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This is not your father’s story. This is not the tale they spun to whisper you to sleep, to whisper you through your life, taking exactly the steps they wanted.
This is not their story.
This beast is yours.
…
It is just one more lesson her mother never taught her, that with war there are two sides of the blade. The one edge cuts with the leaving, but it’s on the edge of return that you bleed.
Tris looks at her hands and knows the shape they take around a gun, a knife, a man’s throat. But this is not about taking. This is about her mother’s fingers grasping scissors on the second Tuesday of every third month, when Tris feels them drag through her hair.
Sometimes she thinks about that when she’s trying to fall asleep. The long smooth motion, the little tug at the end with its slight loss of weight, and then all over again. If it’s dark enough, and Four has uncurled from her back in the night, Tris can almost get there in her mind; sitting in the chair with her mother behind her. A steady presence, hands a comforting weight.
She has her mother’s hands.
Tris presses them carefully against her eyes now, tries desperately to make it completely dark, but she’s not careful enough and the small force causes starbursts from the corners of her eyes. She just wanted things to be dark and quiet for a minute. Just a minute to herself so she can think and figure out what she’s going to do.
The masses moved out so steadily after the founders message broadcast across the city, the current of a young river. They were still moving steadily. Tris can hear them trampling through the forest beneath.
They’d started out walking with the others, caught up in the flow, but the further away from the city they got, the more unsettled Tris became. Like she’d swallowed something and it had gotten stuck behind her sternum. Like she was back in that box of water.There was no physical reason for it, no guns aimed at them, no obvious threat. But she hadn’t been able to shake the stone that had settled in her chest.
So when they came to the turning point, Tris had simply taken Four’s hand and split off from the rest. Heading in a twisting roundabout path back to the Amity capital, and the tree house they’d once called shelter.
Tris opens and closes her eyes quickly, tries to get her vision adjusted. She can make out stars in the sky through the doorway, and sparse lights of passerby on the ground, but no visible danger. Just the vision of her mother in a house on fire every time she blinks.
She is not coping well and has no idea how to fix it.
Stretching out her legs, Tris briefly considers letting her knees nudge into Four until he wakes up and can talk to her until she falls asleep. But at least one of them needs to be rested, just in case.
The breeze picks up and carries voices with it, sounds with no distinct words, and Tris gives up looking for a threat that isn’t there; not yet. With careful movements, Tris settles back onto the simple cot. Her shoulders are flat to the frame but she twists her head so she can watch Four’s back rise and fall. Resisting the urge to trace her fingernails along the edge of his tattoo, she tries to count his breathing instead, wills it to lull her to sleep.
“Go to sleep Tris.” She doesn’t jerk when he speaks, that instinct was all but been beaten out of her, but her breath escapes in an audible huff.
‘I’m trying.’ Is all she says. Four hasn’t even bothered to open his eyes. His face is still half turned into the thin pillow wedged under his arm. How long has he been awake, she wonders. Sometimes she forgets he was Dauntless long before she got there. He was probably awake the second she moved to sit up. It’s pointless to be annoyed at that, so she rolls her eyes instead. His silence feels very pointed now.
She wasn’t trying, and they both know it.
‘What am I doing, Four?’ His eyes are open now, and fixed on her. Tris can feel the weight of them despite staring fixedly into the black of the rafters above.
“Right this second? Nothing productive.” Tris’ exhale this time is almost a sigh. “Your brain is going in too many directions at once, you need to pick a lane.” Frustrated, Tris lifts up her hands, her fingers into a fist without her noticing.
‘How am I supposed to do that exactly? There are a million directions to go in, how do I know the right one?’ Four doesn’t try to lower her hands, doesn’t try to tilt her face to his. He doesn’t move her at all. He simply shifts and settles until his head is on her pillow; temple barely brushing against her shoulder, and the heat of him pressed along the length of her side.
‘You don’t,’ he says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world, ‘just do the next thing. Focus on the next thing, Tris.’ Tris turns her head so she can feel the top of his head against the bone of her cheek. His hair is half in her eye.
‘The next thing.’ She repeats it on a breath, ‘we’ll just do the next thing.’ If she half closes her left eye, it becomes twice as dark with his hair directly in her line of sight. Tris turns all of her focus into it, and falls asleep before their breathing has time to sync.
...
When she wakes up, it’s because the sun is lighting up orange and gold on the inside of her eyelids. There are birds moving around in the rafters, cooing lightly to each other, while the weight of Four’s head and shoulders keep her pined to the bed at her chest. She can’t make out the sounds of any movement from below. It’s hot already, and Tris can feel the pockets of sweat where the heat has gathered between Four’s skin and her own. She finds she doesn’t mind too much, though she’ll need to move in a minute to pee. Four’s breathing is still steady, deep and even, but she knows he’s awake too this time. And she can’t read his thoughts, but she thinks he probably doesn’t mind the sweat either, not if it means they can lie still with each other for a little while longer.
She hopes that’s what he’s thinking. Tris would hate to be alone with that.
Just when she’s certain her bladder will burst if she doesn’t move to get up, Four lifts his head from where it was partially stuck against her sternum and gently nudges the side of her face with his nose.
