Scrubbing the floor when no one else wanted to was something that my mother would have done. If I can't be with her, the least I can do is act like her sometimes.

Oh for god's sake. I'll just carry you.

I just wanted to thank you' he says, his voice low. 'A group of scientists told you that my genes were damaged, that there was something wrong with me - they showed you the test results that proved it. And even I started to believe it.' He touches my face, his thumb skimming my cheekbone, and his eyes are on mine, intense and insistent. 'You never believed it,' he says 'Not for a second. You always insisted I was... I don't know, whole.

And now that you are out? How does the world seem to you?" he says. "Mostly the same," I say. "People are just divided by different things, fighting different wars.

I tell myself, as sternly as possible, that is how things work here. We do dangerous things and people die. People die, and we move on to the next dangerous thing. The sooner that lesson sinks in, the better chance I have at surviving initiation.

So now we all know," says Four, quietly, "that you are afraid of a short, skinny girl from Abnegation." His mouth curls into a smile.

Can I ask why you’re throwing knives at cheese?’ ‘Caleb came by to discuss something,’ Tobias says, leaning his head against the wall as he looks at me. ‘And knife-throwing just came up somehow.’ ‘As it so often does,’ I say, a small smile inching across my face.