"That Wouldn't Be in the Spirit of the Game": Three Deleted Divergent Moments
Like Tris, they're very small...but mighty.
(That amazing art from the ten year anniversary editions of the Divergent series is by Victo Ngai.)
As I’ve said before, I’m not someone who has a lot of deleted scenes lying around. First of all, when the Divergent series was coming out, the way to please accounts (“accounts” in this context means major book retailers) was to offer each of them exclusive content, so whatever deleted material I had was distributed among them. Though you can find it all together now in the ten year anniversary editions of Divergent, thankfully.
Second of all, I usually write “short” instead of long, meaning I add scenes as I revise instead of cutting them. So.
But I did reread the Divergent books recently, and it reminded me of a few bits and pieces I haven’t showed anyone before. (As far as I can recall, anyway.) They’re not long, but I do hope you enjoy them.
Before I start, though, I want to make sure you know I’m officially in my troll era.
Sorry!
…Or am I?
Okay, now on to the main event. This first scene was a potential moment from Divergent. Before I decided on “Capture the Flag” as a Dauntless bonding activity, I played with the idea of a high-risk game of hide-and-seek. Ultimately I decided against it because while it presented some ~sultry possibilities (as you’ll see below), it didn’t have the team-building effect I was going for.
I walk carefully forward, pressing with the ball of my foot on the floor. I was on concrete a moment before, but now I am on something softer. Carpet. I stretch a hand to my left, and feel glass. A window, or a wall—either way, it can be my guide as I walk through this room.My fingertips slide across the glass as I walk. Four wouldn’t hide along a wall. He wouldn’t make it that easy. I pull away from the wall and step forward, my hands outstretched. I know I must look stupid. If he’s in the room, he’s probably laughing at me. I stop, and let my hands fall. Do I hear suppressed laughter? Shaking shoulders, bursts of air, do I hear them?
I hear something. It has a rhythm like a heartbeat. Or like breaths—inhaling and exhaling. I move slowly toward it, angling my head toward the sound like that will make it easier to hear, only it doesn’t. My foot touches something hard. When I reach out to feel what it is, I realize it’s a piece of furniture, probably a desk, since we’re in what was an office building.
Inhale, exhale. I hope those aren’t my own breaths I’m hearing. I stop breathing for a few seconds to make sure, but the air in, air out sound is still there. Louder. I move faster toward it, eager to see if I’m right, and if I’ve won.
My face hits it first, and then my chest. It’s hard, but not as hard as a wall. I don’t move back, but my hands press to it, and find a contour, find cotton and beneath it, a muscle. Above it, a bone. A collarbone. A person.
Gasping, I step back, and immediately heat rushes into my cheeks.
“Guess you found me,” he says, and his voice is distinct— low and clear— so I know who he is. My face is so hot I press my palms to my cheeks to cool them. Four. Of course it’s Four.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” I demand.
His fingertips touch my cheekbones and slide up, under the blindfold, to lift it away from my eyes.
“Because that wouldn’t be in the spirit of the game,” he replies.
This next one is truly tiny: just two paragraphs from the start of Insurgent, when I thought I might tell the story partly in Caleb’s POV. This idea didn’t get very far, but I do like this glimpse of Caleb’s voice:
I pinpoint the star that shows us north: Polaris. Since the train traveled directly west of the city, we will have to walk north and east to reach the Amity compound. According to Polaris, we are. Whoever Tobias Eaton is, aside from someone who necks with my sister right in front of me, he is a skilled navigator, at least.
My knees ache, probably from the ten foot leap from train to rooftop outside the Dauntless compound, but there is no use complaining when two of our party have bullet wounds. I feel the ghost of my spectacles on my nose, though I abandoned them on the train. I was only Erudite for a few weeks, but they were formative weeks.
Finally, an alternate beginning to Insurgent where I tried out Tobias’s voice. (Can you tell I was having trouble figuring out how to write Insurgent?) If this scene has appeared somewhere else before, I’m sorry— it’s been awhile and I have trouble keeping track of what’s been released and what hasn’t.
I really enjoy this particular kind of moment: wherein a child gets the chance to show their parent that they’ve changed or grown. Here it’s a bit complicated, though, because…Marcus sucks.
Ultimately I decided not to include any other POVs in Insurgent, but I do like Tobias’s voice. The difference between him and Tris is admittedly more subtle than I was going for, but he indulges in poetic descriptions more often, and it’s nice.
I search the horizon line for pinpricks of light, but so far there are none, and we walk only by moonlight.
“Are you sure you know where we’re going?” Peter sounds sluggish, like he is talking around a particularly thick tongue. I grit my teeth and suppress the urge to grab him by the throat, like he did to her just weeks ago.
“Yes,” I say.
“I assume you’ve wandered to Amity headquarters in the dead of night before,” he says. “Because how else could you possibly know the way for sure?”
I stop walking. “Would you like to take the lead, initiate?” My voice falls easily into the cadences of an instructor, though I am not his instructor anymore. Still, it is a more comfortable identity for me than Leader of a Pack of Survivors. I gesture toward the horizon. “Feel free.”
Peter’s pale face looks to me like a dimmer moon in a darker sky. His eyes flick from me to the horizon to Tris to his arm, and he shakes his head.
“I thought so.”
My father’s voice slices the air in half, slices me in half. “We’re all tired,” he says. “There’s no reason to be hostile.”
Hastily I try to mend myself. If anyone else had done the scolding, I would have told them off, but it was him, and his chastisements press down on me like weights, making me silent. They always have. I close my eyes and start to walk again.
She slides her hand around mine. Though she is small and so are her fingers, she feels strong to me, like her bones are steel and her muscles are wire. When she touches me, she presses that strength into me. I have felt it since she first touched me.
I open my eyes and stare at the horizon, where there are tiny circles of light.
“There it is,” she says, leaning into my side.
I nod. “I hope they let us come in.”
“If they don’t,” she says, “we’ll make them.”
I smile a little. “Of course we will.”
Have a good week!
-V
I miss this characters so much, you just made my Monday way better than it already was <3
this really makes me want to read the books again!! I love reading about Tris and Four’s relationship. It’s amazing!