So, I thought I'd try sneak yet another update in before Uni decides to exist. I know Max being an uncle is a really popular story line, but I like it and I have a fun plan for it.
Get ready for some Eric and Two badassery cuz that's coming up soon but how d'you think Four will handle it as his relationship with Two develops?
I accelerated a lot of training because that's relatively insignificant because most of it is self-explanatory for anyone who read the books or watched the films, I've just tweaked all the important bits to fit the story line but theres a few more shockers to come, I cant give you everything at once cuz that's just bad writing (it's not like my writing is amazing thou). As we are though, we war is still due as in the books but obviously two is an entire stage ahead of the other initiates to clear that one up for those of you who haven't picked it up yet.
There shouldn't be too many time skips from here on out and do let me know if any of you recognise or go and check out the songs I sneak into my chapters. I don't find them to fit the chapters, it's just what I listen to. Two's look is modelled of what I like to wear as are her piercings, it kinda just fit with Dauntless (I hope you agree). If anyone has any requests do drop me a message and I'll see what I can sneak in there for you.
Now, another thing. Dates aren't mentioned directly so basically, I'm free to do whatever the hell I want with the timeline, years and months and weeks and things are mentioned but don't get stressy when I don't mention exact dates. There's never really been any exact dates in the books so shush.
Anyways for anyone who is still with me, thank you, I'm honestly surprised you stuck with me this far and you're the reason I've found some time to update this story, even if you don't follow along with an account, if you read it and keep up with it, thank you. Thanks especially to owlthewriter for the frequent reviews as well!
Now, into the next chapter!
Chapter 10 – blood before faction
"I'm her brother, Max Wright. You're my Niece."
If I couldn't process the last piece of information, I certainly can't process this one. Surely, he can't be! Not once did I see a tattoo or any indication she was Dauntless. "I know you probably don't believe me but that's why I wanted to give you this as well" and he slides a folder across the desk. I reach for it an open it. Inside the folder is a piece of paper with a family tree on it. Lo and behold at the bottom is Danny, me, liam, caleb, Liz and Jess. I follow the line connecting my name to my mother. Both she and Liam are stamped with the word 'deceased' in bright red. It can't be. He's. Not. Dead. I know the council wouldn't believe me but he's not dead. Seeing this flicks my eyes to a deep grey. Sadness. It brings a tear to my eye but I hold it back and continue on to find Max's name next to my mother Natalie's. there's some other relatives but the tree gets cut off pretty soon as I'm sure Max couldn't fit it on the page at such short notice. Behind the family tree I find the report on my rescue so I quickly find Max's name , Max's profile, or at least the first page of it. The one behind it is my mother's and it's the first time I've seen her face since she died. Her photo stamped with the word deceased. And behind that are the profiles of me and my siblings. But one thing catches my eye. My birthday.
I'd never seen the exact date before, I just sort of got told along the lines somewhere when I was another year older. The Abnegation never celebrate so I never really knew, I never had a reason to but I smile as I run my hand over the black and white numbers signalling the date. Max gives me a few moments longer to flick through each page before he goes to speak up but I beat him to it. "Max? is there any possibility that you have a photograph of my mother and each of my siblings? The abnegation don't allow photos but I'd like to remember them." Max raises an eyebrow. "I know we believe in faction before blood but I know that most families have at least one photo of each other. That much is allowed" he considers this for a moment and then smiles at me "you're not wrong. I guess I can see what I can do for my niece" at this I smile and the deep sadness I felt dissipating somewhat, allowing my eyes to naturally transition back to their neutral colour. "what about you father? Did you want one of him too?" I shake my head immediately and violently. I do not need to be reminded of that monster. Max eyes me strangely before going to say something but again I beat him to it. "Just watch my fear sims and you'll know why. Find me once you do. Or just watch my fear landscape tomorrow." "how d'you know about that?" he says almost ready to jump up and kill whoever told me. "you forget my family come from the highest levels of government, I'm annoyingly good at finding things out and I trained with blaze and flare, two if the best fighters dauntless have ever had." "ah, point taken" and I just laugh. "Anyway, I've taken enough of your time today, I'll let you go." "uncle?" at this he perks up "distract Andrew and Marcus with official business as long as possible." "what..." "go to the pit and you'll see." And with that I'm gone.
