God guys it's been a whole year and I feel just awful that it's taken me this long to get back into writing, but I'm gonna ride this out and try to keep going until this project is finished! Thanks to everyone for sticking through that crazy long hiatus that I promised wouldn't happen..then

Don't get discouraged by how much of an asshole Peter is, I promise things will get better eventually. They just have to suck a lot

Metanoia

(n.) the journey of changing one's mind, heart, self, or way of life.

"Are you sure about this?"

"Of course I am, Christina, why else would I be doing it?"

She fixed me with a stern glare, but I returned it with full force. We'd been dancing around this subject for the last few weeks or so - at first I'd tossed it around as a joke, but one look at Al's disapproving face gave me the final determination to go through with it - and now the time had finally come.

She was standing behind me with a pair of scissors and a look of apprehension on her face - the whole situation was a stomach twisting case of anxiety and dread, really - but I wasn't going to cave in. I'd decided months ago that when the time came to join the academy I'd part with my long hair, it wasn't exactly tactical for the physical part of training. I hadn't changed my mind since then and didn't plan to start, now.

"Christina!"

"Oh fine, fine! I'm doing it- but I'm still very against this," She grumbled, looking unhappy at being the one who was stuck cutting away the long blonde locks I'd loved and nurtured for the last twenty years of my life. That was another knot in my stomach. Twenty years. I'd been sixteen when the memory wipe had occurred, when the faceless Bureau stole my life and the lives of everyone around me - it had taken me nearly four years to fight the serum and start remembering - what I couldn't remember on my own, I'd had help with recently.

Nita, a janitor for the academy, came from outside the city where she'd been in her own city experiment. After it had fallen into chaos, she had been allowed to live and work for a branch of government called the Bureau of Genetic Warfare. Apparently they worked on repairing "genetic damage" - pushing towards more individuals with pure genes, whatever that meant.

When she had explained that part to me, I'd thought maybe it was a good thing, but Nita had proof that they were lying, that genetic damage was a scapegoat; she explained how the Bureau wiped out our entire city's memories just to keep the experiment - our lives , our genes - from going into chaos. Only to preserve their experiments, of course.

It took me a while to fully believe it, but after nearly three months of working together, of her sneaking me information and proof from her outside source, Matthew, I found it harder and harder to deny. She'd made me a believer, even if I still didn't fully trust that her end game was really so pure as to save a bunch of people she didn't even know.

Not only had I become sure that she was telling the truth about the memory wipe and the real world, Nita had also convinced me to help formulate and execute a plan to break into the Bureau. Apparently she and her group of radicals had planned to stop them from dropping the serum in the first place, but weren't able to act in time. Since then they'd worked with loyalists, who believed that erasing an entire city's lives was crossing a line, to develop a way to reverse the process. They'd only recently found the right combination to aggressively repopulate our memories, according to Matthew.

I'd been skeptical of that, too, but Nita was living, breathing proof of the reversal being a success. She'd been wiped, too, volunteered herself to be inserted into my experiment. Then, after a few weeks had passed, Matthew had mailed her an aerosol can containing their miracle cure and detailed instructions.. It had taken a few weeks for her to really fully grasp reality and differentiate the implanted memories, but she'd eventually remembered herself, and everything that had happened.

So now it was time to work on a full scale release of the serum reversal. To do that, we had to make a massive supply run - there was just no way Matthew and the radicals could ship every resident in Chicago one of those containers, let alone manage to fill as many as it would take without gathering suspicion. That's where Nita and I came in.

It had slowly become a matter of when rather than how.

The determined snip of scissors next to my ear made me flinch, and caused Christina to cluck her tongue disapprovingly. She'd nearly cut my ear, but it was my own fault. I'd been off in my own world, and hadn't even noticed that she had begun. Whoops.

"Don't move, Tris - I'm not happy about cutting it already, don't make me mess up and have to shave your head. God you'd probably love that, wouldn't you?"

