Previously...

I scrunch my eyes shut, trying to get rid of the pit at the bottom of my stomach. But, I can't. I can't, I can't, I can't. I grab onto the edge of the sink in frustration and open my eyes again. My muscles tense up as I stare at the scared reflection. I clench my jaw and grip tighter onto the sink. I'm angry, angry at myself for feeling insecure when there is no reason to. I try to push the anger down as well, but instead, it flares. Quick as a flash, I punch the mirror.

Instead of breaking it, my fist collides with the tough glass and bounces back. I recoil, bringing my fist to my chest. I stand there for a second, every feeling gone except the anger, which hasn't found its satisfaction. I stare my fist, it's already turning slightly purple. I cuss under my breath and then grab a hair elastic from my wrist and tie up my hair. I, quietly as possible, storm out of the dorms, trying to find a place that can calm me down.

Chapter 2

Matters Of Training

I wander around the compound for a while, trying to find the training room. I decided that going to the training room was a good idea, as yesterday I saw some punching bags in there, which means that I can punch something that isn't unbreakable like the mirror. However, I cannot find the training room, and seem to have gotten lost in the maze that is the Dauntless compound. I curse as I walk to another dead-end and turn around, walking back the way I came. But that doesn't help either and soon I'm facing another dead-end. I curse again loudly and spin around.

But, I'm stopped by someone. It takes me a second to realize what's happening. "What are you doing, initiate?" A cold voice demands. I look up and meet the stare of none other than Eric, the hot but scary Dauntless leader. I gawk for a second and he stares at me with his unimpressed, blue-grey eyes. "I'm lost." I manage to say, despite one the intimidating man's large hands on my shoulder, gripping me tightly. He rolls his eyes and sighs slightly, "Obviously, initiate. Why are you lost?" he says, emphasizing the 'why'.

"I'm looking for the training room."

He raises his eyebrows slightly, "Why?"

"I wanna practice early so that I'm better than the others," I lie quickly, opting not to tell him about my existential crisis.

He stops to think for a second, staring at me in thought. "Well, your nowhere near the training room, initiate."

"I know." I retort.

"Shut it, initiate. No talking back." he snaps, his icy blue eyes narrowing.

I bite my lips, holding back a snarky comment that I would have said if I was in Candor. "Follow me," he growls and turns.

I follow him in silence, hoping that the walk isn't far, so that I can avoid this awkward silence. Luckily, the walk isn't that long, but it's longer than I'd have liked. When we reach the training room, Eric stops and pulls out some keys from his pocket. He sorts through them and then with the right one unlocks the door. He opens the door and steps aside, waving me through in a way that seems bitterly sarcastic. But, he stops me before I can walk through, by grabbing at my wrist. I turn to face him, ready to give him a Candor tongue-lashing that I knew I was going to regret. Yet, I don't, because he is staring at my slightly purple knuckles. "What's this?" he says, staring at my hand with his intense glare.

"Nothing." I whimper.

"Tell me the truth, Candor." he snarls.

I'm slightly surprised that he knows my faction of origin, despite his 'I don't give a crap' attitude. Sighing, I relent, "I punched a mirror."

He looks up at me, a hint of confusion in his eyes, "Why the fuck would you do that?"

"I dunno. I was feeling kinda pissed when I woke up." I say, shrugging my shoulders, hoping that he takes my lie. I don't want to have to explain my insecurity to the fearless leader, who would probably kick me out of Dauntless if I told him. He takes the lie and lets me through to the training room. I walk down the steps and towards the punching bags when I hear the door shut. I turn around to see Eric following me, now looking at a tablet in his hands. He looks up at me, glaring again. I send him a quizzical look and he seems to get the message by answering, "I have to stay with you. Initiates aren't allowed in the training room by themselves." I nod at him and continue walking to the punching bag.

I stop by the first one and get myself ready. However, I'm stopped by a "That's wrong." I turn to glare at Eric, the anger that was settling down now bubbling again. He sighs and walks closer to me. "First rule when fighting, arms up." He lifts up my arms so that they are positioned in front of my chest. "Second rule," he continues, "feet apart so that you don't lose balance." He kicks my feet to move them into the right position. "Third rule, don't put your thumbs inside your fists," he says grabbing my hands, re-positing my thumbs, and then putting my fists back in place. "If you have your thumbs inside your fists, you could break them when punching. If your fist was like that when you punched that mirror, you're lucky to have only bruised it."

"Uh, thanks," I say, not really sure what I should be doing after his advice.

