So the timeline of this is Tris's initiation class is one year after Four's, and this is the class after Tris', so the war is yet to happen. Four/Tobias, Tris and Uriah are dauntless leaders in this story. If I've missed anything out about the differences I'll just explain in later chapters as I go along. Anyway, I hope somebody out there enjoys my effort x
I do not own Divergent. Only my OC's.
Modifications made on 03/03/16
Magnetism - A class of physical phenomena
Chapter One
Lorraine
There was something inexplicably liberating about running.
Racing through the streets along with other members of our newly chosen faction, I couldn't help but scream along with the rest of them as they cheered and yelled into the warm afternoon air. My feet didn't ache. My muscles felt like foam and my bones were solid and unrelenting. This was electrifying.
My time at Amity was finally over.
More often than none, I had to be calmed, sedated, and dragged into a room to have some 'quiet time' and 'think about my actions'. It turns out I did not have enough calm in me to overlook every single backhanded compliment or smile all the time or listen to those god awful pieces of string being strum against wood for twelve hours of the day and in the end, the result was usually a swift injection with peace serum and a trip to my mother's office.
She'd give me that look, shifting her hair back so that the scar on her face was in full view as if to say 'this is what happens to people around you when you behave like that'. And then I'd sink further down into my chair and tell her I'd try to be better and she'd say 'I know' even though we both knew that no matter how hard I tried I was still a constantly lit fuse and there was no changing that.
Then the serum would wear off and I would sink into a deep dreamless slumber, barely remembering how or why something had elicited an emotion other than anger from me. I'd learned to hold in my anger as I'd gotten older, but I was still a ticking time bomb yet to erupt.
The morning of choosing day my mother gave me a sad smile, seated in her heavily furnished wooden office as if it was just another day. We were both wearing yellow, not a rare occurrence considering it was one of our faction colours and the brightness complimented our dark skin tones instead of washing us out as it did to most other people. Her hair was held in a loose fishtail braid by the side of her head, which she must have done while I was getting ready because her hair had been let out this morning when she'd came into my room to braid my own hair in an identical fashion.
I shut the door to her office and glared at the girl staring back at me through the tall, oval shaped mirror that hung from behind it.
A bright yellow sundress may have been slightly garish for such an occasion, but it was the one of the few things I owned that didn't have a million different fringes hanging off it or an extra metre of material dragging along behind me that served no particular purpose but to give an illusion of relaxation.
The hairstyle brought out the round features that I had inherited from my mother, emphasising our likeness and making us somewhat indistinguishable at first glance. Besides her slightly heavy build, we were alike in every aspect from skin tone to ear shape and the curl pattern of our hair. She smiled once she glanced over and saw the scowl I had plastered on my face.
"I haven't seen you express emotion that clearly since you were six" She chuckled, clasping her hands together in front of her "It's lovely to see you so displeased"
I wandered over to the desk and wrapped my arms around her neck, slightly irritated that she'd chosen today to remind me of where a majority of my sense of humour came from.
"I'll miss you" She squeezed my arms gently and kissed the arm resting underneath her neck. I ignored the slight strain in her voice as she spoke, as if something inside her snapped and she was desperately trying to tie it back together again before her daughter abandoned her.
We hadn't spoken about my test results. She knew what they'd be before I'd taken the aptitude test. I cam top of my class at school and spoke like a true Erudite. But that wasn't where I was going. I didn't fir in there and I wasn't really sure I'd fit in at Dauntless either. But Erudite asked too many questions, valued interpersonal skills and high levels of formality. I was not able to deal with being that person.
Then there was my father. Erudite-born and he was till the day he died. It was evident that he was feigning Amity after he'd kept insisting on making me the subject of his warped psychological experiments, often testing out smuggled serums and mental manipulation techniques on me. No wonder I'm so screwed up. Eventually my mother had enough and appealed to the Faction council to have him stripped of his Leadership position and subsequently ended up leaving Amity and becoming Factionless. I'd inherited his intelligence and defiance apparently. I'd gotten control from my mother.
She'd taught me to stay calm and hold in my anger. But somewhere along the line I had ended up holding in everything else too. My joy, my fear, my confusion, my shock, my sadness. All of it was locked away deep inside me. Emotions made people vulnerable and easily manipulated and I was neither. My mind returned from it's wander and I take my mother's hand in mine, ready to walk into the first day of the rest of my life.