I tried not to laugh, really, but the idea of being bald was equal parts terrifying and hilarious. Maybe it would be enough to get Al to stop giving me those soft eyed looks, but there was no way I could convince Christina to do it and, admittedly, I didn't really think I'd be capable of pulling that particular style off. One look in the mirror showed me two worlds combining. Even though I was technically an adult now, I had remained birdlike; narrow, with eyes that were just on the side of too wide, a sharp nose and slender chin - my neck too skinny.

One half of my head had long locks of hair, well past my chest, I looked young and innocent on that side. The other half had a sheet of blond that ended abruptly at my jawline, following it in a severe line. It didn't make me pretty by any standards, but I did look mature - striking - it gave me harsher angles, and I wasn't going for pretty, anyway. I was going for practical. Christina continued, then, erasing the youthful side of me for good with a few more snips from her scissors.

My hair was still long enough to pull back into a tight bun, but short enough not to weigh me down, or be difficult to quickly clean and put up. It was perfect. I felt my lips curl into a smile without permission as I allowed my eyes to drift up and focus on the dark skinned girl behind me in the mirror. She was absorbed in not ruining my hair, her face set into a serious, focused sort of scowl.

"It looks good, Chris - I really like it," She rolled her eyes and smiled, finally finishing the last few cuts that matched the right side of my head with the left. Only then did she meet my eyes in the mirror, smiling despite her clear distaste for my choice.

"Okay, okay. You do look pretty amazing, but shut up. This is traumatic for me."

"It's my hair, how is that your trauma?"

She just scoffed and flicked the back of my head, making me look forward again. "Just hush up and let me even the lines, okay?"

For a second I thought back to the last time she'd been in this mirror with me - when my face had been painted up and I'd had rational fears of Peter trying something. I swallowed the discomfort that came with thinking about that night, about him. He was nothing, inconsequential and, as my slowly returning memories supplied, just as horrible a person now as he had been before The Wipe. There was still a lot that I didn't really remember, and I often woke up chasing vivid memories that would be gone by breakfast, but a lot of stuff was staying, feeling less surreal as time passed.

The most painful memories by far were of my family. I could remember Caleb, his betrayal and my own, how we abandoned our parents to live lives far from where they could follow. Christina stopped cutting, placing a warm hand on my shoulder, and when I looked at her in the mirror I knew I must have slipped. I'd had some look on my face that didn't fit with the lighthearted mood we'd been sharing just a few minutes ago.

This happened a lot lately, I'd just disappear into my head, sorting through the real world that had been stolen from me and this one. Christina was convinced it was just me taking what happened between Peter and myself, and Al for that matter, poorly.

I let her think that, it was easier than the truth.

"Hey. Are you sure you're..gonna be okay?"

"What do you mean?" I knew what she meant, but I could play dumb - for some reason Christina had come to believe that I actually felt something for Peter, that he'd tricked me into caring about him. That was laughable and entirely wrong, there was no way I felt anything but cold distrust and anger for him. He was a childish bully, nothing more, nothing less.

"Tris. You're going to have to train with him in a few days, and you haven't seen him since-"

"I know that, and it doesn't matter. Peter is just another asshole I'll have to be better than to prove to the higher ups I'm leadership material." I jutted my chin out with a smirk that I didn't at all feel inside. I felt knots twisting and tying together, because even though I've told myself that for weeks now, I can't fight the nervousness.

This was probably the hardest part of it all, pretending my goals were on the academy and furthering my future in this perverse, rewired world the Bureau had made for us. Convincing them that I was still focused and enraptured in it, and not the one they'd erased. I was getting a little better at pretending, just a bit, though.

Christina's lips were pressed into a thin line, but eventually she went back to cutting and nodded, "Alright, just..remember you can talk to me, okay? I'm here for you." I smiled and thanked her, trying not to think about all the things I was hiding from my best friend. I just couldn't tell her, not until it was safe. She'd understand when the time came..hopefully.

"So the main lab where they keep all of the serums is here," Nita explained, pointing to a map that Tris had seen dozens of times now, she'd already memorized it and knew most of this, too, but she listened anyway, determined to get every detail. To make sure she could walk halls she'd never been in just as easily as she traversed the halls of her college.

