But she saw Marcus and she looked at him, with anger and without fear. She made me feel, not weak, but powerful. Strong enough to fight back.
I tug her toward me by her elbow, and kiss her cheek, slowly, letting her skin burn into mine. I hold her tightly, slouching into her.
“Hey.” She sighs. “We got through it.”
I put my fingers through her hair.
“You got me through it,” I say.
I take her to the rocks that Zeke, Shauna, and I go to sometimes, late at night. Tris and I sit on a flat stone suspended over the water, and the spray soaks my shoes, but it’s not so cold that I mind. Like all initiates, she’s too focused on the aptitude test, and I’m struggling with talking to her about it. I thought that when I spilled one secret, the rest would come tumbling after, but openness is a habit you form over time, and not a switch you flip whenever you want to, I’m finding.
“These are things I don’t tell people, you know. Not even my friends.” I watch the dark, murky water and the things it carries—pieces of trash, discarded clothing, floating bottles like small boats setting out on a journey. “My result was as expected. Abnegation.”
“Oh.” She frowns. “But you chose Dauntless anyway?”
“Out of necessity.”
“Why did you have to leave?”
I look away, not sure I can give voice to my reasons, because admitting them makes me a faction traitor, makes me feel like a coward.
“You had to get away from your dad,” she says. “Is that why you don’t want to be a Dauntless leader? Because if you were, you might have to see him again?”
I shrug. “That, and I’ve always felt that I don’t quite belong among the Dauntless. Not the way they are now, anyway.” It’s not quite the truth. I’m not sure this is the moment to tell her what I know about Max and Jeanine and the attack—selfishly, I want to keep this moment to myself, just for a little while.
“But . . . you’re incredible,” she says. I raise my eyebrows at her. She seems embarrassed. “I mean, by Dauntless standards. Four fears is unheard of. How could you not belong here?”
I shrug again. The more time goes by, the stranger I find it that my fear landscape isn’t riddled with fears like everyone else’s. A lot of things make me nervous, anxious, uncomfortable . . . but when confronted with those things, I can act, I’m never paralyzed. My four fears, if I’m not careful, will paralyze me. That’s the only difference.
“I have a theory that selflessness and bravery aren’t all that different.” I look up at the Pit, rising high above us. From here I can see just a small slice of night sky. “All your life you’ve been training to forget yourself, so when you’re in danger, it becomes your first instinct. I could belong in Abnegation just as easily.”
“Yeah, well. I left Abnegation because I wasn’t selfless enough, no matter how hard I tried to be.”
“That’s not entirely true,” I say with a smile. “That girl who let someone throw knives at her to spare a friend, who hit my dad with a belt to protect me—that selfless girl, that’s not you?”
In this light, she looks like she comes from another world, her eyes rendered so pale they almost seem to glow in the dark.
“You’ve been paying close attention, haven’t you?” she asks, like she just read my mind. But she’s not talking about me looking at her face.
“I like to observe people,” I say slyly.
“Maybe you were cut out for Candor, Four, because you’re a terrible liar.”
I set my hand down next to hers and lean closer. “Fine.” Her long, narrow nose is no longer swollen from the attack, and neither is her mouth. She has a nice mouth. “I watched you because I like you. And . . . don’t call me ‘Four,’ okay? It’s . . . nice. To hear my name again.”
She looks momentarily bewildered.
“But you’re older than I am . . . Tobias.”
It sounds so good when she says it. Like it’s nothing to be ashamed of.
“Yes, that whopping two-year gap really is insurmountable, isn’t it?”
“I’m not trying to be self-deprecating,” she says stubbornly. “I just don’t get it. I’m younger. I’m not pretty. I—”
I laugh, and kiss her temple.
“Don’t pretend,” she says, sounding a little breathless. “You know I’m not. I’m not ugly, but I am certainly not pretty.”
The word “pretty,” and all that it represents, seems so completely useless right now that I have no patience for it.
“Fine. You’re not pretty. So?” I move my lips to her cheek, trying to work up some courage. “I like how you look.” I pull back. “You’re deadly smart. You’re brave. And even though you found out about Marcus . . . you aren’t giving me that look. Like I’m . . . a kicked puppy, or something.”
“Well,” she says factually. “You’re not.”
My instincts were right: She is worth trusting. With my secrets, with my shame, with the name that I abandoned. With the beautiful truths and the awful ones. I know it.
I touch my lips to hers. Our eyes meet, and I grin, and kiss her again, this time more sure of it.
It’s not enough. I pull her closer, kiss her harder. She comes alive, putting her arms around me and leaning into me and it’s still not enough, how can it be?
I walk her back to the transfer dormitory, my shoes still damp from the river spray, and she smiles at me as she slips through the doorway. I start toward my apartment, and it doesn’t take long for the giddy relief to give way to uneasiness again. Somewhere between watching that belt curl around her arm in my fear landscape and telling her that selflessness and bravery were often the same thing, I made a decision.