I don't own Divergent.
- Partners? (The Next Day) –
Tris P.O.V.
They all walk into the training room in twos and threes, some slower than others, some still stifling a yawn, evidence that they didn't expect to be put straight into training. I notice that most of the Candor's and Erudite's have bandages on their legs, torsos, arms and necks; they must have gotten tattoos last night.
"Ok." I say, walking forward, "Yesterday you were taught how to correctly throw a knife, this morning you will continue to practice this skill to better your abilities, and we will be judging you on your competence before lunch." None of them move, "What are you waiting for? Move!" they all scramble for knives, not wanting to be the last back to their positions.
Overall they aren't that bad. Chloe, Willow, Julian, James, Finn and Rose all still look unnatural with knives, most likely because they have never thrown a knife before. However Alex, Eliza and Noah all look as though they have done this thousands of times before now, each of them hit the board every time, most hitting close to the bulls-eye.
I go to the right side of the room to begin my scoring for Oscar, while Tobias starts on the left with Noah.
"Go for it Oscar, throw five knives the best you can at the target." I tell him, my eyes on the piece of paper in my hands as I write his name at the top,
"Why don't you go stand in front of the target, for every time that I don't hit you, I will give you a kiss." He says, I look up from the piece of paper, he has a cocky grin on his face, gross!
"No. Who do you think you are initiate? Flirting with your instructor, throw the knives."
"Oh come on, you know you want me," by now most of the other initiates are looking at us.
"I don't 'want you' initiate, I already have a boyfriend," I say, getting angrier and angrier at each passing second.
"Don't think that I haven't noticed the looks you've been giving me, you want in my pants and I am happy to comply."
"I said no. Now throw the damned knives before I give you a zero."
"Don't be like that babe, why don't you-"
"She said no!" Shouts a voice, Tobias,
"I wasn't talking to you Four. Stay out of other people's business!" Oscar shouts,
"Back off Oscar, throw the knives at the target," Tobias says, still angry.
"Make me." Oscar yells, he prepares to throw a knife a Tobias, my breathing hitches, Tobias blocks his arm before he even gets a chance to throw it. Instead Tobias punches him in the face, hard, fast and incredibly powerfully. Oscar's knocked backwards, but not down, he stumbles regaining his balance he shoots Tobias a look of absolute hatred.
"Back off my partner, I will only say it once," Tobias tells him, but then proceeds to look at the rest of the class with his instructor Four face on. Partner, why did he say partner? He just let it slip that we are together, great, I hope that none of the initiates notice.
"Partners? You mean that you two are dating?" Stella asks, crap.
"No, I mean partner as in work partners. We work together, meaning that we are partners." Tobias, or Four rather says,
"Now get back to throwing knives." Oscar just returns to his original spot in front of me and throws the knife in his hand at the target. The other initiates follow suit and return to throwing their knives.
P/B
I look up towards the clock begging it to be nearly lunch time, urgh 7 more minutes. I look around the room trying to spot Tobias, finally my eyes land on him. As I walk towards him I watch each of the initiates throw more knives, I double check my scores and end up beside him.
"Hey, you all good?" he says looking at me, I smile
"Yeah, 'course. I was just thinking about calling lunch." His almost-navy blue eyes leave me, going to his watch; he knows that I'm still shaken up about Oscar,
"Same, did you want to do it at the same time?" I watch him as we walk, stopping by the knife table,
"Sure, on the count of three? One…Two…Three…"
"LUNCH!" we look out across the initiates, we startled most of them.
"Everyone put your knives back, after lunch we will be doing strength and conditioning." As I finish I hear a collective groan, so I stare at them all until the last of them are gone. Once they are, I turn around to Tobias, reaching up and fitting my lips to his, his tongue slides along my bottom lip asking for entrance which I give him almost instantly. We stay like this for a while, until I pull back,
"Thank you for what you did earlier with Oscar," I tell him,
"Anything for you" he says smiling.
P/B
"Everybody line up, I don't care what order just line up," Four instruct the initiates as they walk into the room after lunch.
"Each of you will do a total of 100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups, 100 burpees and 30 laps around this room within the next hour. I don't care what you do first or what order you do it in, but this is Dauntless and this is strength and conditioning." I look around and see fourteen faces of utter disbelief and shock, none of them move.
"Now!" I yell. They all seem to snap out of their trance and start to move around the room doing various things. I am so glad Tobias didn't make us do this last year, they will have to do this twice today and four more times during the week.
By the end of the day all of the initiates are dead on their feet, none of them even try to hide their exhaustion.
"Good job." I say, they all turn to look at me, "Be back here tomorrow morning at 7 AM and don't be late." Once they've all walked out, Tobias walks across the room, towards me. Once he reaches me, he slips his hands around my waist and pulls my body taunt against his, sharing oxygen, our lips meet in a passionate dance. When we finally break apart, we only do it out of the need of oxygen, he smiles down at me as he says,
"Hey" I smile.
"Hey" I respond simply, "I'm so glad that we didn't have to do strength and conditioning last year" voicing my thoughts from earlier, he chuckles
"Yeah, though, it would have been funny to watch you do it, because this time last year you were all as unfit as this year's initiates are right now. Absolutely and completely unprepared for Dauntless life." I laugh thinking back to how unfit I was as the skinny Abnegation girl that landed on that net, what seems like a lifetime ago now.
"Did you want to rank them now or after the guns and fights?" I ask him,
"We can do it now if you want and then adjust it later if we need to."
"Noah, Alex and Eliza are my top three, how about you?"
"Same, but I have it as Alex, Noah and Eliza, because Alex picked up the technique faster than Noah did." Tobias explains, I nod my head. We continue going through the list until we have them all ranked, based on the highest combined score to the lowest. It doesn't take long to agree on the rankings, it is obvious who is the best and who isn't, Tobias and I agree on all of the names before writing them on a slip of paper and putting them in our training file.
Alex - 10
Noah - 10
Eliza - 9
Liz - 9
Charlie - 9
Stella - 8
Finn - 7
Oscar - 6
Willow - 6
Tim - 5
Rose - 5
Chloe - 4
James - 3
Julian – 3
I look at the rankings, they are all fair descriptions of their skill, but they also descriptions of how much effort they put in. Even though knife throwing is partly skill, to become good at it you have to put effort in, Eliza, Noah and Alex all put more effort than all of the others, they want to get into Dauntless bad. Unless any of them completely fail the second and third stages, I wouldn't be surprised if they were ranked in the top ten at the end of initiation.
A/N I know that a lot of authors say this, but please review!
And Merry Christmas to you all (in my time zone I'm posting this on Christmas Eve).
WhiteWolf74 xx