"Now attack," he motions towards the bag in front of me. I punch forward and hit the bag hesitantly. Eric sighs, "Harder." I punch again, this time with my bruised fist, and bite back a wince as the sore skin lands against the bag. "And be careful with that fist, it's bruised so when you punch it's gonna hurt like a bitch." Eric adds. I nod and punch again. "Harder." Eric says each time I punch the bag. However I'm putting all my strength into these punches so harder isn't really an option. "You have literally no muscle at the moment," Eric observes, "but, in a fight you'll need to be strong enough to knock your opponent down." I nod and continue punching. Eric walks closer to me and puts his hand on my back. I stop and look at him. "Tense your stomach and your arms, that'll mean that you might have enough strength to knock someone down."

"Okay." I nod, tensing just at the feeling of his hand on my back.

"It would also help if you're feeling a little pissed," Eric adds.

"Why?"

"I'm sure that when you punched that mirror, you felt strong enough to break it."

"Yeah, but I didn't break it."

Eric snorts, "That's because you have no muscle. I'm sure that when you've finished physical training, you'll be able to break a mirror. But, anger will help you in a fight. You may not have been able to break that mirror, but I'm pretty sure that punch would have been able to knock someone down."

"How do you know that?"

"You're knuckles are bright purple, initiate. Now, continue punching." He growls.

I start punching again, and Eric removes his hand from my back. I continue punching for a long while, Eric staring at his tablet and occasionally looking up at me. Soon, I've worked up a sweat and both my knuckles are slightly bruised. "Enough," Eric commands. I stop punching and turn to face the leader. I wipe the sweat from my forehead. "Follow me," he says in a similar way to when I first saw him this morning. We walk in silence, but I don't mind as it seems more comfortable than talking with him. Shortly, we are at the Pit, where a few people are milling around.

I stand near Eric, not sure what to do as I don't see any other transfers. Eric leaves me to go sit on a small wall, so I decide to sit down on a ledge just a short way from him. I sit there doing nothing, but I can feel Eric's gaze on me. I try not to look back, but in the end I turn to look at him. He raises a pierced eyebrow at me. I turn away again, but look back when I feel that his glare has drifted from me. He's looking across the Pit at some fight that's happening, but doesn't get up to stop it. He doesn't notice me staring at him, so I am able to have a good look at my hot dauntless leader. His arms are huge, built up with pure muscle. And on his forearms he has intricate tattoos, that remind me of a maze. They're really quite stunning. I look up again, to find him staring at me. He smirks, sending me an unknown message. I turn away, but continue to think about him. His smirk is something that I haven't seen. It's small and slightly lopsided, one side curling up higher than the other. It actually makes him look quite cute. So, Eric the scary Dauntless leader, is unbelievably hot and cute when he smiles. I smile to myself a little. But my train of thought is interrupted by someone.

"Hey, Eddi. Where were you this morning?" I look up to see Christina and the rest of the transfers walking over to me.

"I was here. Did you forget that they told us to meet in the Pit last night?" I answer her.

"Did they? Oh well, we're here now." Chris smiles. I quickly realize my bruised hands are on show, so I fold my arms to hide the sore skin. I don't want people to find out about my fight with the mirror, or my early training with Eric.

We sit there and chat for a minute before Four begins telling us about the initiation. He tells us that there are two stages, one where we learn to fight, and one where we face our fears. He also tells us that we will be ranked with the Dauntless-born to workout who get's what job. Then, Eric gives us some amazing news, "The rankings will also determine who gets cut." I look up at Eric, who has walked over to us now.

"Cut?" Chris asks in surprise.

"At the end of each stage of training, the lowest ranking initiates will be leaving us," Eric informs us, his voice steely cold, not showing any remorse.

Eric then informs us that we'll become factionless if we fail. Oh, that's fucking brilliant. But the others decide to speak up, giving Eric the chance to growl at them: "Why? Would you have chosen differently? Or out of fear? Well if that s the case, you might as well get out now. If you're really one of us it won t matter to you that you might fail. Now you chose us, now we get to choose you."

I pull off my sweaty tank top and throw it to the end of the bed. "How do you think training went?" Chris asks from her cot. I look up, whilst grabbing a clean t-shirt from under my bed.

"It was okay, though my hands are already bruised," I say, weaving a lie to escape having to tell my friends about this morning.

"Yeah, mine are too." Will tell us, cutting into the conversation as he walks over to his nearby cot.

"I think everyone has been bruised today," Tris adds, changing into the baggy outfit she wore yesterday.

Everyone laughs a little, knowing the hard work that our trainers have put us through on our first day of training. "So, guys," Chris asks us, "what do you wanna do tonight?"

"Clothes shopping," I suggest instantly, staring at the pile of bland clothes that I've pulled out from under my cot.

