Chapter 16 (Skye's POV)
I can't say I'm not disappointed, because I honestly am. I thought that she did like me back, but she apparently doesn't. She's doing it just for me to help her and make her pass initiation. Yet, I cannot refuse her request. It is, after all, a chance to prove to her what I can do.
That was probably just what Snow was saying to Aly. Telling her to use me so she could get past initiation.
And if I get her past initiation, then I could have more time with her. It's so strange, because I never knew someone like her before, well, before Capture the Flag, as Snow (or was it Tesa?) said. But there's just something about her that I cannot resist…
"Uh, Skye? Where are you going?" Aly asks me, jarring me out of my thoughts.
Oh. Whoops, I think. I had walked passed Training Room 1. Ugh. Way to go, Skye!
I push the door and walk inside after a glance to make sure it was empty, Aly trailing behind me.
I stop somewhere in the middle of the room, near the ring. Turning to her, but not looking in her eyes, I ask, "Where do you want to begin?"
"Dunno. What, in your opinion, is the most important factor in a fight?" she asks.
Hmm… After a little pondering, I finally reply, "Well, it's always good to know the techniques that you are performing, but since I'm sure that Tris and Four will teach you those tomorrow, I won't talk about that much. Something that's just as important though is speed and strength, since you cannot really deliver a punch or kick if you don't have power and speed behind it. So we could work on your reactions and strength. It's only,"—I check my wristwatch—"one o clock. We can continue working until around 5:30-ish so you have half an hour to clean up and go to the cafeteria to get dinner. Is that alright?"
She nods, a lock of hair displaced. I wish I could move it back.
"Let's work on your reactions… Hm… How about this: I am going to punch you, kick you, or throw you. You have to dodge, block, or weave through my attacks, just like Tris did this morning. Since you're smaller than me, it would be very hard for you to block an attack, so you'd do better just dodging and weaving through them instead. That's how Tris rose so quickly in ranks last year. If she tried blocking the attacks from her opponent, she'd probably be in the infirmary a lot more often. So, point is, don't try to block the attack of the opponent if you know he's stronger than you are. Ready?"
She nods again, and gets into the stance that Tris got into this morning.
"Oh right. Stances. Before we get to actually doing anything, you need to know how to stand. Your legs are too close together. That means you are not as balanced as you could, and should, be. See?" Before giving her time to react, I pull a leg out from under her with my foot, and she falls, but not before I catch her. I quickly let go and she stands again, legs wider apart this time. "And bend them a little, so you have some spring when you lunge to attack. Great. Now, ready?"
She's in a somewhat good stance, so I get into one easily. I don't even need to check, I've been doing this for years, anyway. I lunge forward and attempt to punch her in the face, and she leans back, my fist barely touching her face. "Freeze!" I yell. She instantly stops moving, her back still bent, a bewildered expression on her face.
After a few seconds of inspection, I tell her, "Don't lean back like that, your back will hurt, and you're also very off balance. Although you did dodge my punch, so not so bad."
She looks pleased at the compliment, and then proceeds to ask, "If you don't want me leaning back when you punch like that, how am I supposed to dodge it?"
"Simple," I reply, "You know how you're putting most of your weight on your front leg now, but still have your back leg a little bent for spring and balance? Lean on your back leg and shift back a little. Good. Now, you're out of my reach. Or, you could do the easy thing, and duck, but that's not really good when you're fighting experienced fighters, because they can take advantage of you not seeing them for a few moments. Or, you could use your legs to shift your body to your right or left. Like this." I demonstrate by moving my legs to each side a little bit, and she imitates. "Good. Let's try that again."
I lunge to punch her in the face and she moves a little to the left, just enough to miss my fist.
About three hours later, she is more or less able to dodge any punch I throw at her, whether it is from the left, right, or front. She learns very quickly, I think, and smile a little before saying, "You're more or less able to dodge a punch that is thrown by itself. Drop and give me thirty knuckle pushups and forty sit ups."
She looks a little tired from dodging and weaving through countless punches, but does thirty knuckle pushups without complaint anyway. When she reaches the twenty mark, I smile—she hasn't stopped the pushups yet, but now, she drops to the floor. "Get up, Alyssa, up!"
Grumbling too low for me to hear, she gets up and continues her pushups, but notices me smiling and says in an amused tone, "Stop smiling, do them with me. You look like you enjoying my pain. Sadistic."
