The Circle Turned
This is a short AU were each one of the Circle had a slightly different childhood.

I don't own anything but my own ideas.

The redheaded girl grimaced at her companions, as usual. She was caught, again, due to the latest harebrained scheme and quite unamused. She wished that she had never had to fall in with the thieving fools but it had been her only chance of survival. Her raggedy, filthy dress was proof of that- Both in its squalor and how it hung off of her thin frame. Without turning to the Thief Lord she would have gone completely hungry and starved years ago. It was the only thing that a foreign born seven year old could have done when her family abandoned her after a particularly poor trading venture. If she hadn't joined the gang than she would have died. But now, in the cell with two Xs on her hand, she found that it had only put off the inevitable.

Logically, she knew she wouldn't be executed- only sent off to work. The magistrate didn't know of the evil spirit inside her, or the crimes it had been persuaded to commit. The spirit was the reason the Thief Lord had taken her after all, the reason her parents had left her. The Thief Lord had seen her tantrum after she was unable to convince another merchant family to take her home. The wind had picked up and lightning had come from her hair. He had immediately snatched her up, offered her food and a place to stay. A real family to care for her. The redhead hadn't wanted to go with the strange threatening man but she had been hungry and confused. The Thief Lord had asked her about magic and she told him she didn't have any, but her family had thought she was possessed. He had smiled and said that was alright. The spirit dedicated to ruining her life was actually useful to him.

She lost her name, somewhere along the way. She couldn't remember when she had actually agreed to go by Ghost- a mockery of her spirit- but sometime over the years she had stopped resisting the Thief Lord's renaming. She didn't want her family's name anyway. They had abandoned her and she had exorcized them from her mind as well as she could.

"Why can't ye jus' ge' us out o' here, Lady Ghost?" Alleycat mocked, "Or can ye only make wind?" The other gang-members chuckled darkly.

Her fellow gang members had never liked her, jealous of the special attention that the Thief Lord and Ghost's demeanor had never helped either. She had never been good with people, especially of her own age, and tended to be the grumpy loner. They teased her about her high-than-thou attitude, that she was too prissy and proper. They loved to remind her that her rich family had left her here, that she now lived in the slums. They would taunt her just short of her spirit being released, having learned after Cheater's death that her temper did have a bite. It was their way of poking a dangerous animal with a stick.

Ghost let a thunderclap sound just to scare them. She had minimal control over her spirit nowadays. She had been forced to learn how to command lightening by the Thief Lord and then had forced herself to learn how to stop it after Cheater's demise. She knew lethal from non-lethal, how to scare and how to blow a scarf away from a stall. Harnessing the spirit was always something she'd rather not do but she hadn't had that choice in years. It still got away from her though, when she was emotional. It scared her.

She laid back on the moss, her merchant upbringing desperately wishing for crisp sheets and a pillow. Ghost considered that this moss was probably the most comfortable bed she would sleep on for the rest of her future. That was rather a depressing thought.

Briefly, she wondered what it would be- the mines, galleys or shipyards. On one hand, she hoped to be near the ocean. She had always loved the water. On the other hand, she knew that the mines would be safest. Sure, she would die sooner, but no one else was guaranteed too. She wouldn't accidently sink a ship if the spirit escaped. She couldn't start a hurricane if she was underground. A typhoon wouldn't pop up because someone mad her cry. Maybe if she went to the mines the spirit would leave her in favor of seeing the open sky.

On that note, she felt like crying. As much as she hated hurting people, she didn't want to be trapped underground without any fresh air. And she would still have the deadly lightening.

As she had for the last three years, she saw no happy futures. She was cursed after all. Cursed with a spirit who ruined her life. A spirit she knew was driving her mad. At least it brought no voices to her at this moment.

With that semi happy thought, Ghost willed herself to sleep.

...

Briar could usually stand the dark. He remembered it well from his childhood. He had grown up on the streets and could barely remember his birth mother. But now the dark was a monster.

He remembered his kind foster-family's faces. His mother and father dead in their bed, their faces splotched with smallpox. He remembered them taking him in, their smile at him when his birthday rolled around, their pride when he gave exactly the right compliment to the king's garden. The fa Toren's had taken him in around the age of six when he had been caught stealing from them. They had never been the most normal of nobles and apparently he had reminded them of their daughter Sandrilene whom they had sent off with her nursemaid after a kidnapping attempt. They had decided that as a commoner he would be safe from politics and that leaving a little boy to fend for himself on the streets was far more dangerous than adopting him.

Now he was locked in a room, magically even, surrounded by a mob and a deadly disease. Before the lamp had gone out he had tried to lock-pick the door- a skill that he was admitably rusty at but was capable at. The door unlocked but it still wouldn't open, the magic still holding it shut. He had growled and tried ramming it but that had only hurt his shoulder.

Now the lamp was out and the only light was a carefully fed bonfire on a silver plate. He could do nothing but try to feed it and yet still keep it under control. If he caught the floor on fire than he was dead. When he ran out of bits to feed it, it was over. He didn't want the nightmare that he knew would come. He treated the fire like it was his hope, as sappy as that sounded. He knew that he would probably die in this room but kept a bet with himself that someone would come before the fire went out.

He hated fire. It made himself feel like he was burning. Every time he put another scrap in the fire, he could feel the flames nipping at his fingers. It wanted to eat him up, to destroy him.

Briar forced himself on. If little Roach could survive on the streets of Sotat, Briar fa Toren could keep a fire going. He had picked his name to be tough and he refused to take the easy way out. It was getting harder after days with no sleep and exhaustion was creeping up on him. The flickering shadows were almost hypnotizing, beckoning him to the dream world.