I walk through the winding corridors to my brothers at a brisk pace and arrive in no time at all. Almost as soon as I've knocked on the door my brother answers it and pulls me into his apartment and all but throws me on to the sofa where Four is perched. I drop the envelopes and the folder on to the coffee table off to the left hand side of the sofa. "Jesus Danny calm down, it's not the end of the world" "then why the hell did your eyes change!" "I'm not afraid of him, I'm afraid of what he could do to you!" I all but yell. Danny hasn't seen what happens in my fear sims. He doesn't know why I'm afraid.
Flashback:
We walk back through the almost empty streets of the factionless sector, laughing and joking. We should've taken the bus; it was certainly safer, but we needed the walk. It would keep us fit.
"Bea you are a real devil" "no shit sherlock, come on though, you should've seen his face Liam!" "oh, I would've paid good money to see that! you sure you're not a dauntless born?" I jab him with my elbow half-heartedly "you know I wish I was" "hey, only 7/8 years until we choose" "it'll be nice to escape dad for once" I say absentmindedly rubbing my itchy back. it really did hurt. "yeah but we can't let him hear that. We have to play along with it." "I know, I'm just so tired of it. I just want to vanish but then who would take the beatings of everyone else?" "you don't have to do that you know? We can handle ourselves, there's no reason for you to keep being dads favourite punch bag." "I know but I can't stand the thought of scars on your backs when you move on to whatever factions you want to move on to. I for one want to become a member of dauntless but like I said, I don't want to leave any of you." "faction of the brave, rather fitting for my wonderful big sis" "by 15 minutes" at this we laugh and decide its best to leave the subject.
we continue laughing and joking until we reach a particularly strange man sat alone in a corner. As abnegation we always have something with us to give to the factionless so we cautiously walk up to him. "hello sir, would you like some dried apple slices?" I ask him. He rises to twice our height and laughs and responds "no, but I would like you!" all of a sudden before we can even process his words, I feel a sharp pinch in my neck and everything goes black.
End of flashback
Tears spring to my eyes at the thought. "I am afraid because of how fucking easy it is for someone to just fucking take any of you and kill you or torture you without a care in the world. You could go missing and I wouldn't even know about it till it was too late! Why the hell do you think I'm fucking paranoid and why the hell do you think you're in my fucking fear sims?! He fucking beats you and there's nothing I can fucking do" at this I break down in tears continuously mumbling "there's nothing I can do".
"Bea, please come back to us" is the next thing I hear whispered into my ear. Toby. Shit, what happened. I come back to my senses with a start to find Toby is on the floor with me with his back to the sofa and me pulled into his lap, he has a hold of both of my wrists while Danny is kneeling on the floor in front of me. "that's it, I'm gonna let go of your arms now okay?" I nod and he releases my wrists and instead puts his arms around me. I quickly wrap my arms around him and hold him tightly. Feeling his warmth relaxes me and brings me back to my senses faster. I don't know how long we stay like that for but we release each other when my brother clears his throat. Toby pulls me up off the floor and we both drop back down on the sofa while Danny takes a seat from the table and pulls it up in front of us.