Like her, I drop and do the pushups without complaint, but I am able to finish all thirty of them faster than she can finish her 10. "Not fair!" she complains, while I grin. "Do the sit ups now, and stop showing off, Skye."
"Yes, ma'am," I reply cheerfully, fully intending to show off.
Less than a minute later, I jump up and say, "Done!" with a triumphant tone to my voice. She's still doing the sit ups.
When she's finally done, she stands up and grumbles "Show off."
"It's time for strength stuff now! Basically, you're going to do pull ups and more pushups and more sit ups and a bunch of other exercises while I sit and watch."
"Why can't you do them with me?" she asks, annoyed. She looks so cute when she's annoyed.
"Because I already did them so many times, there's really no need to do more."
"So you're going to waste your afternoon just sitting there and watching someone do exercises?"
"Pretty much. Now get started with twenty pull ups."
"Uh… What's a pull up?" she asks hesitantly after a few seconds.
"You never did a pull up before?" I ask, shocked. What do they do in Amity?!
"No…" she replies, flustered. I smile and reach up to the bar above my head with both hands and pull up. "See this bar? You put your hands on it and you pull up. Simple."
"Oh. Now I feel stupid. Oh yea, get out of the way, Skye. Need to do my… how many pull ups again?"
"Twenty," I reply before leaning back on the wall and watching her. She isn't even able to reach the bars. I smile at her attempts, and can't help but laugh after a minute of no success.
Finally, she turns to me with a grudging look to her eyes and says, "Can you help me up?"
"Whatever for?" Can't you reach the bar?" I ask, raising my eyebrows.
"I cannot, as you very well know," she grounds out between her teeth. I can tell she isn't happy with what she's accomplished today, so I tell her, "Calm down. You did well today, and there's only one and a half hours left."
"Just help me up."
So I do. I can't help but notice how her face turns red when my hand lingers after I push up a few inches so that she can reach the bar.
My stomach twists, and I wonder again if she likes me.
She doesn't, you idiot, one part of my brain argues.
But the other part disagrees, You've seen how she keps blushing at any type of contact! And you saw her hold your hand this morning. And how she hugged you. Of course she likes you!
Someone like her would obviously have a line of boys waiting for her to notice them.
But no one else in initiation seems to notice her as much as I do.
Ugh. This is confusing.
I look up from my shoes and I see her trying desperately to pull herself up.
"How many have you done so far in the past, like, two minutes? At least ten, right?"
She bites her lip and mumbles something too low for me to hear.
"Come again?"
"None."
I could practically see my jaw drop. "Two minutes, and nothing?"
She lets go and drops on the floor on the balls of her feet, light and balanced. But when she shakes the hair out of her eyes and looks at me, I see she isn't happy. Her glare almost made me want to run. "I apologize for wasting your time. Perhaps you haven't realized, but I didn't even know what a pull up was two minutes ago!"
"Well,"—I scratch my neck nervously—"Wasn't it self-explanatory? You pull yourself up." This clearly isn't the right thing to say, because she continues glaring at me until I finally say, "Fine. Sorry. You don't need to do the pull ups."
"But then I won't have done anything except dodge punches!"
I sigh, slightly exasperated and slightly amused, "Do you want to do the pull ups or not?"
She is saved from answering when the door is suddenly banged open. Before I completely register what happened, I have Aly behind me, and I'm in a comfortable, ready fighting stance.
"Who are you?" I demand. Sometimes, I hate the vastness of the training room. It's so hard to see who's on the other side when you're standing all the way at the back end of the room.
"Uh… We come in peace?" I hear a feminine voice ring out.
"Skye, it's just us, chill." I can see them now. It's just Snow and Tesa.
I loosen up my fist and stand in a more casual position before saying, "First, how'd you know it was me? Second, how'd you find us?"
They don't reply until they're standing five-ish feet away from me.
"Um… Is that Aly behind you?" Snow asks with a confused and slightly suspicious expression on her face.
"Um. Yea. Why do we keep meeting like this?" Aly says, stepping out from behind me, just like she did this morning.
"Dunno. Maybe if you and your boyfriend hadn't run off then we could be discussing this in a dorm or something, and maybe Tesa and I wouldn't have had to run all around the compound searching for you guys," Snow replies.
"He's not my boyfriend!" Aly protests. I knew it. She doesn't like me.
"Oh yea, um… What were you guys doing, in a room alone? And why is Aly's hair all messed up?" Tesa glares accusingly at Skye, "What did you do? Why is she all sweaty? Tell us now!"