"If we don't disable them from this room, everything will be pointless, they'll just send out another memory wipe and our resources are depleted from making this batch, it'll take years to do that again. I've got people on a lot of this - but there's still a fail-safe for the room that we have to deal with before any of this is possible."

"We can't make a move until your training is over - if we go before then, they'll notice you're gone too quickly. You'll be under strict surveillance and study during the next few weeks. It'll be just as hard as what you went through in Dauntless, if not harder." It still felt like a sick joke, how much Nita knew about that. She explained how people watched their lives in the Bureau, like some sort of television program. Rooted for their favorites. It was so wrong.

Thankfully places like bathrooms, Nita had explained, didn't have cameras in them, or any type of recording. The Bureau wasn't interested in that kind of thing, and apparently didn't suspect people like Nita and myself plotting in them. So we usually had short, ten to fifteen minute meetings in bathrooms of restaurants or the academy building now and then, setting up each one to allow for us to pass by one another without ever being suspected of actually interacting.

"I hate all of this, the training and the..pretending. I just want to get that serum and end all of this." I murmured with a huff. I'd had to blow Christina off for this meeting, and it was another lie in a mountain that was piling higher and higher. It filled my stomach with knots, especially since I knew now why she and Al were so good at rooting out the truth. They'd been Candor, taught to sniff out deceit since they were practically babies. That matched with me being a terrible liar..well. It just made all of this more stressful and risky.

Nita gripped my shoulder and looked me in the eye with a serious kind of expression that irritated me. She looked at me like I was a child sometimes and I really, really hated it. Right now I wanted to swat her hand away, be petulant and stubborn and demand that we bring Chris and my friends into this, even though I knew that wasn't possible without getting us found out, and that would mean the Bureau having time to prepare a counter attack.

It just wasn't an option.

"Look, I know how hard this is for you, I'm sorry, but it's just another month. You can do this, Tris. Now, once you're in training.." She looked unsure for a moment, but before I could latch on to that thought her face had fallen back into her usual stern, business-only expression, and she was talking again, "There's going to be an instructor named- he goes by Four. He's intense, and a bit on the scary side, but he's an ally - like you, he's remembering on his own and I've already recruited him."

That surprised me enough to make me interrupt her, I couldn't help it, because this was the first time she'd actually mentioned anyone else remembering without a serum, and she'd said he was like me. "He's Divergent, you mean?" I asked, suddenly feeling anxious - I had memories of Four from before The Wipe, and everything she said was sort of familiar. Not the Divergent part, because he'd been, in my eyes, absolutely Dauntless. So that was news. He'd been harsh and intense during training, right up until the area where my memories are the foggiest. When The Wipe happened.

"Yes. Look - our time is up, and I'm not going to be able to meet you again before you start training, but don't talk about any of this to him, you need to make sure you treat him like you would any other instructor. Don't get friendly." Anita looked uncomfortable, like she was hiding something again. It made my stomach coil in an uncomfortable way - was this how Christina felt when she knew I was lying to her?

"I'll be careful, I promise."

"Be better than careful - convince them. Four will let you know the next time we need to meet - it won't be for a few weeks, I need to get with Matthew and work out supplies and other things, so just focus on being believable- And Tris?."

I nodded, starting for the door, but turned back to look at her when she called my name. She hadn't said in a tense, worried way like the rest, there was almost..mirth in her voice. Nita had a funny look on her face, a smirk with upraised brows, it wasn't something I'd seen on her but a few times. I liked that look, it was comforting compared to the one she'd had earlier when talking about Four.

It made me want to trust her.

"Yeah..?"

"Break Peter's nose for me."

I couldn't help smiling on the way out the door, but I tried to bite it down, knowing it would look suspicious, coming out of a bathroom like that, or just plain weird, but the idea of causing him physical harm, of taking him down a few notches made me feel warm and tingly and valid. I managed to wipe the smile off of my face pretty quickly when chunks of a conversation I'd wanted to forget came back to me, unbidden.

