A/N: Sorry this took so long! I had to crunch for mocks and I got a new puppy (her name's Rogue and she's an American bully. Total sweetheart.) Anywho, this chapter was a blast to write up. Really therapeutic after working so much for a week straight.
CarBarrier - Thanks! :)
Till next time,
D.L.D
*I do not own Divergent or any of its character and plot work. This is simply an adaption*
Chapter Thirty-Four: Margaret
I wake in the dark, wedged into a hard, sharp corner. Coldness seeps into my spine, sharp and numbing, and my legs are tucked up to my chest. The floor beneath me feels cold and smooth, like stone. My head is pounding. Frowning, I lift a hand and touch my throbbing head; liquid slips across my fingers. Red - blood. When I bring my hand back down, my elbow bumps against a wall. Hard. I wince. Where I am?
A light flickers eerily above me. The bulb is blue and dim when it's lit. Within its eerie glow, I spot the walls of a tank around me and my shadowed reflection across from me. I look tired, exhausted, my eyes ringed with shadows and my skin full of pallor. The wound on my head is obvious now - bruised, bleeding and swelled. The room beyond the tank is small with plain concrete walls and no windows. I am alone in it. Well, almost - a small video camera is attached to one of the walls.
Beneath my feet, I spot a small opening. Connected to it is a tube and connected to the tube, in the corner of the room, is a huge tank. The trembling starts in my fingertips and spreads up my arms and soon my body is shuddering.
I'm not in a simulation this time.
My right arm is numb. When I push myself out of the corner, a pool of blood remains in the corner I was squashed into, smeared on the tank's walls. My heart catches in my throat; I can't panic now. I stand, leaning against a wall, and breathe. The worst thing that can happen to me now is that I drown in this tank. I press my forehead to the cool glass and let out a laugh. That is the worst thing I can imagine. My laugh turns into a harsh sob.
If I refuse to give up now, it will look brave to whoever watches me with that camera, but sometimes it isn't fighting that is brave, it's facing the death you know is coming. Letting the tears flow freely, I sob into the glass. I'm not afraid of dying, death, but I want to die in a different way, any other way.
It is better to scream than cry, so I scream and slam my heel into the wall behind me. My foot bounces off, and in frustration I kick again, so hard my heel throbs. I kick again and again and again, then pull back and throw my left shoulder into the wall. The impact rattles my body and makes the wound on my right shoulder burn like it got stuck with a hot poker. I wince but keep pushing. I have to keep pushing.
Water trickles into the bottom of the tank.
The video camera means they are watching me - no, studying me as the Erudite would say. To test if my reaction in reality is the same as the one within the simulation. To prove that I am really a coward by nature and not at all Dauntless.
Breathing out, I uncurl my fists and drop my hands. I am not a coward. I lift my head and stare at the camera across from me, locking my eyes with the lens. If I focus on breathing, I will forget that my death is coming. I can forget that I am about to die. I stare at the camera until my vision blurs and narrows and it is all I can see. Water trickles over my ankles, then my calves, then my thighs. Cold and calm, it rises over my fingertips. I breathe in; I breathe out. The water is soft and feels like silk.
I breathe in. The water will wash my wounds clean. I breathe out. My mother submerged me within water when I was a baby, to give me to God. It has been a long time since I have thought about God, faith, but I think of him now. It is only natural. I am glad, suddenly, that I shot Ludociel in the foot and not his head.
My body rises with the water. Instead of kicking my feet to stay abreast of it, I push all the air from my lungs and sink to the bottom. The water muffles my ears. I feel its movement over my face. I think about snorting the water into my lungs so it kills me faster, but I can't bring myself to do it. Instead, I blow bubbles out of my mouth, watching the bubbles float to the surface.
Relax. I close my eyes. My lungs burn.
I let my hands float to the top of the tank. I let the water fold me in its silken arms. Comfort me. Not long from now, I will be dead. Not long from now, I will be peaceful.
