Hello! Here's the next part. I hope you enjoy it, even if I think it is a bit of a filler chapter.

After that conversation, the rest of the trip was much more enjoyable. Rosie and Ben were both back to normal and I couldn't be more grateful. If I had caused a rift in their friendship I would have been devastated. I wasn't worth their friendship.

We had decided to steer clear of any subject that involved Dean or which even remotely related to the dauntless faction. Instead we stuck to safe topics like work and this boy Rosie thought was cute. And then all conversation was cut short by someone in the truck picking up a banjo and starting to strum it. Soon everyone but me was singing along to the familiar tune.

No matter how many times Rosie and Ben prodded me to join in with them, I refused. I didn't sing. I would clap my hands along to the beat to get them to drop it, but I wouldn't sing. I wasn't comfortable with that.

I knew how much of a cliché this was. Amity were affectionately (and sometimes not affectionately) known by other factions as 'banjo-strumming softies' and we were doing nothing to prove them wrong. We practically gave ourselves the nick-name by always stashing banjos around the place. Almost everyone in amity knew how to play the banjo, I was one of the few who didn't. In a similar way to how I thought dauntless children were taught to use knives before they were taught to walk, I often wondered if amity children were handed banjos as babies.

Even if it was a cliché, the sound of a banjo comforted me. I had grown up with it. Whenever I think back to some of the happy memories from my childhood, there is usually a banjo playing somewhere in the background. So I didn't mind that for the rest of the journey we did nothing but play song after song on that famed instrument. By the time we pulled up at the hospital, even I was humming along to the tune quietly.

When I entered the foyer I noticed Tricia behind the desk and I waved at her in greeting. I always enjoyed my shifts with Tricia the most.

"Morning." I said happily. But she didn't return my greeting, instead she was frowning down at my hands. It was only then that I remembered the grazes I had along my palms from jumping out of the train yesterday. She had obviously seen them when I waved at her. How could she have missed them when I literally waved them under her nose?

"What happened?" She asked, grabbing my hands in hers and facing my palms up so she could inspect them closely.

"Umm..." I trailed off not really sure what to say. I had been planning on telling her about Dean but I hadn't planned on telling anyone about the train. I knew for a fact that they wouldn't approve.

But then again, if anyone were to understand, I think it would be Tricia. She just seemed to get me. She saw what the adrenaline from working here did to me. She saw how much I loved being pushed. But she never mentioned it, she just accepted it.

"Well, spit it out." She said, narrowing her eyes at me. Whilst she understood me more than anyone else, Tricia was not a patient woman and didn't like to be kept waiting.

"I don't know what to say." Honesty seemed like the best policy right now. That way I wasn't technically lying to her but I wasn't telling her everything.

"Did somebody hurt you?" She asked in a firm tone.

"No! God, no. I mean I had help, I wasn't alone. But it was me. And I definitely wasn't attacked." I babbled hurriedly. Apparently my verbal onslaught wasn't very convincing as her eyes narrowed even further. I sighed. I was going to have to tell her everything. "Okay. So don't freak out about this. But I kind of got these injuries from jumping out of a train yesterday." I said, wincing. I didn't know how she was going to react to that information. 

There was silence for the longest time and I was starting to think that she hadn't heard me when she finally spoke up.

"You jumped out of a train?" She asked slowly, not quite believing what she was hearing.

I nodded. Not sure I would be able to say it again, when she was looking at me with such a piercing gaze.

The silence stretched out between us and I shuffled awkwardly from foot to foot. She raised an eyebrow at me expectantly, clearly waiting for the explanation as to why an amity girl like me was jumping out of a train. Or even on a train to begin with!

I let out a deep breath, realising that I was going to have to tell her everything.

"Well, it's kind of a long story." I said with a nervous chuckle and scratched the back of my neck.

"I've got time." She said in what I would call a stern motherly tone. It's the way I imagine a normal mother would reprimand their child if they caught them doing something they shouldn't. I say imagine as this was not something I had experienced. My mother would never look at me with this kind of stern but caring look. No, she would look at me with contempt or disgust.

"You see, I met this boy the other day." I started out, seeing Tricia's lip twitch up into a smirk at that.

"It always starts with a boy." She muttered quietly, the smirk still plastered on her face.

I decided to ignore that comment and carry on as though she hadn't said anything at all.

"He's from dauntless. I met him here actually. He came in with a cut that wouldn't stop bleeding. It was the day that there was that accident at the merciless mart and you had to leave the desk to help out there were so many people injured. Anyway, he needed to see somebody quick otherwise he was going to bleed out on the hospital floor but there was no one available to see him. He suggested that I do the stitches for him and at first I refused. I told him that I wasn't trained for that but he told me to do it anyway. I kept telling him no and that he needed an actual nurse or doctor and not just a secretary but I was worried he could die if I made him wait, so I did it. God that was one of the most terrifying things I've ever done! I spent half the time I was stitching thinking that I was just making it worse, but it turned out alright, I guess. He left shortly after I was finished and I didn't think I would ever see him again, but yesterday we kind of bumped into each other. He jumped out of a train and landed on me, I had been made to stay late so had missed the truck home. He offered to get me home quickly, so I agreed to ride back on the train with him. And well, when it came time to get off, I got these." I finished my long explanation by showing her my hands again.

Again she didn't say anything for a long stretch of time, making me nervous. But I could understand. This was a lot to take in.

"And you like this boy?" She asked with that same serious tone.

I wasn't sure what exactly she meant by 'like' in that sentence so I decided to play it safe.

"Yeah, we've sort of become friends." I said shrugging.

