A/N: This is the first fanfic I've ever actually published. It's also on AO3. I own nothing that you recognize, only Dorothy's (DJ's) story. Hopefully, I'll be updating once a week. Thank you for reading!
Chapter 1: The Choosing
"Dorothy Jennings." With shaking knees, I make my way to the center. Blood rushing in my ears drowns out whispers. I'm afraid I'll trip on my way there. I don't. I look at the gracious host: Marcus Eaton. His eyes, deep blue, hold kindness for most, but I recognize a familiar type of cruelty lurking just behind the surface.
The woman beside him hands me a knife, almost blue in color, and sharp as can be. I draw the blade across my cold palm, take a deep breath, and let the accumulated blood drip into the only bowl that made sense to me. The minuscule drops land with a sizzle. "Dauntless." A dull roar comes from my new faction, who I've noticed have been becoming less and less enthusiastic as the choosing ceremony drags on.
I wiggle myself into the growing group of Dauntless initiates, finding myself looking up at the back of a Dauntless-born's neck. It doesn't matter, I suppose. I'd see any more Dauntless initiates as they came and joined, and I don't particularly care who goes into other factions. The next initiate whose name is called chooses Erudite. The next, Peter Hayes, comes to stand next to me. He is a confident man, with a wide, easy smile. Something unsettling swims behind his green eyes, but I can't place this one. I almost offer him a smile.
Instead, I look down, picking dirt from under my fingernails as his judging eyes try to burn yet another hole into my already worn grey sweater. Maybe he thinks I'm from Abnegation, I hope. The clothes I wear did come from them, and my mannerisms certainly seem demure, though from self-preservation rather than selflessness.
Other things give away my plight, though. I somehow doubt that he's ignorant, and surely he notices my matted hair or the dirt that mars my face. I tried to scrub as much of it off as I could this morning, but washing in dirty water doesn't allow me to be particularly clean.
It's hard for me to even think of what I am—what I was. I've always been taught to be ashamed of it. Factionless. I was born factionless. I've been factionless for the last sixteen and a half years. But now I'm not. I might not be a member yet, but I can say that I'm not factionless. I grin and barely contain a giddy giggle at the thought.
Finally, the last dependent chooses (Minnie Aaron, Amity) and we're dismissed.
The Dauntless (myself included now) are the first to make the exit into the world. I don't bother looking for my mom. She couldn't come; she had to drive the bus today.
The older Dauntless—members already—lead us past the elevators, toward the stairs. I'm used to this part, at least. Then they run, hooping and hollering the whole way. I try to keep up, feeling lucky that we're descending the steps and not ascending. My chest burns by the time we reach the ground floor.
They don't stop, so neither do I, no matter how much I want to. In fact, the speed picks up and I'm sprinting to keep up. The air outside is cold, but my entire body feels like it's on fire. My legs scream in protest. Not much chance to build muscle or stamina when you barely eat enough to keep you alive, I think bitterly.
Just as I think I can't go any longer, we stop. Around the corner, I hear the loud screeching of the train's horn. The crowd forms a crude single file line in front of the train tracks. The train glides by noisily; the car doors are open as always. The Dauntless members and Dauntless-born initiates jump on with a practiced ease, so almost immediately, it's only the faction transfers left.
I wonder briefly if I qualify as a transfer, given the fact that I didn't necessarily switch out of a faction. I shake the thought from my head and begin jogging with a few other transfers. We run parallel with the train and hurl ourselves into the car. Despite the fact that I've done it before, I find that it takes all of my strength to pull myself in.
I'm not the only one. A dark-skinned Candor transfer pulls in another initiate—a blonde girl, also dressed in grey. She is from Abnegation. A red-haired Erudite boy doesn't make it at all, despite the attempts of a girl who tries to help him. I don't envy him, knowing exactly what it's like where he's going.
I drape my arms over my head, trying to open up my airways and get more breath into my lungs. I sit with my back against the metal of the car, more out of necessity than of strategy, though I realize that it was a smart one as other initiates are thrown around the car by the wind.
The Abnegation girl and the Candor girl who helped her sit on the opposite side of car. I can see them by the orange light of the setting sun. After a few minutes, the other initiates decide that sitting might be in their best interests.
For at least half an hour, maybe more, I sit silently, listening to the conversations of others. None sound interesting enough to lend my focus to. Finally, a boy shouts, "They're jumping off!"
