Okay, so I realized that the spacing (thanks for pointing it out, XxxcloudyxxX!) sort of changed after an update I didn't seem to notice. Oh, and I have proofread my chapters again and everything's right now, I hope. :D Review guys. Thank you!

Chapter 6

The Stranger in Black and Blue

That night, I have a dream. I dreamed I was back in the testing room filled with mirrors. Tori was there, along with other people in the room; I don't remember seeing their faces, though, but I do remember seeing my reflections. I remember sitting on the chair and Tori letting me drink the serum, but I never get the chance. As soon as the bottle touched my lips, I feel something touch my hand, and, without even realizing whether I moved or not, the contents spilled all over my Abnegation shirt, and the room melted into… well, our dormitory.

I open my eyes with a start. I think I gasp, but I wasn't sure. Great… the first dream I get in weeks and it wasn't very good now, was it?

I sit up and look around. The girls have begun fixing their beds. Tina glances at me and smiles; I catch a glimpse of a card fall off her blanket when she pulled it up to fold it.

Technically, being Abnegation, the first thing we're suppose to do after waking up is either attend to everyone else's needs or, if there wasn't really anyone to help and you didn't want to bother anyone, we attended to the immediate chore to reduce the burden for others or the environment. In the dormitories, it was to fix our own beds. But my dream still bothered me, and I was starting to feel nauseous, even more with the grayness of the surroundings. It never bothered me before, but after that dream….

I just told myself that I probably wasn't the only one in our initiation batch who was having these thoughts of selflessness every once in a while. So as I dropped my blanket to drag myself out of the room and into the bathroom, I was relieved to notice that no one threw judging looks at me.

I lock the bathroom door behind me. I push myself against the sink and turn on the faucet. I put both hands under the faucet and splash the water onto my face, getting even my clothes wet. I pant slightly, holding onto the sides of the sink and look up, staring at the gray wall. I want to vomit, just to let anything out and hopefully, my sudden distaste for our color's factions comes out with it. It's just that, I think, seeing your multiple reflected faces melt slowly into gray nothingness may have this effect on anyone.

I stand up and take a deep breath. I close my eyes and do the second un-Abnegation like thing I've done today: I turn to my right and push my fingers into the invisible dent in the tiles on the bathroom wall. I pull it to the side, revealing the mirror underneath. I wasn't exactly aware this was here before I did this, but I had an idea. I think I may have seen Mrs. Susan sneak a look into this very mirror three years ago during an Abnegation gathering.

I stare at my reflection. I take in my own features, from my messy, blond hair, to my rather large forehead, my wide, blue eyes, my thin nose, my narrow face that stretches tightly into my square jaw, and my neck and throat, watching the movement it makes when I swallow. I look into my own eyes. The shape, the way my irises move, and the way it curves when my brows come together painfully reminds me too much of Caleb. These eyes were the eyes that looked accusingly at my brother, who, in turn, looked into these very eyes with disappointment.

I turn away just as someone knocks on the bathroom door, closing the compartment as I do. I make splashing sounds with the water and turn it off before opening the door. Riza was there, holding a towel and a folded gray coat to her chest; I wasn't sure, but I could have sworn I caught a glimpse of a black shirt among the pile she was holding onto.

"You okay?" she asks, smiling as she enters the bathroom.

"Yeah," I respond, pulling the door backwards and leaning against it, "Think I just ate too much last night."

We both laugh weakly. I look at her and suddenly notice the dark circles under her eyes. I wonder if she'd been crying, or if maybe she's been having sleepless nights, too. Then I realize I wasn't the one with I bite my lip and point outside, "I'll go on ahead."

"Yeah, yeah," she nods. "I bet you have some big things planned for today."

"Today?" I ask, turning back around.

"Oh, um, it's the end of our first week, Beatrice. We have the day all to ourselves, to give time to adjust since we'll be moving on to a sort of different mode of lessons next week. Us transfers were briefed about it during our first night. Personally, I think it's a test," she says as she hangs her towel and clothes over one of the stall's door, "To see if we're going to do anything self-indulgent or something. Anyway, I just assumed you Abnegation-borns knew."

"Um, I think we were supposed to. I guess I just forgot," I smile at her and thank her for reminding me before leaving.

Great. Our first vacant day and I have no idea what to do.

