Most of you have heard about Truths and Lies and Over the Years being deleted, but being reposted when this story and the Beauty of One are finished, right?
Okay. I'm still really upset about that.
Anyway.
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Next chapter is where the action starts!
Chapter XVIII. I'm Sorry
BEATRICE
I open my eyes to find myself in the Pit. The rocky walls are illuminated by the dark, hanging blue ceiling lamps. Suddenly, I feel arms wrap around me and a blindfold covers my vision. They punch and hit me, and I can't think.
Even if I was nearly killed days ago, I am still not healed. The pain is unbearable, like Marcus' 'teachings'.
I start screaming, thrashing and punching out everywhere at my faceless attackers. Tears stain my blindfold, and run down my face.
Suddenly the fear freezes. I can't move anything, or feel anything. "Stop!" I hear a manly, stern voice yell.
Tobias.
A pain strikes my temple, beating so fast I forcibly squeeze my eyes shut. I open them to be back in the Fear Landscape room with Lauren and Tobias. He walks over to me.
"What the hell was that, Four?" He sternly says, and pulls me up to my feet.
"I," I hiccup. "I didn't-"
"Get yourself together!" He shouts. "This is pathetic."
I feel more tears prickling at my eyelids. I look at him, then my blood boils. I pull my arm back, and make a hard imprint on his cheek with my palm.
"Shut up!" I scream, yanking my arm from his grasp, storming out of the room.
I exit out the back door so the other initiates wouldn't ask questions. I don't know why I just exploded like that. I start feeling guilty.
I.
Just.
Hit.
Tobias.
More tears stream down my face.
I'm a monster… NO!
I shake my head.
I will never be Marcus. I breathe deeply, evening out my breaths. I run to the spot at the chasm.
Good and bad memories haunt this place.
The chasm that took Al's life, but the same chasm that held my first kiss. Those forced ones by Marcus didn't count. My true first kiss with the only man I love.
With who?
Tobias.
-o0o-
I stay by the chasm for a while.
I hear voices. "Why'd you go see Caleb?! You know you have to stay in Dauntless for initiation training Tobias!" Eric.
I hear a groan, and a slamming of a door. I look up to see Tobias storming out of Eric's office. I climb out of my hiding place and follow him, seeing that he is walking to the unsupervised hallway where he had noticed that I was Divergent.
"Tobias?" I say.
He turns around and he breaks out into a scowl.
"Are you alright?" I ask.
"Well, first I had to chat with the woman who's trying to ruin our old faction, then Eric almost kicked me out of Dauntless, with my friends. So yeah, it's shaping up to be a pretty great day, Four," His voice drips with sarcasm.
I frown when he calls me Four instead of Beatrice.
"I'm sorry for exploding at you earlier. But why did you yell at me? You can either be a cruel instructor or a concerned boyfriend. You can't play both parts at the same time," I say.
"I'm not cruel," He says, scowling. "I was protecting you this morning. How do you think Peter and his asshat friends would have reacted if they discovered that you and I were…" He drifts off, but I can finish the sentence in my head.
He sighs. "You would never win. They would always call your high ranking a result of my favoritism rather than your skill."
I open my mouth to object, but I realize.
He's right.
"You didn't have to insult me to prove something to them," I weakly say, staring at the floor. "And you didn't have to run off to your brother just because I hurt you," Caleb's his brother, in Erudite. He looks embarrassed, and rubs the back of his neck.
"Besides, it worked, didn't it?" I ask calmly.
"At my expense." He reasons.
"I didn't think it would affect you this way," I admit. "Sometimes I forget that I can hurt you, that anyone is capable of being hurt," I genuinely apologize. Sometimes I can't control my anger.
I must've said something good, because he holds my face in his arms and kisses me.
"You're brilliant, you know?" I say, shaking my head. "You always know what to do."
"Only because I've been thinking about this for a long time," He says, kissing me again.
"How would I handle it if you and I were…" I can feel his lips smiling on mine. He pulls away and smirks.
"Did I hear you call me your boyfriend, Beatrice?" He asks slyly.
I shrug. "Not exactly." I blush. "Why? Do you want me to?"
He tips my chin up gently, our eyes meeting.
"Yes,"
He kisses me again, gently and loving.
He abruptly pulls away and I think I did something wrong.
"There's something I have to tell you," He says grimly.
"What is it?"
"Not now. Meet me back here at 11:30. Don't tell anyone where you're going."
I nod, and peck him once again on the lips, and walk back to the dormitory with a smile on my face.
"Hey Four. Why so happy? And where were you?" Christina asks.
"I was walking around the Pit." I make up an excuse.
"Goodnight Christina, Will." I say, after taking a shower and changing.
"Night," They respond in unison. The lights turn off and I wait until I hear the steady breathing of my fellow initiates. I tip-toe from my bed and slowly open the door, careful of it creaking. I walk swiftly to our hidden hallway, careful of running into any Dauntless members. Its past curfew, and I'd be in trouble.
I sneak to our hidden hallway, where Tobias stands. I run up to him and kiss him. He smiles into the kiss. I pull back after a few seconds.
"What did you need to tell me?" I ask.
His face turns grim.
"Follow me."
I follow him to the train tracks, and we jump onto an incoming train.
