So, a bit of a strange story: Eric doesn't exactly have a surname, so I was just going to name him Smith or Rogers or whatever. Then, I was just looking at Jai Courtney's wikipedia page, looking at the list of movies that he's been in, and saw that somebody had listed "Eric Coulter" as the name of his character for Divergent. Okay, that is his name now? Either some overly zealous fan added it and nobody had any other proof that that wasn't his name, or the people who wrote the movie script gave Eric a surname.
But either way, Coulter is as good of a name as any, I suppose.
The hall that the Dauntless leader lead them down was dark and the floor uneven; Tris kept tripping over every little bump. Even though they had not been told to be quiet, none of them spoke. Finally, the man stopped in front of a door and turned around to face them. "For those of you who don't know, my name is Eric Coulter. I am the newest of the Dauntless leaders, but I will be overseeing your training process. We take it very seriously here."
Eric turned and opened the door that he stood in front of. It lead into a room that had ten, narrow beds, five on each side. There was a small locker next to each of the beds. "This is the room where you will all sleep for the next few weeks. In the first stage of initiation, we keep the transfers and Dauntless-born initiates separate. This is because the Dauntless-born are already expected to have the physical and weapons training. However, you will both be ranked as a group."
"Why are we ranked?" asked a girl from Erudite, Myra.
"You are ranked because there are only ten positions available here in Dauntless. Only ten of the initiates will be made members."
"What?" somebody hissed.
"And, since there are eleven Dauntless-born and nine of you, most of you will end up in Abnegation," Eric went on as if he hadn't heard her. Tris looked around at the other eight transfers. With the leg-up that the Dauntless-born initiates had with their training, there was a pretty good chance that most of them would end up in Abnegation. This made Tris even more determined not to fail; there was no way that she could go back to Abnegation and face her parents after she'd left them, too.
"If you are not in training, then you are free to do whatever you like. However, you are not allowed to leave the compound unless you are accompanied by a full-fledged Dauntless member," Eric went on. He looked around at all of them; his gaze seemed to rest for the longest time on Tris before he finally looked away. "Are there any questions?"
"Why didn't anybody tell us before now that there were only ten slots available?" a girl from Candor, Molly, asked.
"Why?" Eric sneered at her. "Would you have picked someplace else? If you don't think that this is right or if you're too afraid that you're not going to make it, then you should probably just leave right now." Everybody else remained silent. Eric offered them a twisted smile that was more frightening than it was friendly. "Welcome," he said. "To Dauntless."
There were ten beds in the room, and all but one of them were occupied. Tris lay in one on her back, and stared up at the ceiling. It was strange for her to hear the sounds of sleep around her. Even before her brother had left for Erudite, the two of them had had separate rooms.
She didn't want to think about her brother. Or her parents. Or Abnegation at all. But it was the thought that kept popping up in her brain. She didn't want to go back to Abnegation and prove to the entire world that she didn't have what it took to be considered good enough by Dauntless. If that happened, the only reason why her parents would even give her a home was because it would be selfish not to.
She didn't want to be a charity case to the people of Abnegation. She wanted to make her life here. She wanted to be brave, which was why she'd picked Dauntless over the other factions.
Maybe Tris agreed with Molly a little bit. It wasn't right that Eric hadn't disclosed that Dauntless was only looking for ten new members this year, and all of the others would end up in Abnegation. But Eric had brought up a great point: doing the brave thing was picking Dauntless and choosing to stay, regardless of if anybody thought that they would make it or not.
Tris briefly mulled over what she might be doing right now if she'd picked Erudite or Candor. It was very well-known throughout the city that Erudite's test was mentally rigorous. If you weren't smart enough, they'd cull you out and you'd be in Abnegation. She thought about Caleb. It was a year since he'd joined Erudite, so she supposed that he'd been deemed smart enough to become a full-fledged member, since he hadn't come back to Abnegation. After all, there were hardly any secrets in Abnegation, since keeping them was selfish.
With the thought that if Caleb was smart enough to get into Erudite, then she was tough enough to get into Dauntless, Tris rolled over and fell asleep.
It felt to Tris like she'd barely gotten to sleep when she was awoken by the startling sound of a starter pistol. "Rise and shine, buttercups," Eric said sarcastically from the door. He was still holding the starter pistol up into the air. "You each have one hour to run a lap around the compound. If you cannot do this, then you will go hungry until lunch." Everybody stared at him from their beds. "Well?" he barked. "What are you waiting for? The longer you take to run, the more likely it'll be that you'll go hungry!"