When I get back to our room, the others are either lying in bed or walking around the room, preparing their toiletries and clothes. I see Susan sitting on her bed, folding clothes into a duffel bag. She smiles at me when she sees me looking, and I approach my bed to fix it but see that someone already did it for me. Great, I just bothered someone.

Susan, probably reading my thoughts, says, "No worries. It looked like you needed air." I muttered thanks and asked her what she had planned.

"Robert and I will be staying over at home. You?"

I thought about it. As much as I missed my parents, I wanted some time alone.

Selfish, my conscience screams at me. I push the voice down.

"I might do the same. So when are you leaving?"

"I might go now. Do you want to come with me, Beatrice?"

"What about Robert?" I ask as I sit on the other end of Susan's bed, taking out my own set of clothes, and I reach over my bed and take out my bag from under it.

"Oh, he says he and the boys have something planned this morning, so he'll catch up later," she pauses for a while and sits up with her hands on top of the bag on her lap. She watches me for a while until, when I begin feeling awkward with her eyes on me, I stop. She snapped out of her star and she grins. "Will you be going with Robert, then?"

I feel blood rush to my face. Will I? "I suppose."

Her smile extends on both sides of her face, then she wrinkles her nose with a grin, "Do you fancy my brother, Beatrice?"

I gasp in pretend shock as I stand up. "Susan! Don't be so scandalous," I tease. She had once replied this way to me when I asked her about him and Caleb, three months ago, maybe.

I pull out my towel from the closet and walk away, leaving Susan in between laughs.


Since the bathroom for the girls have four stalls, with one for toilet purposes, I had to wait in line outside, behind Tina while the three other transfers already inside. I assume that the other Abnegation-born initiates will be taking their baths at their own homes when they go home for the day.

"Hey," she mutters as she turns to face me when I lean against the wall behind her. I smile at her.

"So… you girls planning something?" I ask, nodding towards the bathroom door, a mischievous tone playing in my voice. She grins.

"Not much; games, maybe, or a bit of wandering around, we don't know yet. You?"

"Home."

She nods. Then, when I see this somehow anguished look on her face when she looked down, I somehow feel guilty. Compulsively, I ask her something, more in a matter-of-fact tone, I immediately regret.

"You miss them?"

She snickers once before replying.

"More than anything," and when she looks up, she was smiling again. Then, probably unable to read my expression, quickly shakes her head. "But I don't regret my decision," she blurts out in what seemed to be one quick word. I laugh as she continues, in between giggles as well, "I really don't. I just… miss them. I guess it can't be helped. I guess they never expected me to leave, you know… I—I miss my sister, too, and, if I disappointed my parents, I know I disappointed her more, but I don't think she would actually mind. I think she'd just be happy for me."

My smile slowly began fading. When Caleb left, all I could think about was how he could have betrayed us, how selfish and how much he had lied and pretended to us all these years. I missed him, but not once have I thought about how he felt; I'd never even considered being happy for him, and I know that he would only have been happy for me if I left and went off to Dauntless.

"Yeah… yeah, I totally get that."

Before she could respond, the door opens behind her and Diane, her friend from Amity, steps out, her hair up over her head, wrapped in a towel. "I've never been under hot water for so long," she says with a wide grin on her face. Tina enters the bathroom to take her place, and they both smile at me before leaving me to my thoughts.


I didn't figure out what I wanted to do until after I had taken a nice, long shower, which was probably the longest I've had since initiation, considering our schedules on ordinary routine days. When I get back to the dormitory room, Susan was no longer there. I take my bag from her bed and place it under my bed. I was just about to leave when I hear the window in our room open, and I turn to see Riza leaning against the windowpane, staring out. I join her and take a look outside.

"You can see the trains from here," she says as she looks up at the far sky. I look where she's looking and see the dark, curving outline in the sky.

"Do you miss it?"

She laughs, "No," she says, "I was never really Dauntless enough for my faction. So every time, every day, we needed to jump off that train, I've had Bryan help me."

I was pretty stunned about her answer. For months, I have fantasized about being Dauntless and jumping off those trains with people like her, but here she is, saying she never liked that tradition of theirs. For someone who grew up and was from Dauntless, she didn't seem so brave. Who was I to judge? For someone from Abnegation, I think of myself too much.

"That's why you left, huh?" I ask a stupid question. She doesn't answer for a while, as if pondering her response.

"Yeah," she mutters, "That's why."

