“Are you serious?” Layla asked, her expression lighting up as she turned her face towards his voice. As usual, she was a bit off, her unfocused eyes landing somewhere a few inches to the right of his head. She couldn’t put her finger on why s’mores were her favorite food, but they just were. They reminded her of the better times with her dad when they went camping or just being a kid again. “Well damn, we really wouldn’t be able to make s’mores without any of that stuff. How could I forget that?” She laughed, shaking her head. “Must’ve just slipped my mind. Y’know, with plannin’ the camping and all.”
She snorted, shaking her head. “You were Dauntless before anything else, dude, time spent in Erudite or not. And what the fuck do you do over there? Type or write or something? Doesn’t that mean you’d have like, super strong fingers? Or like…stuff about angles?” In all honesty, Layla’s Dauntless-style education had started lacking after her going blind, due partially to the time that she’d spent in the infirmary recovering from the head trauma, and then the rest of the time when she had to relearn how to live. She tried not to let that stop her, however, and pushed herself just as hard as the other initiates. Still, there were times when she wasn’t sure that she could keep up, like during the shooting or when she got caught on the zipline. She’d felt helpless, and that feeling never entirely went away.
Layla gave the man (or at least, what sounded like a man, and what she hoped as in his direction) a wide smile. “Us? Please. We’ll come back in one piece don’t even worry about…And he walked away, didn’t he?” she asked, her voice getting quieter as she realized that the grunt she’d heard had been dismissive, and the man they had been talking to was gone. She let out a small sigh of relief. She shook her head. “Good thing you didn’t, or else we would’ve been totally fucked. Oh my god, you were being serious. This is amazing.”
“Your memory’s a bit unfortunate.” Jackson replied, with a small chuckle. They were leaving for obvious political reasons, but Jackson didn’t want their journey - or escape, more appropriately - be all work. The two of them were enough to entertain each other, but it didn’t take much to make Layla happy either. So, if taking a few ingredients to make s’mores would be capable to lift Layla’s mood when she was down, then there was no question about it. “Let’s not pretend you did any of the work.” He joked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I spent my first eight years in Dauntless. Four or five of those years are forgotten, since I can barley remember anything until the age of four or five. I learned a lot in Dauntless. But I spent eight in Erudite, too.” He reminded her. “Eight years that I remember all of.” He grinned at her question. “I was a shit student.” It was true. Compared to every Erudite born, Jackson had never excelled in Erudite. However, he had the potential, and he knew that well. If he’d paid attention in class or opened a book, he would’ve passed his classes easily. His memory was strong, but more than that, his learning capability. He’d gotten Erudite in his aptitude test, after all. Along side Dauntless.
Jackson looked down, eyeing the cracks. He cleared his throat. “Layla, I’m not coming back.” He looked back up at her, though he knew it wouldn’t matter. “I’m leaving for good right now. That’s my mindset.” He gave a small smile. “’Course I was being serious. Let’s go.”
