TRIS POV

It seems as though as soon as my head touches the sad excuse for a pillow on my cot, I am awakened by people yelling and flashlights shining in my sensitive eyes. And suddenly I don't remember why I found capture the flag so enjoyable last year.

"Wake up!" Four shouts over the sounds of disgruntled initiates stirring awake. Through the beams of light, I make out the figure of Lauren standing next to him. "Enough of the pathetic groaning. Get dressed and be at the train tracks in ten minutes or consider yourselves factionless."

With an unamused sigh, I sit up and pull a jacket on and replace my pants with a tighter, less comfortable pair. When I am tying the laces on my shoes, Christina hops off her bunk to stand in front of me, fully clothed and alert.

"What time is it?" I ask between a yawn.

She checks her watch. "One," she answers.

Grumbling unintelligible things to myself, I shove myself off of my cot and follow her out of the dormitory.

The Dauntless compound is always on the cool side, but tonight—despite it being summer—it is even colder outside. I zip my jacket up all the way in an attempt to keep out the slight chill, at least until we begin our training exercise. One by one, initiates file out of the compound and into the night. It is the first time we have been outside in a week and a half.

Justin wanders over to where Christina and I are huddled together.

"Why so grumpy, Tris?" he teases, his brown eyes looking even more awake than Christina's.

I level a warning glare at him. "It's one in the morning."

At my words, Uriah practically skips over to us with a grin that indicates that a joke is due at any moment.

"Only you two could be this chipper in the middle of the night," I remark, walking over to the crate that carries paintball guns and the identical one that holds ammo.

"Lighten up," Uriah says as he loads his own gun. "Or I'll shoot you with one of these, and then you'll really be awake."

Undeterred by the threat, I slide the strap hooked onto my paintball gun over my head and cross my arms. The last few initiates trickle out of the compound and spill out in front of the tracks. The train has still yet to make an appearance, and I can tell that Four is impatient by his wide yawn and the way he fidgets with the paintball gun slung around his shoulder. Sometimes I wonder why he makes us do these petty exercises, when we both know that real war is nothing like this.

A train horn sounds. We all aim our heads toward the end of the train tracks, where a train turns the corner, its headlights blinding all of us momentarily. It travels over the tracks with a click-click and rumbles the ground beneath our feet.

Before it passes, we wisely get a running start. My friends and I get split up as we jump on the train, so I am one of the last ones left to do so. Except, unlike the other few initiates that have yet to board the train, I get help from an unexpected source.

I don't know if it is because we are supposed to be a team now with the whole suicide conspiracy, or if it really is just a kind gesture, or if he is just helping everyone else on and I'm not special. But either way, Four holds out his hand to me as I run alongside the moving car, and I take it gratefully, still sore and recovering from my recent brawls.

"Thanks," I say once I am standing inside the train, facing him out of breath.

He gives me a passive nod and heads to the middle of the car, where Lauren is. I don't know what to think of his actions, so I don't.

"He still has it bad for you," Christina says bluntly in my ear.

I shake my head at her absurd statement. "You're kidding, right? He hates me; he constantly reminds me of it," I tell her quietly.

She forces me to face her with her hands on my shoulders. "You don't understand. I'm trained to see these things, as a former Candor. Four doesn't just randomly hand out acts of kindness, and he only helped you on the train, if you didn't notice. He treats you differently."

"Of course he treats me differently. We were together once, and now it is awkward."

"That's not it though. Sometimes I catch him looking at you when you aren't looking. And besides, I'm not going to pretend not to know how you got through gun training. He obviously helped—"

"So what? That means he's in love with me?" It is a feat not to raise my voice on this train full of initiates. I huff and brush her hands off. "I'm not going back down that road, Christina. So I don't know what you want to happen here, but it's not going to."

She purses her lips and turns away from me when Dez slides her way through the crowd to join our conversation. I don't worry about Christina; she will come around. Sometimes we just butt heads because of her nosy behavior and my defensiveness.

