A/N: Edited. Enjoy!


Disclaimer: I don't own Divergent.


Az

"You losers have three minutes to get dressed and meet Four and I down in the Pit. Let's go!"

I groan and pull the thin blanket tighter over my body, silently regretting my little endeavor last night. I am way too tired for this.

"Let's go, Az," Six says right by my head.

Batting away the hands that are shaking my shoulder roughly, I peek out from underneath the blanket and immediately dive right back in, cheeks flushed.

The boy who sleeps next to me is the Erudite kid, Aaron, and he's pulling the black pants on over a pair of blue underwear. He's cute with his long black hair and icy blue eyes and six-pack. I'm not used to seeing boys in nothing but their underwear – and a part of my brain reminds me that last night Eric was wearing pajama pants, not underwear, so it doesn't count.

A minute later and I feel the blanket disappear from around my shoulders. "Hey!" I exclaim indignantly. I was using that to try and keep myself covered while I changed.

Aaron smirks and holds the blanket out at an angle to where neither he nor the rest of the initiates can see me changing. I feel my cheeks heating up and let out a mumbled thanks before hurriedly slipping into the rest of my clothes. He tosses the blanket back on my cot and holds out a hand.

"No problem. I'm Aaron, Erudite."

His hand is warm and soft and I can't help but wonder why I feel nothing when it touches my skin, as opposed to the tingles I got when I touched Eric's large, rough ones.

"Az, Amity," I reply.

"I'm surprised they even let you in," a female voice from behind me says. "Shouldn't the Dauntless have a no-slut policy?"

My jaw shuts with an audible snap as I turn to face the owner of the voice. Long blonde hair and baby blue eyes greet me and I fight back the urge to hit something. Lindaela Raksha. Candor. She's hated me since we were kids, and I have no idea why she has it in her head to make my life as hellish as possible.

Raksha does mean demon, however, so maybe it's not that surprising after all.

I open my mouth to reply but Aaron beats me to it.

"Shut up, Lindaela."

I turn to him in surprise. His electric blue eyes are cold as he glares at her over the top of my head. I feel warmth inside at his defense of me. That's so sweet.

"Excuse me?" Lindaela says coldly, taking a step forwards. "Have you forgotten who I am, Aaron, or has this little slut here confused you so much that you've forgotten who gave you the best ten minutes of your life last year?"

Red fills my vision as everyone laughs and Aaron looks ashamed. That's personal, she had no right to admit that in front of everyone.

"Listen here, bitch," I say, taking a step forwards. I'm cut off as Six re-enters the room.

"Time's up, come on."

Lindaela shoots me the dirtiest look and mouths, 'this isn't over.' I couldn't have said it any better myself.

"Hey," Aaron says as we jog to the pit. "Thanks for that."

I shake my head. "Thank you, too. Nobody's ever stood up for me to her before; that was brave." I nudged him with a shoulder. "Guess that's why you're in Dauntless, huh?"

He blushes and it's adorable. "Us mere mortals have to stick together against the evil dragon queen, right?"

I shake my head. "She's not the dragon queen. Dragons are cool." He makes a noise of agreement and we jog silently for a minute.

"It wasn't the best ten minutes of my life."

I turn to him with a raised eyebrow, not really sure I want to hear about it. His face is even more red as he shakes his head. "Last year. With Lindaela. It wasn't the best ten minutes of my life; more like me trying to appease my parents."

"Why did your parents need to be appeased?" I ask with a frown, though I understand completely; I once kissed Avery, a boy in my old faction, and deliberately let my little sister catch us so that she would go and tell my parents that I liked an Amity boy and hadn't been hanging around the "riff-raff" from other factions.

His blush gets deeper. "My parents didn't like the fact that I don't like girls."

Understanding dawns. "Oh, I see. And you were with Lindaela to make it seem like you do like girls…?"

"Exactly."

"Huh. Well, don't let Lindaela know that; she'd be furious if she found out that you were just using her."

"Which makes no sense because I know for a fact she was using me as well."

We reach the Pit and the four trainers are already there, along with Eric and the Dauntless-born initiates. Eric looks troubled. I send him a small smile, hoping it will cheer him up, but it only causes him to scowl harder, his grey eyes cold and looking like the color of clouds after a storm. What's his deal?

My attention is grabbed by Four, who explains the ranking system. Eric snidely adds in that those with the lowest ranks will be kicked out of Dauntless. Lindaela coughs at that, staring straight at me with a cold smirk on her face. I roll my eyes.

"Alright," Six says. "Today you will be learning how to shoot a gun and how to win a fight. Tomorrow, real fights will begin where you can demonstrate what you've learned. Any questions?" she doesn't give any time for someone to speak up as she immediately grins and says, "Good. Let's go then."

They lead us to a large room where Four walks in front of us while Six lags behind.

"You are not to go ahead of me," Four says.

"And you are not to fall behind me." We all turn to see Six standing at the back of our little group, arms crossed in front of her.

"What happens if we do fall behind?" Some kid – I think his name is Ryan – asks.

She simply smirks. "You don't want to do that, trust me."