He kept feeding the flames.

This time though, he'd made a mistake. His nearly perfect coordination slipped up as he put in a wooden spool of thread. His hand reached to far and got burnt, making him jerk it back in pain. One of his fingers caught the plate and sent it skidding across the room, tipping over as it did so. The fire spilled onto the polished wooden floor, catching it alight.

Briar tried not to panic. Couldn't you beat fire out? But he'd already burned the linens. He couldn't trap it, not when the floor was so flammable. Why was the wood so dry? If only it was green wood, then it wouldn't catch like that.

At that thought, he felt a tingle. Greenwood. What if he could- No. He wasn't a mage. But... He really wished the floor was fresh from the tree, nice and wet and hard to burn. He could smell it, the smell of freshly cut trees. He could feel it.

Briar closed his eyes and felt a power flow through him. It was like he was telling the floorboards to remember being a tree. Waking them up from a long slumber.

When he opened his eyes, he saw nothing but blackness. The fire was gone and the floor wasn't dry and dusty anymore but it felt wet, as if covered in sap.

With the next wave of exhaustion, Briar closed his eyes again and was asleep. Later, he would never admit he swooned but it was in fact, a faint.

...

In the darkness of the temple dormitory, Daja was trying to get to sleep. She wondered what her family was doing, as always, and if they'd ever regretted their decision. She knew she regretted it.

Daja had been born a Trader. The skill she had from that was her calm negotiating skills. Other than that, she had been a failure. She had always been more interested in how things were made, especially metalwork, than she had about trade. She had lingered to much around forges as a child, always getting into trouble for appreciating the blacksmith's skill too much.

So, on account of a mimander's prophecy- that she would eventually become a trangshi if left to continue her current path- they had left her in Capchen with an Uraelle Chandler to 'help around the house' and to be her 'ward'. Uraelle treated her like a servant, or a slave actually since Daja wasn't even paid, until the old woman died. Then Daja was passed around the Chandler clan, mostly for her bargaining skills, but eventually they had grown tired of her. Finally, Darra and Valden dropped her off at Stone Circle and clan Chandler officially cleansed their hands of her.

Now she was stuck in another place with people that didn't want her. She was as pleasant as she could be, always calm and deliberate but she was still under suspicion by the youth of the temple for being born a Trader. The dedicates were also growing tired of her frequently slipping off to the forges and getting into fights.

Daja heard a laugh and tried to ignore it. She knew the girls in her dormitory were talking about her. She tried not to let it bother her. They were only silly little girls.

"Have you seen her clothes? Those ugly dresses! That black wool's so old it's turning brown!" the girl who slept two beds to the left practically shrieked,

Daja gritted her teeth. She didn't notice that the metal around the room started vibrating. It wasn't even that she cared about her horrid clothes, but these girls who she hadn't done anything too, felt like they had to mock her. Bullies made her mad.

Luckily, they seemed to tone it down a bit. She had almost gotten herself to sleep when she heard one of them say, quite loudly even-

"-even her Traders wouldn't take her. They didn't think she has value!"

That was it. She wanted to go on and punch them in the face. Daja found it hard to care about her 'starting no fights, only defending rule' after that. She was going to get up and-

The other girls started screaming and that brought two dedicates running. When they got there, they found every scrap of metal melted around the room- except for around Daja's bed.

...

Sandry was covered in salt, both from the sea and her tears. She was so thirsty that she thought she might as well drink the ocean water- regardless of its effects. She was finally going to come home to her parents after five years of living with Pirisi and Traders. Her parents had written her that they were sure that she would be safe now and had sent for her. She and Pirisi had bargained for passage with the next ship heading to Summersea, Third Ship Kisubo. Then it had sank and Sandry was the only survivor as far as she could tell. Anyone else was merely a drowned body.

She wouldn't be a survivor for much longer. She was parched and starving. Her fair skin had baked, the blisters stung extra from the salt. Her lips were even cracked and bleeding, also stinging from the salt.

The biggest irony was that she had lived apart from her family for so long for her protection, only to die getting back. She knew she would die. She was in the middle of nowhere with no one to come to her rescue. If only she had died quickly like everyone else instead of this torture on the wooden plank!

Then she saw a chance- a suraku. A survival box. It was bobbing in the water, heading away from her.

She knew she couldn't swim there, she was too tired to survive the ocean. She looked around for a stick, something she could pull it towards her with. There was nothing.

She wished she was a mimander and could tie up the winds in a thread. Then, not only could she get to the suraku, she could potentially blow herself to land.

She was so hungry she could just picture the box, all of the supplies wrapped in cloth. She wished it would just move a little. She called it over, trying to channel all of her optimism. It would come! She could see the cloths so clearly and begged them to come to her.

Slowly it obeyed her command.

A\N: Well, that was interesting. Don't ask what brought this on because it'd be kind of hard to explain. For some reason, I got inspired to write Tris if she had grown up like Briar- and then I had to do everyone else. I have no idea if I'll continue this- heck, I don't even know if anyone wants this continued!- but I could see something else in this AU. Their reactions to Niko, them meeting each other... Could get interesting, especially since their all connected in some way before they even know of each others existence. Briar and Sandry would be interesting, their actually siblings before the whole Circle thing! This Tris is also thought provoking, she'd quite a bit different than cannon!Tris is at the moment. I don't know. Did this work? Did you like it? Hate it? Think it wouldn't work at all? Or want to see where I'm going with it? Reviewing would be much appreciated because I'm a horrible judge of my own work!

Thanks for reading!