"You said you couldn't wait to kick my ass in training, which, I mean, that's not going to happen but it's a nice thought."

"I will,"

"You will, what?"

"Beat you, in training I mean. Just because you're bigger doesn't mean you're better."

"We'll see."

I guess we would, in maybe two or three days I'd find out for sure if my confidence was just a show - in my memories, Peter had beaten me, but I hadn't known anything about fighting then. Now I was a little more trained, I was sure I could beat him.

"We'll see,"

Today was going to be a lot of firsts for me. It would be the first day we'd be staying in the compound of the academy, the first time Will or Al would see me with my hair cut short (though, to be fair, it would be the first time pretty much anyone in our training group saw it aside from Chris), and, worst of all, would be the first time I'd seen Peter since the night he'd humiliated me. To say I was nervous bordering on anxious would be an understatement. I still hadn't checked my missed messages from him.

It had been three months, there was still a manila envelope sitting at the bottom of my duffel that I didn't have the stomach or heart to read, but I hadn't destroyed it yet, either, and I didn't want to think about what either of those things meant, so there it stayed, tucked away safely. So I was definitely feeling just a little sick to my stomach as Chris and I turned the corner and spotted our friends waiting among a small crowd of people that had been in college with us.

I stood out front of the academy with one bag in my hands, trying not to look as nervous as I felt; I was sure I wouldn't need much of what I packed, but had brought it anyway. A selfish thing, but then, I'd learned that I'm a pretty selfish person. I'd already destroyed my journal and all the files I'd written up on my computer under Nita's command so as to not draw more attention to myself or the memories I'd been getting back.

"Wow," Will puffed out, eyes wide and a big smile on his face, gesturing to my hair as though I didn't know that's what he'd meant, "It looks really cool, Tris, I bet it feels better, too, huh?" He asked, smiling in a supportive sort of way. It wasn't like I'd ever worried that he wouldn't support my choice - he was pretty good about not getting all huffy over things that weren't his own body. All the same I felt a bit of tension ease out of my shoulders.

"Oh yeah, thanks. It really does feel better, my whole head is so light now!"

I nodded with a returned smile that felt easy, natural, though it dried up when Al pouted at me like a kicked puppy with a sour look in his eye, mouth set into a strange sort of frown. Clearly he didn't approve of it, but wasn't brave enough to say something like that. We hadn't spent any time exclusively alone since our argument and he'd been pretty passive since then, just sulking mostly. He was probably hoping I'd have forgiven him by now.

I tried to feel guilty about it, but every time I saw that look I heard him accusing me of calling Peter up for phone sex and got angry all over again. Over the last month or so I'd gotten..not quite memories, but feelings about that night, impressions that scared the hell out of me, so I hadn't picked at that particular case of memory loss, mostly for fear that maybe Al had been right. If he was, it had to have been Peter's fault, that much I knew for sure.

"Yeah, it..it looks nice, Tris" Al finally spoke and I forced a grimace of a smile at him, but I didn't thank him for the compliment. Instead I was the first one to go inside, pushing past the doors and trying not to make it feel like a death sentence. I'd gone and ruined my hopeful mood by thinking about things best left alone. It felt like there was a stone in my stomach, cold and heavy, and it made being greeted by Officer Coulter that much less intimidating. He stood with a stern sort of authority, just like he had what felt like years ago in our classroom.

Except now I was seeing Eric.

The young Dauntless leader who had dangled Christina off of a bridge over the Chasm, who had been particularly cruel and sadistic to me personally. It filled my stomach with hot rage instead of fear, though, and I held on to that. Especially when I heard more footsteps behind us and voices chattering at varying levels of volume. It was easy to imagine I could hear Peter's snide tone, or Molly's terrible laugh, but I was probably imagining those things.

Probably.

