The first phase of the exam began after lunch. We sat at one of the long tables in the cafeteria, while the test administrators would call ten names at a time, one for each testing room. I sit next to Wendy and across from our neighbor Sherria.
Sherria's father travels throughout the allied city for his job, so he has a car and drives her to and from school every day. He offered to drive us, too, but as Wendy says, we prefer to leave later and would not want to inconvenience her.
Of course not. Abnegation do not burden others. But I do.
The test administrators are mostly Abnegation volunteers, although there is an Erudite in one of the testing rooms and a Dauntless in another to test those of us from Abnegation, because the rules state that we can't be tested by someone from our own faction. The rules also say that we can't prepare for the test in any way, so I don't know what to expect. No one does. And no one is allowed to tell us what to expect either.
My gaze drifts from Sherria to the Dauntless tables across the room. They are laughing and shouting and playing cards. At another set of tables, the Erudite chatter over books and newspapers, in constant pursuit of knowledge.
A group of Amity girls in yellow and red sit in a circle on the cafeteria floor, playing some kind of hand-slapping game involving a rhyming song and laughing when one of them messes up. Every few minutes I hear a chorus of laughter from them as someone is eliminated and has to sit in the center of the circle. At the table next to them, Candor boys make wide gestures with their hands. They appear to be arguing about something, but it must not be serious, because some of them are still smiling while others make strange accusations while gesturing wildly.
At the Abnegation table, we are all seated quietly and patiently wait to be called, everyone but me. Faction customs dictate even idle behavior and supersede individual preference. I doubt all the Erudite want to study all the time, or that every Candor enjoys a lively debate, but they can't defy the norms of their factions any more than I can, so I try my best to stop fiddling with the hem of my blouse or bite my fingernails, Wendy says it's a bad habit of mine.
Wendy's name is called in the next group. She moves confidently toward the exit. I don't need to wish her luck or assure her that she shouldn't be nervous. She knows where she belongs, and as far as I know, she always has. My earliest memory of her is from when we were four and six years old. She scolded me for not giving my jump rope to a little girl on the playground who didn't have anything to play with. She doesn't lecture me often anymore, but I have her look of disapproval memorized.
I have tried to explain to her that my instincts are not the same as hers—it didn't even enter my mind to give my seat to the Candor man on the bus—but she doesn't understand. "Just do what you're supposed to," she always says. If it is that easy for her. It should be that easy for me. key word: Should.
My stomach wrenches. I close my eyes and keep them closed until ten minutes later, when Wendy sits down again.
She is as pale as a sheet. She pushes her palms along her legs like I do when I wipe off sweat, and when she brings them back, her fingers quake. I open my mouth to ask her something, but the words don't come. I am not allowed to ask her about her results, and she is not allowed to tell me. Faction rules.
An Abnegation volunteer speaks the next round of names. Two from Dauntless, two from Erudite, two from Amity, two from Candor, and then: "From Abnegation: Sherria Blendy and Natsumi Dragneel."
I get up because I'm supposed to, but if it were up to me, I would stay in my seat for the rest of time, or until the test died out. I feel like there is a bubble in my chest that expands more by the second, threatening to break me apart from the inside. I follow Sherria to the exit. The people I pass can obviously tell us apart. We wear the same clothes and we wear our hair the same way yes, but Sherria might not feel like she's going to throw up, and from what I can tell, her hands aren't shaking so hard she has to clutch the hem of her shirt to steady them. And also the obvious body mass difference. Where I am voluptuous, petite, and pink, she is skinny, lanky, and blond.
Waiting for us outside the cafeteria is a row of ten rooms. They are used only for the aptitude tests, so I have never been in one before. Unlike the other rooms in the school, they are separated, not by steel walls, but by mirrors, some of colour some bleached white. I watch myself, tanned and terrified, walking toward one of the doors. Sherria grins nervously at me as she walks into room 5, and I walk into room 7, where a Dauntless woman waits for me.