I'm not surprised. The trains almost never stop, and the Dauntless almost always take the trains. Jumping seemed like the only way to get off. I've seen them do it when they used to patrol the factionless sectors. I stand, looking out of the open door. Sure enough, the Dauntless in the cars ahead of us are launching themselves onto the adjacent rooftop. There's a gap between the tracks and the ledge of the roof. I watch as a few more people jump onto it, observing how they land and hoping to figure out how not to kill myself.
"We have to jump off too, then," I hear from a girl behind me.
"Great, because that makes perfect sense, Molly. Leap off a train onto a roof." A roof that's quickly approaching. And why did that sound so sarcastic? It did make perfect sense, at least to me.
"This is kind of what we signed up for, Peter." I hadn't imagined that the high, slightly effeminate voice of the boy behind me was that of Peter Hayes, but I realize that it suits him.
"Well, I'm not doing it," says a smaller voice. I whip around toward him. It's a little Amity boy, curled up near the back. He'd been crying.
"You've got to," the Candor girl who helped the Abnegation girl says, "or you fail. Come on, it'll be all right."
"No, it won't! I'd rather be factionless than dead!"
The words hit me hard, my chest tightening, and I can't hold back a reply. "Really?" I ask. His eyes snap up, as though realizing for the first time that I'm there. A look of recognition crosses his face. "Because I'd rather be dead than factionless." With that, I see that the roof has appeared in front of the door, and I leap to the relative safety of the roof. I run a few steps to stay upright, but quickly stagger to a stand still without falling completely.
I watch as the people from my car each land on the roof, each falling except for Peter. My words must have left a mark, because just as the train passes the roof, the Amity boy jumps. He misses the roof, and falls just beside. He screams until a sickening thud stops him. Bile rises in my throat. He wouldn't have jumped if I wouldn't have said that, I think blankly. But he wouldn't have lasted a day trying to fight for food with the factionless. That was probably a more merciful death for him.
A Dauntless-born suffered a similar fate, another girl almost hurling herself off the roof to get to her fallen comrade. No one noticed the Amity boy. I didn't even know his name.
"Listen up!" My head snaps away from the spot where the Amity boy should have landed. "My name is Max! I am one of the leaders of your new faction!" The man speaking is older than anyone on the roof, member or initiate. He jumps up and stands on a ledge bordering an open hole in the concrete. It was put there for a reason. "Several stories below us is the members' entrance to our compound. If you can't muster the will to jump off, you don't belong here. Our initiates have the privilege of going first."
"You want us to jump off a ledge?" If the mousy Erudite transfer hadn't said it, I might have. It seemed so callous to ask us to jump as if two people hadn't died doing that very thing moments ago.
"Yes," Max responds simply, looking vaguely amused.
"Is there water at the bottom or something?" Water at the bottom won't help much, I realize. We might still die, jumping from this height.
"Who knows?" Something burns hot in my chest. How can he be so nonchalant about the fact that he might be asking us to jump to our deaths? But he wouldn't do that, would he? If they killed initiates in their first day, they would have run out of members almost at the beginning of the faction system, right? That must mean that they made some way for this to be at least mostly safe, right?
The horde of members in front of us part for the initiates, for us, like the red sea had for Moses. No one moves for a tense moment. Then the Abnegation girl steps forward into the makeshift aisle. A few people snicker. I'm not one of them.
Max yields for the small girl, letting her step up onto the ledge and look into the abyss below. With obviously shaking fingers, she stumbles to unbutton her grey Abnegation blouse. At last, she pulls the offending garment off, revealing a grey tee shirt, and lobs the blouse at Peter. It hits him in the chest and he glares at her indignantly. A few Candor transfers and one Erudite transfer shout and catcall, but she ignores them and turns to the hole once again. She stands there for a moment. Then she bends her legs and jumps off.
I'm the first one to run up and peer down after her. By the time I get up there, the black abyss has swallowed her. She makes no noise, which means that I can't tell how far she fell. The uncertainty makes my heart beat faster.
The Candor girl who helped her was the second to jump. She screams as she falls, but stops after not too long. Then, it was a Dauntless-born, then two Erudite transfers (a couple, judging by the way that they held hands as they jumped). I was the sixth.
I don't know why I waited so long to jump. It feels like I'm flying. It seems like I'm falling forever, yet I hit something springy too soon. A net. Normally I wouldn't like the way that it made my time perception so faulty, but the only thought that comes to my mind, and falls from my lips, was "I have to do that again."
The man who grabs my arm to pull me off before the next initiate just chuckles and asks my name.
"Dorothy," I answer, still in awe. I don't think I even looked at him, too overwhelmed by the fact that I just jumped off a building.
