The Unlucky Ones

[27] - Nails

[Tobias]

" I’LL TAKE YOU OUT THE BACK DOOR. " I say.

She shakes her head.

" I don’t need you to... " She replies.

I can see her hands trembling even as she shrugs off my offer. She needs me.

" Nonsense, " I say.

I take her arm and help her to her feet. She wipes her eyes as I move toward the back door. Amar once took me through this door, tried to walk me back to the dormitory even when I didn’t want him to, the way she probably doesn’t want me to now. How is it possible to live the same story twice, from different vantage points? She yanks her arm from mine and turns on me.

" Why did you do that to me? What was the point of that, huh? I wasn’t aware that when I chose Dauntless, I was signing up for weeks of torture! " She says.

If she was anyone else, any of the other initiates, I would have yelled at her for insubordination a dozen times by now. I would have felt threatened by her constant assaults against my character, and tried to squelch her uprisings with cruelty, the way I did to Christina on the first day of initiation. But Tris earned my respect when she jumped first, into the net; when she challenged me at her first meal; when she wasn’t deterred by my unpleasant responses to questions; when she spoke up for Al and stared me right in the eye as I threw knives at her. She’s not my subordinate, couldn’t possibly be. She's more. She's a crush.

" Did you think that overcoming cowardice would be easy? " I ask.

She shakes her head.

" That isn’t overcoming cowardice! Cowardice is how you decide to be in real life, and in real life, I am not getting pecked to death by crows, Four! " She says.

She starts to cry, but I’m too struck by what she just said to feel uncomfortable with her tears. She’s not learning the lessons Eric wants her to learn. She’s learning different things, wiser ones. Ones that will actually help her.

" I want to go home, " She says.

I know where the cameras are in this hallway. I hope none of them have picked up on what she just said.

" Learning how to think in the midst of fear is a lesson that everyone, even your Stiff family, needs to learn. " I say.

I doubt a lot of things about Dauntless initiation, but the fear simulations aren’t one of them; they are the most straightforward way for a person to engage their own fears and conquer them, far more straightforward than the knife throwing or the fighting.

" That’s what we’re trying to teach you. If you can’t learn it, you’ll need to get the hell out of here, because we won’t want you. " I say.

I’m hard on her because I know she can handle it. And also because I don’t know any other way to be.

" I’m trying. But I failed. I’m failing. " She says.

I almost feel like laughing. Tris isn't failing. She's succeeding. Excelling. She surpassed Peter by a margin.

" How long do you think you spent in that hallucination, Tris? " I ask.

She shrugs, biting her lip.

" I don’t know. A half hour? " She asks.

I smile, cocking an eyebrow.

" Three minutes, " I say. " You got out three times faster than any of the other initiates. Whatever you are, you’re not a failure. "