for Salmon; hopefully it brightens your Sunday a little.
This fight isn't about Tris and Peter, it's about me and Eric. I don't even flinch when I see their names on the board; really it's a foregone conclusion. As much as Eric might look the Dauntless part with a faceful of metal hoops it's just a shell, a disguise, and underneath is still the same innate, ingrained prejudices that make his Erudite thirst for knowledge manifest in cruelty. He's never quite fit in here, just like I never have.
To him this fight is just the shortest route from point A to B because unfortunately he's not blind or stupid, though I might be willing to help him with the former before I leave forever. I know he's seen the same similarities in her that have intrigued me. She's the first Abnegation transfer since myself, and maybe that would be enough, but she's got the same need to prove herself, the same desire to rename and remake herself, that I had.
It's more than the fact that we grew up in the same society, and know how to relate to each other that fuels his curiosity though, and this fight is the simplest way to find out if there's something deeper than superficial commonalities between us. I know he'll ignore the fight to focus on cataloging my every reaction, looking for any hint of attachment, and I'll spend it trying to dispel the nervous knot in my stomach and trying not to cringe too much.
But it's also why this fight is not about Tris and Peter, but Eric and me. He's looking for any weak spot that he can exploit, retribution for having to suffer the indignity of coming in second to a Stiff in our initiation class, and the continued humiliation of everyone knowing that if given a choice, Max would rather have me as his second-in-command than Eric.
And if the girl is something more to me than someone I empathize with all the better. I've seen the manic gleam in his eye as he's watched people having to fight their loved ones, the euphoric joy of watching people watch their friends and family take a beating and being powerless to stop it.
Being on the outside I've always understood the necessity of it - if you're too focused on someone else's well being you'll get yourself killed, and how much help are you going to be if you're dead? -, but being on the inside changes everything, which is something that comes into sharp relief watching Tris struggling over and over again to pull herself up off the floor.
She'll never take the easy way out; her will is too strong to allow feigning unconsciousness, but I can't watch anymore. Her scream chases me down the hallway, and it's not until I'm slumped against the door of my apartment that I notice how heavy my breathing is, the way every muscle in my body is clenched, or the cold sweat chilling my skin.
With my face pressed into my knees her scream plays in my head and it's so much like the ones I used to make every time the belt bit into my skin that it sends me scrambling towards the bathroom to heave into the toilet. At least that makes it easier to rationalize my reaction.
When you're jumping off a building the air always feels more solid than it is, like it's trying to remind you that your body wasn't made for flight, or maybe desperately trying to cushion the inevitable impact.
I've always liked that feeling. I have never liked jumping off buildings. But hanging out the door of a speeding train is a good compromise. No height to make my head spin, but the same feeling of the air fighting against you. It feels good, free. It makes me forget the reason I'm hanging out the door in the first place, which is so I don't have to look at Tris' battered face. At least Marcus never left evidence where everyone could see it.
It shouldn't bother me, but it does. It shouldn't bother me either that it was Al helping her into the train, or Will and Christina defending her against the taunts that met her, but that bothers me too. I'm choosing to ignore that part though.
Still, it doesn't change the fact that I can't look at her face without guilt turning me inside out. Even if the silent reproaches I see there are an invention of my head, they're still present every time I look at her.
I could keep trying to convince myself that the reason I dreamed of being locked in that damn closet last night was because my sheets had twisted around me so tightly as I thrashed in my sleep that I felt trapped. That the reason I dreamed of her screaming in pain on the other side of the door was misplaced guilt at my cowardice.
Just because Eric outranks me doesn't mean I can't disagree with him. I could have gone to Max and made a pretty convincing argument that pairing Peter and Tris wasn't in the best interest of either of their training. Dissent doesn't equal disloyalty even in Dauntless. And even if I hadn't failed her - no them, my initiates I remind myself - I should have at least been able to stay and watch the fight.
It sounds pathetic even in my head, just as it sounded the night before when I tried to convince myself that I was leaving and she was staying and in a few months neither of us would be more than a footnote to the other.
"You like her."
I'm barely even tasting the stew that keeps finding it's way into my mouth, but the nervous voice next to me has better luck breaking into my thoughts than dinner does.
"Tris," Lynn nods at her across the dining hall, "you like her." As I watch a blush creeps up her neck and colors her cheeks, her embarrassment literally written on her face at addressing me so bluntly; she's still just an initiate even if she is Dauntless-born.
Thankfully, Zeke and his brother Uriah are too absorbed in trying to hit each other in the face with their peas - the latter probably trying to impress the girl on his other side - to notice Lynn and me.
"Are you sure you weren't born Candor?" I snap.
As soon as she ducks her face at my harsh reply I regret it. "I understand her," I murmur as an apology, "we grew up having the same values shoved down our throats, and I know what it's like coming here and being looked down on for it."
Across the hall Tris keeps gingerly itching at the top of her shirt, and I wonder if she got a tattoo there. I drop my gaze just in time to not get caught as Zeke, Uriah, and Marlene burst into a raucous fit of laughter, drawing Tris' attention to our table.
