This
scene takes place right before Tris, Tobias, and the others leave the city for
the outside world. In it, Tori has gathered a group of Dauntless to commemorate
their old faction by getting tattoos of their original “fear numbers,” defying
the new factionless regime. I cut it to resolve some pacing issues, but
initially I wrote it because it establishes so many characters and dynamics and
emotions in such a short space, and it’s the last hurrah of Dauntless, sort of
bookending the series. You may recognize bits of it—some of the information in
this passage is now sprinkled throughout Allegiant. —Veronica Roth
T R I S
TORI, WHO IS carrying a small
cardboard box, sets it down and climbs onto one of the tables. Then she holds
up a hand for silence. It comes in bits and pieces.
“I called this meeting partly to
stick it to Evelyn Johnson—”
Cheering.
“—and partly for another reason.”
She reaches into the box at her feet
and takes out a tattoo needle.
“To create something that binds us
all together.” She holds the needle in both hands, as gently as she would hold
a child.
+ + +
The Dauntless cycle through the
lines quickly. Time wears on, and as it does, I become more and more aware of
what we are going to do tonight. Leave the city. Break the law. Maybe never
return. Find the world outside. Hear the answers to all our questions.
Are
we really just an experiment? How long have you been out there? Have you been
watching us? What do you want from us?
And for me, the most important one: Who is Edith Prior?
Christina returns from the tattoo
line with a number 13 on her arm. I notice a few tiny shapes floating over the
3, and she gives me a wicked smile.
“Moths,” she explains. “Tough as
cotton balls, right?”
I laugh. and then I wonder if it’s
all right to laugh, because that’s what Will said to her when he found out she
was afraid of moths. But I guess that, after someone dies, what’s all right to
feel is whatever you do feel. And Christina is still smiling.
“Feels good to think about it,” she
says as she sits on my other side. “You know?”
I nod, and even though I’m a Stiff
and I don’t do this sort of thing, I grab her hand and squeeze it.
Tobias and I stand in Bud’s line,
and Shauna maneuvers her wheelchair to Tori’s line, ahead of Zeke. I check my
watch. We only have a few hours until we set our escape plan in motion—I didn’t
intend to spend those hours waiting for a tattoo, but maybe that’s just the way
it’s going to be.
“I’m really going to miss this
place,” I say.
“Really?” He shrugs. “My thoughts
are more like, ‘Good riddance.’”
“There’s nothing you’ll miss? No good memories?” I elbow him.
“Fine. There are a few.” He smiles.
“Any that don’t involve me?" I
say. “That sounds really self-centered. You know what I mean.”
“Sure. I guess.” Tobias shrugs. “I
mean, I got to have a different life here, a different name, even. Here I was
always Four, thanks to my initiation instructor. He came up with the nickname.”
“The legendary Four,” I say with a
flourish of my hand.
“Indeed.” He spreads his arms wide.
“And how fortunate you are to bask in my presence.”
I jab him in the ribs with my elbow.
“Why haven’t I met this initiation
instructor?”
“Because he’s dead.” Tobias says
“dead” like it’s just another word, but his eyes find mine and I can tell this
is anything but a casual topic. “Amar was Divergent.”
I touch his arm, lightly, but there
isn’t much to say. He shifts like he’s uncomfortable.
“See?” he says. “Too many bad
memories here. I’m ready to leave.”
We are quiet for a while, and it
feels comfortable, which is a strange thing for me. Usually silence is charged
with all the words a person isn’t saying, or can’t find a way to say, but with
him, I feel like my presence is enough, like his presence is enough.
We move closer and closer to the
tattoo needles, and when we’re a few feet away, Tori says without lifting her
head, “You two, get in my line instead.”
I feel nervous, but I don’t want her
to know that I’m afraid of her, so I do what she says.
I go before Tobias, and when Tori
finishes with the Dauntless woman in front of me, she curls her finger at me.
“You’re up.”
She is switching out the old needle
for a new one and preparing a new batch of ink. Her hands are bare and small,
steadier than any hands I’ve ever seen. They almost seem to rest on top of the
air like it’s a table, motionless.
I sit in front of her.
