Chapter Text
At 6:30, the gentle chirping of your alarm pulls you from slumber and you yawn, stretch, and lie there for a moment more before dragging yourself out of bed and setting your daily routine into motion.
Breakfast is already waiting for you downstairs, laid out on the table before your parents as always. “Good morning,” is passed around, from you to your mother to your father and back to you, and then you all eat to the low murmur of the morning newscast on the television.
“Yesterday, protests in the capital turned violent when a Nonconformist assaulted a Department of Social Health officer…”
You raise your eyes to the thin television mounted on the wall. A girl, tall and lean and all arms and legs, screams in the face of a motionless DSH officer. She flings the bottle in her hands wildly, motioning to the crowd of people behind her, tossing her bright pink hair out of her face. A pause, and then without warning she slams her bottle into the side of the officer’s helmeted head. The camera trembles as the crowd surges forward.
“Those Nonconformists, at it again,” your mother mutters.
“They ought to round ‘em all up and put them through recal therapy,” your father remarks absently.
Your eyes fall back to your food. Nonconformists, at it again. This, too, is normal - just another part of your daily routine.
After breakfast you shower, get dressed, brush your teeth. You place your tablet into your bag and double-check to ensure you have everything for the day ahead. Downstairs you go again, tossing a goodbye over your shoulder as you head out the front door. Your mother’s cheery, “Have a good day!” follows you, echoed by your father a second later.
Outside, low-hanging gray clouds kiss the rooftops, threatening rain. It is mild despite the dreary weather, and you reach down to unbutton your gray blazer, exposing the pristine white button-down shirt beneath. Like any other day, it will take you ten minutes to get to school, leaving you with plenty of time to socialise and get your things together for your first class. Your eyes fall to the gray sidewalk beneath your feet, rolling beneath rolled-down white socks atop dark gray brogues.
“Y/N!”
You lift your head at the sound of your name. A cluster of gray is waiting ahead of you - classmates. Friends. Above the gunmetal uniforms are content, blandly smiling faces, and you mirror their expressions. They surround you, and you melt into the small crowd as conversation bubbles up, tugging you in. The discussion is simple and basic. You discuss the homework, the weather, talk of new uniforms.
One boy leans close and whispers conspiratorially. “Hey, listen to this. I saw my neighbour get dragged out of his house the other day by the DSH.”
His voice falls even lower as everyone bends closer. “He’s going to be forced into recalibration therapy. He was secretly a Nonconformist, planning to overthrow the government!”
Dramatic gasps rustle through the group. You try to picture it: a man, maybe middle-aged, dressed in bright colours and loud patterns, kicking and screaming as he is dragged across his lawn by the Department of Social Health’s black-clad, helmeted officers towards the gaping doors of a dark paddywagon. The girl from the news flickers through your head, as well; she is in mid-swing, face contorted with anger and effort, shards of glass nicking her cheeks. Probably well into recal therapy by now. It’s for her own good. Nonconformists and their agenda are a threat to social health.
At school, algebra II, world history, Studies on the Human Body, literature, and Social Health all pass without incident. Before you know it, the last bell is ringing, and you’re leaving your last class of the day - physics - and waving to Dr Wecht as you go. And then, you are on your way home again, surrounded by all your friends. You will go home to your parents and study until dinner was ready, and then you’ll all eat to the newscast just like breakfast -
Someone shoves you aside and one of your friends releases a startled scream. You looked up as a boy holding a girl’s hand shoves through the group, jumping over a fence and running through someone’s yard. The girl’s hair is light pink, you notice, barely avoiding getting knocked to the ground by another girl in all black -
They’re Nonconformists, you realise, and someone slammed hard into your back.
Almost immediately large hands grab your shoulders, straightening you up. A face, framed in wild brown curls, appears before your own. Thin eyebrows drop low in concern over warm brown eyes. “Holy shit, I’m sorry.”
His crass word choice goes right over your head. There’s more of them, running past him, calling desperately for him to hurry up. He looks to his right and color drains from his skin as fear bleeds onto his features. He lets you go, and then he’s gone.
DSH officers are suddenly in your midst, pushing through you just as the Nonconformists had seconds before. One of them pauses, their visor scanning the lot of you, and everyone recoils from the blackness of their armoured uniform.
“Watch out for Nonconformists,” a rough, feminine voice orders from the void of the helmet. “Be careful going home.”
And then she’s gone, too, following the path of her fellow officers and the Nonconformists before them.
Silence reigns after they’re gone. Tense, perturbed silence. Everyone scatters, darting into their respective homes, thrown completely off-track by this disruption in their daily routine.
But you are less perturbed and more throughtful. You let your feet carry you down the path that’s ingrained into your muscles and nerves. You go home, you say hello to your parents, and you go upstairs as you normally would. You open your physics book, but you don’t study it. The words on the page are drowned out by the thoughts in your head.
“Y/N! Dinnertime!”
You shuffle downstairs, join your parents at the table, and a moment passes before you blurt, “Some Nonconformists were getting chased by the DSH earlier today. They ran right through us on the way home from school.”
Your parents’ faces pop up from their meals, shocked.
“Are you okay?” your father demands, and you nod, though it’s abundantly clear that you are. Both of them relax, but there’s a pressure in the air now. You glance between the two of them.
“What do you think of Nonconformists?” you ask slowly.
Your father’s response is immediate. “They’re ungrateful, entitled, naïve brats,” he spits. Your mother nods sagely in agreement. “They don’t know how good they’ve got it. The government does so much for us. The world’s in much better shape - nothing like the Old World. They ought to just learn to accept things and move on. I wish the government could just track down every Nonconformist and recalibrate them.”
Your gaze drops to your food, untouched and growing cold. “I just - the people getting chased… They were around my age. And they looked really, really afraid of the DSH officers. And I just have to wonder what they did to have the DSH after them like that.” You shrug. “I just think it’s a little weird to think that if things are so perfect, why do people have to learn to accept it and deal with it. I mean, there’s so many Nonconformists and obviously not everyone’s happy, so…”
The silence you are receiving lifts your gaze to stormy faces. You realise too late that you’ve said too much.
“That sounds an awful lot like Nonconformist talk, young lady,” your father says lowly. “And I won’t have Nonconformism in my house.”
“S-sorry,” you blurt, shoving your chair away from the table. “I was just - just wondering. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
You don’t bother to excuse yourself as you hurriedly leave the table and dart up the stairs.