We stay in silence for a while until Danny speaks up. "how long has this been going on?" gesturing between the two of us. We both open our mouths to speak simultaneously but Toby decides to be quiet and let me speak. "we haven't really talked about it yet. We both like each other but that's as far as we got so…" I trail off. Danny gets quite protective of me but I'm sure he gets it. He eyes us for a little longer before saying "Bea, is this why dad was so desperate to marry you off to Tobias?" Toby's eyes widen, I assume this is a new revelation. I sigh, "no, it's not but it's not like I'd have rejected that choice wholeheartedly. There's a very good reason that I watched Toby more than I should've." "and you, I didn't realise you had the hots for my sister" at this we all laugh. Spoken like a true dauntless. "I didn't want to set off overprotective brother mode. Besides, after we transferred I didnt think it mattered anymore cuz I dint think we'd see her again." "no that's true, you didn't want to leave did you Bea?" "who else was going to look after Liz and Jess? I wasn't going to leave even if I wanted to so badly until Liz went free running with me for the last time and we had a long conversation over some smuggled tea on the top of a building. She convinced me to follow what I wanted for once. So I ended up here. My choice changed from leaving to not leaving so many times but she encouraged me to make a choice and stick to it." At this Toby smiles and says "im glad you're here" in a spur of the moment decision he decides to kiss my cheek and it's the most adorable thing ever. "oi! Watch it, that's my sister you have there!" he says but I see the laughter in his eyes.
"I do believe I promised someone some fighting practice" Toby perks up at this. "you sure you want to train right now?" "yes! Im sure, you and danny can help me move my shit into my new apartment later as well" their eyes bulge "you have an apartment?" Danny asks "Yeah, Max called me to his office today and assigned me an apartment and gave me a key card to access the outside doors." They both look relieved that I wonr be staying in the dorms anymore. "Right! Toby, let's go and I'll come drag you to the apartment later!" "my darling sister, you realise all the apartments don't come furnished?" "not even the leadership ones" "nope, not even those" toby chimes in. "fine then you're coming shopping later." "deal"
Me and Toby leave Danny's apartment and he continues off to the training room while I make a pit stop at the tattoo parlour to go grab all the cheques and my messenger bag with sketchbooks etc. I should be able to accept points cards now that me and Tori set up a member's account with Max's help, it's not like I was going to fail initiation now.
Once all that's done I'm on my way over to the members training room which I've been coming to since Max gave me the go ahead a few weeks ago. I find Toby on the bags doing some warm ups. I take a minute to analyse the way he hits, how fast he is, what his build is, what his skill set would benefit with, where the issues in his stance and movements are and come up with a quick game plan. "Four, you ready to go?" I don't want to call him toby in public, that would not be a fun thing to deal with is anyone found out his real name, or mine for that matter. "yeah, want me to stay at the bags?" "yeah just for a minute" I walk over to his side "get into your fighting stance" he does as hes told without question "right I'm going to push you and don't correct yourself okay? Just let it happen" he nods and I go ahead ans push him. He stumbles over. "right now get back into stance" he does so and I correct his stance into what should be a more comfortable one that improves his balance "I'm going to do the same again okay?" this time he doesn't stumble, he stays firm and I have to apply more force to make him stumble. "how'd that feel?" "pretty good actually, id have thought you'd have put me in your stance" "my stance is a little more suited to my body type just like I put you into one that corrects the issues in the dauntless standard" he looks a little confused at this, I shouldn't really know any of this, but I continue anyways. "now try and punch from that stance." He does so and it looked alright "again" again it looked good so we start to get into the various other moves that you're taught here. "right, now we've corrected that we can move on to the next bit, the new stuff" he smiles. I begin to show him some of the simpler moves that he can easily utilise rather than the harder stuff he'd need a lot longer to learn.
After a few hours I'm pretty damn impressed by how well toby picked everything up. "think you're ready for the mats?" "yeah but I won't beat you" "probably not" I say with a chuckle. We step into the ring unaware of the audience of three we'd gained. We both get into stance and start the light back and forth before we start to get serious, I wait for him to start attacking and I mainly do the blocking. "think about what you're doing, how you're applying what you've learned. All the dauntless fight the same and that's what you want to avoid. Use your head." As soon as I've finished my little speech he attacks again in a flurry of blows I'm almost struggling to keep up with. I can't wear him out because he's too physically fit but I can go for the pressure points and knock him down. I immediately switch from defence to attack mode and before he even knows it, I've bruised all his pressure points and he's on the floor of the mat. "not bad, certainly an improvement" I offer him my hand and he takes it only to pull me down to the floor and pin me before I can protest. "better?" "ha, ha very funny, you know I can't get out of this one" knowing full well he's using the pin I taught him minutes earlier. "concede yet number girl?" I smirk "never number boy" I can see he's debating leaving me here but alas we have some shopping to do so he lets me go and helps me back to my feet. "if I remember correctly someone has some shopping to do" "that I do, shall we go grab Dan the man?" Toby starts laughing and I can't help but join in. "come on lets go." As I turn around, I'm met by our audience of three. Max. Andrew. Marcus.