There was a slow silence as Eric waited with an irritated expression on his face, arms folded behind his back. Behind him stood a few officers I vaguely recognized from around the Dauntless compound in my old memories, but had yet to meet in this new world, and Four, who I wasn't supposed to know. I tried to feign curiosity, looking around at each of them, but when the stern male with his clinical buzz cut and his narrowed eyes stared at me I felt my stomach twist and had to look away.

In my search to look at something, focus on some faraway object, I noticed Zeke, the Officer I'd done my ride along internship with, standing next to Four. When he and I met eyes, he grinned at me encouragingly, which made me feel just a little bit better.

"Alright, listen up everyone, I'm not going to repeat myself!"

Eric's voice boomed, making me flinch, but I stood taller and focused on him, intent to ignore the way Four was still looking at me like I was some sort of offensive bit of trash in his lobby. Wasn't he supposed to pretend he didn't know me?

"For the next three weeks you're going to be working on rigorous physical training and testing, you'll be living here, as you should already know, and you'll be given a brief tour of the areas you're allowed to enter, as well as a breakdown of our rules here. You'll wait here for your name to be called in blocks from your assigned trainer, they'll escort you to your new living quarters."

Eric's voice was hard and commanding and I found that I hated it as much right now as I could remember hating it during Dauntless training. It made me want to squirm away, but he was looking my way so all I could do was square my shoulders and meet his cold eyes without an ounce of fear. He smirked and looked away to his next target and it felt a bit like I'd passed some kind of unspoken test.

"Less than half of you are going to make it through this portion of your training, so I'm going to warn you right now. If you're too weak, don't waste our time, go ahead and leave - because we aren't going to go easy on any single one of you,"

Eric's eyes found mine again as he said this and I felt anger boiling to the surface. I managed to scowl at him, and he seemed amused by that, chuckled even, before he took a step back and dropped his hands to his sides.

"Welcome to the Academy, recruits. We'll be watching, train hard and don't disappoint me!"

It took two entire blocks of names to be called before I heard my own, and..surprisingly, Four hadn't been assigned to me. Somewhere inside I felt a bit of relief there, I didn't like the way he kept staring me down. It made me feel like I'd done something wrong, when I clearly hadn't.

When Zeke called out Peter's name I made it a point to look anywhere but in the direction of the slowly growing group standing around waiting to see who else they roomed with. I could feel his eyes on me, but didn't do a thing to acknowledge it. There was a bit of disappointment and pity in me for someone as nice as Zeke being stuck with someone as terrible as Peter. Christina leaned into me, brushing shoulders and murmured quietly.

"He's staring you down, like, kinda hardcore.."

"Good for him."

"Christina Murillio,"

She groaned and bumped my arm with a long suffering sigh, but still made the walk. I followed her with my eyes, watching her and nothing else so I didn't run the risk of looking at him. I wouldn't give him the pleasure of my attention, not until I absolutely had to, anyway.

When my name was called it wasn't really a surprise, but it twisted in my stomach all the same. Of course my luck would run out after not being paired with Four - but hey, at least I had Christina, and she was where I made the bee-line towards.

I managed to look at my future trainer with what I hoped was a friendly smile, but that meant my eyes had to graze over Peter's face - I didn't catch a single detail in the exchange, but it felt like I swallowed a handful of ice all the same. Zeke grinned and gave me a thumbs up as I walked over to stand with Chris, feeling a small bit of relief at the realization that I was happy to have him as a trainer - someone friendly and reliable.

At that point I had no other choice but to turn around and face the room I'd been ignoring, which meant looking Drew in the eye when his name was called. The smug bastard kissed the air in my direction and I had to ball my hands into fists to keep from lunging at him. Chris put a hand on my wrist and squeezed gently, and I felt a wave of gratitude for her. She was probably going to be the only thing that kept me from losing my mind for the next month.

Once our group was complete, Zeke looked down at the clipboard in his hand with that same, friendly smile. It was still as unnerving now as it had been when I'd interned that he was so naturally, comfortably happy and friendly. Downright odd. I didn't have any memories of him from Dauntless, but he was undoubtedly one of them- one of us .