I don't miss the look of pain that flashes across Lynn's face when she catches Marlene's eye as she leaves, but I'm never quite sure if her at least she likes you too is something she said or something I imagined.
I spend the rest of dinner surreptitiously glancing at Tris and trying to work out what she could have had inked into her skin, measuring it's size by the way her fingers pick at the fabric covering it. I fleetingly wish that she wasn't Abnegation-born so it would be on display, but the thought is gone as quick as it comes, replaced by gratitude that she is because maybe if I had more time I'd be the only one to see it.
"Thinking about how you're going to win capture the flag again?" Zeke inquires once all the initiates have gone back to the dorms.
"Not really."
"You okay, man? You seem... I don't know.. off lately."
I teeter on the edge of telling him that I'm leaving, he's my friend - has been my friend since initiation -, and I feel guilty for leaving instead of trying to fix the wrongs I see. A strong person wouldn't run away. A true Dauntless wouldn't surrender. But the admission would open up a whole can of worms I'd rather not get into, not least of which is why joining the factionless is looking less and less appealing than it did a few weeks ago.
"I'm fine." I mumble, and even though he clearly doesn't believe me he can't say anything more on the subject once Eric plants himself next to us, his faux bravado doing little to conceal the seething desire to outdo me even in childish games.
xxxx
You like her Lynn's voice echoes in my head as I follow Tris up rusted remains of the Ferris wheel. Even my terror at the height isn't enough to silence it once we climb up from the platform and I've got her caged in with my body as she points out the other teams flag, pulsating with light in the middle distance.
I'm too lost in the pale expanse of her neck and the sudden desire to kiss it to realize that by now I should be climbing down - hell, I should be climbing out of my skin with my fear of heights -, but her breathless reminder makes the awkwardness worthwhile, and it makes me smile, even if it shouldn't.
And then right in the middle of chastising myself for looking at one of my students that way the world stops. The beam she was supporting herself on literally dropped out from under her feet, and now she's dangling a hundred feet off the ground by only her hands, and it's my worst fears realized.
"Four!" she pleads, and my heart abruptly stops, and then tries to claw it's way up my throat. I have to swallow it back down before I can reply.
"Hold on!" I yell back. "Just hold on. I have an idea." Over the pounding of my heartbeat and the pounding of my hands and feet as I climb my way down faster than I thought possible I can hear her calling out my name above me, but she isn't crying, isn't giving into to the terror that she could very easily be going back to the compound in a body bag, and it helps. It helps too that I don't hear her small body ricocheting over and around and under the metal struts of this abandoned behemoth.
My knees scream with pain as I drop to earth a good ten feet above the ground, but I ignore it, racing to the control panel and praying corrosion or rats haven't eaten away the wires that would make this work. "Come on," I growl as I slap at the buttons, "work. Work."
A massive shudder rocks through it and I pray it doesn't throw her off, but then with a creak and groan it's moving, and she's still holding on. I realize immediately there's a flaw in my brilliant plan; if she doesn't let go at just the right time she'll be drawn between the wheel and the base that supports it, dying in the crunch of bone and rupture of organs no matter how little she is.
But she isn't, she doesn't, and before I can shout a warning she's rolling out of the way as one of the car comes down, the last effort of a machine intent on killing her, or so it seems.
I expect tears when I pull her hands away from her face, but she's laughing. Laughing in hysteria maybe, but laughing nonetheless. I've still got one of her hands trapped between both of mine when she pushes herself up. She's close enough that I can feel her breath washing across me, warm and humid.
"You could have told me that the Ferris wheel still worked. We wouldn't have had to climb up it in the first place." She tried to sound casual, but the slight shake in her voice betrayed her.
"I would have, if I had known. Couldn't just let you hang there, so I took a risk. Come on, time to go get their flag." I remind her because it feels like I should, because it's more appropriate than sliding my fingers into her hair and pressing my lips against hers, like I'm aching to.
It was her actions and her plan that won my team the flag, and I can tell on the train back that somehow or other Eric will find a way to punish me for winning the third year in a row, but my brain is too consumed with envy to give the thought much heed.
She's so happy, pressed in-between Zeke's brother and her other friends, laughing and smiling and for one bright moment being alive and carefree and sixteen. More than anything I wish I was next to her.
I lean out of the train, closing my eyes to the scenery whipping by and imagining what it would have been like if we had been in the same initiate class. We would have been celebrating together, sitting with my arm slung around her and her body pressed against my side. And when she got tired she would have rested her face in the hollow of my shoulder, and it would have been calm, the same calm I felt with her hand in mine.
The beautiful illusion crumbles as we walk through the Pit, her to the dormitories, and me to my apartment, not because I'm two years older, or even because I'm her instructor, but because I'm leaving. I'm leaving, I remind myself sternly, and she's staying. Forget about her.
A/N: So this is my first Divergent fanfic (as you can tell from my profile I've only written American Horror Story before), so I hope everyone enjoyed it, and I always appreciate reviews.