It was a bad day inside the simulation today. Well, every day is a bad day, but today was a really bad one. For a moment, Skye allows herself to miss Amity, miss its simplicity and beauty, miss the comfort and support that came from everyone around her. Then, like she always does, she pushes away the thoughts of the life she used to lead. You chose Dauntless for a reason, she reminds herself.

Still, today the thoughts linger, protruding into her consciousness even as she tries to pretend them away. She finds a quiet space where she knows she can be alone. Leaning her shoulder into the wall, she tries to remind herself about the reasons she left, but the only memories that will come to mind are the happy ones, and she feels tears burning behind her eyes.

"Are you okay?" a voice comes from behind her.

She turns, expecting to see anyone other than the boy who walks toward her. "Ward, hi. Yeah, I'm fine." She swallows hard; the tears can fall later, but not now, not in front of him.

"You sure?"

"Yeah." She pauses, then asks "Why do you ask?"

He shrugs. "Thought you might need a friend, is all. I know the simulations can get pretty bad."

"It's still better than the first phase, though. I'm not a fan of getting the crap beat out of me." She intended her comment to be snide, but it comes out far more bitter than she meant it to.

"You're not…mad, are you?" He shakes his head, as if he's horrified that she might think so low of him. "Skye, that wasn't me. That was…it was what we had to do. I never meant for you to get hurt. I just did what I had to do."

He smiles. "Besides, you held your own pretty well. They teach you to play possum in Amity?"

"Yeah, around the same time Candor teaches hand-to-hand combat," she retorts.

He brushes a lock of hair off his face. "Look, I was going to ask you something. I know each faction has their own way of doing this, but I don't know the Dauntless way, and I don't think I could pull off the Amity way even if I knew it, so I'm just going to go for brutal Candor: I really like you, and do you think there's any chance we could go out together some time?"

She pauses, and he takes her hesitation as a sign that she misunderstood him. "As in a date," he supplies helpfully.

"Why?" she finally spurts out. "We have nothing in common. Girls from Amity don't date boys from Candor."

"Yeah," he agrees, "but we're both Dauntless now."

She shakes her head. "I don't even know if I'll be able to make it through initiation."

He takes her hand. Factions have different standards for physical contact. Amity embraces it, and Skye doubts that she went a single day there without at least one hug, one reassuring hand pat, one ruffle of her hair. In Dauntless, though, contact is reserved for purposeful actions: you fight your opponent, you help them off the mat, you bandage their wounds and they bandage yours. Pointless contact has no place in the practical Dauntless compound. She isn't sure how Candor views touching, what Ward was raised to believe, but she can see in his eyes that this isn't an empty gesture to him. The firm pressure that the pads of his fingers apply to the bones of her hand, the way his thumb fits into the crook between her thumb and forefinger, all of it tells her that this action means something.

His voice drops to barely above a whisper. "I could help you."

"How?" she asks, startled. "Is there a secret to the simulations?"

"There's a few tricks," he admits. "I could teach you."

She hesitates, then leans back, pulling her hand out of his. "What's wrong?" he asks.

"What's in it for you?" she asks. "You're not the kind of guy who helps someone out of the kindness of his heart. Why are you offering to help me boost my ranking?"

"Because I want to see you become a full-fledged Dauntless."

"Why?"

"Because you were right."

"What?"

"Amity girls don't date Candor boys." He gently touches her face, and she's too startled and intrigued to stop him. "But a Dauntless girl and a Dauntless boy…that wouldn't turn any heads at all."

He goes to leave, then stops and turns back to her. "Well, that's not entirely true. You'll always turn heads."