Chapter Text
He woke up before dawn, when the moonlight was still able to enter through the enormous concrete and metal window of his room. The bluish clarity barely brushed against the dark walls, the mess of clothes strewn near the bed, and the black jackets hung carelessly by the door. For a few seconds he remained motionless, eyes closed and breathing heavy, clinging to that absurd feeling of wanting to stay asleep even though he knew perfectly well he wouldn't be able to. Manjiro let out a muffled groan and turned over on the bed until he buried his face in the pillows.
He didn't look at the clock. He didn't need to. After so many years living inside Dauntless, the body ended up getting used to the constant noise of the trains, the shouting in the hallways, the music thumping until the early hours of the morning, and the permanent smell of sweat, alcohol, and rusted metal. For that very reason, the silence of the early morning always ended up waking him up. There was something strange about those hours when the faction finally seemed to run out of energy, as if the entire monster had stopped breathing for a moment.
Most would hate that stillness. In Dauntless, being left alone with your thoughts for too long was almost a death sentence; people filled the void by throwing themselves off buildings, fighting for fun, or drinking until they lost consciousness. But Manjiro had been tired of the noise for years. Twenty years of breathing the same chaos were enough to understand that adrenaline stopped feeling exciting after a while. In the end, only exhaustion remained.
He opened his eyes slowly and stared at the darkness of the ceiling, still lying down, as he began to mentally organize everything that awaited him that day. Training sessions. Meetings. Internal problems. More political discussions disguised as agreements between factions. The mere idea caused a grimace of annoyance. Sometimes it seemed ridiculous to him that Dauntless pretended to be a free faction when it was sunk in invisible rules and endless responsibilities. Being one of the leaders only made things worse; there were days when he felt he had more in common with Erudite than with the very people surrounding him.
That thought managed to pull a dry smile from him. If someone within Dauntless could hear what went through his head half the time, they would probably try to snatch his position away with their bare hands. They admired him too much to imagine that he was the first to distrust everything they defended with such pride. Because Manjiro no longer believed in the factions, not really. Not after having seen how the city buried people and secrets with the same ease with which it gave speeches about peace and stability.
Slowly he sat up until he was on the edge of the bed. The cold of the floor rose through his legs as soon as he rested his bare feet, finishing the job of waking him up. He ran a hand through his messy blonde hair while letting out a heavy, tired sigh, the kind that seemed to come from deep within. At first glance, he was still the same as always: calm, impeccable even half-asleep, with that indifferent expression that made it impossible to know what he was really thinking. And perhaps that was why he worked so well as a leader. People trusted someone who seemed to have absolute control over themselves more.
What an irony. Because the reality was completely different. There were days where he felt violence boiling under his skin from the moment he opened his eyes. An old, silent rage that never quite disappeared. Sometimes a poorly phrased sentence or the wrong look was enough to imagine himself breaking someone's jaw without stopping to think too much. Other times he simply wanted to disappear from the meetings, let the city keep consuming itself alone, and forget about carrying problems that had never been his.
But he couldn't do it. Not yet.
Manjiro finally stood up and walked to the window. From up there, the Dauntless facilities looked like another place; enormous concrete structures pierced by weak lights, metal bridges suspended over the darkness, and the train tracks disappearing into the distance. Everything looked cold. Empty. Very different from the wild and proud image the faction displayed during the day. He leaned his forehead against the freezing glass and closed his eyes for an instant. Sometimes he could still remember his brothers' voices within that silence.
And that was the worst part. Because time kept moving forward, the city kept functioning exactly the same, the factions kept acting as if nothing had happened… but he hadn't managed to leave that night behind. Not the blood. Not the questions. Much less the sickening feeling that they were hiding something from him from the beginning.
The initiation would be in a few days. As soon as he remembered, he let his head fall back until it softly hit the window pane. He closed his eyes in annoyance, remaining motionless while the cold slowly pierced his skin. This year it was his turn to present himself before the whole city. Once again he would have to stand in front of thousands of people and repeat the same empty speech they had been reciting for generations: why the factions exist, why every citizen must choose one, and why they should feel proud to belong to it. Just thinking about it made him want to laugh. Or vomit.
He still didn't understand how they could sustain such an absurd system without everything collapsing once and for all. How the hell could a single part of your personality decide the rest of your life? It had always seemed ridiculous to him, even when he was a child and still trying to convince himself that the factions made sense. If you were brave, Dauntless. If you were kind, Amity. If you were smart, Erudite. If you couldn't keep your mouth shut, Candor. And if you had enough patience to let everyone walk all over you, Abnegation.