I leave shortly after that. I guess I still wasn't sure what I was planning; just that I was going to roam around the city until I did.

When I passed the boys' dormitory room on the first floor, I could hear their boisterous laughter and loud teasing from inside. I also noticed the steam coming out of the bathroom beside their room. I rush out of the building then.

I don't know how long I wandered before I stopped in front of a building by the outskirts of the Factionless sector. Behind it is a long alley, running along this building and another one, taller than the others in this area. I stopped when a group of kids caught my attention. There were four of them: all four of them in a gray ensemble, but one of them dirtier than the others, his clothes too loose for his skinny frame. They were running playfully in the alley, laughing as they kicked around a small ball that could have been for a pet.

When the ball started towards the skinny one, he kicked a tad bit too early and fell on his butt. The others laughed but went to crouch with him otherwise. "You okay?" one of the Abnegation girls asked him. He gave them a toothy smile as he pushed his hair out of his face instead of answering, and they laughed again, with him this time, and helped him get up.

The ball rolled towards me and as I look down at it, memories of my childhood flooded back. I remembered being children like them once, but not exactly. What set me and Caleb apart was our father; being a leader, he had to set an example, so he barely let us play games like these—self-indulgent and unnecessary, he kept saying. Of course, occasionally, we'd sneak away with Susan and some others after school to play. Without thinking, I step on the ball to steady it then call out to them.

"Hey! Is this yours?"

They all turn and I could swear I saw panic in the eyes of one of the Abnegation boys.

"Yes…" the Abnegation girl whispered. "We're sorry, miss. We didn't mean to end up playing here. We just happened to…" She trails off. Then the Factionless boy speaks up.

"I'm sorry. I lead them here." The boy looks down at himself as he clasps both hands behind his back, his right leg swinging lazily back and forth. "I just saw them and… I'm really sorry," he pauses to look up at me and continues, "I'll just go."

I feel a twinge of pity for the boy. He's too young to be living under these conditions. I remember the boy who stole from my supply of provisions a few days ago.

He had already turned when I called out to him again. "What's your name?"

He turned to look at me, probably to check who I was talking to, and answered, "I, uh… I have none, but… but my brother calls me Rain," he mutters.

The knot in my stomach tightens.

"Rain, really? Why rain?" I pretend to chuckle.

"He says he found me and my mom on a rainy day," he turns around to face me, "I think it's because he says our father used to call him 'Sun' or something."

I smile inwards. I wanted to tell him that his father probably called his brother "son", but decided not to for now, to let him have the bliss for ignorance for a while longer.

"Hey," I roll the ball under my feet, "Heads up!" and I kick the ball to him in a quick movement. He catches it with his hands and I smile at him as he looks up. Then, I turn to the Abnegation children.

"Don't stray too far. No, actually, get close to the Abnegation sector now. Play with Rain there. Oh, and if we ever see each other again, that would be the first time, okay?" I wink at them and they grin widely. They run past me, pulling Rain with them. He glances back one last time to thank me before catching up to his friends.

I peek into the alley and look up at the tall building on one side. You can still see the remains of the once most likely magnificent building, but years of untouched damages that should have been fixed have made it just a tall building still made of stone and brick, compared to the glass and steel ones in the city.

I walk into the alley cautiously, sliding my fingers against the side of the building to my right. I jump slightly when a stray cat runs out of a pile in a corner of trash. I think my heart jumps off of my chest for a split second when a deep, rumbling voice speaks from above me.

"Careful there or you might hurt yourself, Stiff."

I raise an eyebrow at him. "You…"

He was the man who jumped off the train yesterday. He had his elbows on the edge of the rooftop of the tall building to my left. From down here, I couldn't see his face clearly against the sunlight, but I knew it was him.

"Who are you, and what are you doing here?" I demand, trying in an authoritative tone. I obviously failed where he succeeded when he spoke.

"Shouldn't I be asking you that? Isn't it a bit too dangerous for a little Abnegation initiate like you to be wandering around here on your own?"

"Well..." I begin, but I stop almost immediately. Whoever this guy was, I didn't want to give him that sort of power over me. "For your information, I am… doing my rounds in these parts of the city."

"Oh?" he says as he seems to straighten up on the rooftop, "Well then why did you let those kids go?"

"I… I didn't. I sent them back."