She nodded, a concentrated look taking over her face for a few seconds before it cleared and returned to a neutral expression.

"Ok." She said simply.

"Ok?" Was that all she was going to say? Didn't she want to question me about what made me decide to get on a speeding train that doesn't stop in the first place? Or scold me for behaving so recklessly.

"Yeah. Ok." She repeated. Not expanding on her answer.

"That's it?" I asked incredulously. I just spouted out a really long story about how I met Dean and let him lead me off on an adventure and she just says 'ok'? I couldn't quite believe it.

"Yes. Were you expecting more?" She asks. Tricia had always been a fairly straight forward person and would never use more words than she had to but this was pushing it even for her. Couldn't she give me a little more to go off? Was she disappointed in me? Angry? Happy?

Whatever she felt, I had no clue what it was.

"Well, kind of, yeah!" I exclaimed finally falling down into my seat behind the reception desk.

I didn't understand her, if I had told that to anybody else in my faction, they would definitely have given me more of a reaction. But she was acting as though there was nothing remotely odd in what I had said.

Tricia obviously saw my confusion and took pity on me.

"Did I ever tell you that I was born dauntless?"

What?! She was from dauntless?

I was stunned.

People who transferred factions very rarely talked about their previous faction after the initiation process was finished because they didn't want to seem disloyal to their new faction.

Faction before blood.

So it wasn't that strange that I didn't know Tricia was a transfer, but to think that she came from dauntless was shocking.

Amity didn't get very many transfers from dauntless, after all the factions aren't exactly compatible, so that Tricia was one of them just seemed like too much of a coincidence. The woman I work with everyday was one of maybe 40 people alive today to have come to our faction from dauntless. The odds on that were small.

I couldn't help this tiny feeling of anger and jealousy swirl in the pit of my stomach at this new information. She had been given everything I wanted and had thrown it all away for a life that I resented. She could have been in dauntless. She could have been jumping in and out of trains. She could have been free.

But instead she chose to be stuck behind this desk, doing administration and paperwork.

I couldn't understand that. Who would choose this life when you could have so much more?

That thought caused me to stop in my tracks. I had chosen this life. I had decided to stay in amity when I could have had so much more. I couldn't get angry at Tricia for giving up everything I had ever wanted when I hadn't had the courage to leave when I was given the chance. Tricia deserved the happiness she got from her transfer because she had been brave enough to go out and get it. I deserved to be miserable because when the time came, I hadn't been brave enough.

I wasn't sure what expressions crossed my face on learning this information about Tricia but whatever they were, she found them funny because she let out a small chuckle and the warm smile was back on her face.

That managed to kick start my brain and I finally found my voice again.

"You transferred to amity from dauntless?" I asked, needing the confirmation to make it feel real.

"Yes. When I was sixteen my test results showed me that I was amity, but this wasn't a shock to me. I had always known that I wasn't dauntless, and my parents had too. I was raised in dauntless and acted like a dauntless, but I never felt quite at home there." She explained in a soft voice. My eyes had already been glued to hers ever since she started talking but at that last sentence I was even more alert. That was how I felt every single day. She knew that feeling too. I felt a surge of kinship for Tricia flow out of me at that. I had never known anyone else who had felt this way and I was very glad that I wasn't the only one. "So nobody was surprised when on the day of the choosing ceremony I transferred here. Skip down the line a few years, I met my husband, had a family and here I am today." She continued, a happy grin on her face.

I felt the need to look away from the love and emotion that glazed over her eyes at the thought of her family and I was struck once again of how unusual my family was. My parents would never act like this. They would never get all gooey-eyed at the mere thought of me. On the contrary they would probably just get annoyed by thinking of me.

Like for the majority of this conversation, I wasn't quite sure how to respond to this. Why was she telling me all this? I loved hearing about it, don't get me wrong, but I wasn't quite sure what she meant by telling it to me. Did she know about me? Was she trying to tell me that I was a fool for trying to have the life she rejected? Was she telling me her happy life story to show that amity was much better than dauntless and that I shouldn't go gallivanting off with dangerous dauntless boys? All these thoughts and more whizzed through my brain but none seemed to make their way out of my lips.

"What are you saying?" I asked, needing to know.

"What I mean is that although that life was never for me, I did enjoy my time there. I can understand the attraction of the dauntless life style. And it may have been years since I was one of them but I have never forgotten the feeling of jumping out of those trains. So I am probably the only person here who will understand why you did it." Tricia explained.

I felt a rush of emotions towards Tricia, most of which I couldn't name but there were a few that I could understand. Companionship, acceptance, affection.

But at the back of my mind there was one question.

Did she really understand?

I knew that she could understand why I would find enjoyment from jumping out of a train, but did she know why I wanted to do it in the first place? Did she know that I wasn't really meant to be in this faction?

I think she knew that there was something different about me but I don't know if she had pieced it all together yet. And if she hadn't I didn't want to be the one to tell her.

I don't think I could take the disappointment and disgust that would be evident on her face if I told her that I couldn't take the opportunity to give myself the life I dreamed of, like she had.

She would have to be disgusted by me. I was too weak and pathetic to even try it.

She wouldn't understand how the test had put me in dauntless. She would confirm what I had always feared: that I didn't belong in dauntless at all. And I don't think I could take that kind of reaction. Not from her.

I had always looked up to Tricia. She had taken a mentoring role for me, a sort of mother-figure and I wouldn't be able to take her rejecting me, the way I knew she would if she learnt the truth.

So I stayed quiet. And kept that secret to myself. Like I always did.