So simple. So perfectly ordered. So fake.
Because people changed. All the time. Fear changed people. Loss did too. Even love could turn you into someone completely different. So, how did they expect to lock millions of people inside a single virtue and pretend that it was natural?
Manjiro watched the distant city lights as irritation began to grow slowly in his chest. The worst part was that nobody seemed to really question it. Everyone moved forward as if that division made sense, as if belonging to a faction were enough to explain who you were. He himself had spent years pretending to fit into Dauntless, playing the role of the perfect leader until the performance began to tire him more than he was willing to admit.
Because yes, he was brave. Brutally brave sometimes. His hands didn't shake in the face of danger, nor blood, nor decisions that would make other people vomit. But he also thought too much. Analyzed too much. Doubted too much. There were parts of himself that Dauntless would never openly accept, parts that fit better in the cold laboratories of Erudite than among people throwing themselves off moving trains to feel alive.
And that contradiction was beginning to consume him little by little. He hit his head against the glass again, this time with a bit more force, letting out a heavy sigh. Then he ran a hand through his messy hair and pulled it slightly, seeking for the pain to tear away that dark sensation beginning to sink into his chest for a moment. Sometimes he needed that; something physical, something real, to stop losing himself in his own thoughts. Because when his mind began to wander too much, it inevitably ended up returning to the same place.
His mind shut off abruptly when the image appeared again. Long blonde hair moving in the wind, small honey-colored eyes looking at him with that blind trust that still managed to shatter something in his chest. For an instant he could almost hear her voice. Then the image changed, just like always. Blood covering that same hair. Dark. Thick. Too much blood for such a small body.
Manjiro opened his eyes sharply and pulled away from the window before getting trapped in the memory again. He breathed deeply, passing a hand over his nape while walking toward the kitchen with slow steps. He raised his arms to stretch and the movement revealed part of his torso; under the dim lighting of the apartment, the tattoo covering his ribs seemed to spread like a living stain over his skin. It didn't have a concrete shape. They weren't symbols or elaborate drawings like the ones many Dauntless members showed off proudly. They were aggressive strokes, black scribbles and irregular marks that seemed to have been made more by impulse than aesthetics, as if someone had tried to tear something out from within and ended up plastering it onto the skin.
On the other side, where the tattoo didn't reach, the scars spoke for themselves. Some thin and barely visible. Others thicker, slightly deforming the pale skin of his abdomen and shoulders. The most evident remained the one on his face; a clear line crossing from near his ear to brushing the corner of his mouth. Over time he had stopped really noticing it. In Dauntless, scars functioned almost like medals, silent proof that you were still alive. Although his didn't have a heroic story behind it. It never did.
He reached the kitchen and took a glass of water without turning on the lights. The cold liquid went down his throat slowly as he finally managed to push the past aside and return to the present. Or, at least, try to.
Draken had spoken with him the night before. He would arrive early and expected to find him ready before dawn. They had a meeting with Erudite. Just thinking about that was enough for the annoyance to return to his expression. Max wouldn't be present either; the primary leader of Dauntless had left before midnight to review a series of reports about strange movements near the borders of Amity.
Lately, too many similar complaints were arriving. Shadows seen in the fields. People disappearing. Noises during the night. Most preferred to pretend they were exaggerated rumors. Not Manjiro.
After the nuclear war and the fall of what once was the United States, humanity had survived by a near miracle. The factions weren't born solely to create order, as they were taught since childhood; they were born because the outside world became an uninhabitable cemetery and someone needed to control what little was left. Decades of radiation, chemical weapons, and failed experiments deformed entire cities, animals, and people alike. Even now, generations later, stories still existed about groups of survivors living outside the walls, people affected by toxic waste, mutations, and diseases that never fully disappeared.
Many within the city believed they were simple tales used to keep the population away from the borders. Others claimed to have seen figures moving through the fog of the outskirts. Beings too tall, too thin, or too violent to remain normal humans. Dauntless patrolled the boundaries constantly for that very reason. And although nobody admitted it out loud, the fear still existed.