Most of the others had changed into the black clothing that had been provided for them in the lockers. However, Tris had chosen to sleep in her Abnegation clothing since it was comfortable and familiar. She regretted that decision now, as she had to shimmy into a pair of pants and put on some shoes, while most everybody else just had to put on their shoes.
Her lungs and calves were burning, but she thought that she hadn't done too badly when she stepped into the dining hall. "Tris," Eric said as she walked past him. He checked off her name on a tablet that he was holding. She kept her head down, didn't make eye-contact with him, and walked over to where some of the other transfers were sitting.
"We saved you some food, because we weren't sure if you were going to be able to make it," Christina said as Tris sat down next to the other girl.
"Thank you," Tris said genuinely. "That was really nice of you."
"Okay, you see that? It's weird," Christina said.
"What? It was nice that you thought of me," Tris said.
"No, it's weird that you thanked me instead of chastising me for thinking that you wouldn't be able to complete the run in time," Christina said simply. She gave an annoyed huff and shook her head. "You are still such a stiff."
"And you're being brutally honest, even when it's not called for," Tris pointed out. Christina narrowed her eyes as Tris.
"Touche," she said simply. As Tris peeled the wrapped off from her giant muffin, she felt somebody's gaze on her. She looked up sharply and saw Eric looking at her from where he stood in the door to the dining hall. Almost as soon as Tris looked up at him, he looked away, towards one of the other initiate trainers, Four. It might have been just a coincidence, since there were a lot of people in the room, and Four was speaking to Eric. Uncertain of what to make of that, Tris turned her attention back to her breakfast. "What do you think, Tris?" Christina asked.
"I'm sorry, what?" Tris said with a slight shake of her head. She'd been so focused on the fact that Eric might have been looking at her that she'd completely spaced on what the others were talking about.
"What do you think that we're going to learn how to do first?" Christina repeated herself.
"I don't know," Tris said blankly. "The person who did my aptitude test was from Dauntless, and she mentioned that they used the same hallucinogenic drugs as part of the training."
"Oh no, I don't think that I could do that again," Myra said sharply. "It was really scary."
"How did you guys react to everything?" Tris asked, her voice low. "Did you all see the guy with-"
"-the knife standing over the woman?" Christina finished. The others nodded with agreement. "I just went straight over to him and started to yell at him until I woke up."
"I found a brick on the ground and started to attack the man," Edward said.
Their answers seemed so simple to Tris that they almost didn't seem right. "He didn't cut the woman's throat? Or try to attack you?" Tris asked.
"He didn't get a chance because I attached him first," Edward said. Christina was about to respond as well when a loud commotion broke out by the door.
"But it's only a minute past!" Al protested.
"And I said one hour, or else no breakfast!" Eric snarled at him. "Be faster tomorrow. Your hunger today should help you to remember."
"I saved him some food, too, but now I'm afraid to give it to him," Christina whispered under her breath to Tris.
"Initiates, with me!" Eric barked from the door. The four of them stood and as they walked over to where he and Four stood, the others, Dauntless-born and not alike, joined them. "Four will work with the Dauntless-born today. All others, with me." They broke off and Eric lead his group to a room that was filled with rows of desks. A box sat on top of a desk on the other side of the room. "Line up against the wall."
Everybody scrambled to do as he asked, half-fearing what he might do if they didn't do so quickly. Eric pulled a gun out from the waistband of his pants and held it loosely in his hand. He stalked slowly in front of the row of initiates, pausing to look each one in the eye. When he reached the end of the line, he spun around and started back the opposite way. Tris was unable to meet his gaze, her training from Abnegation overrode literally everything else. Once Eric reached the front of the line again, he went to stand before the group.
"Guns are much more difficult to understand than most people think. These are exceptionally dangerous weapons, and should not be handled lightly. The first rule of gun safety is-" He broke off as Peter started to yawn loudly. Eric closed the distance between the two of them and shoved his gun into Peter's face. It scared the yawn right out from the young man. Eric pulled the trigger; there was a faint click and a stick with a white banner that unfolded popped out. The banner read "BANG!". "The first rule of gun safety is to never aim your gun at somebody unless you intend to shoot them," Eric finished. He rolled the banner up and stuffed the stick back inside the gun. "And the second rule is to never put your finger on the trigger unless you're ready to pull it." He gestured towards the box. "Grab a gun. You will learn how to strip one and put it back together blindfolded. You will not move on to actually firing a gun until you are able to do this." There was a brief pause in which nobody moved or said anything. "Well?" Eric barked. "What are you waiting for?"
