Expectations and Suppositions

Chapter 5

XXX

It's still early. The dawn sun filters in around the curtains in the room I am in. I didn't have a chance to look around last night, but I do now. It's similar to what I saw in the living area, clean lines, minimal furniture, but everything multi-purpose. It's calm, almost serene, as if Eric had crafted his space to be the anti-thesis of Dauntless on purpose. A place to escape to when he needed it. I wonder how many people had been in his apartment and figured that out.

I listen to see if Eric is awake, and feel his mind in the kitchen. The smell that wafts through the room tells me he's cooking.

I exit the spare room and walk towards where he is making what appears to be eggs at the stove.

"Morning." He says in his usual slightly gruff manner. "Tea?"

"Yes, please." I say as I take a seat at the table.

He brings me a mug and a plate of eggs a minute later. It tastes good, and I savor the quietness around me. It wasn't crowded in here like the rest of Dauntless was.

"I issued the report last night. Max, Tris, and Four have all read it." He says as he grabs his own plate and mug of coffee and sits at the other end of the table.

"And?" I ask.

"Four confirms your account based on the security footage. The three were seen in the infirmary for stitches and will be reprimanded."

I smile and start eating my eggs. Again, it's all I could have hoped for at this stage.

"Max was quite impressed, commented on your awareness."

I shrug and try and play it off by continuing to eat my eggs.

"Are you nervous for your fight today?"

I shrug. "Should I be?"

He shakes his head. "I've read the reports. You seem to have 'natural ability' according to Four, if his opinion counts for anything." He says with a sneer when he says Four's name.

It piques my interest, as there seems to be so much tension between Eric and everyone I meet. "I take it he's not your best friend?" I ask to see what he says.

Eric snorts. "Hardly."

I want to pry a little more. It almost feels like he is purposefully not thinking about why he dislikes the other Dauntless member. I can't help the urge to dig into this a little more. "What'd he do. Steal a girl from you? Or something else?"

"My rank." Eric deadpans.

I stop chewing when he says this. Now it makes sense. Eric always was a bit of a sore loser. Even when I was a child, he never intentionally let me beat him in games. He always wanted to be first at everything he did.

I smile at the memory of him throwing a temper tantrum when I beat him at chess. I was six, and he refused to play with me for a month.

"He tried to warn me to stay away from you." I say before taking another bite.

Eric rolls his eyes. He would expect nothing less from who he considered his biggest enemy. "I'm sure he did."

"I blew off his concern."

And this gets Eric attention. "Oh really?" He asks before taking a sip of his coffee.

I shrug. "Like I said, you'll always be Eric to me."

He smirks, his mind is mulling over what I said. Thinking about the little mouse he knew. He isn't sure what to make of what I've become, but doesn't say anything else.

XXX

I show up in the dorm while everyone else is at breakfast. Tris and Four are waiting for me when I do.

"River, I am so sorry." Tris says as she runs up and gives me a hug. She feels guilty that I was attacked.

"You didn't do anything wrong, just so you know." Four says as he gives me a once over. Eric had let them know I would be staying in his apartment last night, and Four is making sure Eric didn't do anything 'untoward.' I want to roll my eyes, men are such boobs.

"It's fine." I say when Tris finally lets me go.

"Your fight is scheduled for after breakfast. You will have the rest of the day off after that." Four says as he turns to leave.

Tris lingers a little longer. "You'll do great River." And gives me another hug.

The leave shortly after and I quickly grab my training clothes to get changed.

XXX

A ring has been erected in one of the bigger training rooms, well if you could call it a ring. It's a raised platform with no ropes on the edges. The mat is also barely padded, meaning that any landing was bound to hurt. Dauntless were meant to be tough, no use sugar-coating what a real fight would feel like.

We are all milling around as Four and Tris go over the schedule. Everyone keeps their distance from me, no doubt having heard what happened to Volger and his friends last night. The three in question glare daggers at me from across the room.