When I was young, my father used to hold me over his head and run with me so I felt like I was flying. I remember how the air felt, smoothly gliding over my body, and I am not afraid. I open my eyes.
A dark figure stands in front of me. I must be close to death if I am seeing such things. Pain stabs at my lungs. Intensely. Suffocating is painful. A palm presses to the glass in front of my face, and for a moment as I stare through the water, I think I see Margaret's blurry face.
I hear a bang and the glass cracks. Water sprays out of a hole near the top of the tank and a pane cracks in half, the splinter spreading. I turn away as the glass shatters and the force of the water throws my body to the ground. I gasp, swallowing water as well as air, and cough, and gasp again, and warm hands close around my wet arms. Immediately after, I hear her comforting voice.
"Elizabeth," She says. "Elizabeth, we have to run."
Promptly, she pulls my arm across her shoulders and hauls me to my feet. Blinking, I study the woman. Lavender hair tied, warm brown eyes, grey Abnegation clothes hiding her body. She is dressed like Margaret and looks like Margaret, but she is holding a gun, and the determined look within her eyes is unfamiliar to me. I stumble beside her over broken glass that crunches under our feet and through water and out of an open door. Dauntless guards lie dead next to the doorway.
My feet slip and slide on the tile as we walk down the hallway, as fast as my weak legs can muster. When we turn the corner, Margaret fires at the two guards standing by the door at the end. The bullets hit them both in the head and they slump to the ground. She pushes me against a wall and takes off her grey jacket.
She wears a sleeveless shirt. When she lifts her arm, I spot the corner of a tattoo under her armpit. No wonder she never changed clothes in front of me.
"Margaret," I say, my voice hoarse. I point at her tattoo. "Where did you get that from? How do you know Dauntless things?"
"Mother," She answers, smiling. She makes her jacket into a sling for my arm, trying the sleeves around my neck. "And her training has served me well today. Father and Veronica and some others are hiding in a basement at the intersection of North and Fairfield. We have to go get them."
I stare at Margaret. I sat next to her at the dinner table, twice a day, for sixteen years, and never once did I consider that she knew about our parents' former lives. Not once did I consider that maybe my parents weren't Abnegation-born. That they perhaps passed us some traits that came from their birth factions. Margaret was trained to hold a gun; did mother also teach Veronica? Did father know about this? How well do I actually know any of my family?
"There will be time for questions later," Margaret promises, sending me another smile. She lifts her shirt and slips a gun from under the waistband of her pants, offering it to me. Then she touches my cheek. "Now, we must go."
She runs to the end of the hallway and I follow her.
We are in the basement of Abnegation headquarters. Margaret has worked there ever since she became an member of Abnegation, so I'm not surprised when she leads me down a few dark hallways, up a dank staircase and into daylight without interference. How many Dauntless guards did she shoot before she found me?
"How did you find me?" I ask.
"I've been watching the trains since the attacks started," Margaret replies, glancing over her shoulder at me. "I didn't know what I'd do once I found you. But it was always my intention to save you."
My throat feels tight. "But I betrayed you. I left you."
"You're my sister. I don't care about factions," Margaret shakes her head. Her features pull slightly. "Look where they have gotten us. Human beings as a whole cannot be good for long before the bad creeps back in and poisons us once more."
She stops at the where the alley intersects with a road. I know now is not the time for questions, but there is something I need to know.
"Margaret, how do you know about Divergence?" I ask. "What is it? why..."
She pushes the bullet chamber open and peers inside. Seeing how many bullets she has left. Then, she takes a few out of her pocket and reloads. I recognise the expression she wears as the one she had when she was threading a needle. Intense concentration.
"I know about them because I am one," She says as she stuffs a bullet into place. "I was only safe because mother and father were prominent in Abnegation. When mother died, she told me to remain in Abnegation and watch over you and Veronica. She wanted the three of us to be safe and find peace within Abnegation - the only place where we could really be safe. But I couldn't force you to stay, Elizabeth." She puts an extra bullet into her pocket and stands up straighter. "I wanted you to make the choice I never had yourself."