Our moods immediately sour and I can feel the fear and rage radiating off of Four, his façade firmly in place, as is mine of calm and collectedness. "Hello Max, how can we help you?" I say with a fake smile. "It's alright, I was just showing these two the training room before we get back to business, they don't get to see it very much after all." "no I can't imagine they do, I'm sure it's a nice change from the mundane greys of home" I say deciding to take a very careful jibe and max laughs a little while Andrew and Marcus look about read to rip my throat out, either because I'm speaking again or because of my very mild threat. Maybe both. "Two here is actually on track to join the leadership program." "as I said before Max, it is an honour. I must be going though; I have apartment to furnish as you well know" I give him a look that says how dare you leave that part out. He at least has the decency to look sheepish. Meanwhile Marcus and Andrew look 500 times more murderous than before which is quite the achievement and that sets off a feeling of deep satisfaction but also one of fear. I don't want Liz and Jess to take any hits for this. "see you later" I smile and walk out of the door with Toby quickly following behind.
A few corridors down, well out of earshot toby breaks the silence "how can you stay so calm in that situation?" I consider this for a moment. "you've seen my fear sims, when you're in those situations, you start to block how you feel to get through them. It just starts to bleed over into high stress situations. I never really dealt with any of the emotions I felt at the time or now and probably never will. My eyes show my really intense emotions so they change colours and those are the only indication of how I'm really feeling. I will have to get a hold of them again but that's why my breakdown today back at Danny's was so spectacular, I never deal with those emotions at the time so they just pile up until said breakdown. My mask is so good because I don't let myself feel to survive. It comes with trauma not practice." After this we remain silent all the way to Danny's.
We open the door to find a 15 and a 16 year old sat on his sofa dressed in grey loose fitting clothes. Jess and Liz. Without a word I rush over to them both and pull them into a hug which they both eagerly return. I pull away and look at them both for a few seconds. "god I've missed you both." And they both crack huge smiles with tears in their eyes "we missed you to sis" I get up and go to the kitchen to find Danny. "how did you get them here?" "Max said he wanted Marcus and Andrew for official business and didn't wanna discuss it with dependents around so he came and dropped them off here for some strange reason." "oh my god! I forgot to tell you! Max is our uncle!" "WHAT?!" "yes! I didn't believe it to start with but he pulled up everyone's files and showed me the family tree." "Bea he could've changed it" "what reason would he have to change it? And even then, they're controlled by Candor so even if he didn't have the hard copy, the database is controlled by Candor. There's no way he changed it. He's our uncle." Danny stops for a minute and considers this. "I don't know, something is brewing and he wants as many powerful allies on side and you're a very powerful ally." "don't think I haven't noticed. I don't have to leave the compound to notice the Erudite presence, Jeanine was here as well. Whatever they're doing, they have to weed out divergents. I don't like where this whole thing is going but I'm going to be training for leadership soon, so we will know fairly soon. If he wants a powerful ally he wouldn't have to expose his family history to us, and yet he did, he revealed that he was one of the people who rescued me. Whatever this was, it didn't sound any alarm bells whatsoever and I'm normally pretty good on picking up when something is off." "touche, but I still don't like it" "well either way, I have to play along for now either way, but I believe this was sincere. The report on my rescue is in that folder on the table along with our family, I know I don't ever wanna talk about that time again, feel free to read the report, it might shed some light on the questions I never answered." "maybe one day we can sit down and talk about it." "maybe" "either way, I trust you but just be careful." "I will but right now I'm going to spend some time with our sisters" I smile and walk out of the kitchen.