"What are we doing up at this time in the morning, exactly?" Dez asks, eyeing her paintball gun with confusion. "What does this thing even do?"

"We're playing capture the flag," Uriah replies. "And the guns shoot balls of paint that splatter all over you when you get hit."

Dez scans the gun with a renewed interest. "This would be fun if I wasn't so exhausted."

"Exactly," I agree, wondering why we can't play at nightfall or at least get to sleep in tomorrow morning. With the amount of slumber time I waste on succumbing to nightmares, sleep is a simple thing that I revere now.

"Listen up!" Four's voice is jarring and gets the weary initiates back on their feet. "We're playing capture the flag. Lauren and I will choose our teams, and then we will jump off and make a plan before fighting. If you run out of ammo, resort to your combat skills. If you get hit—which will be obvious because of the paint—then you're out; I know how you Dauntless-born will try to stay in to salvage your pride." A few agreeing chuckles travel through the group. "This exercise is not just a game. It is supposed to teach basic teamwork skills and working towards a common goal, so treat it seriously."

Once he is finished speaking, Lauren steps up beside him. "All right," she says. "Now that that's all out of the way, the captains will choose teams..." She looks at Four expectantly.

"Ladies first," he offers.

She grins, seemingly hoping that he was going to say that. I don't like that look she wears, like she knows him enough to predict his actions. "Derek," she chooses.

Four bites his lip and considers his options. I know the kind of team he will be going for—fast and smart and stealthy—but I still don't expect him to outright pick me first and foremost.

"Tris."

With an eye-roll, I walk across the train car to stand by his side. What point is he trying to make here?

"I don't want to be on your stupid team," I mumble hotly, childishly. Somehow he manages to infuriate me at any given opportunity, and by the smirk on his face, I can deduce that he enjoys it.

"Too bad," he whispers discreetly. "I need someone on my team that I can blame when I lose."

It cracks a smile out of me that I try to stifle.

By the time the teams are evenly distributed, Uriah and Dez are on my team, and Christina and Justin have been sent to the other. While I hope that I don't run into my friends on the opposing team, I am curious to know how it would play out if I did get in an altercation with one of them. But I specifically don't want to hurt Christina, even if I am slightly irritated with her at the moment.

Four's team jumps off first. With the light of the moon and a couple of flashlights to guide us, we jog to the far end of the Navy Pier, near the same carousel that my team began at last year. And similarly to last year, everyone bickers about the plan: about who should go where, about who should receive what task, about who should even be in charge in general.

"Did you win last year, Tris?" Dez asks between all of the arguments happening simultaneously amongst our team.

"Yes," I reply.

"How did you do it?"

Maybe I shouldn't tell her our previous strategy that we used, but at this time of morning, I am too exhausted to care about learning experiences. I shrug. "What anyone would do, really. We scouted and found their flag, and then we separated into a few groups to be offense and defense. They weren't expecting a group to come around the back, so we took them down pretty easily," I recall.

Dez nods. "Makes sense." And by her expression, I can tell that she desperately wants to get a word in and suggest the plan to the group.

After a couple more minutes of the initiates continuing their heated arguments, Uriah steps into the middle of the group and takes control. I laugh quietly to the side with Dez as he condemns their stupidity that has wasted time and puts them all in their places.

"Since all of you are terrible at this, I'll make the decisions," he states, leaving no room for objections. "Right now, I'm going to split all of you losers into teams with different positions, so listen carefully."

He proceeds to list off names of people whom he wants to assume a defensive position, or to hide the flag. When he gets down to scouting, I realize that there are really only a few people left that haven't been given orders yet.

"Dez and Bryce, you two go scout together. Tris and Four, you do the same." He sends a wink in my direction.

I pinch the bridge of my nose. Thanks, Uriah. I'll remember this.