We sit by the train wall on the floor, side-by-side.
I hear the screech of the rails as the train slows, which means we must be nearing the middle of the city. The air is cold, but his lips are warm and so are his hands. He tilts his head and kisses the skin just beneath my jaw.
I'm glad the air is so loud that he can't hear my sigh.
I shift, swinging a leg over him so I straddle him, and kiss him. I can feel the nervousness in his heartbeat so I calm down.
He does have a fear of intimacy.
He deepens the kiss. I press my hands to my legs to stop them from shaking.
I should not be nervous.
This is Tobias.
Not a drunk Marcus.
Tobias.
I zip his jacket down slowly, and feel him shiver slightly. I pull away and look carefully at the tattoos just above his collarbone. I brush my fingers over them, and I smile.
"Birds." I say. "Are they crows? I keep forgetting to ask."
He smiles. "Ravens. One for each member of my family. You like them?"
My heart drops to my stomach when he says family.
I don't answer. I just tug him closer, and kiss each raven in turn. He closes his eyes.
We talk and kiss for awhile, until Tobias touches my cheek.
"I hate to say this," he says, "but we have to get up now."
I nod and open my eyes. We both stand, and walk to the open door of the train car.
The wind has died down since the train has slowed.
I look at my watch. Midnight.
The street lights are all dark. I see a bright star standing out from all the patches of dark towering buildings.
Tobias points at it. "Apparently the city ordinances don't mean anything to them," he says, "because their lights will be on all night."
"No one else has noticed?" I ask, frowning.
"I'm sure they have, but they haven't done anything to stop it. It may be because they don't want to cause a problem over something so small." He replies with a shrug, but the tension in his features worries me.
"Wonder what the Erudite are doing that requires night light." I wonder aloud.
I turn toward him, leaning against the wall.
"Two things you should know about me. The first is that I am deeply suspicious of people in general. It is my nature to expect the worst of them." He says, "And the second is that I am unexpectedly good with computers."
I nod. He mentioned earlier on that aside from being a Faction Ambassador, he works with computers in the control room, but I still have trouble picturing him sitting in front of a screen all day.
"A few weeks ago, before training started, I was at work and I found a way into the Dauntless secure files. Apparently we are not as skilled as the Erudite are at security," he says, "and what I discovered was what looked like war plans. Thinly veiled commands, supply lists, maps. Things like that. And those files were sent by Erudite."
"War?" I ask hesitantly, brushing my hair away from my face.
Listening to my father insult Erudite all of my life, then beating me have made a permanent mark-scars and all-in my brain that I should quite be wary of them.
After all, what if people start believing those articles?
But all my life experiences have added up to me being suspicious of authority and human beings in general anyway, so I am actually not that surprised that a faction could be planning a war.
Which is ironic, really, the factions were first established to keep the peace between society.
"Something big is happening Beatrice." He says.
Beatrice. Even If I love the sound of my real name rolling off of his tongue...it feels, foreign.
Abnegation.
I need to forget the grey and become the black.
"Beatrice sounds too...Abnegation," I say.
"Well, how about...Tris?" he offers. I smile.
"Tris, that is what you will call me when we're alone." I confirm, kissing him on the cheek.
"The big thing though...War on Abnegation?" I ask.
He laces his fingers with mine and says, "The faction that controls the government. Yes."
My stomach sinks.
"All those reports are supposed to stir up dissension against Abnegation," he says, eyes focused on the city moving in front of us.
"Evidently the Erudite now want to speed up the process. I have no idea what to do about it...or what could even be done."
I meet his gaze. "But...why would Erudite team up with Dauntless?" I say.
Then it hits me.
Erudite doesn't have any weapons, and have no experience in fighting-
but the Dauntless do.
"They're going to use us." I say, staring wide-eyed at Tobias.
"I wonder," he says, "how they plan to get us to fight. I told Caleb that the Erudite know how to manipulate people. They could coerce some of us into fighting with misinformation, or by appealing to greed-any number of ways. But the Erudite are as meticulous as they are manipulative, so they wouldn't leave it up to chance. They would need to make sure that all their weaknesses are shored up."
Then he looks at me, curiously and says, "But how?"
The wind blows my hair across my face, cutting my vision into strips, and I leave it there.
"I don't know," I say. "But what will happen then?"
He looks down for a moment, then looks back at me. "I don't know, but if the war will occur anytime soon, we have to stay together Tris,"
I nod. "When it does, just remember; that's what you and I do...protect each other."
The rest of the trip, we hold hands and stare out into the retreating view of the city.
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Q: the last sentence Tris says in this chapter, the part after the ;, is from a different book.
NAME WHO SAYS IT AND WHAT BOOK! HINT: MY OTHER FANDOM!
P.S. Beatrice was nicknamed Tris by Tobias, so yes, she IS TRIS now.
P.P.S Sorry to confuse you, but if the chapter says Four, Tris, or Beatrice, it's in Tris' perspective, not Tobias', and from now on it WILL SAY TRIS INSTEAD OF FOUR, but only Tobias knows its Beatrice/tris, and to others, Four.
Ughhhh sorry, I know, confusing.
LE SHIPNAME IS BACK TO TRIBIAS!
~TrissyPoo