Four/Tobias Eaton Imagines

Power and Consequence

It is a very peculiar thing to be in power. In most places, it serves as a slight modifier, something to tip the scales a fraction in your favor during moments of most importance. Small power in small doses can be measured out and used when necessary. Nothing more and nothing less would suit the other factions.

In Dauntless, however? This place of shadows and blood? To have any small scrap of an advantage is to have the world. Your chosen faction is one that welcomes honor and dishonor both so long as they can send you up in the ranks. If some insignificant bit of power can change the course of your destiny, imagine the results of legitimate might.

Power is bravery here. Everyone in Dauntless knows it, from the first day initiates to the faction leaders. Some people wonder how the higher ups in your faction are able to be so brave, to take the risks that no one else will. I'll tell you a secret, then, if no one else will: they don't have to worry about failing when they know they can't.

You get that first rush of power from your first act of bravery and it's all easy from there on out. The free fall picks you up in its mighty arms and carries you forever. They're coasting on the bravery of others, up there in the upper echelons of Dauntless capability. They may not be risking their lives on the daily like the regular people of the faction, but they get the credit for it nonetheless.

Only a few people know of this sort of duplicity, however, and among their rank are you and your boyfriend. That's why you and Four decided not to pursue the status of becoming a faction leader, actually, despite the shock of the rest of the Dauntless populace. It just wasn't worth it to you. The adrenaline of actually being brave far outweighs the power of knowing you can make anyone else bleed.

Still, in that choice you and Four reclaimed your power. Anyone knows it from seeing the two of you together, in knowing that both of you are fighters in a way that Max or anyone else at the top can never quite become again. You haven't sold your souls yet, only your fists, and who here isn't guilty of that?

It still makes you laugh to think of how people reacted when you and Four first got together. In the beginning, it was looked on as something unreal, a trick or a hoax that would end up with you dead and him lightly chastened. The second you started looking at him as something other than a monster, everyone knew that something bad was to come of it.

They were right, technically. The only difference is that it would be bad for them and not you. What you and Four have is extraordinary. In a way, of course your friends and fellow faction members would fear it. If they have nothing of the sort, why would they not do their best to tempt you from it? If you cannot have power of your own, you can gain some back by stripping others of it, and that is precisely what they tried to do with you and Four.

Of course, when you first met Four you had no idea what the two of you would accomplish together. Back then, you were just a first time initiate. You jumped off that roof in Dauntless and landed with someone staring at you, someone who would change your life forever without even knowing it.

Four was a year above you, trying out the title of initiation leader for the first time. Most everyone there was afraid of him despite the miniscule gap in age. You weren't one of them, which drove your friends crazy. They were absolutely certain that you were going to get yourself reprimanded or killed because you couldn't seem to act with the proper respect. Even worse, you seemed to like Four, which clearly marked you as insane.

They asked you time and time again what you could possibly see in him, what could ever make Four, follow-without-question Four, be human and not some sort of nightmare. You merely responded that he looked well in your eyes. Everyone with half a brain could see the way Four looked at you and realize that you were well in his eyes as well. It was almost inevitable that the two of you would get together. Whatever would happen to shake Dauntless' foundation to the core was only a thing of the certain future, speculation be damned.