At Peace: A Tobias and Tris Fanfiction ®

Chapter 9: Almost Embarrasing

I wake up in the cold, next to Tobias. He is still asleep. Memories of last night flood in quickly. The train, my ankle, our discussion, and the plan to move to Abnegation. Suddenly I cannot wait to get out of this awful weather. I shake Tobias's shoulder. He doesn't move. I grab his arm and pull him upright. He mumbles something I cannot understand. Something like, "Tris...sleep."

"What?" I whisper. A smile crosses his face and he opens his eyes.

"What time is it?" He groans. I look at my watch which hasn't worked since initiation. But I've kept it, it was from my mother.

"Eight O' clock," I lie. We need to get moving. "Can we go? Abnegation isnt far from here." I ask.

"Yeah, this way." He points in the direction of Abnegation, which I already knew. He puts his jacket around my shoulders, leaving his bare arms exposed again.

"Tobias, take this. I have sleeves," I beg.

"No, I'm fine."

After what seems like hours, I see a gray home. Plain, healthy, functional. It looks like mine, but of course they all do. Tobias sees it too, and takes off towards it pulling me behind him. Finally I can see men and women in gray, keeping their heads low, sneaking the occasional glance at the two factionless wearing black. It's almost embarrassing. 

"Follow me," Tobias whispers. He weaves his way through three rows of houses until we find one with a dent in the window and a piece of the door's corner missing. Tobias opens the door. There is a stain of ash on the floor inside. Other than that, it looks like my home. No one is here. It is utterly silent. It is very cold inside, as it hasn't been heated in years. I light a match that lies by the fireplace, and ignite the old, dusty wood. I sit on my knees warming my hands. Tobias is still at the door.

"Come over here, it's warm," I say. His expression is tight and his eyebrows are arched. I'd image he's thinking of Marcus.

"He's not here, Tobias. Just come sit down." After a minute of debating with himself, he nods ever so slightly. Placing himself next to me, he warms his hands.

 "So now what?" I ask once I warm up.

"I dont know, I guess we just transfer," he replies.

"Transfer? We cant, we already-" I start.

"Yeah I know, I mean we act as though we've lived here all along."

"I guess. We already know how to fit in," I add.

"Wait here," he says. Tobias gets up and walks up the gray stairs, to my left. I can hear drawers being pulled, objects being moved, and his heavy footsteps above me. After a while he returns carrying a pile of gray clothes. He separates them into two stacks and hands one to me.

"Those were mine before I left, they're kind of small," he says. He looks down at his pile. "These were his." I know who he means, Marcus. I'm surprised he is actually willing to wear them.

"I'll change in the bedroom." I head upstairs, easily navigating in a home that might as well be my own. Once inside, I see a plain bed with white blankets, a small dresser, and an odd statue sort of thing shaped like a wave resting on top. I slip on the clothes. Despite what Tobias said, they are huge on me. The pants barely stay up without me clinging on to the belt loops. The shirt is a longsleeved sweater, obviously gray. I'm still wearing my black sneakers from Dauntless, but the baggy pants easily hide them. I hear a knock at the door.

"Come in," I say.

Tobias looks at me from head to toe. "Too big." He begins going through the dresser again. He wears a gray collared shirt and almost identical pants as mine. He's found Abnegation shoes that fit him."What do you wear? Small? Extra-small?" He asks me.

"Small."

He pulls out a different pair of pants, after looking at the label of several others.

"These are mediums, but I dont have smalls. We can get new clothes later," he adds. He leaves the room and I slip on the other pants, these fit better around the waist, but they are still long.

"Done!" I shout. Tobias comes back into the room and looks at me again. His mouth curves into a smile. A small one, but its more than any expression he's shown for the past week. The sight of him, not in black, makes me laugh. For the first time for a while, I feel free. I dont have to act a certain way, or do anything I dont want to. We're free now.

"What?" He laughs.

"We're stiffs."

"I like it." He wraps his arms around my waist and draws me into an embrace which I have longed for since I became an instructor. He's himself right now, not Four. After what seems like hours, I pull away. 

"Do you have a hair tie and pins?" I ask.

"I doubt it," he laughs.

"My hair," I sigh. Its messy. Very messy. And I need to do something with it, this is not very Abnegation.

"Its fine, trust me." He nods. "But mine needs cut." He walks to the end of the hallway and pulls out a mirror. In one motion, he pulls the cover off of the mirror and grabs the scissors. He begins chopping away at his hair, making it shorter and shorter. We will blend in fine here. I close my eyes and imagine the sound of my mother cutting my hair before the choosing ceremony. I want to see her again, and my father. But I cant. I will not tell them that I was kicked out of my own faction. I wont let them know what a failure I've been. I just cant. And there are rules about coming back to your origional faction like this, I cant risk it as much as I want to sometimes.

The sound of the scissors puts me at ease. I've never been more at home than right now.