Chasing Dauntless (A Divergent OC Fanfic in Dauntless)

Chapter Ten

I opened my eyes, and to my surprise, it was bright.

Chase and I knelt on top of a thin beam, suspended in between two tall buildings. We were several stories up. He glanced over the edge, then up at me. A faint smile grew on his face. "You're crazy, you know that?" I shrugged, and returned the smile. "I'll explain later. But come on." He crouched lower on the wooden beam, stretching it slightly. I saw a faint puff of sawdust: the beam was breaking. "Chase. Let's jump." Chase stared at me, his mouth agape. He closed it.

His eyes were full of questions, but he asked one simple one: "Why?"

"Obviously, we won't die," I tried to explain. "Let's just get this over with."

Chase narrowed his eyes, but not angrily. He looked like he wanted to say something, but just sighed deeply through his nose. "Okay." His voice was quiet. I crawled over closer to him. "Together?" I asked. He nodded. "Together." I reached over and held Chase's firm arm. He looked at me, quiet.

"One." I heard Chase let out a big breath slowly.

"Two." My grip tightened on Chase's arm.

"Three!" We fully extended our legs and jumped.

We fell through the air, wind whistling in our ears. But Chase and I did not struggle. We knew it wasn't real, and we were used to falling.

The second before we hit the ground, everything went black for a moment.

I realized my eyes were closed. My real eyes. I felt pressure on my arm. I opened my eyes.

Chase stood over me, his eyes locked onto mine. "It took you a little while to wake up," he said, breathing a sigh of relief. I sat up. Chase bit his lip and looked confused. He seemed to be searching for the right words.

"Jess," he finally said, carefully. "What you did in there wasn't normal."

I gave a small shrug. "I know it wasn't usual." Chase shook his head. "No, it was really unusual. How the hell did you control the simulation like that?" I looked at him questioningly. "It was my mind." "But the simulation-" "Chase. My. Mind."

He stared at me. "Where did you learn to do that?" I smiled slightly. "When I was little. I got nightmares, until I realized they were dreams in my own head. I just made the monsters go away until I got better and better at it. This wasn't that different."

Chase shook his head. "Jess, I've flown and stuff in dreams myself-" I cut him off, holding up my hand. "I've created land right underneath my feet. I've built cities from the ground up in seconds. I am good at controlling my own mind." I let a small, sly smile creep onto my face. "Flown and stuff?" I said, raising one eyebrow. Chase looked away, but I could see his smile. "Shut up."

Chase cleared his throat, and returned to the computer. "I will be overseeing your entire fear landscape in stage two of training," he said. I cocked my head. "Why? He looked up at me, his lips pressed together. "They can't find out what you are."

My mouth fell agape. "What I am? What the hell am I?"

Chase came over to me and rested one hand on my forearm and the other on my knee. He looked seriously into my eyes.

"Jess, you're divergent."

"Divergent? That's real? What does it even mean?"

Chase sighed. "It means you don't fit into one category, one faction. You fit into multiple, which means none. Your mind thinks in tons of different ways. They can't control you if you're divergent."

"Who's they?" Chase just kept looking at me solemnly.

I realized something. "Chase, how the hell do you know so much about divergence?" I asked, peering up at him.

"I'm divergent too."

I leaned back slightly. The moment the word divergent first slipped from Chase's mouth, I had a feeling he was, even though I didn't have a complete idea on what it was.

Chase's grip tightened on me. "Jess, nobody can ever find out what you-what we are. Understand?" I nodded. "Not Hannah, not your friends, not your parents if you're somehow able to talk to them, not other instructors, definitely not Duncan." I nodded again, still trying to understand the new information. "This is something about you that you need to hide completely. Never talk to anybody about this. Ever." Chase's voice was severe, his clear brown eyes eyes boring into mine. I swallowed with difficulty, my mind was completely elsewhere.

"Even you?" I asked quietly.

Chase chewed his lip again. "You can talk to me about it," he said. "But only when we're completely alone." I nodded. Tiny sparks of hot emotion shot through my lower back, I must have been freaked out and didn't totally realize it.

Chase coughed slightly. "So, yeah, I'll be doing all of your fear landscape stuff," he told me, suddenly seeming like an awkward, cute teenager who wasn't sure what to say. It sunk in that Chase was eighteen: less than two years older than me. Two years ago, he had gone through this exact process: Dauntless initation, keeping his divergence hidden.

I looked at Chase somehow deeper.

He peered up at me with his warm brown eyes from under his eyebrows.

I suddenly saw a young guy, who felt desperately alone. Sure, he had friends, but nobody knew about his divergence.

Well, now I did.

I realized that Chase had been waiting for, had been almost wanting another Divergent in Dauntless, somebody to connect with.

I was that person.