Foxglove

She knows she will be Dauntless the day her father almost kills her, because it is Dauntless that stops him. Dauntless - that takes the terrifying man she'd believed to be untouchable, and rips him off of her- makes him bleed.

Figures in black, with ink and piercings and steely eyes. Large hands, her father's blood still on the knuckles, that gently pick her up and carry her to the infirmary. A massive presence that totally engulfs her, that leaves her feeling safe and protected.

She doesn't remember the man's face anymore, only the feel of the leather under her fingers as she tells him to stay a while longer. And the rumble of his voice as he laughs and calls her a demanding little thing. Daring.

Dauntless.

She'd looked at him with dry eyes, with expectation and impatience, and so he'd settled into a chair at her side with another laugh.

Dauntless Little Flower he called her, and when his faction members come looking for him, he shows her off with pride, as though they'd known each other forever and he'd seen her grow.

Foxglove, she'd finally told him, her father always called her Snapdragon, but her mother called her Foxglove. It's poisonous, she'd confided, pretty but deadly. Her mother said that one day she would be just the same. Annabell, she'd reluctantly admitted, was her real name.

Little Flower, he'd said with something that felt almost like magic, when you become Dauntless true, no one will dare call you anything but Foxglove.

I know, she'd said, with all the strength and faith of a child. As if I would let them call me anything else.

That time, it was not only Her Dauntless who laughed.

----- Line Break -----

She would be Dauntless, but that doesn't make this feel any less mad, standing above a seemingly bottomless void. "You want us to jump?"

"Got a problem with that, Amity?" Scorn. It is scorn on the man's face as he looks at her. Because questioning a seemingly suicidal order is apparently tantamount to cowardice.

And after a moment's thought she does feel a little stupid, why kill all their new recruits? But there's the part of her that doubts, because courage and blind obedience are not the same thing, no matter what some people think. "My only problem is that you're in my way."

"What?" His sour expression deepens with confusion.

Doubts, she may have - stupid, she was not. "You're in my way, I can't exactly jump with you standing there." There is truly only one correct decision here if she wants to become what she has always known she would.

"So do something about it." It's a dare and she knows it. A dare to back down, or to squeeze her way past, coming uncomfortably close to him, likely so he can intimidate her with his height and mass. She almost feels the exact moment when the part of her brain that controls her decision making takes a punch to the face. It is a split second before her body meets his in a tackle and they both go over the edge together.

A laugh bursts from her lips as she looks down at him, wind yanking on her wild hair. She laughs for the thrill, the feeling of falling- flying. She laughs for the stunned look on his face, grey eyes wide in surprise, smirk absent from his stern, thin lips. She laughs for the shouts behind her, the sound of feet as they all scramble to the edge to peer into the darkness, even the older ones who are already Dauntless. And she laughs for the disbelief at her own sheer audacity, her foolishness. She'd just tackled a leader of Dauntless off the fucking roof.

She was clearly out of her mind.

When she catches sight of the net appearing over his shoulder she quickly tucks close to his body, head against his chest, ankles curled to his calves, arms up against his sides. He responds, one arm banding tightly across her back, the other buried in her hair, nearly crushing her skull against his chest. It was the only way they could avoid injury as they hit the net together.

The landing jars her a bit, the air escaping her chest in another breathless laugh. There is a long pause as they lay there, the shock locking them in place and everyone else too surprised by the sight of them both in the net to do anything about it. Then suddenly the net tilts, and she tumbles off of Eric's chest, though before she slips away he feels the way she trembles.

So she was scared- he wonders if it was of him or the fall.

A hand pulls her from the net and helps her to the floor, and she looks up into brown eyes.

"Name?" It is asked in such a bland tone, she is sure he couldn't care less, that maybe what she had just done wasn't nearly as bad as she thought. But then her gaze slides past him to take in the others, and she sees the way they stare.

She gulps, and then with a confidence she doesn't quite feel, she proclaims who she would be, this new version of herself. "Foxglove."

As if she could go by any other name.