AN: been awhile! What do you think?
The first thing we do in the morning is head to the medical clinic. Well, okay, it's the second thing we do. We get a scolding for not coming in sooner, but we both leave with contraceptive injections that are good for a year. That's certainly practical, although I grumble that we don't both need one since we're together. Tris, for some reason, thinks this is hilarious.
The truth is that I find it impossible to imagine where I might be a year from now. On the other hand, some things are pretty predictable: I'll still need to eat and sleep and now that I know what I've been missing, I'll also still want to be having sex. Unless I'm dead, I think wryly.
Then it hits me that I'm by no means sure I'll actually be alive in a year. But I do know I will do everything I can to make sure Tris is. In fact, I guess it's just as well that we both have the injections, and so I pretend to think it's funny, too, and I laugh with her. Tris raises her eyebrows at me in a way that communicates that I'm not fooling her. I may have been inside her head, but she's the one who seems to know what I'm always thinking. It's a little annoying, actually.
Cara won't look at us when we get to the meeting room, and Leo won't stop looking at us.
"Everything alright?" he asks casually, sidling up to me at the coffee pot.
"Yeah, fine." I say neutrally, through a mouthful of muffin. "We're going to head off soon - might as well see if any of the known Divergent are still out there."
He glances at me, a question mark in his eyes, and I lift my shoulders in response. "Yeah, I know," I say, deliberately misinterpreting his look and sighing heavily. "I don't really expect to find any of them alive or sane, either, but we have to try." I grasp his shoulder and then start to walk away.
"Oh, and Leo," I add, turning around, and spreading my arms out. "You were right about that ear thing and all of that. Thanks for the advice," I smirk at him, and he throws a muffin at my head with an exclamation, but he looks inordinately pleased, and more than a little relieved.
Leo isn't pleased that Tris and I insist on going out into the city alone, however, nor are Harrison and Tori. We finally agree to at least take Inez with us, since she knows more about how to move around the city without being seen, but they are still reluctant.
"Look," I say impatiently, "being light on our feet, low profile, and Divergent is the best way both to keep safe and gain the trust of other Divergent."
"Yeah, and how will they know you're Divergent from just looking?" Leo grumbles. "It's not like it's tattooed on your forehead."
"Hey, that's a good idea!" Tris calls out brightly from across the room. "Let's go get tattoos on our foreheads! What do you think, Tori? What should the Divergent symbol be? A broken dish? A fork in a road? Maybe an unblinking eye?"
Leo looks at her steadily and comments wryly, "I think I liked it better when you were just scary and kind of sullen."
"I'm still scary," she says with satisfaction.
In the end, they agree to let us go alone largely because Fernando gives us an electronic beacon. We can activate it if there's trouble and communicate directly with Cara through the Dauntless computers. It doesn't last very long and the range won't go past Amity, but it's enough for now. Fernando is muttering about batteries and frequencies and writing out equations on a napkin before we even walk away, so an improved beacon can't be far behind.
We crunch across the frozen ground to the train tracks and discuss where we should go to find the Factionless we're looking for. Fully half of the known Divergent, including Laila, are Factionless, which is why I relented on having Inez to come with us. Otherwise, I would have preferred to be alone with Tris.
"Hard to say where they'll be," Inez sniffs, wiping her nose on the back of her hand. She herself was on the suspected list, though it's not clear why. Her aptitude test was conclusively Dauntless; she just didn't pass the initiation.
"But I would guess Abnegation. That's where Evelyn said they'd be. Good, available shelter and food, and the Abnegation were generally friendly to us." She shoots me a sidelong glance. "But I doubt Evelyn herself is there."
This is ideal, as I'd rather avoid Evelyn in general right now and don't want to risk her interfering in our mission. I just hope we can get in and out without Marcus knowing we're there. I can't imagine he won't do something to make our mission more complicated.
When it's time to move, I notice that Inez jumps off the train readily and lands lightly on her feet. I wonder why she didn't make the cut at Dauntless?
"She was ranked second in her year," Tris says softly at my elbow. "One of the Dauntless leaders decided to cut her - told her she needed to disappear for her own safety."
I frown at Tris. "How do you know that?"
"Inez told me, of course," she smirks.
"And why do you always know what I'm thinking?" I say, with some irritation. "I'm the one who saw inside your brain, not the other way around."
She shrugs. "I can just tell when you're thinking, and now that I know for a fact that our minds work the same way, I just sort of assume you're thinking what I would be."
"Yeah, well," I mutter. "You're not always going to be right."
I can practically hear her eyes rolling.
Although the Abnegation sector appears to be abandoned, we can see the signs that someone has been trying to clean it up. But the evidence of the massacre that took place here won't be so easy to erase: there are bullet holes, broken concrete, and the outlines of bloodstains still sketched on the ground. I reach back and grab Tris's hand, and she clutches mine gratefully.
"Old habits die hard," Inez says softly. I wait for her to explain. "Factionless are used to hiding, so that's why you don't see anyone outside." Speaking of old habits, we arrive at Tris's house before either of us even realizes that's where we're going.
"Do you want to go in?" I ask her tentatively.
"Someone probably lives there now," she says evasively.
"So we'll knock," Inez shrugs, striding up to the door. No one answers right away, though I see a curtain on an upstairs window move. A few minutes later, the door opens a sliver.
"That you, Inez?" a cracked voice says.
"Yeah, it's me," she says. "Can I come in for a minute Yolo? With my friends?"
"Yeah, sure," the voice says nonchalantly.
There are probably 20 people in the living room, eating, talking, playing cards. Some look up at us in curiosity when we come in; most don't.
