I own nothing
They are in Amity and Peter thinks he's gonna be sick.
Everything is a haze of yellow and sunshine and lies and he thinks the farm air is messing with his lungs and his brain and maybe (just a little, put your thumb and forefinger together little,) his heart.
The sky is bluer than the uniforms of the erudite and the nights seem less haunting without the shadows of dauntless.
He thinks he sorta likes it.
He thinks the grass is long and aggravating and it pulls at his feet to trap them but it also let's go and gives him freedom.
He thinks the songs are juvenile and sappy and far too much like the ones he remembers his sweet (sickly sweet sick sweet just plain sick) mother singing to him when he was into that kind of thing.
The people are dirty and foolish and smiling so wide he thinks the entire thing might be a dream, like the cruel joke of a Cheshire cat.
Hell, he even thinks the horses are loud and smelly and wild like the screams of friends flying down a zip line through a ruined city and thinking that nothing has been more beautiful.
Not the Peter cares about beauty. He cares about himself and... well, what else is there but you? No one else is always going to be on your side. No one else is going to defend you when the masses have turned against you. And when you die, who else is really going to be with you to hold your cold, dead (like deaddead, like paleandpurpleandfreezingandnevergoingtomoveagaindead), hand and tell you everything is going to be okay?
Peter cares about himself and hates Amity for it. He hates all of them because apparently peace is more important and peace is about the group, not the individual and Peter never learned how to play well with others.
He learned how to juggle knives and spit fire and to never give up anything that belongs to him.
He learnt that blonds are bitches and so are brunettes and gingers really are soulless and the ravens have hearts as dark as their hair.
He learnt that hands can heal but they're more likely to hurt and that he was never going to be the smartest or the bravest or the most selfless or the most honest or the most peaceful.
He learnt that he was only ever going to be Peter and nothing better, no matter what(no matter that maybe he wanted to be better).
But as much as he hates Amity and their plaster smiles and hollow happiness, there's this girl that is nothing more than rainbows and manure and crooked tooth that doesn't know anything that he does.
She doesn't know that feeling of metal against her temple or a fist crashing into her jaw again and again and again and...well, you get the picture.
All she knows is that the pretty (because everything here is pretty, pretty like crumbling sugar) white mare in the third stall loves apples and having her ears scratched.
She knows that the seeds he has been forced to plant will take weeks to sprout and grow and that the soil will need to be watered daily because the sun is fierce(a little like him but less bitter and bloody) and will take everything if you let it. And she knows that she will never let the big bad sun hurt her three little plants(little lives, little like insignificantandunimportant, little like her).
What they both know is that she blushes when he says things that are harsh and unforgiving(because she thinks that that is what she is suppose to do- blush like a china doll, like a schoolgirl, like an ignorant to pain and suffering and tragedy amity girl).
They know that he talks to her more than any other ignorant amity girl(because maybe she isn't so ignorant and maybe that plaster smile hides more than just emptiness, maybe she is more than rainbows and manure and teeth that no one bothered to fix).
They both know that he looks awkward in his sunny shirt and cherry trousers(because he is a wolf in sheep's clothing for the first time and the belt is a little too tight, like it wants to strangle him) and that she looks comfortable in her strawberry skirts and wheat tops(like a strange faery or a tired girl with skin that clashes horribly with yellow or someone who has given up trying to be anything else but what is easy)
Peter meets her when they tell him to go to the fields and help. He gets lost(he's been lost for a while but now he's just being lazy and troublesome and hopes to make someone else as miserable as he is).
He asks her for direction(asking implies that he was polite and he wasn't) and she wonders why he thinks that she cares about soft rabbits and chirping birds more than people(he really wasn't polite). She tells him to go down a path and he thanks her by implying her teeth are disgusting and that she is lucky the horses at least like her. She smiles and wishes him a good day and he laughs(nothing is funny but isn't that a little funny, that absolutely nothing is).
She sits next to him at dinner because she is late and no one wants to sit with him. They talk because she feels awkward and he hates Amity and her and the world but she is sitting across from him and maybe he's a little lonely.
He insults her(something clever about the horses eating her hair it looks so ugly). He wants to make her miserable because then she'll be like him and he might not be angry(lonely) anymore.
She just laughs and smiles at him(not through plaster and paint like usual but with lips and eyes like a real fucking person and not some china doll, some schoolgirl, some ignorant amity girl) as if he's told the best joke ever and he thinks that her smile might be beautiful(absolutely crazy and obviously in need of help but beautiful like zip lines and fireworks and freedom).
Her cheeks hurt(she hasn't giggled and cackled and snorted and laughed like that since, well, a while now and it hurts, hurts like sunburns and threats and the yelling voices that promised rainbows and manure but cared only about straight teeth and smooth hair).
She isn't sure if she hates him or herself but decides not to care because lying is easy and natural and the solution to more than just one problem.
When he asks, she tells him that she laughed because it was funny and nothing is and even if it(he) was mean it didn't make it(him) less amusing and that she loved laughing and rainbows and didn't mind shoveling manure or her bad teeth but hated her frizzy hair. She told him stories of a little girl whose hands were too small to catch everything(anything) but that it didn't matter because it was the thought that counted.
She smiled and laughed until maybe he believed that she believed in magic(but magic is fickle and strange, why would she ever want to believe in something like that?) and that the world wasn't so bad if you could laugh at anything(anything because nothing is funny anymore, not when you have to kill a friend or lose a home or everything).
And when he is standing in front of Tris and Four and the guards, he thinks of her auburn(not bitchy brunette or soulless ginger) hair and her giggles in the fields and that maybe he was wrong when he thought he couldn't be better, if only for a second.
He thinks that maybe she would smile(not because his face was funny or that she was a chinadollschoolgirlamitygirl but because she liked what he was about to do, about to become) and hold his hand(hers' had looked dirty and rough but warm and so very alive and like they could never hurt-just heal).
He thinks she could make him laugh and smile and live. So he tries.