That night, after dinner, Tris went back to the dorms with Christina. She noticed that Edward and Myra, both from Erudite, had taken the guns from earlier, and were practicing stripping them.
"Oh, that's a really good idea," Tris said. "I should have taken my gun with me, too."
"What you should have done was to pick Erudite if you wanted to study during your free-time," Christina scolded the blonde. "Personally, I want to check out the clothing shops that some of the Dauntless members told us about at lunch."
"Look, I spent my entire life thinking about getting away from Abnegation, and now that I finally have a chance, I'm not going to blow it because I want to window shop," Tris said. "And if you don't want to end up washing the feet of initiates and feeding the homeless, you should, too." Christina paused a moment to consider this.
"You're right, but I really want to go check things out. I won't stay too long and I'll swing by the classroom to get a gun on my way back," she said after a moment. Tris waited until Christina, Al, and Will left the dorm before she started out. Tris wasn't sure that she could find the classroom from the dorm, so first, she went to the dining hall in order to retrace her steps from earlier.
The dining hall never really closed, but started to serve different things at different times. After the approved "dinner hour", it was apparently happy hour, as several older members sat clustered around some tables, laughing and drinking. The people in Abnegation never drank any sort of alcohol under any circumstance with the claim that it might lead to drunken behavior, which would be selfish of the drunk person who had to have other people take care of them. Also, if one started to drink a lot, then they would become an alcoholic, and there was nothing more selfish than a drug addiction. But as she looked into the dining hall briefly, she sort of wished that they had been allowed a drink or two; maybe then, things would have been much happier. After all, there was a reason why the other factions called them "stiffs".
As Tris approached the room that they'd been in earlier, she saw that the light was still on inside. She paused before she got to the door and wondered if somebody had forgotten to turn the light off, of if somebody was in there right now. That gave her an even bigger reason to stop, because she was almost afraid to run into the strict leader and teacher, Eric.
But the entire reason why she'd joined Dauntless was because she didn't want to cower in fear anymore, so she strode over to the door and was about to push it open when she heard sharp voices inside. "I don't care what she says; it's completely abhorrent that she'd even think something like that," Eric was saying.
"But you're not listening to me," somebody replied sharply. Tris couldn't quite place the other voice.
"I've listened to your bullshit for long enough, Four. If you don't shut your face, I'll-"
"You'll what?" Four interrupted. "You'll shut it for me?"
"I'll make you regret ever even thinking about joining up with this-" Their voices were getting louder as they got closer to the door. Tris scrambled back to make it look like she hadn't just been eavesdropping on them. The door opened and Four and Eric stepped out. Four broke off in mid-sentence when he saw Tris standing there.
"Tris," Eric said. Although his tone was sharp, the look on his face was not. "Can I help you with something?"
"Um, I was just looking to grab a gun to practice stripping," Tris said quietly.
"I put them away for the night, but you can use mine," Eric said as he grabbed it out from the waistband of his pants. He pulled the clip out and held it out for her.
"I can't just take yours," Tris protested.
"Stop being such a stiff and just take it," Eric said. "I'll just get another one." After a moment when Tris didn't move, he gave an annoyed huff, closed the distance between them, picked up her hand, and roughly slapped the gun into her hand. He stepped away from her quickly and half-turned away from her. "Goodnight, Tris."
"Um… Goodnight," she said hesitantly. She turned around and hurried back to the dorms.
Tris sat on a bed with Myra; Edward sat on the one next to theirs and was facing them. All three of them were working hard to strip and reassemble their guns when Christina, Al, and Will came back into the dorms. Christina's eyes found Tris, and she went over to the other girl.
"Where did you get the gun?" Christina demanded. "We went back to the room, but it was locked. And when we peered into the window, we couldn't see the box there anyway."
"Eric gave me his gun when I asked about practicing," Tris explained, her fingers pausing over the grip pin.
"What?" Christina blinked at the blonde. "So you mean to tell me that you just waltzed up to our tough-ass instructor, demanded a gun, and he just gave it to you?"
"No," Tris said slowly. "He asked me what I was doing there. I said that I was looking for a gun. He said that he'd put them away for the night, but that I could use his."
"That's…" Christina started. She seemed to be at a loss for words.
"Strange? Unusual?" Myra prompted.
"Yes and yes," Christina said with a slight nod of her head. "But I was thinking more along the lines of 'out of character'."
"We barely know the man, not to mention the fact that he's our instructor," Edward pointed out. "How do we know that it's not out of character for him? He could very well want for all of us to excel, even if he knows that we almost don't stand a chance against the Dauntless-born."