“Go already,” and there is no way he could know that she needed to go so badly, they can’t actually read each other’s thoughts; it just feels that way sometimes. He’s already rolling out of bed and moving toward the little kitchen.“You wiggle your toes!” His words follow her as she half runs down the hall to the latrine. But he’s laughing, and even if it’s slightly at her expense, Tris finds she doesn’t mind that so much either. Not when it’s about this. It’s just so nice to hear him laugh.
The mirror in the pocket sized bathroom is small and slightly watermarked, but it’s low enough that Tris can see her full face and the tops of her shoulders without standing on tip toe. Four has to hunch slightly if he wants to fit in frame. She’s in a loose shirt, cap sleeved and moderately green in colour. It looks more like the swamp water Tris sees in her fear landscape, but it was tucked neatly in the dresser when they holed up the day before, and clean. She won’t stand out so much in this colour either, unlike the hard black of Dauntless, of the Factionless. This colour almost fades into the earth.
Tris manages to wash her hands and face before she hears Four’s feet down the hall. The heavy step completely deliberate, otherwise she’d never hear him until he stood breathing next to her. He reaches the doorway and then leans casually against the jam, like they have all the time in the world to flirt with each other in the mornings. No cares in the world.
“You about done yet,” his eyes cruise around the stamp sized space, ‘it’s just that I’d like to get in here sometime today too.’ There’s a dimple winking in his cheek when he says it, and there’s no heat in his tone so all Tris can do is roll her eyes again and slide in between him and the small sliver of space left in the doorway, sort of shimmy her way through; watch his eyes lift up at the corners when she does. Feels them in the centre of her back as she walks away, out through to the kitchen. There’s a fried egg on a plate sitting on the counter when she gets there.
Tris hadn’t checked the day before, whether there were supplies tucked into the fort, she’d taken watch outside until Four had stared her into getting some rest, the first time. But Four had looked around, had found the shirt she was currently wearing, and obviously the eggs.
Tris couldn’t’ be sure if this place was regularly used by Amity, there hadn’t been anyone staying in it when they’d asked for asylum. A thought occurred to her as she dug into the egg, and hung around until she accepted it as probable truth. Joanne had kept this place ready for her, or others like her, just in case. It was a very Amity characteristic.
The rattle clank from the bathroom echoes down the hall and Tris feels the structure shudder when Four pulls on the chain that acts as their shower. The trough of stored rainwater on the roof gushes and though she knows from great experience that it’s so very cold, Four makes no sound of exclamation when it splashes down on him.
Tris swears every time, can’t help it. But Four is quiet, is almost always quiet, sometimes even when he’s speaking.
It used to get under her skin. How someone his size would stand like they were trying to occupy as little space as possible one minute, and be throwing knives at her head the next.
People are capable of hiding deep pockets of themselves, she did so in Abnegation; her mother did so all her life. So she’s not going to pretend she understands him completely. But some things make more sense now than when he was following her up the Ferris wheel. If someone who is supposed to protect you, beats you instead, you would adapt to survive. Be small, be quiet, and be beneath notice.
When he stomps down the hallway again, such a clunky gait completely against type, Tris’s mouth twists out of its hard line so she’s grinning when he steps through the doorway.
Four’s mouth mirrors hers with barely a pause, springing across his face between one step and the next. His shirt is sticking to wet spots on his shoulders where he didn’t dry off properly, his face is a little bruised on the side, but there’s no pain in his movements, no stiffness. He’s whole and standing in front of her like no bad has happened.
Something cracks in her chest and the contents spill all through her insides. She’s afraid it’s spilled all over her face, feels the warmth of it spread out from her nose, curl down her neck and meet with the rest of the flood in her lungs.
Tris manages to get her hands up to her chin, but they’re stopped by the press of his collarbone into her fingers, her nose awkward against the skin of his neck until she turns her head; can’t help but lean into the pocket he made for her.
She doesn’t want to be weak, not when it’s her fault they’re not out finding the new world, her fault the old one can’t fit them anymore, her fault for so many things. But less than two days ago, she thought she’d never see him again. Thought she’d have to take the echo of him curled around her into whatever comes after this, the next life or whatever; like maybe she’d get to keep that sense memory until she saw her parents again.
It didn’t work out that way though, and Tris can’t pretend she doesn’t want to weep with relief.
‘This is nice,’ Four mumbles it into the top of her head. His tone makes her laugh, half nervous and embarrassed, but neither of them move to let go.
‘It is?’ Four just nods for a bit against her skull.
‘You’re not usually so obvious.’ How can the person who knows all her tells, even the ones she doesn’t know about, think she’s not obvious. Tris tries to hold on to her scoff, but her ribs must give something away.
‘It’s not that I don’t know,’ he defends evenly, ‘you’re just not usually so open about it.’
They’re quiet for a bit after that, the birds get used to them and start hoping along the counter. Tris can hear them pecking at the plate for crumbs.
She’s not ready to let go, but her wrists are starting to feel the strange angle they’re held at between the two of them.
Just when she’s about to shift positions, she hears it, low against her hair.
‘It’s nice.’
Tris presses her face harder into Fours neck, doesn’t feel her wrists at all.