"Hi. It's Tris. I can't answer right now, but please leave a message."

After it's all said and done, I'm not sure where to direct the most anger at myself. I'm angry I let it happen. I'm angry I got hurt in the first place. I'm angry it was in front of my students. Again and again.

The day should have started normally. I taught my morning class and ignored a twinge of pain in my shin. I'd felt it in my leg, on and off, over the last two months. Just a bruise that got aggravated, I'd thought, nothing more than that. If it had ever hurt enough for it to be anything else, I'd made myself ignore it. The fact that it ached to walk on had been inconvenient, nothing more.

And then I jumped. It should have been simple. One low platform to the higher, pulling my own weight up. It's a jump I'd done thousands of times. It's also the jump that put me in the hospital last time. If I weren't furious at the situation, at myself, I'd appreciate the parity.

I don't make the jump. I catch the ledge but my left shin hits a climbing pipe and pain explodes through my body. For just one second, my vision goes black, but one second is enough and I lose my grip.

The next thing I know, I'm on my back, cushioned by athletic mats, and hurting.

I'm not surprised by mayhem. I'm not even surprised by the fact that I'm seeing the best and worst of people. That much I'd known since the Erudite attack on Abnegation, watching people without the serum who acted of their own accord. People had shot me and tried to drown me but also given up their lives to save me. No, none of what I've seen tonight surprises me.

What surprises me is that there was no precipitating incident, no premeditated coup. A siren had gone off and people had decided there was no reason to be anything but their worst selves. I could have stayed inside, could have stayed safe, but I'm too Dauntless, too Abnegation, too Divergent to just leave things and look after myself.

I'm not a superhero like some of the people I know. I don't have a mask or special powers. But I did have a lot of training and a lot of weapons and I'd brought both out into the streets of Darrow with me tonight. It's reckless and stupid but by the time the second siren rings out and I drag myself back home, I'm doing okay.

I have lots of cuts and bruises but nothing terrible, aside from a nasty cut in my left bicep. That one is going to need some attention, though I don't think it's deep enough to need stitches. As I exit the elevator to my floor, I can feel it stinging and I can't wait to get some bandages on it.

 "It's short for Beatrice," I say, letting him pull me along. I don't actually know if we're going to find someplace private but I suddenly don't care.

Along the way, feeling silly and a little reckless, I grab an abandoned but mostly full cup of wine from the fountain. It looks as if someone filled it and then got distracted and it seems like a waste. 

We pause and I kiss him again, struck by the need to be close to him.

There's no Fight Club tonight and it's enough to make me want to slam my fist into a brick wall until it bleeds except that I know it won't be satisfying. I need someone who can hit back until I can't feel anything but rage. Al's arrival leaves me insecure and afraid, old scars ripped into new wounds. I need to fight until I can't hear anything but the blood in my ears.

I know someone who hates me just enough to make it work.

It's what sent me, first, to a liquor store to buy a six-pack of beer. I won't touch a drop of it, but it should be fitting enticement for someone naturally belligerent. Beer in hand, I take the train with all of its slowing and stopping, out to the countryside. Ignoring the peaceful beauty, I search for the clearing where I once met a white stag.

"Ronan Lynch," I say, waiting.

Before Darrow, I had never heard of vampires. If we talked about monsters, it was because we talked about what might be beyond the fence. Whatever lived in that bombed out wasteland was far more real than an undead creature that drank blood.

Darrow is different. Darrow is full of its own strange terrors that grow bolder with every month. A vampire attack used to be a signal for panic. Now it's a regular danger on the same level as a mugging or a break in. Vigilantes, my own friends among them, seek them out with a vengeance. At their behest, I carry two knives with me now. One, my Dauntless black switchblade; the other, a knife carved from wood, inlaid with a silver filigree cross. It feels strange and theatrical, yet I feel safer with it at my back.

It's Petros Park and barely after sundown, but that seems to matter very little to the vampire in front of me. I catch its reflective eyes, like a cat at night only gaunt and horrible. She has fangs outstretched and I know she means to make a meal of me.

I reach for my knives.

I am not prey.

It's strange how much the patterns help. The routine of waking up in Tobias' arms, going for a run, going to work, seeing him on the way in to his shift as I go home. The alternating shifts are nice; it means one of us gets home before the other. Tonight it's me and I choose to fill the time with cooking. Tonight it's pasta with spicy red sauce. Easy, but consuming enough to keep my mind from wandering. The sauce is simmering and I've just put the pasta on to boil.

It's not Abnegation food nor is it Dauntless either. It simply is, just like everything else here. When I chop tomatoes, I can salt them if I choose, or add spicy cayenne if I choose. Anything I want. I can make a meal that transcends faction rules, the same as Aramis and Porthos upstairs or Alison on the floor below. Just as the food is just itself, I can just be who I am.

Sometimes I have to wonder if what our city thought of as Divergent is simply another world's normal. If that's what I am.

The thought buzzes around my head as I unwrap a block of cheese and hear the door open.

Two more weeks. I keep repeating that to myself, but I've never been good at patience. I went to the hospital this morning and the stitches were cut out of my right palm, but my left hand is still trapped in metal splints and medical tape. I can go running, outside, but at wok I'm relegate to desk duty until I'm no longer splinted. I know it's policy for all employees, but I still chafe, waiting. I want to climb and jump higher again, outpacing all the bad dreams that weigh on me.

I want to be at the punching bags, climbing the scaffolding. Anywhere but behind this desk. I feel so tense, so ready to run, that I forget to lift my head when I hear the door chime.

"Can I help you?"

I'm standing there in my kitchen, trying to remind Grey of the drinks we've left cooling on the counter, but I can't quite fish out the words as he reaches up and touches my jaw. For long, painful seconds, all I can think of is the last person who cradled me like this, who watched my face with quiet understanding. I miss Tobias. I miss Christina and Uriah and knowing who I was. Maybe it had been an illusion of understanding, but it had been something.

I stare at Grey now, feeling like I'm on the precipice of something dangerous.