Dauntless Member ||Eric Coulter||

|III|

"Are you ever going to stop getting piercings in your face, Eric?" Tempest asked, and they walk away from their familiar training room.

"I don't know, maybe? I see that you prefer tattoos to piercings." Eric noted as he nodded at her arms, which were all inked up now.

Tempest rolled down her sleeves to cover them, as she shifted her jacket around. "I'm still not used to showing them off. I guess once a stiff, always a stiff." She murmured, and Eric shrugs a bit at her words. "What? You have a new opinion that doesn't agree with a opinion that you had of me at first?" It was a legitimate question and it was a tough question, one that, had Eric was thinking and a bit stumped about.

"You are right, Tempest. My opinion of you, as of right now, has definitely changed from the original opinion. I didn't think that a Stiff could be tough and brave, to the point of being a total idiot." He said and she looks affronted at his insult. "Oh that was meant to be said in regards to your brother. The big idiot part, I mean. It is honestly a bit hard to remember, that you were a Stiff first." He pointed out and she was raising an eyebrow.

"Was that an actually compliment coming from your mouth, Eric? If it was, then congratulations. You don't sound like a computer anymore." She said and he chuckled softly.

"Yeah, I guess so, if most former Erudites sound like computers when they talk. I wonder what my family is doing right now?" He questioned quietly, not really even asking anyone in particular.

"Well, I know what mine is probably doing. Destroying our room in a rage after we transferred factions in order to get away... from his tyrannical sorts of tendencies." Tempest murmured as she shoved her hands into her pockets and continued walking.

"Are you upset with me about something?" Eric asked and she looked over at him, shaking her head a bit.

"No, just still trying to wrap my head around the fact that you told Max, one of our faction leaders, that, I would be a good candidate for Dauntless leader. I mean, thank you, but I don't know if I'm ready." She said and he looks over at her.

"You mean, because of your Dad and him being the official leader, of your old faction?" Eric asked, even though he already knew and Tempest nods a bit.

"I left to get away from him and also because my aptitude test said so. I just couldn't stay with him. It got worse, a lot worse, after my mom died." She'd admit and Eric looked at her hand, as it has a pair of clear crossed throwing knives tattooed there.

"Well, you are safe here. At least, I think you are." He murmured to her and his tone of voice was surprisingly comforting, as she looked over at him silently out of the corner of her eye, as subtly as she could, wondering where the sudden sympathy and kindness towards her was coming from, seemingly coming out of literal nowhere at the moment.

"Where is this coming from, Eric? I need to know." She asked sharply as Eric raised his eyebrows at her.

They both stopped together, standing at the intersection of tunnels between the hallway to the Pit, and then it was another one that was just leading into another hallway to the cafeteria.

"You hated me during initiation and now, instead of mocking me for a fear of my father, who tortured me and all of the information that I am sure, you have stored somewhere about me, in this compound. You haven't shared a damn thing about me and now, you're comforting the one person, that you'd pick on the most during initiation. I'm not the worst, so why the hell are you switching your gears??" She snapped, finally losing her cool after weeks of looking at the same smirk, that was a staple of an expression on his face.

Eric's smirk disappeared and he looked unusually tensed, as he looked like he was struggling now, to think of any words to explain it. Which was a shock to her, since after all, he was originally from the faction of the very intellectual people, filled with all sorts of information and words.

"I picked on you during initiation because I wanted to see if you would break. But you were expecting it then, the sort of insults, that I was throwing at you. I was an Erudite, you were a Stiff. The insults were a usual part of your life then. If I switched gears to a kinder approach, I wanted to know if that would trigger your defensiveness and it looks like I was right." Eric said and Tempest stared up at him with her mouth hanging open for a second or two.

That was just before she slammed it shut and her open right hand slapped him in the face, swiftly sending him staggering away and into the opposite wall.

"You did it for an experiment? You played around with my emotions for experimental purposes-- you really are just an Erudite in Dauntless." She said and he held his cheek in his hand and she shakes her head at him. "Just stay away from me, you terrible son of a bitch." The anger was a way of rather cleverly disguising the pain in her voice, but she could not stop her eyes from showing it.

She turned on her heel and bolted away quickly, tearing down the hall toward the Pit, eventually turning to the hallway where she had chosen to live.

She slammed the door to her apartment shut and she punched the wall next to her bed so hard, that she felt sticky liquid trickling out of her fist from her knuckles and she looked at her hand without words, as her knuckles bled in front of her.

"I fell for it. I thought I knew better than that, but apparently not." Talking to herself like usual, and Tempest was swiftly washing her knuckles and she walked to her bed and eventually, she pulled the covers off of the bed, and a pillow, before she fell asleep on the makeshift bed, that she had made on the floor for herself.