In our designated teams, we all split up to complete our assigned duties. Four follows me further down the Navy Pier, although I think he could lead me there instead, since he must know where we are headed. How many times am I going to get stuck in a situation where I have to converse with him and be near him? I swear, luck will never be on my side.

Thankfully, we walk to the Ferris wheel in silence. It is still as rusty and forlorn as ever, stretching up high above my head with its great spokes poking at the night sky. The sight of it leaves an ache in my chest, a longing for a simpler time, when I didn't have to stress about the slight possibility of instability leading to another war, or grieve over friends and family. Back then, I was only focused on passing initiation, and then I had the luxury of falling in love along the way.

There are no current moments I cherish anymore.

Without wasting time, I ditch my paintball gun on a patch of overgrown grass and start climbing the untrustworthy ladder that creaks under my weight.

Once I am up several rungs, I notice how quiet it is behind me. I turn around and find Four staring up at me with dread in his eyes, obviously debating whether or not to challenge one of his only fears tonight.

"Are you coming or not?" I ask. It is best if I don't do this alone, after my near-death experience last time.

The words, "For old times' sake," barely reach my ears before he tosses his gun aside and steps onto the bottom rung of the ladder. Then, for a while, the only noises in the night are the groans of protest made by the supports of the Ferris wheel and Four's labored breathing below me.

"Shit, Tris," he pants, and I stop to glance down at him with my arm secured by the ladder. Sweat has broken out across his forehead, and his dark eyes are vulnerable in a way that I haven't seen since I told him I loved him for the first time. "Do you just love to torture me or something?"

Even though he is partially joking, I frown. "Because you never tortured me," I bite back sarcastically, turning to continue up with ladder.

"We've always tortured each other," he corrects me. His voice is less tight now that he is distracted by the conversation and not the distant pavement. "That's how it's supposed to go."

Maybe that is why it all ended. It wasn't all his fault, or wholly my fault. We both tore each other to pieces in a toxic relationship. There wasn't any way it could have ended happily, and the split was the only way we could survive. It was a matter of self-preservation, not spite.

Recalling a distant memory that relates to his words, my mouth twitches at the corners. "Well, we both aren't very nice, so that's why we liked each other so much, remember?" I ask, echoing the exclamation that I made while influenced by peace serum in Amity.

A rough laugh escapes him, and a part of me lightens at the sound. "Of course. How could I forget?"

After a few more steps up the rusted ladder, I pause. "We can stop here," I say. It is not nearly as high as we went last time; we are only at the top of the ladder. But it is still a great view that makes me buzz with energy because of the height.

He releases a relieved breath in response but continues climbing until he is standing one rung beneath me, so that we are at the same height. Because of his close proximity, we are pressed together tightly with our sides against the metal and my back to his chest. We haven't been flush together like this in a very long time, and it makes a blush appear under my cheeks for unexplainable reasons.

We stare out at the darkness together, watching but not watching our surroundings. Lights twinkle in the inner city, evidence of the Erudite researching even this far into the night. It surprises me that they would waste energy on late night study sessions, unless they are up to something much more diabolical, like creating serums to commit mass mind-control and murder.

I silently chastise myself for thinking it. My skepticism for the Erudite still hasn't faded with time.

"Somehow I know they're behind the suicides," Four says against my ear, echoing my own thoughts back to me. I had almost forgotten about our pact to investigate and hopefully stop the suicides, and when I remember, I feel guilt clench at my stomach; I had promised Caleb that I wouldn't get involved in any more conspiracies, and here I am, diving straight into the heart of another problem.

Then, after a pause, Four adds, "Did you hear that Jeanine went on trial?"

"Yes," I reply.

He hums and grips the metal bar next to us tighter, so that his knuckles are white. "It's asinine that after all she did to the Dauntless and to the Abnegation and to us—torturing us with fists and serums until we were expendable—that they still have to put her on some lengthy trial. Although maybe it won't take too long if they use truth serum."