And then we start to run. It feels good, even after my run last night. The cool, open air whips my hair across my face and fills my lungs with an icy burn.

We run for an indefinite amount of time, some people dangerously close to falling behind Six, who yells at them until they pick up the pace. I stay right in the middle, not going too fast, not too slow. I'm trying to judge where the others are at; Aaron keeps pace beside me, while Lindaela pants too heavily to be running at the very front. We finally stop back at the large room, where they coach us on some stretches and we are handed small guns.

It feels heavier that I imagined it would.

Eric joins us in our shooting practice. The other initiates start firing immediately – without much success, might I add. I don't join in right away, opting to watch Eric instead. He hits the bullseye every time.

I attempt to mimic his stance to see if I can reciprocate his success. Feet shoulder-length apart, one in front and one in back; right arm straight, left arm slightly bent for support; upper body leaning forwards the slightest bit. Aiming down the target, I take a breath and slowly squeeze the trigger until it explodes.

"Whoa," I say as I stumble back a bit. Aaron chuckles next to me.

"Nice shot," he compliments, nodding to my target. I look up and blink in surprise as I actually managed to shoot the mannequin in the shoulder. Not the heart, but I was close.

Six comes over and compliments me as well. "Squeeze the trigger slower," she says, "helps with accuracy."

I follow her advice and by the time we head out for lunch I've hit the heart more times that I missed. I keep turning to Eric, trying to see if he is proud of my near-perfect shots, but he doesn't look my way once.


Aaron and I sit at a table with Uriah, Will, Christina, Four, Six and Eric, who looks up when we sit, assumes a bored expression and turns back to his food. I can't help but feel slightly hurt at his behavior – why is he acting so different than yesterday? Did I do something wrong?

"Hey Mama," Uriah says, grabbing my attention. I raise an eyebrow and he slings an arm around my shoulders, pulling me into his side. "Missed you this morning. Did training go well?"

"It went fine," I reply in a flat tone.

"Aw, don't be like that," he pleads with a small pout. I roll my eyes so hard I'm afraid they'll get stuck in the back of my head.

"Why are you like this?"

He simply smiles and kisses my cheek before going back to his food, stealing a piece of melon off of my plate.

My traitorous cheeks warm of their own accord and I look down at my food, poking at a piece of chicken. The next time I look up, Eric is glaring at me with some hostile and unidentified emotion playing in his grey eyes – eyes that, just a moment before had been so cold yet were now nearly flaming.

Something inside of me snaps. Already he's had me on a roller coaster trying to figure out why his emotions keep going from hot and cold in regards to me; it's only been a day! I prop my head on my hand using the table as a base for my elbow and tilt my head as I look at him.

"What's your problem with me?"

The people around us get quiet as we stare across the table at each other. A blonde eyebrow raises at my question.

"Why do you assume you're important enough for me to have a problem with?"

Ouch.

I shrug, not letting him see that his comment stung. "Oh, well maybe based off of how much you've been staring at me in the last 24 hours."

He leans over the table, his face inches from mine. My heart involuntarily speeds up and my breath hitches at his unexpected closeness.

"I'm just waiting for you to fall flat on your face," he says with a cold sneer, his face harsher that I've ever seen it. "I want to be the first one to laugh and say 'I knew it' as you fail and get sent to live with the factionless. You're nothing but a little girl far away from her peaceful farms, right Amity?"

Everything inside of me grows cold at his little speech. I can feel myself practically vibrating with anger, but I don't rise to the bait. I simply nod, ignoring the surprised look on his face, before standing, dumping my tray into the nearest trash can and walking away.

So that's how he wants to play it, huh?


"Hey," Aaron says as he and the other transfers trickle in from lunch. "What's going on with you and Eric?"

I smile at his concern. He really is sweet. "Nothing that needs worrying about."

He looks troubled and opens his mouth to respond but is cut off by Four.

"Earlier, you learned how to fire a gun. Now you'll be learning how to fight. Tomorrow, you'll be fighting one-on-one. This is one of the most important parts of your training, so work hard and fight harder."

He and Six go through some basic moves before turning us loose to practice however we please. Eric isn't here to unwittingly show me how it's done, so I pay extra close attention whenever Four or Six corrects someone's stance or shows them the correct way to do something.

Everything just feels wrong for some reason. Punching, kicking – it feels much harder that firing a gun. Aaron notices me struggling and tries to help, to no avail. Maybe I'm more of a long-distance fighter; I'd gladly take my gun back over this nonsense any day.

I'll just have to work extra hard to make up for my lack of natural skills in the fighting department.

I fervently hope I don't get creamed in my fight tomorrow.


As I lay in bed, I plan.

What I want more than anything right now is to get under Eric's skin – the way he's gotten under mine. He obviously feels strongly enough about me in some way to react so strongly to me.

I need to confront him about it – not in front of everyone. That was stupid. I wasn't thinking, only reacting to how frustrated he was making me feel. That will be plan one: try and talk to him about it. If that doesn't work, I'll have to launch plan two, something I don't think he'll ever be ready for.

Get ready, Eric.


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