Candor cry in sharp fear and scurry off, but the one that actually injures her is Seulgi’s cry, just witnessing Wendy kill a man in incredibly close proximity. And for the first time in years, Wendy lets the guilt of murder get to her.

“I’m sorry I killed him.” She leans against the earthy wall and manages to breathe out, only staring at the floor.

Seulgi doesn’t speak for a while, and it’s a feeling that stings. The tears in her eyes had dried somewhat in shock without getting the chance to be wiped away. “It’s…” Seulgi tries to stay, and Wendy thinks her voice is much higher than usual. “I guess you had to. This is conflict and we can’t escape it.”

Wendy’s heartbeat is dangerously heavy and dangerously loud in her mind. It pounds through every inch of her. “I did it for you.” She says without thinking, without filter but in a way she doesn’t regret saying it. It’s like a net of tension has been slung off them. Seulgi timidly peels herself off the wall the soldiers had her pressed against, and her smile is small but it’s so meaningful to Wendy she could cry. And she laughs bitterly, “I’m just so ing glad you’re alive.”

Seulgi blinks slowly. “I could say the same about you.”

They’re even closer now, probably half an inch away from their noses brushing, and Wendy’s been in many battles but this is the scariest feeling she’s ever experienced. She sees Seulgi’s carefully staring down at her lips, her tongue draping from the side of by habit, and it’s a discovery that runs a jolt right through her. Wendy’s mind never even assumed Seulgi felt any sort of way about her, she’d always denied it. And somehow, even now it’s just easier to continue denying.

As Seunghoon said, she’s in love. As Seunghoon implied, it’s dangerous. Seulgi’s mouth is curved upwards at the edges like a little bear, and she’s pouting slightly, as if curious. It’s the most enchanting thing and Wendy feels like she’s subconsciously drifting her lips closer, so she snaps her attention swiftly away.

She’s been staring down at the ground for quite a while now, and she knows Seulgi’s soft eyes curiously are watching her, as if Seulgi, unlike Wendy, was terrible at reading people but wanted to so badly with her. But Wendy’s thinking about this too much and llets her thoughts escape with a mental head-shake, her blood running thick with adrenaline through her veins.

“Um,” Seulgi contemplates, her body still looking just as tense as it was around the soldiers, though Wendy can see shadows cascading over the floor and she can tell Seulgi’s making an effort to playfully swing her arms around. “You probably need to, uh, fight for justice, or something.”

Wendy glanced at her through hooded eyes, quietly smirking at how Seulgi mumbled over everything in the last sentence due to distaste. “Or whatever Dauntless fights for.” Seulgi adds.

Wendy decides to raise her head up properly, and doesn’t bother to brush her hair from her eyes as she does what she’s supposedly best at - being bold.

Wendy places her hand on Seulgi’s jaw, her thumb down her chin. “I’m fighting for peace.” She says, kissing Seulgi quickly and softly on the cheek and dropping her own words right into her heart.

---

The war’s dying down, Wendy’s team tells her every time they meet in the morning. Candor seem to getting the idea that no matter what technology they’re able to haggle, defeating Dauntless isn’t so easy. She thinks that what’s going on, at least, amongst news of Bae Joohyun momentarily resigning from her position to heal fatal scars, but Wendy can’t listen properly because her thoughts are a mess and the medication for her injuries is going straight to her brain.

Wendy’s overly thoughtful and hates knowing that Seunghoon convinced the faction she should have a resting break mainly due to sympathy. She was embarrassed about her affections, to touch the very surface of it. And yet, complaining about her near-mutilated hand seemed to cut it as reason enough - she probably wouldn’t prove the best asset either, in an area where Kang Seulgi, her most terribly sweet distraction, is actually far closer than a train ride away.

“Apparently Bae Joohyun needs a robotic hand, or something!” Wendy picks up Yura’s bubbly, expressive gossiping from across the control room. “How cool is that?”

Super cool, having a replaced part of you not even being human, Wendy scoffs in her mind, admiring the gradual stitch-work all over her palm. Had she not blackmailed Erudite professionals into tending to her major wound, that could’ve totally been her too.

The sound of Yura’s bubbling is getting closer, so Wendy sharply snaps out of her daze and looks up. Yura’s standing in front of her and jutting out her bottom lip slightly, ready to ask her something. Wendy smiles, thinks she knows what this ‘something’ is. “Hey, I was wondering, since you’re off now and the battle’s coming to an end,”

“If you still need to be in charge of the initiates?”