She is not as severe-looking as the young Dauntless I have seen. She has small, light brown, angular eyes and she was wearing a black blazer—like a man's suit—and jeans. It's only when she turns to close the door that I see a tattoo on the back of her neck, a steel black dragon with a red eye wrapped around an iron pole. If I didn't feel like my heart had migrated to my throat, I would ask her what it signifies. It must signify something. Something so elaborate always does.
Mirrors cover the inner walls of the room. I can see my reflection from all angles: the gray fabric obscuring the shape of my back, my long neck, my knobby-knuckled hands, red with a blood blush. The ceiling glows white with light. In the center of the room is a reclined chair, like a dentist's, with a machine next to it. It looks like a place where terrible things happen. Things like death and miscarriage. I wonder if the test is painful?
"Don't worry," the woman says, "it doesn't hurt."
Her hair is a bright dodger blue and straight/wavy, but in the light I see that it is streaked with black with the tips a dark crimson.
"Have a seat and get comfortable," she says. "My name is Levy."
Clumsily I sit in the chair and recline, putting my head on the headrest. The lights hurt my eyes. Levy busies herself with the machine on my right. I try to focus on her and not on the wires in her hands, or what she plans to do with them.
"Why the dragon?" I blurt out as she attaches an electrode to my forehead.
"Never met a curious Abnegation before," she says, raising her eyebrows at me.
I shiver, and goose bumps appear on my arms. My curiosity is a mistake, a betrayal of Abnegation values. But then again, I never really was an Abnegation.
Humming a little, she presses another electrode to my forehead and explains, "In some parts of the ancient world, the dragon symbolized intelligence, magic, and ferocity. Back when I got it, I figured if I always had the dragon on me, I'd be strong. So I wouldn't be weak. Plus it reminds me of someone special."
I try to stop myself from asking another question, but I can't help it. "You're afraid of being weak?"
"I was afraid of my weakness," she corrects me. She presses the next electrode to her own forehead, and attaches a wire to it. She shrugs. "Now it reminds me of the fear I've overcome and of the person who helped me overcome that fear."
She stands behind me. I squeeze the armrests so tightly the redness pulls away from my knuckles. She tugs wires toward her, attaching them to me, to her, to the machine behind her. Then she passes me a vial of fluorescent blue liquid.
"Drink this," she says.
"What is it?" My throat feels swollen. I swallow. Hard. "What's going to happen?"
"Can't tell you that. Just trust me."
I press air from my lungs and tip the contents of the vial into my mouth. My eyes close.
When they open, an instant has passed, but I am somewhere else entirely. I stand in the school cafeteria again, but all the long tables are empty, and I see through the glass walls that it's snowing shades of blue and red. On one of the tables there is a book*. On another there is a knife*. On the last one, there is nothing*. Or so I presume. The moment I stop directly looking at the empty table, yellow wisps move like water through the air*. Suddenly, the wisps turn into the figure of a man*. The man is pale and dressed in a black robe. In some way he seems familiar*.
The man says, "Choose."
"Why? And who the heck are you?" I ask.
"Choose," he repeats.
"What will I do with them and why do you care?" I ask the man.
"Natsu, it's time to choose." he scolds.
When he scolds me, my fear disappears and stubbornness replaces it. I scowl and cross my arms, and give him the most heated glare I can muster. He meets my gaze as level as a calm sea. I am so distracted that I forget to ask how he knew my name.
He stares at me with a calm expression, but his eyes have so much emotion in them that I can't seem to keep my eyes on him. I look away in unease, and decide to stare beyond his form. I ask what my choice will signify and he only nods his head and with a wave of his arm as he smiles and says something in a foreign language, something like, "Natsu, nondum est tempus ut veritatem inquirat. Otouto crescere, et redde me fieri a familia iterum. In posterum tempus, Koibito. Aishiteru Natsu." or something of the sort. Shortly after his weird hand tricks, I am transported to the room where Levy gave me the vial. Instead of the chair, however, there is a single mirror and three doors. Each of the doors has the same insignia as the objects that were on the table.