Instantly, I felt my face warm up, and I saw in my peripheral vision that Aly's did as well. Seeing this from another person's perspective would seem like Aly and I were… I looked away. "It's not like that! We were just practicing."
"Practicing what?" Tesa asks, suspicion laced in her voice.
"Techniques and reactions and some stuff that will help us pass initiation. It's not like that, guys, Skye was just trying to help me. Honestly!" Aly says, flustered. She's so adorable when she's flustered. I don't even realize that I'm staring until Snow clears her throat.
"So why was it such a big deal that we couldn't come with you and you had to run away from us after lunch?" Snow asks.
Without thinking, I reply, "Oh, that was after-" I immediately cut off. I was not planning to tell them about my hoping that Aly would confess that she liked me.
"After what?" Snow asks, curious and still suspicious.
I face palm and ask Aly, "Are your friends always this suspicious of me? I wasn't even doing anything! You wanted me to help you, and I did. Well, tried to. And then your wonderful friends come storming in and have this ridiculous theory that we were doing something. Ugh, what is wrong with you people?"
Aly looks hurt and for a moment, I am confused. But as I run the sentence over in my head a few times, I realize what I said. She thinks that I think that she's a horrible person because she feels that she is responsible for America and Maxon's deaths. "Aly, I didn't mean it that way! I'm not judging you or anything! I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking!"
But she glares at me and says, "Of course you weren't thinking. I wasn't thinking either. I thought that I could trust you enough to not blame me after I told you about what happened. I was a fool. I was wrong, clearly. You blame me too. I shouldn't have trusted a Dauntless-born initiate." She spits out those last words as if it's the worst insult she can think of.
"It wasn't your fault, and I'm not saying it is!" I protest futilely.
"It sounded like you were accusing my friends of being ridiculous and saying that there's something wrong with me!" I stare at her shocked. I honestly didn't think of it that way!
But there's nothing I can do as she walks away, her friends trailing behind her, casting accusing glares my way as they exit.
I can't help but feel awful, even as I walk to her dorm late at night, ready to apologize.
I sneak in and stand there for a while, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness a little. Before I can move at all though, a voice whispers, "Skye. No. No. No!" And a girl bolts up, panting slightly with a panicked expression on her face. It was Aly! For a moment, I think she saw me standing by the door, but I was mistaken, because she flops down onto the bed and grumbles, "Stupid feelings."
I didn't hear her correctly though, and I move forward until I reach that bed. Leaning down, I take a silent breath and hope she doesn't kill me before whispering, "Hey."
She immediately stiffens and turns toward me after a few seconds. She stares at me with an accusing look in her eyes before finally breaking the glare and whispering, "Why are you here?"
"I want to apologize. I really wasn't thinking. I was just upset that your friends thought that I was, you know, doing something to you, and I was frustrated because, well, I-"
She sighs, and, leaning on her elbow, says, "It's not your fault. I was just overreacting, that's all."
"I—I have a question…" I hesitantly begin. I wanted to ask what she was dreaming about because she said my name… But what if it made her angry?
"And your question is…?"
"Well," I scratch my neck nervously, "When I walked in here… You were tossing and turning and then—"
"Oh." Even in the darkness of the room, I can see her turn red. Maybe I did have a chance then!
"What was it about, Aly?"
"Nothing important…"
"How come you said my name?" I ask, nervous to know the answer. Maybe… Just maybe…
"I—I did not!" she protests, biting her lip and wringing her hands.
"Liar," I say, triumphantly. I'll thank Christina later for telling me about how to figure out if someone is lying or telling the truth. And I know that Aly was lying—not just because of the wringing of her hands, but also because I heard her say my name- I was sure of it!
After a moment, she finally says, "Fine. I'll tell you. But if you make fun of me, I promise you, you will regret the day you were born."
Even though she was threatening me, I wasn't the least bit scared. "Mkay. Tell me."
"Let's go outside first. I don't want to wake anyone up." So after we silently crept outside the room, I crossed my arms, and asked, "Well?"
"Well… See. There's this thing. And it kinda, well, um, okay if I tell you, you won't laugh right?" She sounds really nervous, so I nod, even though I might. Depending on what she said.
"Imayormaynotlikeyou," she says really quietly and quickly.
"What? Say that again, slowly," I say, because I really didn't hear her the first time.
"I… May… or may not… well, kind of, um, like you. A little."
