Becoming Determinant - Tobias' Story

Divergent Chapter 26 - First Kiss

A/N: Thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter, and to my wonderful beta reader, Rosalie!

"Divergent" Chapter 26 - First Kiss

I hold Tris' hand the entire walk, matching her pace and hyper-aware of her body next to mine. At one point, I run a fingertip down her palm. I'm not quite sure why I do it, except that I want to, but when she shivers lightly, I want to do it again.

"So…" she says after a while, "four fears."

"Four fears then; four fears now," I confirm with a nod. "They haven't changed, so I keep going in there, but…I still haven't made any progress." Not until you were there, anyway.

"You can't be fearless, remember?" she reminds me. "Because you still care about things. About your life."

"I know," I answer, as I lead her around the edge of the Pit and onto the hidden path down to the river. She looks around curiously, presumably not having noticed this route before. Most people miss it, but it's one of my favorites.

"You were going to tell me about your aptitude test results," she says abruptly. I'm vaguely surprised to realize she's still thinking about that. My mind has definitely been elsewhere.

"Ah." I scratch the back of my neck, debating how to answer, and finally ask, "Does it matter?"

"Yes," she insists. "I want to know."

My lips twitch into a smile. "How demanding you are." But I like her persistence. She's as stubborn as I am.

This isn't the place to answer her. Even though the area is completely deserted, and I'm avoiding the cameras as much as possible, there's still the possibility we could be observed.

So, I wait until we reach the river, and until I've led her onto my favorite perch on a flat rock well away from the path. There's no surveillance equipment here, and the roar of the water will cover anything that could be overheard even if someone were nearby.

We sit down, and I release her hand, knowing that I'll want my hands free for other things soon.

My eyes hold hers for a moment, and then I say, "These are things I don't tell people, you know. Not even my friends." She won't realize, of course, that I've never deliberately revealed my secrets to anyone, ever, until tonight. That I feel closer to her than to anyone else.

Just thinking that makes me nervous – I can't reveal too much, or I'll scare her away. I know that Abnegation fear of intimacy too well.

She clasps her hands together, watching me, waiting, and I finally say, "My result was as expected. Abnegation." I don't tell her that my father prepared me for the test – that he told me how to make sure I got that result so no one would know I'm Divergent. That secret is for another day. This one is bad enough for now.

"Oh." She sounds disappointed, and my heart sinks. Now, she'll realize why I left Abnegation, that I ran away like a coward. Sure enough, she continues, "But you chose Dauntless anyway?"

"Out of necessity," I say quietly. It's a feeble answer, but I don't have another to give.

"Why did you have to leave?" she asks, and I look away. I don't want to see her expression when she figures it out. It's hard to retrace my reasoning from two years ago. Yes, I was scared of my father, terrified, but I didn't have to leave my faction behind.

If I had stayed in Abnegation, I wouldn't have lived with Marcus again. I would have gone through initiation with the others and then lived elsewhere. But I couldn't see that at the time. All I could see was the need to escape, so I ran like a frightened little boy. Shame fills me at the thought.