"Nope, because if I remember clearly, you told them to continue playing, just a bit closer –"

"Okay, okay! Just.. shut up!" I interrupt him in a frantic; I don't know why though. I don't expect anyone to be around here at this time of day, but I guess hearing him say it out loud makes me feel negligent. He just snickers at me.

I sigh in exasperation and bite my dried lips. I look back up at him and for a moment, I thought he was gone, until I see his hands move.

"Your turn."

"What?" he asks.

"To answer my questions: Who are you and what are you doing here?"

"A bit curious for an Abnegation kid, aren't you? Or were you a transfer?"

"I… No! No more questions until you answer yours."

He snickers again. "Do you really want to know?" His voice echoes down the alleyway.

"Do you think I would be asking if I didn't?"

This time, he guffaws, his head shooting back towards the sky as he grips the edge for support. "Well, come up here then, and let's have a proper conversation about who's out of place."

My grin fades. As much as I wanted to know, I wasn't sure if this man was to be trusted. What if he wasn't alone on that rooftop, and I was walking right into a trap? Then my inner voice laughed at me; what trap would be set for me? Oh, conceited Beatrice…

I stall. "We're already having a conversation. I think this is okay," I say as I wave at the distance between us and shrug.

He inhales. "Nope," he says as he shook his head once and pointed at the floor beneath him.

I bite my tongue. "Why… do you need me up there?"

"No reason. I'm just curious to why a Stiff like you is so eager to poke her nose into my business, and how far, or high in this case, she would go for the satisfaction of knowing," when he paused, I could actually feel the satisfaction of overpowering me in his voice. "Or are you gonna let a few feet off the ground stop you?"

I swallow. I know I should be smarter than this; I did get Erudite in my aptitude test. But I also got Dauntless… so I went for it.

I took the biggest three steps and approached the wall of the building, grabbed onto the ladder hanging onto it and pulled myself up.

"There we go!" he called out as I continued up. "Not so bad, is it? The roof's just a tad bit lower than when we're on the train." Halfway through, I noticed something

"The ladder's broken up there!" I shout, looking up at him. The ladder stops just a few more rungs above me where the iron somehow bends completely to the right. A few rungs remain at the top, though, curving onto the edge of the rooftop.

"Yeah, well," he leans forward above me and bends down, reaching down. He pulls up his black long sleeve with his other hand, and he offers the other to me, "Grab on."

"What?" I exclaim as I look down. I was already very far off the ground, and one wrong move…

"Hey! Hey, don't look down! Geez, just trust me."

I would have thought otherwise in some other situation, but not this one. So I move up a bit more and grab onto his hand. He pulls me up a little more and grips my other arm as I reach for the edge. Once he's pulled me up, both my arms in his hands, I am suddenly fully aware of the air behind my leaning body, my feet on the second to the last rung of the ladder. One slipping movement and I doubt I'll see another day, so I move in a hurry, grabbing his arm with my one hand and his shoulder with my other. He groans slightly as I push myself up and onto the rooftop, applying pressure on his shoulder before I drop in front of him, his hands still on my elbows for support.

"That wasn't so bad, was it?" he says in my ear as I put my hands on my knees. I glance at him once and grin, letting out a sigh of relief. He was alone in the rooftop. I stand up and take a few steps to my side, turning to face him.

"So," I begin as I feel a wall behind me. I move a little more to the right and felt the door leading into the building. His eyes, serious and a dark shade of blue, squinted as they followed my movement, then it curved, smiling. "You were gonna answer my questions."

At this distance, I am able to size him up. His dark hair is curt short, almost Abnegation short, with just a few stubborn strands straying from the neat cut. He now has a band aid over his the cut below his eye that I saw a few days ago. And his clothes—he was still wearing his long-sleeved black Dauntless top, but his slacks were blue, the color of Erudite, except a bit faded and mixed with brown, a sign that it was a donated cloth for the Factionless.

He smiled again, mischievously. "Not until you trust me enough."

"Do you trust me?"

"I don't see a reason why not. Can't you be trusted?"

I don't answer. Instead, I just shrug with a frown. I'd rather leave that up to other people's judgment.

"But I'll give you this much: I was Dauntless, and I left, if that wasn't obvious enough yet."

I blink a few times before I blurt out "Why?"

His mouth opens, as if he was about to say something, but turned into a wide smile before he laughed. He shrugged while shaking his head. "I just…" he shook his head again, before the grin on his face began fading, "I just had to."

I think about what to say next, but I couldn't, so I just ask him "Why?" again.