I feel like I just gulped down a whole cup of steaming hot chocolate. So surprising, yet it filled me with warmth. Before I can say anything, she turns away and says, "I know you don't like me back, but you wanted to know, so I told you. Sorry if this ruins any friendship between us or anything."
I really smile this time, and say, "I like you too, Alyssa."
I can see her stiffen, and after a moment, she says, "Are you just saying that because you pity me?"
"No! I, well, I actually mean it…" I've never said anything like this to anyone before, so I feel really aware of everything I'm saying.
"You do?"
I move forward and embrace her, and ask quietly, "Does this answer your question?"
She laughs and pushes me away, but she can only move me so much (a.k.a. less than an inch away). I hug her even tighter, but she shoves me away with more force, and I move back a little. I smile at her. She smiles back and asks, "So… what does this make us?"
"… Uh…" I reply. Good job, Skye. Just after she confesses, you begin acting like an idiot!
"It's like, ten o clock, maybe you should go back to your dorm," she says after a moment's hesitation.
It's like something in my head forced me to scream "Wait!" because I do so, and Aly freezes, and before I can think about what I am doing, I take a step forward and brushed my lips to hers.
At first, she looks startled. Her lips were soft and tasted like vanilla. I loved it…
I really didn't even know what to do, so I pulled back, and looking into her eyes, the warm chocolate brown eyes. Tearing my eyes away from hers, I finally that she was blushing.
Well, of course she is, you idiot! You are too. You just kissed her! My mind screams.
Suddenly, Aly laughs, and says, "We can do better than that…"
We looked at each other, chocolate brown on bright blue. She wrapped her arms around my waist, lacing her fingers together as I stood, frozen, my heart beating so loudly I was sure she could hear it. Without thinking about what I was doing, I reached both my hands up to caress her face. Completely focused on what was happening right now, this moment, her lips on mine, and mine on hers, fitting together like two puzzle pieces. I was smiling, in spite of myself, into the kiss. We stayed there, lips moving with each other—it could have been just a second, or a minute, or hours, or days—all I know was that this was everything and more, that I ever wanted from Aly.
Of course, Fate decreed that now was the perfect time for an instructor to turn the corner and catch us.
"Hey!"
A/N: So, I don't really know what I'm doing wrong, because I'm having less and less reviews. So, to promote some, if you guys could answer some of the following questions in the reviews...
1. Who is your favorite character in this story?
2. Do you ship Skylyssa? What kind of ups and downs do you think they will experience later on in their relationship?
3. What do you think Tris will do in the next chapter to get even with Hestia and Four?
4. How do you think Four will apologize to Tris?
5. Who do you think the instructor is, and what do you think the instructor will do to Skye and Alyssa?
5. Can you please read my new story, Demigods at Hogwarts, and tell me what you think?
CJ potter rider jackson: No, they were not. How come? Am I making them too similar? What do you suggest I change? Thanks for commenting, by the way!
luvdivergentforever: Oh, don't you worry. NO one, and I mean NO one can truly seperate Fourtris. But you'll have to wait until the next chapter to see what happens!
Booklover4610: Beat the crap out of Hestia? Ouch... You'll get more-next chapter. Promise. Love the enthusiasm btw (Even if it's about beating someone up :P)
Vex Cavilliers: Thank you very much!
ZammieandPercabeth4ever: Lol, agreed. Hestia the initiates: bah! Hate her. But the goddess of the hearth, love her :) Completely awesome, I agree.
Olive: Thank you so much! Was what happened good enough? Hope it was :P
blueraspberry-butterflies: Haha, I love how you went "Tris will beat that idiot up" to "Love it!" So yea, thanks :) And Tris might-but you'll have to wait and see!
NotJustAShadow: Thank you! Oh yes, Tris, Four, Zeke, Christina, Will, Skye, and Uriah will do something to Hestia. But what would that something be? Hm...
divergentoverblood: Lol, I'd be like "I'll throw knives at you, Hestia, but don't worry, I've been doing it for years" Hit in the heart. "Whoops, did I mention, I have horrible aim" :P
artofskating: Yes, fighting with Hestia is part of what Tris will do. I'll try to make sure Tris is angry enough, but not sadistic, because that's just not Tris. Thanks for reviewing!
fanficforyou: Wow-jumping right to making someone factionless? :P Don't worry, something like that will happen later on in the story.
Until next time,
~myperfectionismyimperfection