We're about to get started, when Max and Eric enter the training room. This gets everyone's attention, none more so than Four and Tris. Max and Eric quickly move to talk with Four and Tris. I feel fleeting thoughts from all of them, and I can't help but groan.

"Another fucking new rule."

"The fights today will be scored. You will each fight once today. After that we will have a few days of more advanced training before the next fight. You will have a total of five fights to be scored on." Four says in his indifferent tone.

"How long do we fight for?" A Candor named Warren asks.

"Till one of you can't continue. Or one of you concedes. According to the old rules." Tris says, clearly uneasy at what is going to come next.

"New rules, no one concedes." Eric chimes in.

This sets off the murmurs and whispers. It's the first fight, and more than a few people were nervous about what would happen if they weren't allowed to concede.

"First fighters will be Tam and Volger." Max bellows out.

And this sets off a whole other set of murmurs and whispers. Eric looks moderately shocked and turns to question Max. I'm far enough away I shouldn't be able to hear them, but I know what they are saying none the less, and I feel her cold manipulative hands all around me.

"Two by two, hands of blue."

I inwardly groan again. Of course this was her doing, one I am sure Jeanine was very specific about after the incident report likely hit her desk this morning. All leaders, regardless of faction, received reports so that they knew what was going on during training. It kept everyone 'accountable.' More like it made it easier for Jeanine to spy on everyone.

I grit my teeth and approach the ring. Volger looks like he is practically salivating at the chance to rip my head off. I don't say anything as I hoist myself up onto the platform and ready myself for the fight.

"Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing." I remind myself to be water, to be a River… to flow with the fight.

"You'll be scored on this, so fight hard." Four says with a small amount of concern in his voice. I know it's directed at me.

I countdown silently, as the music only I can hear gets louder in my head. Three, two, one…

"Go!" Four yells, and Volger launches himself at me.

His form is sloppy, he's letting his hatred of me cloud his judgement. I easily sidestep his first attack. This angers him and makes him pause to re-evaluate his next attack.

It's then that I fully feel and hear it… feel the adrenaline flood my limbs, feel the nerve endings inside me begin to spring to life, the hidden melody of this 'dance' rise up and hit full volume. It's not my memory, but theirs. Every tactic they used in a fight, every strategy. I am a conduit for all of their collective memories. My arms and legs become fluid, and I fall into step as if it is a dance I'd memorized the choreography for and danced a hundred times.

On Volger's next attack, I sidestep and counter with a punch to his throat. He stumbles back, choking for air. I don't give him time to recover.

My strikes are hard and fast. Each one hitting another point on his body that inflicts the most amount of pain with the least amount of force. Groin, throat, liver… and at one point when he tries to grab me I chop down as hard as I can onto the plaster covering the stitches of his arm.

He howls, clearly seeing red. Good, he looks better in red than blue. He makes another attempt to rush me, to overcome me with brute force. I use this against him and flip him over my body. He lands with the wind knocked out of him. It's then that I rain down an onslaught of strikes directly onto his face.

I don't hear them call to me to stop. I don't hear both Four and Eric climbing up on the platform with the intent of separating us. I don't even feel Eric when he physically hoists me off the limp form of Volger. The music is too loud to hear anything but what it tells me to do, and all I want to do is beat every last speck of blue out of Volger.

When the music does subside, all I feel is the wetness of Volger's blood on my knuckles, and the satisfaction that I beat his face to a bloody pulp.

XXX

Eric doesn't let me down when we get off the platform. He doesn't even let me down when we make it outside the training room. He just continues to carry me through Dauntless over his shoulder, like I'm a lifeless sack.

"I can walk." I say after we make it past the Pit and towards one of the exterior stairwells.

This seems to break Eric out of whatever trance he had been in, and he sets me down. He quickly grabs on to my upper arm and continues to drag me along.

I roll my eyes at the back of his head as he drags me up several flights of stairs. We finally make it to the roof and he slams the door behind us.