Manjiro rested the empty glass on the counter and stayed still for a few seconds, looking at the darkness of the apartment. Something inside him told him that things were starting to move again. He felt it in the tense meetings between factions, in the awkward silences of Erudite, in the way Max had begun to double the patrols at night. The city was restless. Like an animal waiting for the exact moment to strike. And he hated having the premonition that he was right at the center of it all.
He then headed toward the bathroom, decided to take a long shower before Draken appeared entering the apartment as if it also belonged to him. Just imagining him pushing the door without bothering to knock made Manjiro click his tongue in annoyance. They had grown up together, trained together, and survived enough stupidities for anyone in Dauntless to consider them practically brothers, but that never meant he enjoyed sharing his space. Draken had an irritating ease for invading others' lives with total naturalness, as if the concept of privacy were offensive to him.
That's why, when the initiation ended and he took first place in his generation, he immediately took advantage of the privilege of choosing an apartment before the rest. While many ran excitedly to live with huge groups, surrounded by noise and endless parties, he chose one apart from the main core of Dauntless. A quiet place. Just his. At the time, Draken had mocked him for weeks.
"Sure, the prince needs privacy," he had said between laughs. "I bet you want space to enjoy the fame".
And honestly, he hadn't been that wrong. Manjiro smiled slightly at the memory while opening the shower faucet. The water began to fall with force, slowly filling the bathroom with steam. During the first years after the initiation, the constant attention had been entertaining to him. He was young, attractive, and had just become a small celebrity within Dauntless; the prodigy boy, the perfect initiate, the new promising talent of the faction.
People talked about him even when he wasn't present. And the girls… well, the girls weren't exactly discreet either. More than once he woke up with some stranger between his sheets, with perfume impregnated in the pillows and red marks on his neck. He enjoyed the feeling of control, the intensity of the moment, the way they looked at him as if he were something dangerous and fascinating at the same time. For a while he believed that was enough to keep the mind occupied.
But growing up ruined many things. Now, at twenty years old, those nights seemed distant. Empty, even. There were more important things occupying his head. Real problems. Real responsibilities. Secrets too big to waste time chasing passing distractions. He took off his shirt while watching his reflection slowly fog up in the mirror. Sometimes it was hard for him to recognize at what point he had stopped feeling like a teenager. It probably happened without him noticing, buried between political meetings, blood, and corpses. Dauntless had a brutal way of forcing you to mature fast.
And honestly, he was thankful that his younger version had at least been careful enough not to end up tied to anyone. The mere idea of having a child scattered across the city produced an discomfort that was hard to explain. He had never loved any of those girls. He wasn't even close to it. They were passing moments, quick impulses, bodies trying to fill different voids. Nothing more. He wouldn't know what to do if one day someone appeared claiming to carry his blood. Because Manjiro could barely carry himself most of the time. Much less another life.
When he left the bathroom, the steam was still clinging to his skin. He wore only a towel wrapped around his waist and his blonde hair was dripping over his shoulders as he advanced barefoot through the apartment. He wasn't surprised to find Draken sitting at the dining table, completely settled as if he had been there for hours. A cup of coffee steamed between his hands and the bluish light of a tablet partially illuminated his face.
Manjiro narrowed his eyes with annoyance. The tablet had been a "diplomatic gift" from Erudite some years ago. Jeanine insisted too much on modernizing communications between factions, something that seemed more suspicious than useful to him. Even so, Draken had gotten used to using it quickly. Probably because he enjoyed pretending he understood more technology than he actually did.
For an instant, he considered asking what time he had entered, or how the hell he had made coffee without him hearing while he bathed. Before, Manjiro detected even the slightest sound inside his apartment; steps, breaths, the brush of a door opening. Now Draken could appear out of nowhere and that displeased him more than he wanted to admit. Maybe he was losing his edge. Or simply he was too tired lately.
He decided not to give it importance. He walked past without the slightest trace of shame and let the towel fall as soon as he crossed into his room. He didn't even reach to open the drawer when he noticed the clothes perfectly arranged on the bed. Black pants, boots, dark shirt, and the Dauntless jacket folded on top.
Manjiro let out a long sigh.
"You were taking too long".
Draken spoke without looking away from the screen, as if that completely justified invading his home and choosing his clothes. Sometimes it was unsettling how easily they both seemed to understand each other without needing to explain much. They had spent so many years together that certain things became automatic; silences, looks, habits. Draken knew when Manjiro hadn't slept well even before seeing his face. And Manjiro could tell the other's mood solely by how he closed a door. It was almost sickly.