It reminds me that he got the worse end of the torment in Erudite. Jeanine may have poked and prodded my mind until it was drained of all intellectual capabilities, but Four was tested with serums too, and Jeanine's guards never laid a hand on me like they did him.

Shuddering at the thought of having to say goodbye to him before my execution, I press myself closer to the ladder for balance.

"I'm surprised nobody killed her when they had the chance," I remark. The Dauntless may not have had guns at the time in Erudite to exact their revenge on the woman who enslaved their minds to make them murderers, but the factionless had reason to hate her as well. All they did was take her into custody though.

"I would have, but I wanted to see if she would access her computer and give up the information that you went back for."

The revelation astonishes me. I turn the top half of my body as much as this position will allow me to. My lips are parted, but I can't get words out. I thought he helped the factionless destroy the important information that he claimed Marcus was lying about. No, instead he took my word. He disregarded what they wanted and trusted me enough—minutes after he ended things with me—that he attempted to obtain the information that I betrayed him and my faction for.

He doesn't meet my gaze. "I never told you this, but the factionless found us before she could access it and held me at gunpoint so they could take her downstairs to Evelyn. Otherwise, I would have gotten to the information before they had erased it. And it was there; whatever it was, I saw the file."

My voice cracks on the way out, full of emotion. "You...you believed me," I state.

He chuckles briefly, but the sad look in his eyes doesn't slide past me. "Against my better judgment, yes." Finally, he looks down into my eyes, and I feel like I might break at how soft they are, if only for a second. "I regret a lot of things that I did that day, but that wasn't one of them."

My mind fills in the blanks hopefully. He regrets the way he treated me, he regrets abandoning me...

Suddenly I don't want to hate him anymore. All this time I have pushed him away and pretended that he was despicable as a defense mechanism, to protect myself from the pain of the loss. But I can't deny who he is any longer, who he has always been, beneath the fortified exterior that he has built up since the war.

"Tobias," I whisper breathily, longingly, because I don't know what else to say. It is the first time I have uttered his name since he confronted me in Jeanine's personal laboratory; the name comes easily, but it feels foreign, like I need to spend time repeating it before it comes naturally.

He disregards me. "There's the flag," he says, pointing at a tower in the distance, where it glows in the window. "Now can we get off this damn thing?"

Despite my desire to continue this conversation—I haven't felt that close to him, or anyone for that matter, for a long time—I relieve him by agreeing that we should climb down the ladder. Once we are on stable ground again, we jog to meet our group, our tender moment forgotten as we plan out our attack.

The tower rises tall over the same clearing surrounded by trees where the flag was hidden last year. We decide to take a similar approach too. We split into three teams: offense, defense, and a group that will sneak around the back, up into the tower, and to the flag. Tobias—I may as well call him that while he is on my good side—and I are named off as offense, so we lead the team to the front, making sure to take cover behind the trees as we slowly but surely take the other team out.

Before long, Dez appears at the top of the tower, waving the flag in the air with enthusiasm that is matched by the rest of our team. I allow myself to join them in their victory cries while our opponents throw down their guns with frustration.

One of the members of the other teams shoots at us even though the game is over—maybe jokingly, maybe not. Either way, it starts a mock war, and each team begins shooting at each other again, even breaking off into smaller groups and turning on their friends.

I stay leaning back against a tree, smiling as I watch the initiates have their form of Dauntless fun. But I am shocked out of my reverie when my arm stings. When I glance down at it, it is dripping blue paint, and Tobias stands not far off, looking nonchalant.

"You're so dead!" I shout teasingly, firing my own shot at him. He dodges and I miss, and red paint splatters on the tree next to him.

His laughter drives me to action to prove him wrong. And then we shoot at each other, managing to hit arms and legs and torsos until we are covered in paint and we are both out of ammo. With no other defense, he resorts to physical contact, chasing me down while I shriek and try to outrun him.