“Yep.” Yura giggles, not really at anything funny but just because she was being Yura, “They’re all alright, but keeping hold of them and acting strict enough isn’t really my forte.”

“No worries.” Wendy winks, laughing along with her. But something makes her feel so drained and alarmed going back to initiate training. Perhaps it was the thought of Yeri; well, her and her relation to the one thing she’s trying to rid her mind of. Seulgi. She’s pretty much on her last attempt.

After notifying Hyeri of her plans of taking over again, who’s thankfully across the control room now and not right into her ear, she trecks over to the initiate dorms. It was odd to her, being back with ambitions after so many days in bed, romantically blubbing like a teenager over a girl, letting herself sink into her own despair of knowing how embarrassing this whole thing was. Being back on track felt old but completely familiar.

On cue, the usual stench of sweat hits her before she properly gets to the dorm room designated to Dauntless transfers, and she doesn’t so much know why she’s travelled there on a day off when the teenagers would probably all be out getting drunk at midday or climbing random skyscrapers. But she notices a single solemn figure slouching over the side of their bed, and then knows it to be Yeri. Wendy does a double take, though. It was really, really unusual to see Yeri not in the centre of a social circle.

“What’s up, kiddo?” Wendy asks with her usual chirpiness, but oddly it isn’t reciprocated. The initiate begins to direct the edge of her face away, meaning Wendy can only see her pretty ear piercings while the rest of her is engulfed by shadows. “Hey,” Wendy hushes her tone as she walks round, so far that Yeri can no longer tilt her head, and she finally sees how swollen the small sixteen year old’s face is.

“I’m sorry, I need to toughen up.” Yeri caws out, mocking herself with a voice that sounds about ready to crack.

“No, it’s okay.” Wendy furrows her eyebrows, kneeling on the grimy floor in front of where the girl had perched herself, closely looking into Yeri’s eyes. They’re watery. “You can cut the bravery crap for now. Besides, confronting your emotions is probably the bravest thing.” She speaks assertively. And she doesn’t remember forming that ending sentence in her mind, but it feels slightly as if she was talking to herself.

Yeri inhales, her breathing sniffly and claggy. “I heard about Amity’s huts getting bombed. A random drunk guard told me.”

“...Oh.”

Wendy doesn’t  know how to connect the dots and doesn’t want to make assumptions, so she falls silent, still hunched. Memories of the shock of flames and sting of fumes flood back into her system, alongside that morbid display of blood.

Yeri’s forehead dives into her hands, her voice breaking painfully. “They’re dead. My mum, my dad... And I bet all of my sisters…”

Wendy face falls, heart sinks, Yeri’s throat seems as if it’s become too hollow to add any more tears to the ones she has already shed. She’s probably miles past her breaking point, so far into this dread that she’s found herself empty. It makes the faction leader wonder how long she’s known for, or how long she’s been prepared for something to happen. She’s already trying to seem like she’s pieced herself back together again, which terrifyingly enough, doesn’t seem true at all.

It’s then that Wendy realises how long it’s been since family’s crossed her mind. And she misses them, she supposes; she blocks it out. The most painful thing is to miss people you can’t even remember the faces of.

And it’s possibly even more painful to mourn the people you can.

“Faction before blood.” Yeri raises her head, shuts her teary eyes and mumbles to herself. Wendy reckons that this impressive girl’s greatest weakness is her unpreventable attachment to other people, and it could be one of the most difficult and dangerous weaknesses to deal with. Wendy, of all people, should know. She couldn’t possibly mention it, though.

Yeri pauses for a while before saying anything else while Wendy inaffectively her knee. She clears her groggy throat, sighs. “I… I hope Seulgi’s okay, at least.”

Wendy feels her ears burn up with the ripple of yet another Seulgi-induced jolt, widening her eyes. It’s as if the girl was reading her mind, and she doesn’t want to think about the fact that she‘s probably blushing.

“Yeah, she’s good.” Wendy shrugs, arms too frozen to keep Yeri’s knee.

“I know you pay a lot of attention to her.” Yeri sniffs, nonchalantly, with a slight flicker of fire back in her sad brown eyes. She was hanging on her implication but not quite saying it, and Wendy wanted to groan even more at her own grossly smitten self.

A/N: I'm back! I should be taking a little break to focus on exams, but I've really been meaning to finish these last chapters and don't want to leave everyone hanging too much longer ;;<3 I'm not sure if this chapter's alright lol, I'm being really critical of it :/// The next and (probably?) final chapter will be written hopefully soon enough. Thank you for your subscriptions, upvotes and feedback!! It really means a great deal to me :'))))