"There is something, though," Tris said slowly.
"What?" Will asked.
"When I got to the classroom, he and the other instructor, Four, were talking about something."
"Talking about what?" Myra asked with a slight frown.
"I don't know; it doesn't make any sense," Tris said. "But Eric was angry about something that Four said, and Four wanted for Eric to listen to him, but Eric wouldn't. They came out of the room then, and obviously stopped talking because of me."
They were all silent for a beat. Then, "Ooooh!" Christina exclaimed.
"What?" Edward asked with a look of worry in his eyes that she was about to snap.
"I'll bet that Four and Eric are in some sort of competition," Christina said eagerly.
"What do you mean?" Al asked.
"I mean that they're both instructors, right? Four is working with the Dauntless-born and Eric is working with us. So they have this little friendly competition going on to see how many of their initiates that they can get to be full-fledged members."
"Maybe, but it just doesn't seem right when the odds are so clearly skewed in Four's favor," Myra said quickly.
"Which would be why Eric was so willing to give up his own gun to Tris!" Christina pointed out.
"There's nothing special about this gun though," Tris said gently. "It's just like the one that I'd been working with all day today."
"Are you sure?" Christina asked as she grabbed the half-stripped gun from Tris's hands. "No special engravings or anything?"
"No, nothing like that," Tris said, but Christina wouldn't give it back until she'd examined every inch of it.
"Aw, that's too bad. I was hoping that it was some sort of romantic gesture on his part. He gave you the gun that had been his father's or something."
"That's stupid; he wouldn't just be carrying something like that around," Edward pointed out. Christina simply shrugged and walked over to her own bed. She flopped down on her stomach and then rested her chin on her fist.
"But anyway, Tris, Myra, you've got to come into the Dauntless town with me sometime. They've got some seriously cute clothes."
"Are clothes the only thing that you think about?" Myra asked as she wrinkled her nose.
"No, of course not; don't be silly," Christina protested quickly. "I think about makeup, too."
Since everybody was anticipating Eric bursting into their room at the crack of dawn to make them run again, everybody slept in their clothes and put their shoes within easy reach.
They were right.
"Great job, Tris," Eric said as Tris walked past him in order to get into the dining hall. "You've improved a few seconds from yesterday." She looked back at him and watched as he did something on the tablet that he held. She was still slightly intimated by him, but after the strange encounter the night before, she was certain that there was another side to him that he hid from the initiates. After all, the Dauntless initiation was all about finding out who was the bravest and toughest. If he mollycoddled them, then it would be rough for the initiates to take him seriously.
After breakfast, Eric lead them to a different room. Punching bags hung at staggered intervals all around the room, and there were mats on the floor and covering all of the walls. "Line up!" Eric barked, and they did as they were told. Like the day before, Eric paced in front of them and met their gazes. Tris tried to meet his gaze the first time that he passed her, but his steely glare was too much for her and she instead looked down at his shoes. She did not attempt to make eye-contact with him when he came back. Once Eric had passed everybody twice, he went to stand in front of them.
"There will be times when either you don't have a weapon, it doesn't work, or, for some reason or another, you cannot use it. If you find yourselves in a situation like this, it's important to have other means to defend yourself," he explained. "We will go over technique today, and tomorrow, we will have staged fights against one another."
Eric then turned and walked over to a punching bag. "Over here, were you can see me," he said, and everybody hustled over to where he was. Eric named a few different punches and kicks. He demonstrated each one, first against the air, and then against the punching bag. "Everybody! To a punching bag and let me see what you've got."
Tris walked over to one of the punching bags and began to tentatively hit it. The bag stings her hands and feet, and no matter how hard that she hits it, it barely moves. The room was filled with the sounds of skin against the punching bags and the occasional murmur of Eric giving one-on-one help to somebody.
After a few minutes, Eric stops behind Tris. She hesitates as she feels his gaze on her, uncertain of what to think about it. "You're doing okay, but I think that your biggest problem in a real fight will be your size," he said. Tris couldn't help herself and she gave him an annoyed look. "Not like your small stature is a bad thing. It's just that most people are a lot bigger than you are. You'll be facing people who are easily twice your size, if not more. Like Al or Peter." Tris's eyes widened and she looked over to where Peter was viciously pounding on a punching bag.
Eric moved to block Tris's view of him. "When you are up against somebody larger than you, it will be very important to try to immobilize them and put them on the ground. What you need to focus on is the knees. You hit somebody in the knees, and they're not going to be able to get back up for a moment or to. This'll give you plenty of time to get them subdued in other ways," Eric explained. Tris nodded with understanding. He moved to stand next to Tris again and showed her a low, sweeping kick move that seemed fairly simple.