But as I am running away, I don't watch the path in front of me closely enough, and I accidentally step right into slippery mud. I crash to the ground with a groan that quickly turns into a laugh when Tobias slips and lands right next to me. And there we are, a chuckling pile of paint and mud, two teenagers that were never gifted with fun finally getting the chance to experience it despite the weight of a past war.

Once we manage to calm down, he pushes himself up and offers me a hand. I take it, standing up so that I am eye-level with his chest, though I look up at his face. The grin hasn't worn off his face yet, and it makes his eyes crinkle in a way that somehow manages to take any and all weight off my shoulders. There is no death or war or chaos in the world. There is no more guilt.

There is only Tobias and his shy smile.

Too preoccupied with my focus on how handsome he is, I failed to notice that his grin had faltered slightly. Before I can do any more than briefly see it, he closes the space between us and lowers his mouth to mine.

I am too stunned to do anything but stand there, rigid. The kiss is tentative, almost like our first one, but this time he knows what he is doing. His lips are just as I remember them: soft and warm and promising, trying to rouse mine to action. They take me back to a time when I had something to live for, when I felt like I didn't constantly have a pressure on my chest that makes it a struggle to breathe. And even when I was struggling to keep my head above the river of guilt, he could remind me that I had to continue fighting with just the touch of his lips on mine.

But before I can reciprocate—though I don't know if I would have—he pulls back. He meets my wide eyes with his own.

After a moment of hesitation, I ask, "Why did you do that?"

Does he realize how complicated he just made everything, even more so than he had been? Does he realize that we cannot automatically go back to how we used to be now, because a kiss doesn't fix everything? What was his motive?

But when I take into account that he seems as taken aback as I am, I figure out that this was on instinct and not planned.

"I-I don't know," he answers.

With a demand for an explanation trapped in my throat, I decide that it has to stay there because now the other initiates are heading toward the train.


Later that night—or early morning, really—after having taken a shower to rid myself of the dried paint and dirt, I find it difficult to wind myself down. Every part of me is still buzzing with Dauntless adrenaline from the paintball game, though maybe I just tell myself that to play off the fact that Tobias kissed me.

Christina went to bed before I had a chance to apologize for the way I snapped at her. So, with nothing to do, I aimlessly wander the compound until I can get the inevitable exhaustion to come through.

I wind through several hallways, cross the chasm, and eventually end up in the Pit. Some Dauntless members and initiates alike are still awake, most of them with a flask in their hand. All of them seem to be having fun, until I hear the laugh of someone who must be having the time of his life.

Tobias has his head thrown back, laughing so hard at something Zeke said that he has to back up and place a hand on the stone behind him to steady himself. Or maybe he is off balance because of the brown bottle in his hand.

At first I don't care. He looks like he is joyful for once, so why should I ruin that? But the more I think about it, the more I realize that Tobias has loose lips when he drinks alcohol. I have really only seen him drunk once—it must not be a common occurrence—and even though he was not as drunk as he seems to be now, he had the nerve to tell me I looked good, back when I was his initiate and nothing more yet.

And what is stopping him from mentioning the investigation we are delving into, or that he kissed me tonight? The thought worries me to the point where I decide to step in. At least the first time I confront him after our kiss will be fuzzy for him...

"Tris!" he calls when he sees me approaching. And it's stupid, but a part of me melts at the image of him genuinely glad to see me. "Come join us."

"If I have to," I say, stepping closer to them and scratching some stray paint off the skin of my neck.

Zeke tips his flask at me. "Not drinking tonight?" he asks.

"No. I'd rather have a clear head for knife-throwing tomorrow." Plus, I don't enjoy the taste, from what I recall from a sip I took last year.

Tobias may be intoxicated, but he is still perceptive. "Here," he beckons to me, offering me his bottle as his eyes slide past mine. "It'll help you sleep."