Without bothering to respond to the comment, he began to dress slowly while drying his hair with one hand.
"What will the meeting be about this time?" he asked with evident annoyance. "Jeanine is fucking insufferable".
Draken let out a short laugh through his nose.
"She didn't say much on the call. But it's surely about the Divergents again".
Manjiro barely looked up while finishing buttoning his shirt.
"Again?"
"Mhmm. Seems Erudite found new 'inconsistencies' in the simulations. You know how Jeanine gets when she thinks she's discovered something important". Draken finally looked away from the tablet and drank some coffee before continuing with an irritating tranquility. "Though honestly, I think she's just obsessed with the idea of controlling everything she doesn't understand".
Manjiro let out a dry, bitter laugh. That sounded exactly like Jeanine Matthews. The leader of Erudite had that cold way of looking at people, as if they were defective pieces inside an experiment too large. Intelligent, calculating, and absurdly proud of being so. Sometimes he felt she didn't even see human beings in front of her; only statistics, results, and useful possibilities.
"Damned brat story," he muttered while putting on his jacket. "I guess that's why she's so annoying. She never really left childhood. She just replaced toys with people".
Draken smiled slightly, although there was some tension behind that expression. Because they both knew that Jeanine wasn't simply irritating. She was dangerous. And lately she was putting too much interest in the Divergents for it to be a coincidence.
Childhood. The word kept spinning in Manjiro's head as he finished settling the jacket over his shoulders. Honestly, he didn't remember at what point he had stopped feeling like a child. Maybe he never really had the opportunity to be one. Growing up within Dauntless meant learning too soon that pain was normal, that bleeding was part of training, and that showing fear only served for someone stronger to crush you. Since they were little, they were taught to jump before thinking, to endure blows without crying, and to act like adults long before even understanding what that meant.
The factions loved to brag about their perfect system, but they rarely spoke about how cruel it could get. Because it was. And not just in Dauntless. Manjiro was sure of that. Each faction simply hid its violence in different ways. In Dauntless it was physical, direct, brutal; they wore it with pride marked in scars and broken bones. But in Amity, the cruelty probably existed behind fake smiles and emotional pressure disguised as kindness. In Abnegation, it must feel like suffocating slowly until you forgot who you were outside of constant sacrifice. Even Candor had something rotten in the sickening obsession with tearing secrets out of people as if privacy were a crime.
No faction was really clean. They just learned to sell their flaws as virtues.
"She'll probably say we have to watch some faction again," he murmured while finishing adjusting his boots. "That woman is two cupcakes away from asking us to start killing teenagers".
Draken let out a short laugh hearing him, though Manjiro remained serious just seconds after speaking.
"The worst part is I wouldn't mind too much if that avoids having to put up with the initiates this year," he added with weariness before letting out a sigh. "But I need a more valid reason than some damn tale of old".
Divergents. That word again. It seemed to be following him lately. Manjiro leaned back against the counter while his mind inevitably returned to the same thought that had awakened him hours ago. Divergent. People incapable of fitting into a single faction. People who broke the mold.
Since he was a child, he heard stories about them; absurd rumors that passed from mouth to mouth like urban legends designed to scare initiates. Some described them as dangerous threats to order. Others spoke of them almost as if they were biological errors. But he never really understood what the problem was. They weren't Factionless. And therein lay the most important difference.
The Factionless were something else entirely. The city tried to ignore them, hide them under the rug like uncomfortable trash, but everyone knew what they ended up becoming after years of surviving outside the system. Broken people. Empty. People so desperate for food or shelter that they slowly seemed to lose something human in the process. Some even ended up leaving the safe limits of the city and never returned. And outside… outside only horrible stories existed. Mutates. Sick. Survivors deformed by entire generations living among toxic waste and radioactive ruins. Creatures that barely kept a human appearance and prowled the borders during the night. The Factionless were dangerously close to ending up the same.
But the Divergents weren't. They kept functioning within society. They thought faster. They adapted better. They were capable of seeing more than one perspective. If the rumors about the simulations were true, they could even resist them.
So, why was Jeanine so obsessed with eliminating them? That was the part that wouldn't stop bothering him. Erudite spoke of advanced genetics, of human evolution, of superior minds capable of correcting the errors that destroyed the world before the factions. Supposedly the entire system existed to perfect humanity little by little. So, if Divergents were precisely that—people capable of developing multiple aptitudes without being limited to a single virtue—shouldn't they be considered the perfect result?