Tris lets my hand fall from hers. If she sees anything amiss in having her home occupied or if really, if she feels anything at all, it doesn't show. Her face is as blank as the walls around us. Abnegation houses generally don't have much in the way of personal effects, so that's no surprise.
"Why don't you look around?" I say softly. "I'll stay here with Inez." Tris nods and heads for the stairs.
"You want something to eat?" the woman named Yolo asks me.
"Yeah, sure," I respond. Inez coached us that you never turn down an offer of food in Factionless. First, because you can never be sure when you might see food again, and second, because Factionless don't trust anyone who turns down food. She offers me a piece of the knobby Amity bread, which I'm suspicious might be spiked, and some tired looking fruit. I opt for a wrinkled apple.
"Thanks," I say.
Inez is hugging a short, bald man, dusky skinned and craggy faced, but with a compelling light in his eyes. "Hey, Bobby, this is my friend, Toby. Toby, this is Bobby." I say hello and try not react to my new nickname, which I don't like at all.
"So, where you been, Inez? No one's seen you for days. I was getting worried about you."
"Yeah, you always were a worrywart. The boss sent me off with these guys - they're Dauntless. We're trying to figure out what the hell's going on." At first, I'm a little uneasy about how well Inez lies, but then I think about it and decide she's not really lying. Just telling one facet of the truth.
Bobby looks at me in surprise. "You're hanging out with Dauntless now?"
She shrugs. "They're not so bad, you know. Hard people, but soft beds - and they have good eats. They like cake."
He laughs. "Well, that doesn't sound so bad," he allows, hitting me on the shoulder. I smile back at him.
"We're looking for the sister of Toby's friend, Amar," Inez says easily. "Laila Sadawy. Ring a bell?"
Bobby cocks his head for a moment, then shakes it. "Sounds a little familiar," he says vaguely, "but no one I know. I'll ask around."
He walks away from us.
"Should we try another house?" I say quietly. Inez shakes her head.
"Just be patient," she murmurs. "If she's alive and wants to see you, she'll come to you. That's how it works here."
Just then, there's a commotion upstairs, and a woman with broad, square shoulders, jowls quivering in rage, drags Tris down the stairs by the hair. "I caught this one stealing!" she bellows. "Stealing!"
"Uh oh," Inez breathes.
"Let me go!" Tris yells, and I move to help her. Inez grabs my arm. "Don't," she says urgently. "It'll only be worse if you start a fight." I grind my teeth and look at Inez through narrowed eyes, but she returns my glare with utter calm, and her confidence keeps me at bay. For the moment.
Bobby steps to the foot of the stairs. "I don't know who you are," he says quietly, "but Factionless don't steal from each other."
"Well, I'm not Factionless," Tris scowls at him. "And I wasn't stealing."
"Then how do you explain the fact that this was in your pocket?" the woman huffs, and she holds out a blue glass statue. The blue glass statue. My breath freezes in my throat.
"Well?" Bobby says, his tone mild, but there's a hard look in his eyes.
"It's mine," Tris says defiantly, but I notice she doesn't try to snatch it back. "It's not stealing if it belongs to you, right? My mother gave that to me," she finishes more softly.
The room falls silent and still.
Comprehension dawns in Bobby's eyes. "This was your house," he states, and Tris nods slightly.
There's a long silence, as everyone stares at Tris. She will not look at anyone, however, and stares angrily at her feet.
"I'm sorry for your loss." Bobby finally says gently, a phrase repeated quietly around the room, as if it's something often said in Factionless. "Most of us who are staying in this house knew your parents. They were good to us." The signal he gives the big woman on the stairs is slight, but the twitch of his fingers produces immediate results, and she hands the statue back to Tris.
"Thank you," she says quietly, still looking down, but less as though she'd like to kill her own shoes.
For the next hour, a steady stream of people approach Tris to share their memories of her parents, and the many ways they had helped each one of them. Some try to give Tris small mementos they have found in the house - her mother's hairpins, her father's spare spectacles - but with almost all of them, she closes their hands reverentially over the item as though it's a relic and says that her parents would have wanted them to keep it.
It's very moving and all, but I am getting increasingly restless when I realize Bobby is standing next to me, giving me an appraising look.
"So what do you really want, Tobias?"
I look at him in surprise, and he smiles at me. He's obviously a leader among the Factionless, and of course he would have realized right away who I was. I wonder if Evelyn already knows that I'm here and has guessed what I want. I decide there's no point in lying to him. "We really are looking for Laila," I say, "but there are others."
"Do you have a list?" he asks.
I hesitate, and then nod reluctantly. He raises his eyebrows quizzically.
"Some of them probably won't want to be found," I start.
He smiles again, sardonically this time, holding out his hand. "Welcome to Freedom, my friend." He looks at my list intently. "You're looking for Divergent," he says flatly.
"Yes," I say.
He hands me back the list. "If we wouldn't help Erudite hunt them down, we certainly won't help Dauntless do it," his even, mild tone is at odds with the hardness in his eyes, and I realize that the people who were standing so casually around him are no longer casual, and they are armed. I hadn't noticed any weapons in the house until now.
"It's not like that," I say quietly into the now charged room. "You must know the Erudite tortured both Tris and me because we're Divergent and tried to kill us, too. I thought everyone knew that by now." I pause and look at him, and he nods at me, a little of the hardness gone from his eyes. "We're looking for them because we need them. We all do, if our city is going to survive."
Inez has come up behind me. "Me, too, Bobby," she says. "I'm Divergent - you knew that, and now everyone else here does, too. We're going outside the wall to save your lazy ass," she drawls. "And we need help."
