"Transfers, this way!" a voice calls as Leo finds the Amity girl in the crowd. His legs are still shaking from the fall, but his face is flushed; he found the fall more exhilarating than frightening. "Sorry, I don't think I caught your name," he whispers, as they travel into the depths of the Dauntless compound.
She hesitates a moment, then says "Skye."
He smiles. "Choosing a new name?"
She nods. "I don't think my Amity name really fits me anymore."
"Yeah, I understand that. I'm Leo, by the way. Leo Fitz."
They arrive at a dormitory-style room with twelve beds. Everyone scrambles to lay claim to a bed in a preferable location. Skye slips through the mess, and by the time Leo finds her, she's kneeling in the space between two beds, one hand on each. She sees him and grins. "Which do you want?"
Her grin looks so familiar it makes him homesick for a moment, but he hides the pang of guilt and sits on the left bed. Skye sits on the other bed as the room falls silent, waiting for the next instruction.
They are given new black Dauntless clothes and told to change, with a vague gesture toward the sign reading "bathrooms" that implies a certain disregard for those who don't want to strip in front of everyone. The dark-haired Candor boy has no reservations about modesty, and pulls off his shirt before the leader is done speaking, revealing a torso far more chiseled than his conservative Candor suit would have let on.
"He's certainly not shy," Skye whispers to Leo.
"He doesn't have anything to be shy about, far as I can tell," Leo agrees as they hold their new outfits to their chests and quietly slip into bathroom stalls to change.
When they exit, Leo is stunned by how much clothing can change a person's appearance. Skye, previously clad in a red tunic and a big gold skirt, now looks much older in a black T-shirt and loose black pants. She clearly feels odd as well; she keeps her arms crossed over her chest, with her hands rubbing her bare arms as if to protect them.
When he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he freezes. He's become so accustomed to the Erudite rule that one must wear some blue in every outfit that now, wearing all black, he looks exactly like the "hooligans" and "fools" his father has always scorned. Would Jemma even recognize me? he wonders, then forces himself not to think about it.
The next step in becoming fully Dauntless is to burn the clothes of their old factions. Like the jump into the Dauntless faction, Leo hangs back, wanting to cling to his favorite blue plaid tie for as long as possible; he's never seen a Dauntless wearing a tie, and he isn't sure he wants to give up his habit of following his mother's advice: "Dress smart and you'll be taken as smart." Unlike him, Skye is near the front of the line, tossing her red and gold garments onto the bonfire and striding away, as if they're a burden she's glad to be rid of. Leo takes one last whiff of his tie, of the scent of spills and smoke and Jemma's laugh. He lays his blue outfit to rest on its funeral pyre, and he feels like a piece of him is also lying on the embers.
As he leaves the room with the bonfire, he enters into a large communal dining room, with long wooden tables filled with people who are all talking and laughing and fighting merrily. He joins the rest of the transfer initiates at an otherwise empty table. They each take food from the plates in the center, and among the cacophony of the other Dauntless, Leo misses the peace of his old home, the dinner table where he and Jemma would eagerly discuss their latest project, where their parents would give tips and pointers, where he and his sister would scarf down their food so they could run back upstairs and continue working.
But then the other initiates start joking and teasing, calling Leo and the two Erudite transfer girls "brains without brawn," and the larger of the two girls offers to show the name-caller just how much brawn she's got. A fistfight almost ensues, only stopped when someone bounces a dinner roll off the girl's head and tells her to sit down. And in that squabble, and the warm food, and the stories of so many different homes, Leo nearly forgets what was so wonderful about his old home, and starts to learn what's so wonderful about this one.