Unless the problem wasn't perfection. Unless the true problem was something much simpler. Control. Because someone impossible to classify was also impossible to control completely. And Jeanine Matthews hated everything she couldn't understand.
He would probably end up with a headache if he kept thinking too much early in the morning. Lately, his mind didn't know how to stay still; it jumped from one problem to another, from a memory to a theory, as if it were constantly looking for something. Something he still couldn't manage to find.
He finally stepped away from the counter when Draken stood up. Before going to Jeanine, they would stop by the main dining hall to grab something quick, more out of habit than hunger. Draken left the apartment first and Manjiro took an extra second to make sure the door was closed correctly before following him.
The Dauntless hallways stretched in front of them like the entrains of a massive underground beast. Dark rocks, metal structures embedded among old concrete, and that permanent smell of cold humidity that never fully disappeared. The blue lights hung along the tunnels bathed everything in an artificial tone that, after so many years, had become strangely comforting to him. In fact, it was when he went outside that something felt incorrect. The heat of the sun on the skin. The wind hitting his face. The sensation of open space. All of that seemed much less natural to him than living underground surrounded by steel, noise, and darkness.
He walked a few steps behind Draken, watching how the enormous man practically occupied half the hallway on his own. He was at least three heads taller than him, and yet Manjiro had never felt small at his side. The difference was curious; Draken imposed by size and physical presence, but Manjiro… Manjiro had something worse. Something that made people, even within Dauntless, lower their voices when he appeared. He didn't need to raise his voice or demonstrate strength constantly. It was enough to look him in the eyes long enough to understand he was dangerous.
And the other factions noticed it even more. Probably that's why Max insisted on sending him to meetings with Erudite or Candor. Manjiro knew how to handle smart people and insufferable people, sometimes both at the same time. Besides, Jeanine tended to measure everyone as if she were calculating how much she could manipulate them; with him, she never managed to do so comfortably.
Thinking of her caused a slight grimace. Even knowing part of Erudite's movements, he remained calm. Not because he trusted them, but because he understood something most forgot too quickly: no system fell overnight. It had to be rotted slowly from within. Have patience. Wait for the right moment. Doing something impulsive years ago would only have led him to a grave. And then, what would he be now? Another corpse forgotten underground. Another buried name.
Like Shinichiro. Manjiro's jaw tightened just at the thought of his brother. So absurdly noble. So desperate to believe that people could fix the world without getting their hands dirty. Sometimes it still bothered him to remember how good Shinichiro had been; because in a city like that, good people ended up dead too fast.
But he hadn't forgotten the goal. Never. The entire city lived within an artificial calm, held up by fragile rules and fear disguised as stability. And while the factions kept pretending everything worked perfectly, he watched as the cracks began to spread little by little. They were eating the system from the inside out.
Passing in front of the surveillance area near the central fountain, Manjiro raised a hand without stopping and showed his middle finger toward one of the dark windows. He knew perfectly well that Keisuke would be in there checking cameras while waking up from some clandestine nap before finishing his shift. Damned slacker. He didn't receive an immediate response, though seconds later he heard a dull thud from the other side of the glass and smiled slightly to himself. At least he was still awake. More or less.
He then went back to mentally organizing everything he had to do during the day, although Draken would probably have half of it resolved before he even opened his mouth. First, Jeanine and her sickening obsessions. Then meeting Max near the outer city gates to review the reports on strange movements. Supervise the guards assigned to the Factionless perimeter. Review the paperwork piling up in his office—another proof that being a leader was bureaucratic shit disguised as authority. Prepare the initiation speech. And then the internal Dauntless meeting. They would surely discuss modifications in training again, new strategies for initiates, or structural improvements within the complex. It was always something similar. People trying to perfect a system based on throwing teenagers into violence until discovering which ones survived.
Manjiro let out a tired sigh.
It was midday, or perhaps a little later, when Manjiro really came to. The entire morning had passed on automatic; meetings, signatures, empty conversations, and calculated looks that he barely registered. His body moved on its own while his mind remained far away, caught between thoughts he had spent too long avoiding organizing.
Now he was walking through one of the intermediate zones between the functional city and the territory occupied by the Factionless, a strange place where decay still kept remnants of something that once must have felt alive. The streets were almost empty, covered in cracked concrete, half-collapsed structures, and ancient buildings that seemed to resist falling out of pure stubbornness. Some windows remained intact, dark and dusty, like dead eyes watching from the past.