Who would have thought that cutting my hand open and dropping my blood onto a bed of coals would be the only thing that calmed me down more than the peace serum. The silent hiss of the sizzling red liquid had made me sigh with relief at my decision. I had chosen this. I could finally be free.
"Hop on!"
My heart hammered against my chest as I registered what was going on. The Dauntless-born initiates did not have to be told twice. Half a second later they were already dashing towards the open carriage, leaping in breathlessly like maniacs.
I realised that somehow my feet were still moving. I was slightly ahead of the rest of them and I hadn't paid enough attention to how much momentum I should have probably been losing as I travelled so I endeavoured to slow down my pace before I reached the dead end of where the roof of the buildings overtook the height of the train.
The train coughed and spluttered, the grainy squeaks of the track ringing through my ears while I counted my breaths and paced out my entraining process.
Three...two...one.
I leaped up off the gravel and threw my arms onto the floor of the train, sliding myself up onto the rough metal ground. The rust scraped at my shins when I pushed myself inside and I crawled into the corner of the carriage to avoid the glares and surprised expressions aimed at me. I scramble to my feet, feeling somewhat light-headed after the overwhelming thrill of jumping onto a moving train. I was out of breath but not as much as the others. I looked around, surveying my new fellow faction members for anybody who looked as out of place as me.
Nobody else did.
My yellow dress stood out like a sore thumb amidst their various black, white and blue outfits. Cliques were already starting to form and there were varying groups of people dotted around in small clusters, laughing and squealing from excitement. I scanned the carriage for a sliver of grey or red and found that I had been heinously outnumbered. I allowed myself to let out a sigh. This was going to be one hell of an initiation period.
"Lorraine Reyes, right?" A voice asks from behind where I'm standing.
I turn around to find a nervous smile coupled with apologetic grey eyes, and a matching grey dress shirt and pants. His hair was a dusty brown and styled in a neat combed down position against his angular face. He had striking features, bright eyes and a pout-like expression that made him look slightly confused. I nod in response and try to remember why he looks so familiar...
"Oh umm yeah I'm...uhh I'm Matthew" He stammers and stalks towards me holding out a nervous hand in front of him.
"I know" I respond, shaking his outstretched hand.
"Y-yeah" He stammered once more, a happier expression making its way onto his pale face.
"We both used to volunteer at the library together, right? I thought you'd end up in Erudite"
"I thought the same about you" He chuckles nervously. I could never forget that nervous laugh, the jittery way he'd type information in on the computer or awkwardly stammer through fees for overdue books.
"Stop being so nervous" I say as non-demandingly as I can. which evidently, is very demanding as he looks slightly taken aback by my comment and responds back in a small voice.
"I can't"
"You are a socially flawed human about to enter a dauntless compound. You have no choice" I sigh "Besides, I kinda like you"
"Thanks. Ummm...do I have say something witty now too?"
"Hmmm you're intelligent so you can if you don't think about it. If you're gonna be a smartass, then you've gotta be smart. Otherwise you're just an ass. And you are no ass my dear Matthew"
He laughs. A genuine, calm laugh that's so adorable I kind of feel glad I get to hear it. I laugh too because for the first time in sixteen years, I think I may have just made a friend.
"Alright initiates time to go" A female voice calls out to us. Half a moment later she leaps out of the carriage, followed by a few of the other Trainers and I shuffle over to the edge of exposed airspace, glimpsing over the open doorway at how they execute their jumps.
Three more consecutive jumpers, all leaped out and rolled out onto the grainy tarmac roof. I look beside me at Matthew, who for once doesn't look too panicked. I give him a curt nod before I took a few steps backwards then ran out of the train, diving forwards and landing on my side then rolling myself across the stony ground to reduce the impact.
My shoulders were slightly grazed and I brushed some small stones off my forearms but apart from that I was still relatively unharmed and had not yet succumbed to the overplayed intimidation from the trainers that the other non-dauntless born initiates already had. I could practically see them mentally retreating back to their old factions, too systematised to immediately adapt to their decision.
The sun was directly overhead us now and the luminescent glow showered down onto my lemon coloured dress, which only added to my inadvertently obtrusive state, and I avoid staring down at myself lest I blind myself with the bright yellow replica of the sun I decided to pull out of my wardrobe this morning.