This time, though, he just laughed. "Stubborn, aren't we?"

He turns his back to me and stares out at the other side of the city, and stays there. I decide to join him. I copy his position, my elbows on the edge of the rooftop. I clasp my hands together and I turn my head to the side to look at him, and he does the same.

He makes a 'tut' sound once and speaks as he looks away: "I didn't take you for the Dauntless type… I mean, if you were, you wouldn't be here right now."

He pulls his arms back and puts his hands in his pockets, and he turns around to lean back against the edge.

"What?" I ask.

"You," he says, nodding towards me, "liking the whole Dauntless thing." He smiles.

Am I that easy to read? I mean, really? First Caleb, then Robert, and now this guy, and he barely even knows me!

"How can you—"

"I can just tell. I mean, yeah, if you weren't, you wouldn't be on this rooftop right now. But if you were, you wouldn't even be in this part of the city. So what is it really?"

I gulp, swallowing too loudly. I could see him suppressing a smile again. And I just shake my head, letting my hair cover my face as I turn back towards the city. "I was born in Abnegation, I was born for this, so I stayed. As simple as that…"

"I don't think it is," he takes out one hand from his pocket and turns, now facing me, and pushes himself from the wall. He rocks from side to side as he keeps letting his body fall to the side, but pushes back up again. "You decide to stay… 'for your family', and then you spend the next years of your life regretting, wondering what you're missing out on, and the next thing you know, you're miserable about the decision you made that unfortunate day when I was 16. Am I right, so far?"

I actually laugh at him. Here was the guy who just left Dauntless, telling me I would regret not transferring there.

"Well, it's just been a few days, but, yes, so far… sort of. Because the mere fact," I turn to face him and point at him then myself, "that you're here right now, having this conversation with me, is enough justification that I may not be missing out on that much." I turn my head to the side and smile at him with squinted eyes.

He breaks into a grin and nods. "Well, that is true… But still, trust me, you are missing out. There are just some things that only the Dauntless can give you." He looks out at the city again and, this time, the train passes by. I look at him, just to see his reaction, but he had that façade of a serious, nonchalant guy again, as if he wasn't bothered. But his eyes sort of said something else entirely. I feel like he had this sudden urge to jump off this building and then fly up onto that train or something.

I was about to say something, but he beat me to it.

"What's your name?"

I stared at him for a while, shrugging off the questions in my head before I registered his. I shook my head and asked him to repeat what he just said.

"Your name… what was it?"

"Um…" I don't know why I hesitate, really. But for some reason…

"Think about it. You don't get to pick again," he says, a faint smile curling his lips.

"Tris," I say firmly.

"Tris," he nods and repeats, grinning. He looks down at the ground, as if looking for something, as he sets his hand on my back. "Welcome to Dauntless."

"What?"

"Nothing. Well, maybe… maybe if meet again," he says, a smug look on his face as he looks back at me.

He crosses over behind me and reappears at my other side, stopping in front of the small platform where the ladder is anchored over. "I assume you can help yourself down?" he says as he gives me one last glance before he turns around and sort of hops down onto the ladder.

I look over the edge and see him jump down from the ladder. "Wait!" I call out to him, and he pauses, his hand still on the ladder. "What's your name?"

He puts a hand on his forehead, shielding his eyes from the sunlight, and I could see a sideward grin on his face. "It's Four!" and he runs away, sprinting through the alley as he glances back at the other direction every few strides.

I wonder if I misheard him.

Then clattering sounds, like sticks hitting steel and iron, growing louder along with footsteps disrupt my thoughts. I immediately walk over to the ladder and, after taking a deep breath, crouch down and hold onto the ladder, feeling for the rung of the ladder and continue climbing down.

Just as I dropped down on the ground, I see a set of feet to my right, a little past the dividing wall. I stand up and am suddenly face to face with a blonde, curly-haired boy who just turned the corner and looks probably just as shocked as I did.

It was Robert, and in his hands were two long, slender wooden sticks. He drops them when he realizes who I was, though.

"What are you doing here?" we ask in unison. Then we laugh.

"Come on, let's just go back," and he puts his arm over my shoulders, pulling me along through the alley.

I don't talk for a while, but tease anyway, "Where you playing over there, or did I just miss the drum set?"

"Oh, shut up."


Haaa! Crappy ending. :P R&R, thanks guys!