There was something uncomfortably nostalgic about that place. Manjiro never knew the ancient United States. No one from his generation really did. All that remained were poorly preserved fragments of history, blurry photographs, incomplete records, and ruins devoured by time. Even so, he couldn't help but wonder how it must have felt to live there before everything collapsed. Families. Normal people. Children playing in streets that were now covered in ash and rust. Everything destroyed by overly ambitious governments and people too desperate to control more than they could sustain.
The thought caused a slight grimace. The worst part was that the current city didn't seem much different at its core. Speeches, rules, and names changed, but the human need to control remained exactly the same. Sometimes he wondered if the leaders really were incapable of seeing the errors of the past even with entire ruins in front of them… or if humanity was simply destined to destroy itself over and over regardless of how much it tried to avoid it.
He was torn from his thoughts abruptly when he heard footsteps approaching at full speed. He frowned slightly and raised his head just in time to see a grey blur run past him and accidentally hit him with her shoulder. Manjiro stopped dead in his tracks. Processing.
Greys didn't run. The members of Abnegation walked in silence, looked at the ground, moved like ghosts trying to occupy the least space possible. The "grey smudges," as some Dauntless called them with little subtlety, went unnoticed even when they were in front of you. But that girl had just run desperately through the middle of the street… and had pushed him.
He didn't know what bothered him more. Whether the fact that an Abnegation was fleeing from something—which meant probably something was going very wrong—or having been pushed by someone who clearly weighed half what he did. Before deciding, he had already turned and started running after her.
He reached her faster than expected. For being from Abnegation, she ran quite well, although that probably spoke more to her desperation than her physical condition. Manjiro didn't even need to really exert himself; his steps were light and constant, accustomed to years of brutal training. In a matter of streets, he managed to pull up alongside her.
That's when he observed her better. Completely messy black hair, strands coming out of the improvised braid she wore. Agitated breathing. Tense shoulders. And enormous blue eyes that turned toward him as soon as she noticed his presence at her side.
Manjiro arched his eyebrows slightly. The girl's reaction was immediate. As if she had just understood who was running beside her. Her face, already red from the effort, flushed even more and she let out a small muffled sound of panic before trying to stop abruptly. Bad idea. Her shoes clearly weren't made for running and much less for braking suddenly. Her foot got caught clumsily against the uneven pavement and the girl practically went flying forward with a muffled shriek.
Manjiro decelerated until stopping just in front of her. The little grey smudge had ended up sitting on the ground, completely disheveled, with an expression of absolute humiliation painted on her face while trying to process what had just happened. Manjiro honestly didn't know if he wanted to be annoyed or laugh at how absurdly bizarre the whole situation was.
Less than an hour ago, he had been arguing with one of the guards assigned to the Factionless perimeter because the idiot decided to get aggressive with an old man who could barely stay on his feet. Draken stayed to handle the matter before he ended up making it worse; mainly because Manjiro had already snatched the man's weapon and hit him on the forehead with the butt hard enough to split the skin. Afterward, he simply took off saying he would go check another sector. Lie. He just wanted to be alone for a while. Away from the noise, away from people, and away from the constant sensation of containing something violent inside his chest.
And now an Abnegation girl had just pushed him, run away from him, and then fallen down alone in the middle of the street like a damn newborn puppy. Life clearly enjoyed mocking him.
Manjiro ended up squatting in front of her while the girl kept rubbing her head in evident pain. She looked at him with distrust from the ground, still breathing hard from the run. From close up she looked even smaller than she seemed when running; too thin, wrapped in that huge grey clothing that practically swallowed her body.
"What happened, Stiff?" he asked with a twisted smile. "Did you run out of bread to feed the hungry or what? Were the grandma skirts on sale?"
The girl immediately frowned. She was probably trying to look intimidating. She failed miserably. She had red cheeks, hair in a mess, and enormous blue eyes that seemed too expressive for someone from Abnegation. There was nothing threatening about her. Absolutely nothing.
And yet she responded.
"Don't you have some dog to kick around somewhere?" she fired back with a slightly trembling voice. "Or some train to jump off of, troglodyte?"
Manjiro opened his eyes slightly, truly surprised for the first time all day. The girl was clearly terrified. He could see it in how her hands trembled against the ground, in the rigidity of her shoulders, and in the watery shimmer building up in her eyes. Saying that had probably taken all the courage she had in her body. And yet she said it.