I search the area for Matthew and for a moment feel slightly dismayed as I see no sight of him. I turn back around and find him standing directly behind me, closer than socially acceptable. This kid was going to give me a heart attack if he kept creeping around behind me.
"S-sorry" He smiles slightly at my wide-eyed expression and I feel the need to smile back. But I don't.
"Initiates!" A guy calls out to us and steps out from among the dauntless leaders "I'm Uriah!" He walks over to the edge of the building and peers down towards the can't be more than a year or two older than us but he speaks like he's been doing this for years. He has a slightly bemused look on his face as if he's proud of himself for coming across so intimidatingly; that's soon replaced by a stern expression as he walks complacently across the edge of the building.
"You all have to get into the compound, don't you?" He begins, pacing back and forth, his footing exceptionally accurate as he misses the hollow beside the concrete by less than an inch.
A series of mumbles and 'yeah's follow the question nervously.
"Well it's down there" He points towards the direction of beyond the ledge.
Silence.
"So we jump?" I ask him, confidence coating my words like a protective shell.
"Precisely" He takes an extra step sideways and allows us to cautiously peer over the edge of the roof and down into the jagged abyss. None of us miss the two crumpled bodies laying side by side on the pavement. None of us say a word.
"If you fail to jump then you fail to become a dauntless member" He warns "The instructions are clear enough"
The rest of the dauntless that travelled with us are all stood in a line behind us, conferring amongst themselves. If we jump and die then what would the lesson in that be?
Don't be brave?
I compose myself and convince myself that I have no choice but to land safely. I look around and realise that the others had all retreated backwards and left me peering down over the ledge by myself. Well it looks like I have no choice now.
"We can just go?" I ask him. He nods his head and motions for me to take the step. I look down into the gaping hole and smile. If I die then at least I have the satisfaction of being the first one of this group that was brave enough to leap of the edge of a building and into a dark pit carved into the ground. I step onto the edge and turn to face them before stepping backwards off the building and feeling myself float down into the unknown.
Not only did I jump off a building, I did it backwards. To say I was brave about it was a complete and utter lie.
I did it out of spite and the only thing louder than the wind in my ears was the sound of my own heart, violently pounding against my ribcage. I could feel myself accelerating as I surged through the air, the wind whistling an unusually comforting tune in my ears as I did so. I was enjoying the sensation of weightlessness so much that I almost forgot that my journey had an endpoint.
I landed flat on my back, sinking down into a net with a sharp creek of the springs echoing through the dimly lit room.
"Finally" A male voice sighs. he violently drags down the edge of the net forcing me to roll towards the direction of his arms. Or at least that was the potential outcome before he steps back and leaves me to roll helplessly off the unstable netting and stumble onto the ground. My feet immediately encounter a smooth, ice cold surface and I travel out of the bright gap of sunlight and into a chilly, somewhat eerie and rough compound.
"Lorraine Reyes?" His pale blue eyes look bored, and I notice the piercing above his eyebrow, a black surface piercing peeking out through two consecutive holes in his face. Unusual but not entirely unattractive. I hold my gaze on his for a moment, staring at him as intently as he stares at my expressionless face. His grins coldly, piercing eyes stabbing through mine for a few more moments.
I nod at him eventually, somehow managing to conjure up an accurate imitation of a relaxed human being. He made me nervous and I wasn't quite sure why. Maybe it's because he didn't look the slightest bit uncomfortable in my presence, something I was very unused to.
"First jumper - Lorraine!" He calls out towards the vacant air behind him. A myriad of cheers and bellows follows his announcement and I barely make out the faint outlines of a group of dauntless members gathered in the darkness. I smile at myself while his back is turned, hearing someone as infamous and desired as Eric Coulter saying my name with the slightest bit of respect was kind of self assuring.
"Where the fuck are your shoes?" Eric laughs once he's turned around, looking down at my bare feet.
I look up out of the hole in the ceiling and then back down at my feet. They were extremely loose ballet flats and they must have fallen off my feet as I was falling. I can't help but laugh at the irony of the situation and look back at the blonde guy to find that he's staring at me with a look of confusion.
"Well they are definitely not on my feet" I say pointedly, still laughing - for once as airily as a member of my home faction.
"Crazy hippie" He shakes his head, and walks towards the direction of my faceless admirers.