“You can come closer, you know,” she
says. “I won’t bite." She tilts her head. “Oh, wait. I have done that,
haven’t I?”
I scoot closer.
“I know your upper arm is already
taken, so you can choose a different place,” she says, and her voice is
unexpectedly soft. Her eyes, which curve gently down at the edges, find mine.
“Okay,” I say.
“Your number?” she says. “Or your
best approximation of it?”
My fear number, when I went through
my fear landscape during initiation, was seven. But am I afraid of the same
things now that I was when I was an initiate? Am I still afraid of being
responsible for my family’s deaths when they’re already gone? Am I still afraid
of being with Tobias, in that way?
“If you’re having trouble, think of
the tattoo as a memory of your fears as a Dauntless initiate,” Tori says. “The
number can change, but the memory will always be the same, and that’s what
you’re recording, not your fear count.”
That makes it easier. “My number was
seven.”
I offer my arm to her, and she
cleans my forearm with antiseptic, then touches the needle to my skin. I am
used to the prick of the needle and the stinging pain that makes my eyes water.
I don’t even have to look away this time. I just watch the needle move, and her
hand wiping the excess ink, and my skin turning red around it. I still don’t
like the buzzing sound it makes—it’s like a swarm of bees.
“Apparently you didn’t need Jeanine
to be alive after all,” Tori says quietly. “You didn’t need her to be alive in
order to get the video shown.”
“I didn’t know that at the time.”
“Or a part of you didn’t want to
know. Wanted to keep her alive.”
“I’m glad she’s dead.”
“Hmm”
“Hey,” I say harshly, so she pauses,
lifts the needle. “I hated her. I’m glad she’s dead. You’re not the only one
she stole people from, so stop acting like it.”
She doesn’t answer. Instead she goes
back to the tattoo, tracing each line, filling in the space between them. When
she finishes, the skin around the number 7 is bright red, but it doesn’t hurt
that much. She bandages it, and I realize that the room has gone quiet. Bud is
putting away his supplies, and Tobias, standing behind me, is the last one in
line. The silence is for him.
T O B I A S
“WE ALL KNOW your number, Tobias Eaton,” Tori says.
I still feel a prickle of fear
whenever someone says my name out loud, like it’s a forbidden word. For a long
time it belonged only to me, until I gave it to Tris, but then the Candor
wrenched it from me with their truth serum, and now it belongs to everyone.
My shirt has long sleeves that are
tight around the wrist, so I pull one up as far as it will go—to my elbow—and
sit, offering my blank skin for her to mark. I am already warm with
embarrassment, standing in this room that shouldn’t be silent but is. She
raises an eyebrow at me.
“I don’t remember putting a tattoo
on your arm,” she says, slapping my upper arm lightly. “Come on, let them all
see the fine work I did on your back.”
She asked me, once, why l got so
many tattoos if I was always going to keep them covered, even in the heat of
summer when most Dauntless wear as little clothing as possible. I didn’t give
her a reason, but I still remember it—I wanted the tattoos to cover all the
places he hurt me, the back that bore the belt and the side that bore the fist.
A lot of people hate scars, but
before I joined Dauntless, I had always wished that I had some. I wanted to
have some kind of reminder that while wounds heal, they don’t disappear
forever—we carry them everywhere, always, and that is the way of things, the
way of scars. So I got the tattoos instead.
And I hid them, because I didn’t
want these people to see those wounds, even if they wouldn’t know what they
were looking at.
I curl my fingers around the hem of
my shirt and pull it over my head. I sit up straight, my back to the room, the
flames on my side expanding and contracting with my hurried breaths. Tori
cleans the skin on my arm, and I feel like their stares are the flames, and my
skin heats up more for every second they spend looking at me.
They are silent while she draws the
number, and at first I feel like their silence is cruel, like it scrutinizes
me. But as she draws the last lines on me, I realize that the Dauntless shout
when they feel camaraderie, and they are silent when they feel respectful. To
them I am still the man with only four fears.
I stare down at the 4 as she covers
it with a bandage, and I realize that this, unlike the other tattoos, is something
I am proud to carry everywhere, proud even to carry outside the fence, to
whatever will come next.