"Yeah, definitely. The stuff they've given us is ugly and baggy." Chris adds.

"I'll come," Tris says. We nod our heads and turn to Will and Al who are sitting adjacent to us.

"No, I think I'll get some things later," Will tell us.

"Yeah, me too," Al adds.

I stand up and turn back to the girls, clapping my hands together. "Okay then, let's go."

We leave our sleeping quarters and walk towards the Pit. Dauntless is truly amazing in my point of view. Despite the dark, craggy rock that the compound is made from, it seems to have a light energy about it. It's unique to Dauntless and no other place has it. I love how it's designed, with a random place or thing here and there, as if someone was playing drunken darts to see where a bridge or shop would be. The light that comes in from the roof of the Pit is beautiful, illuminating the entire space naturally, something that you wouldn't expect for the Dauntless. It's where I belong, unlike Candor or any other faction. I already love it here.

After we went shopping, we went back to our quarters to try on some of the stuff we bought. Tris ends up in a shortish, black dress and some nice heels. Chris also convinced Tris to put on some eyeliner and it definitely is noticeable. Chris herself has put on a black romper suit and some red sandals. I decided to wear some dark green denim shorts, a black tank top, and a dark green faux leather jacket. We then decided to go back out to the Pit again.

So, whilst Chris and Tris are checking out some of the stores in Dauntless, I've opted to wait in the Pit for Al and Will, who said they'd meet us. I sit alone awkwardly, as sitting alone is always awkward. Even though it's awkward, it's actually not boring. I watch as others walk past, doing their own things. I even get to watch a small fight between some of the older Dauntless; they are clearly more skilled than any of us initiates but show what we are aiming to be. I'm so wound up in watching the world go by that I jump when someone stops right in front of me. "Initiate." I look up to see Eric glaring at me with his stony glare.

"Eric," I respond, slightly confused.

"Are you going to be training tomorrow? In the morning, like today."

I stay silent, still slightly confused to why this conversation is happening. "You said that you wanted to be better than the others so I assumed that you'd wanna use the training room every morning."

"Yeah, I do. But why are you asking me about it?" I ask, noticing his stare harden more as I speak. So, Eric doesn't like people asking questions. Why is that? Though why am I interested in Eric is a more important question. Maybe it's because he's hot. But he's terrifying too. Who'd wanna know about someone who scares the shit outta them? A madman. Oh great, I'm mad; I'll just add that to the list of bad things about me. Or maybe it's because I wanna see if there's actually a good person underneath the hostile wall that Eric puts up. But it's more likely that I'm just mad.

"Did you forget what I said this morning?" Eric snaps back with a question of his own. I look blankly at him, trying to remember. "I said that you're not allowed in the training room by yourself, initiate!" he growls before I have any real chance to think.

"Uh, okay." I nod, feeling uncomfortable.

"So, you'll be meeting me in the Pit tomorrow at the same time as today?"

"Uh, okay." I say again but add, "What time is that as I didn't know what the time was this morning?"

"How did you not know the time?" he counters with his own question. He really doesn't like answering questions.

"I couldn't find anything that could tell me the time."

"You could've asked me."

"I didn't think of that."

He smirks in some kind of victory and then suggests, "How 'bout try to get here around 6, okay?"

"I'll try. I wanna be better than the others and also I kinda enjoyed training without any other initiates there." I nod.

Unexpectedly, Eric leans towards me so that his lips are by my ear. I can feel his breath, hot and tingly against my skin. I can smell him too: aftershave, hair gel, and mint. He whispers deeply, in a tone of voice I do not recognize, "Good." He steps back and turns away, with a lopsided smirk gracing his lips.

I sit there dumbfounded. What the hell was that about? Then it hits me. He saw me checking him out this morning and now he's getting me back. But then again, he could have just been trying to intimidate me. I dunno. He was less cold this morning but then he has shouted at me a lot today. But he shouted at everyone. Just now he said that it was good that I wanted to train with him. I seriously do not know. I guess I'll see what happens tomorrow.

There you go... Thank you for reading! Please follow, favorite and review! The next chapter will probably be up in maybe a week or so. Visit me on instagram on either totallynotalivenow or totallynotdeadyet for awesome content.See you guys later...

ThatOneGirl: Thank you! When I write, I always try to get into the head of the character and especially in the first person, I try to blend in the thoughts with the narrative. I know that writing is hard (I took me a week to write this) and sometimes when you put it out on the internet, people criticize your writing because of a few mistakes that can be fixed. If you want to write then do it and try your hardest. If you want any help with your writing, I could help. Just go to either of my instagrams ( totallynotdeadyet or totallynotalivenow) and DM me. Thank you again for reviewing.