A laugh escaped Manjiro's throat before he could help it. Loud, genuine, almost incredulous. He never would have expected an Abnegation girl to be so talk-backy.
"Hey, hey…" he raised both hands slightly, still amused. "Aren't little grey rats supposed to not talk like that?"
He watched her attentively as he spoke. There was the fear. Of course it was there. The girl seemed torn between running away again or simply fainting right there. Her body trembled slightly and the first tear finally slipped down her cheek before she could contain it.
But she didn't look away. And that was what really caught Manjiro's attention. Because most people did look away when he faced them directly. Even within Dauntless. There was something in his presence that normally forced others to back away instinctively. She wasn't being brave exactly. He knew how to recognize real bravery. This was something else. It was like watching a small animal baring its teeth even knowing perfectly well it could end up crushed. Not because it thought it could win… but because something inside it refused to bow its head.
And for some reason, Manjiro found that fascinating.
"Do you even know who you're talking to?" he finally asked, leaning slightly closer.
The girl swallowed hard. She knew. Of course she knew. The whole city knew who he was.
The strangest thing was that the girl wasn't trying to fake bravery. Manjiro could see perfectly how her body trembled, how her fingers nervously gripped the grey fabric of her skirt, and how the first tear finished sliding slowly down her cheek. She was scared. Very. But even so, she kept answering him.
"Yes, I do know who I'm talking to," she blurted out finally, trying to keep her voice firm although it cracked slightly at the beginning. "To a Dauntless idiot who doesn't know how to respect people. You're supposed to be here to protect us, not to go harassing factions you know aren't going to defend themselves. You're a bully".
Manjiro laughed again, this time with authentic amusement. The brat knew perfectly well who he was and yet had the nerve to insult him directly to his face. And not normal insults, no; she used those exaggeratedly correct words that sounded plucked from an old Erudite book. He definitely didn't expect to hear something like that come from an Abnegation girl sitting on the ground.
He raised an eyebrow, watching her with more attention.
"Well, setting aside your passionate moral discourse…" he said calmly, "where were you running to? Haven't they told you this area is dangerous?"
The reaction was immediate. The girl looked away suddenly and the red in her cheeks got even worse. That's when Manjiro understood she wasn't fleeing from anything serious. There was no pursuit, no attack, no real danger. Only shame. And honestly, that was even more ridiculous to him.
"Come on, talk," he continued while resting an arm on one knee. "Or I'm going to drag you back to Abnegation and I'm going to shout until your parents come out".
The girl practically jumped from the fright. Now she looked at him truly horrified.
"Don't do that!"
Manjiro smiled slightly. Ah, so he finally found a weak point.
She let out a frustrated sigh before speaking hurriedly, clearly humiliated at having to explain it.
"I left school late and missed the bus because there were too many people… and I gave up my spot to someone else, so I ended up at the end of the line. But that will make me two hours late and today it's my turn to cook dinner. Plus I promised a friend I'd help her repair clothes for the Factionless after and I can't be late because I already missed once and—"
She stopped abruptly, probably realizing she had just vented in front of him as if they were acquaintances. Manjiro stared at her in silence for a few seconds. It was so absurdly predictable it almost hurt. For a moment he had expected to hear something interesting. That she had stolen something. That she was escaping from someone. That she was doing some fun stupidity. But no. The girl was having a crisis because she wanted to arrive in time to cook and sew clothes. So damn Abnegation it made you want to throw her against a wall.
"Incredible," he muttered finally, running a hand over his face. "Well, next time don't run alone through closed zones. I won't always be here to take care of you".
That actually managed to make her truly angry. The girl raised her head immediately and looked at him with a disgust so genuine Manjiro almost laughed again. Her enormous blue eyes were full of annoyance now, not just fear. And it was strange. Very strange. Because normally people in front of him shrunk, tried to please him, or simply fled. But she seemed incapable of staying quiet even while trembling.
"You didn't take care of me," she protested with indignation. "You made me fall and hurt myself!"
Manjiro opened his eyes slightly, offended.
"Excuse me? You fell on your own".
"Because you chased me!"
"I followed you. There's a difference".
"That's still weird!"
And there it was again, that expression between indignation and absolute nervousness that made the whole situation feel surreal. Manjiro ended up letting out another laugh while shaking his head. That girl was definitely weird.