So some Merlin!
Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin or Divergent.
Merlin made his way from his room over to the training rooms. At 1 in the morning Dauntless was almost silent. He reached the training rooms without meeting anyone else. When he entered, he put on the basic lights and got to work practicing.
Contrary to popular belief Merlin was not as hopeless at fighting as he appeared to be. He had carefully held up the facade so as to not have to choose a job that would put him in danger of exposing himself as divergent. But part of being divergent meant that he was Dauntless inclined. He loved sparing. He loved the way it felt to be in perfect control of his body. He'd had fun learning how to expand his situational awareness. And he'd loved learning how to use weapons. Guns weren't his favourite thing but the traditional weapons? There's was something heady about being able to manipulate something so deadly.
At the same time Merlin loved it because of the sheer beauty of the movements of the katas. He liked being to protect people with his skills. Liked being able to do something with his courage. Dauntless for all its faults had made him feel less useless. They had given him the power to help. He didn't think he could ever go back to how he'd been in Abnegation. He couldn't live without this release, this expression of joy and power and strength, without this assurance of his abilities.
When he had finished it was half 2 and Merlin packed up and made his way back to his room. On the way there however, he encountered two people coming his way. He quickly ducked into a little alcove to let them pass without seeing him. Neither of them noticed him, but as they went past his alcove they stopped as one pushed a finger into the other's chest.
"Don't screw this up!" She hissed. "We can't let his shipment be diverted again. We need those weapons to be delivered or the deal is off. And the longer they're there the greater the chance that someone will notice. So get this done or you'll be tangling with me!"
"You think I'm scared of you?" The man growled back at her.
"Oh hell yes!" She snarled, "Don't pretend to be braver than you are. You do it poorly."
The man threw a punch but the woman avoided it, caught his fist and twisted it up behind the man's back.
"Do I have to break it?" She said sweetly.
"No," the man ground out.
"Good" she said and stepped away. "Don't screw up that shipment." Then the woman is gone. The man stared after her for moment, then cursed and went on to his own quarters.
Merlin waited a few moments and then stepped out of the alcove. He looked first after the man and then the woman and finally made his way up the paths to his own room.
"That was interesting," he murmured in the security of his room. "Very interesting."
"Hey Gaius!" said a familiar voice.
"Merlin," said Gaius looking up to see the young boy standing next to him, thumbs hooked in his belt loops. Hunith's son. Even after three months Gaius still can't quite reconcile the boy standing in front of him with the one that had walked into Dauntless for the first time. The Merlin then had been skinny, clumsy, wrapped in baggy, grey clothes and jumpy.
The young man who stood here now was lean muscle and carried himself with confidence. He moved with an absent grace though he still tended to trip over things and he wore his tattoos like they had always been there. He was sheathed in the black of Dauntless and looked at home in clothes that would have scandalized abnegation.
Merlin for all he was a kind and gentle soul fit into Dauntless so well it frightened Gaius. He had to search for the boy who had first wandered into his infirmary with a black eye and split lip whenever he saw this Merlin.
"Hey," Merlin said waving with his left hand. The one with 'magic' inked on it. A blatant reminder of the name given to him when he had breezed through the fear simulations so fast. It was a taunt too, to the people who hated him, a taunt that wouldn't fade.
"It's good to see you," Giaus said, "unless you're hurt and then its not, because an old man like me needs his rest."
Merlin laughed. "Nah I'm not hurt. Just taking a break from Tori. Lady can be hard when she's ready."
"Did you expect anything else?" Gaius inquired.
"No," sighed Merlin. He hopped up onto one of the moving steel tables Gaius used to put his tools on. Gaius watched as he redistributed his weight almost without thought to keep the table from rolling out from under him. Gaius watching the motion, wondered as he had often wondered before, why the other dauntless did not recognize Merlin for what he was. At the same time thought he understood. Merlin was unbelievably good at hiding who and what he was. He made his skills fade into the background and was so good at combat that he made the way he moved look natural enough that people just did not realize that Merlin could be a threat.
"Merlin," Gaius said, reprovingly, "I put my sterilized tools there."
"And you wipe it down with alcohol before you put any tools there," said Merlin shrugging.
"Why do I put up with you?" Gaius said.
"Because my mom asked you to," said Merlin grinning, "And I'm a joy to your old age."
"Is that what you think?!" Gaius demanded with a twinkle in his eyes.
"Who else is going to steal donuts for you?" Merlin said innocently, his eyes also twinkling with laughter.
"I'll have you know," said Gaius, straightening up in a parody of intimidation "that I have a umber of grateful patients here. I can have donuts whenever I want."
Merlin could take it no longer and burst into laughter. He laughed so hard, the table slid out from under him and Gaius had to grab his arm before he fell flat on his face.
"There," said Gaius when they'd both recovered enough to talk, "That teaches you to sit on my table." Merlin was set off into laughter again.
"Yeah," he says between sputters of laughter. "Thanks Gaius."
Sometimes Gaius has to look for the boy who first came into Dauntless and sometimes, he's right there to see.
"So," said Merlin when he had re-perched on on of the cots instead. "I have a question." Gaius raised his eyebrows at the somewhat serous tone.
"You've been here longer than i am and you have a way better grasp of politics than I do at the moment, said Merlin, "So what do you think are the implications of someone moving a shipment of weapons out of Dauntless sans permission? Hypothetically speaking of course."
Gaius almost dropped his pen.
"That's an oddly specific question Merlin," he said, raising an eyebrow.
Merlin shrugged. Gaius put down his pen and and said, "I would say that the political implications are not good. It could mean the start of an uprising against Dauntless or other factions by another faction. Or even the factionless. It's the sort of thing Dauntless is supposed to stop. It won't give your faction a good name either."
Merlin contemplated until Gaius sighed and said, "Why don't you give me the whole story Merlin?"
Merlin met his eyes and for a moment they were almost alien. They were cold and calculating and they weighed heavily on him. Then the blue eyes lightened and Merlin nodded.
"So, I was coming back from practice..."
Lancelot moved inside his room. He was bareback with the mirror in his room exposed so he could judge his stance, and his spare broom handle in his hands. He shifted from stance to stance swooping the wooden rod in the accepted motions.
He hoped dearly that no one would ever walk into his room because right now he was not the image of a perfect abnegation. He moved again letting the familiar movements sooth him.
The old man's words from the morning haunted him. Dauntless was to protect. Yet, they couldn't protect if they couldn't match up to faction standards. But leaving people out to the cold?
It was hard; hard to reconcile what he'd been taught to what he saw everyday. However it wasn't just the unjustice of the world he was living in. It was the sheer bitterness with which the man had spoken. Normally he wouldn't have been so disturbed but recently he'd been picking up a lot of resentment and bad feeling from the factionless. It made the hair on the back of his neck stand up and his instincts were twitching. Something was wrong. Something was brewing under the surface. And it was dangerous.
Review please! Have a nice day/night!