I look out over the city for a minute, letting the slight breeze in the air play on my skin. I hold my hand out like it is a leaf on the wind.

"Where did you learn to fight like that." Eric asks after a minute.

I don't answer.

"There is no way that you would learn how to fight like that from Four or Tris." He voices the thoughts in his head. "So who taught you to fight."

Again, I don't answer. It's still so complicated… and I shouldn't have beaten Volger as well as I had if I intended to stay under the radar. But the music had called to me, had carried me away on its melody. And all I saw was her hands of blue trying to reach out, trying to snatch me back to my own personal hell.

Eric's patience has grown thin. "Your Leader asked you a question… Don't make me ask it again."

I drop my hand and let out a sigh. I turn and regard Eric. His stance screams of tightly wound tension, ready to lash out.

For a second I wonder if he is in fact still the Eric I knew. Could I trust him?

My face must give away what I am thinking. He's taken aback momentarily. He realizes he's falling into his routine, the one that keeps others away. He doesn't want to do that with me. His mind softens along with his stance. "You can trust me little mouse."

"You and Simon, were always very smart. Top of your class, each with a brilliant mind. Gifted." I say as I move to one of the edges of the building and sit down, my feet dangling over the edge.

"When you both left, everything changed. There was no more hiding, no more being left to my own devices."

Eric moves to sit next to me silently, paying close attention to what I am saying.

"She took everything, everything I loved was stripped away." The pinpricks along my scalp begin to itch, and I involuntarily begin to scratch at them with my nails on my right hand.

"You remember her specialty, right? Behavioral Neuroscience?" I look over at Eric, who's gaze is trained solely on me. "I became her pet project. She was constantly probing, experimenting, testing…" I say as I reach out with my other hand and take Eric's from the side of the ledge.

I bring it up to my scalp and press his fingers to where he can feel the scars. His eyes widen only a millimeter as he starts to feel all around my scalp, but enough to show he knows. He knows what scars feel like underneath his fingertips. Each one stokes his anger a little more.

"Everything became about my mind… and how to break it apart and put it back together the way she wanted. Like a broken doll. She wanted to trigger certain responses, essentially reprogram me to fit the ideals she tried to fill me with. It was a constant barrage of simulations. And each time I responded in a way that… displeased her… she would subject me to something worse."

Eric's anger seeps off him in waves. It isn't directed at me, but rather for me…which is comforting in a sense. He finally takes his hand away from head and places it back down on the ledge.

"Did it work?" He asks carefully.

The itching dulls, and I take my hand away. "Not the way she wanted."

"So what happened?"

"She broke me… my mind. It took her about four years, but she did it. I just don't think she realized to what extent."

"What do you mean?" His Erudite is showing with each question, he wants to know everything.

I take a breath and continue. "She stripped my amygdala. She spent four years trying to create a puppet, something only capable of doing and feeling nothing except what she 'programed' me to do. Instead, I absorb everything." I look at him to make sure he understands what I am saying.

He comprehends, and is beginning to fully understand. "She made you divergent."

I nod the affirmative. "I think it was always there… but what she did amplified it… and other things. I…I can feel… and hear… peoples thoughts, certain memories…"

"Can you imagine what I would do if I could do all I can?"

"You're a reader."

I merely nod. "Sometimes it's a whisper, other times it's like someone said it out loud. Sometimes I get flashes of memories someone is subconsciously thinking about."

We sit there, silently, for a few more minutes while he takes everything in. He's skeptical. But there was nothing else to explain what I was able to do in that fight, how I had been excelling at all of the training so far. He wants to test what I claim.

I sigh. Of course he does. I get up and move off the ledge, back towards the door to the stairwell. He gets up quickly and follows after me. Pressing his weight to keep the door closed as my hand grabs the handle to open it.

XXX

AN: Sorry, shelter in place and work have been hectic/ stressful. Hope you liked this update.