Dauntless Sweethearts

Chapter Tris (Six)

Tobias kept ducking back every time Amar called for a new initiate until the only two left were him and I. I offered to go first even though I was scared that I'd get sick again.

 My first fear found me in front of a bunch of people who were all laughing at me, including Tobias, and as I went to go tell them to stop, I realized that I was in a glass case with water rising up. I panicked, I was going to die as a public display of humor. When the water level reached my chest, I realized that I had to get out of there. Pounding on the glass didn't help any except to make my audience laugh harder. I had to think, the water had reached my neck and was slowly inching it's way to the top. Suddenly, a thought occured to me, and I swam down to the bottom where I pulled off the jacket that was somehow on me and stuffed it into where I could feel the water coming from. The scene changed, and I was sitting on a rock in what seemed like the descriptions I had heard of an ocean. The water was throwing me about, and I wasn't sure what to do. All of a sudden, a wave threw me into the water, and I was drowning. Maybe if I could swim down, I could merely get past the fear, so I did and was moved over to another fear. I could smel smoke in the air, but I didn't know where it was coming from until the heat began to lick at my feet, the fire was below me and was slowly growing.

"Smell that, Stiff?" I heard an unidentifiable voice. "It's the scent of selflessness beiong extinguished."

"You know what I smell," I smirked suddenly remembering that none of this was real. "I smell rain."

As I finished speaking, thunder rumbled, and rain began to pour down putting out the fire and sending me to my next fear. I stood in a room with my parents, brother, and Tobias standing in a line; I was directly in front of them with a faceless person pressing a gun into my hand.

"Kill them," the person said in a feminine voice.

I shook my head, "No."

"Kill them now, or I will kill you," she pressed a second gun to my head and began to count down from five. I turned so that I was facing her gun, and as she reached one. she shot me moving me on to what looked like the image I had created in my mind of what the Dauntless Training room would look like.

In front of me, was one of the big dauntless borns, and he was sizing me up like we were going to fight. I looked down at myself and saw that I had a huge stomach, and as I looked back up, the boy rushed towards me and started punching me where I would be weakest, my belly that I had a feeling was holding a child. As he hit me, I felt a wrenching pain in my gut, and I fell to the ground. Instead of stopping like I thought he would upon seeing someone on the floor unable to fight, he started kicking me right where he had been hitting me a second before. There was nothing that would get me out of this fear, and I was so scared. I thought of Tobias and how he would be holding me right now if I woke from this like a nightmare, and just like that, I was on to the last fear, and it was by far the worst. Tobias was laying there on the ground in a puddle of blood. He was dying, and there was nothing I could do. I couldn't live without Tobias. I loved him more than anything. As I watched, the light left his eyes, and he went still. I fell to the ground screaming and yelling that I can't live without him. Thinking of the mere fact that I might have to live without him, I decided that I should die too, and I looked around until I found a gun. I had never shot a gun, but I figured at point blank range it wouldn't matter, so I placed it to my head and pulled the trigger.

Amar walked over like he was going to congratulate me on my low number of six fears as soon as the trigger was pulled, but I rushed to the nearest garbage can, getting there just in time, to vomit. Tobias went to come over to me, but Amar called him over.

"What's up with that? Is she sick or something?" Amar asked Tobias probably figuring he'd know having been in the same faction as me.

He replied almost unsure, "No, serums don't seem to get along with her system well. How many fears did Tris have?"

"Six, and I'd be careful with her, there's only one other time I've seen a serum make someone sick."

A few minutes later, I heard Tobias screaming. From what I could tell in my spot by the trash can, he had four fears. FOUR! How can anyone only have four fears, but then again, I only had six, so I guessed it wasn't that bad. As soon as he came from the fear landscape, he rushed over to me and pulled me into a hug. Something told me that one of the fears he went through was exactly the same as the nightmare he had told me about the day before.

As he sat there holding me, Amar walked over to us, "Four and Six fears, unheard of. Come on, I'll lead you to the cafeteria."

Tobias helped me up, and we followed the dark skinned Dauntless guy to a room filled with other Dauntless. The onslaught of multiple scents caused a sudden bout of nausea to hit me, but I was able to control it; for how long, I didn't know. The three of us sat with some of the other initiates, and the Erudite boy, Eric, decided to be rude.

"Looks like one Stiff's about to faint and the other like she's gonna throw up," he sneered.

 "You all made it out alive," Amar said. "Congratulations. You made it through the first day of iniiation, with varying degrees of success." He looked at Eric. "None of you did as well as Four and Six over here, though."

He pointed at Tobias and I as he spoke. Was he talking about our numbers of fears?

"Hey, Tori," Amar called over his shoulder. "You ever heard of anyone with six fears in their fear landscape? Maybe even four?"

"Last I heard the record was seven or eight. Why?" Tori called back.

"I got a couple of transfers over here with those fear numbers."

Tori pointed at us and Amar nodded.

"That's got to be a new record, the four fears one," Tori said.

"Well done," Amar looked directly at Tobias. He then turned and walked over to Tori's table.

All the other initiates stared wide eyed at us. Before the fear landscapes, we were just someone they coould step on, on their way to Dauntless membership. Now, we were someone worth watching out for, maybe even worth being afraid of.

Amar us power, and it seemed, new names.

"What's your names again? Starts with....?" Eric began to ask us, but Tobias interrupted him.

Tobias put his elbows on the table and glared at Eric, "My name is Four and she is Six. Call us 'Stiff' again, and you and I will have problems."

I had been happy to go with the nick name Tobias and I had come up with before coming to Dauntless, but I think he used my new one to scare them, and it didn't bother me one bit. I smiled then looked at the food in front of me. There was some sort of meat between two pieces of bread, and some sort of bread looking thing that was all brown with a whipped topping of the same color. Just looking at, let alone smelling, the meat dish intensified my nausea, but the brown thing didn't, so I figured I'd give it a try. The food was warm and moist with a sweet flavor that I couldn't describe as I had never encountered it before; the best part was, my stomach had begun to settle.

Remember, one comment and Four votes for the next chapter. So, are you still trying to figure out what's up with Tris, or should I say, Six?