"Alright guys, I'm Zeke, I'll be your trainer through the next month or so - let's get the rules done with first, okay?" It was a rhetorical question, but I heard Peter scoff all the same, like he was trying not to say something snarky. That familiar sense of blood boiling started up, but instead of letting it happen, I squeezed my fists tighter until I felt the painful bite of nails against my palms. It grounded me enough to focus.

"Pretty basic stuff, but gotta go through it anyway," Zeke droned on like he'd rather be doing anything else, "No leaving the compound during training days, no fighting with your fellow trainees outside of sanctioned brawls, no food in your dorms," And so on and so forth, there were a surprising number of rules, actually, and at the end he had each of us sign a form saying that we agreed to the mandates under penalty of removal from the program.

Next was a brief tour, we'd all seen the place before, but not where we'd be staying. There was a small area with washers and dryers, a supply closet full of bathroom amenities, a cafeteria, and then the bathrooms themselves that were, thankfully, not unisex.

I noticed things that I probably wouldn't have, if it weren't for knowing about The Wipe, like how supposedly all the other officers had gone through this program before, and it was a normal, routine thing, but every part of the compound looked new, barely used. It had the wear and tear of four years, not fifteen or twenty like it should have looked.

The whole time we were being shown around, I could feel eyes on me, and once someone grabbed for my arm, but I brushed past them and walked up to Zeke directly to ask him a meaningless question about the supply closet. He didn't seem to mind one bit, actually he seemed sort of pleased to have someone ask him questions.

Clearly I couldn't avoid Peter forever, but for now I was fine with putting it off for as long as possible. Christina was a pretty good buffer through it all. I reminded myself to thank her personally when I wasn't so focused on ignoring my surroundings entirely. Well, not entirely. I gave Zeke and the halls we walked my full attention.

Eventually we made it to the actual dorms, which were basically just a long, open room with twelve bunk beds that didn't look particularly comfortable, but at the very least seemed sturdy. Zeke stopped here and folded his arms behind his back, addressing the group of them as a whole.

"This is your dorm, you're only to sleep here, no sneaking into the others - and trust me, we'll know," He seemed to look directly at Christina with a wicked sort of smirk, but she simply smiled back like she was innocent. I tried not to laugh, hiding it in a quiet cough, instead.

"You'll be expected to keep this area neat and organized, we'll have inspections at random, now get settled in, you're free to familiarize yourself with the compound for the next half hour, after that you'll start your first training session, so I'll see you then!"

I stormed to a bunk in the far corner, throwing my bag on the top just as Christina tossed hers on the bottom. There weren't any other bunks around it for a good few feet, but the next closest one was occupied almost as soon as mine had been, by Peter and Drew. I hadn't meant to look, but, well, I wanted to see who I'd be neighbored with and that's how I met Peter's eyes. He scowled at me, and I scowled right back. I managed to not drop my expression, even when I heard Drew making obscene kissing noises.

Meeting Peter's eyes didn't feel one bit like I'd touched an exposed wire, my stomach definitely wasn't twisting into knots and I absolutely was not thinking of going over there and punching him in his stupid face. Finally I tore my eyes away and turned my entire body away from them, nothing good would come from letting those two rile me up. Chris looked at me with a supportive kind of smile and looped her arm through mine.

"Let's go check out the cafeteria, maybe we can grab a snack before training,"

As we left, Peter's voice rang out, not overly loud, but loud enough for me to hear, and it took everything in me not to turn around and attack him. Chris' arm tightened around mine and she patted the back of my hand gently.

"Keep running, Prior. Just like the little kid you are."

This was going to be the longest month of my entire life.

Alright! So we're back in the swing, things are kicking off. Next chapter will include a fair bit of physical violence and blood, so be ready for the sparring to begin!

As always I appreciate your comments and support and I'm excited to hear any ideas you might have about where this is going. Nothing is set in stone~

I'm cautiously hopeful about having another chapter up in a week or so, but don't hold me to that. Super psyched to be back at this again and to have you all here for the ride.