He stepped back and Tris moved to try it out. "Okay, good," Eric said with a slight nod. "Keep practicing that." He moved off to help somebody else.
When Eric dismissed them for lunch, Christina caught up to the other girl. "That look that Eric gave you was really intense," she said. "He scares the hell out of me."
"He's intimidating, that's for sure, but I don't think that he'd ever intentionally hurt one of us without reason," Tris said carefully.
Al, who'd been walking in front of them, turned around to face them once they got to the Pit. The Pit was the center hub of the Dauntless compound, and all hallways converged to the one spot. There was a waterfall, and the entire building had clearly been built around it as a focal point. There was only a rusty and extremely rusty rail that prevented people from falling over to their deaths, but, from what the others had heard, it was a popular spot for people to commit suicide.
"I think that I want to get a tattoo," Al said.
"A tattoo of what?" Will asked from behind the girls.
"I don't know, but I've been thinking about it since we saw the tattoo shop last night," Al said. "I want to feel like I've actually left Candor and stop crying about it." There was a moment of awkward silence. "I know that you guys heard me these past two nights."
"I think that you're right," Christina said as she poked Al in the arm. "If we want to be all the way in Dauntless, we should at least try to look the part." Christina looked over to Tris. "Don't tell us that you want to practice gun stripping again. Have a little bit of fun."
"Don't expect for me to cut my hair," she said. "Or dye it a strange color. Or pierce my face. I'll try to fit in, but I'm not sure if I'm ready for something like that."
"How about if you pierce your bellybutton?" Christina asks with a laugh.
"Or your nipple?" Will asked. Tris gave them an annoyed look.
"Well, think about it," Christina went on. "After all, we've still got until 6 when our training is done for the day."
After dinner, the four of them went into the town, where the tattoo parlor was. For a while, Christina and Tris sat and watched as Al got a spider on his arm. The tattoo artist was more ink than actual skin, and it was a little bit unnerving to Tris.
After a while, Christina went over to look through the book filled with pictures with Will. They elbowed each other whenever they saw a good one.
Tris got up, too, but went over to look at the art that hung on the walls. Art was a strange concept for her, because Abnegation viewed it as impractical and excessive, and the time spent studying art in any way could have been spent helping others. She reached up to touch a drawing of a bird.
"It's a raven," somebody behind her said. "Pretty, right?" Tris turned her head and saw that it was Tori. Tris widened her eyes and Tori offered the younger woman a smile. "Hello there. I never expected to see you again. Beatrice, right?"
"Tris, actually. Do you work here?"
"Yes. I only just volunteer to administer the tests to get out of the parlor once a year." She regarded Tris. "Weren't you the first jumper?"
"Yes," Tris agreed.
"Well done.
"Thanks." Tris turned her attention back to the raven. "Listen, I need to talk to you about…" She looked over to Will and Christina. "Something. Sometime."
"That isn't wise," Tori said quietly. "I did my best to help you, but you made your decision." Tris doesn't quite know how to respond to that. She knows that Tori has the answers that she's looking for, but seems unwilling to tell Tris because she did the exact opposite of everything that Tori had told her to do. "Want a tattoo?" Tori asked.
Tris looked back up at the picture of the raven. She hadn't intended to get one, but as she looks at the drawing, an idea comes into her head. "I want something like this," she said as she pointed up at the raven. "But with three."
"Okay, where?" Tori asked as she went behind the counter to get a sheet of paper and a pencil to start to sketch out the design. Tris went over to the full-length mirror on the other side of the room and considered her reflection for a moment.
She turned back to Tori and pulled down the collar of her shirt and tapped her left clavicle. "Right here," she said.
"Okay, so sort of smaller?" Tori asked.
"Yeah," Tris agreed. Tori sketched something for a moment, and then showed it to Tris. "It's perfect."
"Sit down, and we can get started," Tori said as she motioned towards her work station. Tris settled into the chair and watched as Tori prepared the needle and ink. "Is there any sort of significance to this?" Tori asked as she pulled on a pair of latex gloves.
"I might not be able to see my family anymore, but I don't want to ever forget about them," Tris explained. Tori nodded with agreement.
I hope that everybody is enjoying it so far. I know that it's a lot of rehashing what we already know, but things will pick up in the fourth chapter, I promise!
Also, if you spotted any grammatical errors, please let me know so that I might fix them! Reviews are always appreciated.