I'm about to walk past the mirror when I see an image of my father tied to a chair with a gun aimed at him, of Wendy and Grandeeney crying in the corner yelling at me to stop and to "pick the book". *
I get another image of me as a vigilante, standing over the corpse of a child. This me ,or not me, looks at me and says, "Pick the knife, Natsumi. You know you want too."*
I get another vision of the same man as before. The same man appears in front of the door with the wisps. There is a dystopian society and people screaming behind him. The man looks up, and this time, instead of emotion filled eyes, his eyes hold some strange emotion I can't cipher along with guilt. When his eyes meet mine, he asks if I want to know the truth while extending a book to me*. Then the mirror shatters.
I am so surprised that I stumble backwards and fall on my rear. I manage to get up and look towards the doors once more. The book showed my family crying in a dark room, the knife showed an evil me, and the wisps showed me the same man from before. I don't know why, but I feel a tug in my gut leading me to the door with the wisps. Just as I place my hand on the door knob, the scenery changes once again.
This time, we are in the factionless sector of town. My family has visited the sector to hand out provisions to the factionless. It is also the place where we found Wendy*.
We were giving out provisions to the Factionless, like every other Monday, when a four year-old me heard some crying not too far away. I move away from my mother, though I know I'm not supposed to, and head over to where the nose originated from. I had expected to find someone crying over recently becoming factionless, due to the initiations occurring a few weeks prior, when I spot a child wrapped in some blankets near the street curb. I run over to the child before my mother can stop me, and hold the child in my stubby arms. By the time my parents and fation members find me, the little bundle has stopped crying and was holding onto me tightly. My mother pitying the poor creature, decided to adopt her, seeing as how she became barren after having me. I clearly remember on the walk back, my parents telling me that curiosity was a bad thing to have, when I saw a little tag hidden within the little bundle. It was a name tag, and on it there was only a name. That is the story of how we adopted Wendy. The perfect Abnegation.
I snap out of my reverie in time to notice that the sector has actually changed. Instead of an old run down abandoned area, there is a beautiful square with elaborate natural vegetation. In the middle there is a beautiful park, and in that park there is a man reading a newspaper. I decide to follow my instincts and head past the strangely normal man and towards a beautiful porcelain fountain in the middle. Right as I am about to pass the man, he grabs my hand and quickly whirls me around to face him. He shoves his newspaper in my face and demands to know if I know a certain man. I take a closer look at the newspaper and notice that it was the face of the man from before. I want to tell him the truth, but I feel as if I shouldn't.
"Why do you need to know?" I ask.
"Please, if you know about this man, you can help save my family, so please. Tell me everything you can."
I hesitate. "Yes I know him." I say. "But I'm afraid I don't know much about him sorry." I say hurriedly.
As I try to walk away again, he grabs my wrist and twists it painfully until my arm is bent behind my back. And I feel nothing but a sharp pain, and that sharp pain triggered something dormant within me. Suddenly, my dormant instincts come alive. I maneuver myself around him, grab the arm that was not holding my wrist, and roll him over my back and hip until I hear his back make contact on the ground with a thud. I maneuver my captured hand out of his hold and hold him in place via his neck. I feel a burning sensation in my right arm as I hold him in place.
The last thing I see is the horrified expression in his eyes, and the desperate plea for forgiveness. Then everything goes up in flames and in the distance, I hear a very dangerous, very prominent roar.
Then nothing.
Ok, I have no beta so forgive the mistakes. I do not own either genre, only some of the plot. Shout out and kudos to ichika aono, KetchupHero6001, fairytailasaurus, TrisandTobias4life, and especially to Lilitraum for reviewing and PMing me. Thank you guys. You rock! Also I am accepting ideas and OC's to the plot as long as they are not part of the main shipping theme.