It is tempting. And even though I was supposed to come over here to monitor him and hopefully coax him to stop drinking so he wouldn't accidentally say anything important, I take the bottle from him. With one touch of the bitter drink to my tongue, I cough, almost spitting it out.

"Don't kill yourself, Tris," Zeke chuckles. And then, because of the current situation in our city, he amends, "Sorry, I guess I shouldn't joke about that."

Tobias shakes his head, and I notice that his hair is damp in the low light, since he must have showered. "No, it's okay," he tells Zeke. "They aren't actually suicides—"

An alarm goes off in my head, and I reach up and press my hand to his mouth before he can reveal anything else. He gives me a questioning look as I remove my hand.

Then I try to play off the situation so that Zeke doesn't think anything of it. "Looks like someone is a little too drunk," I declare. "I should get him home."

Handing the bottle off to Zeke and bidding him goodbye, I drag a protesting Tobias off with me out of the Pit.

"Are you insane?" I snap. "You can't go around saying stuff like that!"

"Huh?" he slurs, the drinking fully catching up with him.

"You were the one telling me that you needed to be able to trust me, but obviously it's you who can't be trusted. If the wrong person had heard what you said, it could have gotten us killed!"

He pouts his lip slightly, puzzled. And when he nearly trips over his own foot, I realize that now is not the time to chastise him. He is an intoxicated boy, and he won't remember any of this in the morning.

After watching Tobias wobble and almost fall three times in a row, I huff and pull his arm over my shoulder, letting him lean on me. He hums sleepily and rests his head on mine. It reminds me of when he used to tuck me into his chest, a protective hand on my head, pressing his cheek against my hair.

Leading him all the way to his apartment is a struggle. At one point I am tempted to leave him laughing his head off in the hall, but I finish the task of dropping him off, if only to prevent him from spewing out dangerous information.

"Okay, where are your keys?" I ask when we arrive at his door. I let him go, and he slumps against the wall.

"Umm..." Clumsily, he digs through his pockets until I can't take it anymore. I shove my hand into his pocket and pull out his keys, jamming one of them into the lock.

His apartment is dark, but the moon shining through the window is enough light that I can make out where his bed is. So I lead him over to it, and he falls down onto it when his knees hit the edge.

"What're you doing?" he mumbles when I begin untying his shoelaces.

"Just go to sleep, Tobias."

He huffs stubbornly. "I don't wanna sleep without you," he admits.

It makes my cheeks burn, but I just shake it off. He clearly doesn't know what he is saying.

In reality though, I haven't had a good night's sleep in what feels like years. Not like I had with him next to me, anyway.

Setting his shoes next to the bed, I stand up to leave. But his hand catches my arm before I can move away from the bed.

"Don't go," he begs, his eyes drowsy and his breath sharp from the alcohol, and I wonder why he felt the need to drink in the first place.

To remove his hand, I take it in mine. This is the first time I have reciprocated any contact since I came back to Dauntless. And it feels essential to have his fingers pressed against mine, like he is striking a match against my skin.

"I have to," I try to explain. "Trust me, this will all make sense in the morning. I'll see you tomorrow."

He gives in, loosening his grip on my hand and allowing his eyelids to close. "Love you..." he murmurs, slipping off into unconsciousness.

Delusion has fully taken over him, but I can't help but let the words bounce back and forth across my skull. They have the same ring that they used to, even though he doesn't mean them.

I don't leave yet. It reminds me of something he said when he was coercing me to shoot a week ago, and I can't let my thoughts go unsaid. So I speak aloud with nobody else to hear.

"I said that I loved you before I left," I say. I brush a stray lock of hair away from his forehead, glad to see the crease between his eyebrows missing, if only in slumber. "It didn't take me until after we escaped. And if you were awake, I would have said it and meant it all the same."

Before I go, I set a glass of water and pain pills on his nightstand, for the hangover he is bound to have.

I may have unresolved feelings to deal with now, since our kiss, but I can't pretend to hate him anymore. I loved him too much to not owe him respect now.