"I don't understand why we're such a threat to the leaders."
"Every faction conditions its members to act and think a certain way. And most people do it. It's not hard for them to learn, to find a pattern of thinking that works and stay that way," She touches my uninjured shoulder and smiles. "But our minds move in a dozen different directions. We can't be confined to one way of thinking and that terrifies our leaders. It means we can't be controlled. And it means that no matter what they do, we will always cause trouble for them."
I feel like someone has breathed new air into my lungs. I am not Abnegation. I am not Dauntless.
I am Divergent.
And I cannot be controlled.
"Here they come," Margaret says, looking around the corner. I peek over her shoulder and spot a few Dauntless with guns, moving to the same beat, heading towards us. Margaret looks back. Far behind us, another group of Dauntless run down the alley, toward us, moving in time with one another. All of them are carrying guns. We are trapped. I can feel myself panicking, my heart racing as my lungs tighten. We are going to die.
Margaret grabs my hands and looks me in the eyes. I watch her long eyelashes move as she blinks. I don't have long eyelashes; I don't look like any of my sisters. I have all of the recessive genes - all of the outlaying features. Right now, I wish I had something of Margaret's in my small, plain face. I wish I could look like her and Veronica. But at least I have something of theirs, something of mother's, in my brain.
"Go to father and Veronica. The alley on the right, down to the basement. Knock twice, then three times, then six. It's important you do it like that," She cups my cheeks. Her hands are now cold, like her gun, and her palms feel rough. "I'm going to distract them. You have to run as fast as you can, Elizabeth."
"No," I shake my head, grabbing onto her hands. Squeezing her arms. "I'm not going anywhere without you."
Gently, she removes my death grip and smiles. "Be brave, Elizabeth. I love you."
I feel her lips on my forehead and then she's running into the middle of the street. Holding her gun above her head, Margaret fires it three times into the air. Immediately, the Dauntless start running toward her. I sprint across the street and into the alley. As I run, I look over my shoulder to see if any Dauntless are following me. But Margaret fires into the crowd of guards are they are too busy dealing with her to notice me.
I whip my head over my shoulder when I hear them fire back. Stumbling, my feet falter and then stop.
Margaret stiffens, her back arching. Blood surges from a wound in her abdomen, dying her grey shirt crimson. A patch of blood spreads over her shoulder. I blink and the violent red stains the insides of my eyelids. I blink again and I see her soft smile as she sweeps my hair trimmings into a pile. I see her humming as she chops the vegetables for dinner; I see her tucking hair behind my ear, patching up my knee; I see her telling a younger Veronica off for yelling at a boy. I see everything she's done, everything she's ever did, before I see her crumple, drop to the floor, like a dead weight.
She falls, first to her knees, her hands limp at her sides, then to the pavement, slumped to the side like a rag doll. She is motionless and without breath. Blank and without motion.
Tears stinging my eyes, I clamp my hand over my mouth and scream into it. Howl into it. My cheeks are hot and wet with tears I didn't feel beginning. My blood cries out that it belongs to her, and struggles to return to her, and I hear her words in my mind as I continue to run, telling me to be brave.
Pain stabs through me as everything I am made of collapses, my entire world dismantled for a moment. The pavement scrapes my knees. If I lie down now, this can all be done. Maybe Ludociel was right, and choosing death is like exploring an unknown, uncertain place. Maybe giving up now, allowing myself to die, may not be a complete coward's way out. It would be a testament to remaining brave in the face of danger.
I feel Meliodas brushing my hair back before the first simulation. I hear him telling me to be brave. I hear my eldest sister telling me to be brave.
The Dauntless soldiers turn as if moved by the same mind. Somehow I get up and start running.
I am brave.