I pout my lower lip for a second, but then I grin as the pieces come together in my mind. "THAT'S why you like me!" I exclaim. "Because you're not very nice either! It makes so much more sense now.

I think about pressing myself against him, but I can't, because all our secrets would keep a space between us.

Who is he when he isn't Dauntless, isn't an instructor, isn't Four, isn't anything in particular? Whoever he is, I like him. It's easier to admit that to myself now, in the dark, after all that just happened. He is not sweet or gentle or particularly kind. But he is smart and brave, and even though he saved me, he treated me like I was strong. That is all I need to know.

If utopian fiction became the new trend, I wouldn't read it.

Dauntless,' he says. 'I was born for Abnegation. I was planning on leaving Dauntless, and becoming factionless. But then I met her, and...I felt like maybe I could make something more of my decision.' Her. For a moment, it's like I'm looking at a different person, sitting in Tobias's skin, one whose life is not as simple as I thought. He wanted to leave Dauntless, but he stayed because of me. He never told me that.

For someone so small, you're heavy, Stiff," he mutters.

He smiles in my memory. A curled lip. Straight teeth. Light in his eyes. Laughing, teasing, more alive in memory than I m in reality. It was him or me. I chose me. But I feel dead too.