Work Text:
There’s something about Initiation that will always make me nervous. Not in the hands-shaking, knees-knocking kind of way that used to come over me for Mid-Level presentations. It sits in my stomach, turning my mood just as sour as the acid that feels like it’s churning.
It’s how similar these kids faces look to my own. Or at least, to my old face. Back before putting on a show of confidence wasn’t second nature. I look over the files of this year’s fifteen-year-olds and I see uncertainty. Sure, there are those where it’s readily apparent they’re not venturing from mommy-dearest. But their eyes show that they’ve made up their minds, even if they haven’t realized it consciously yet.
The ones who stare out from the photographs without the ghost of direction though, they’re the ones who unsettle me. Once they walk up to that bowl and draw blood, they’ve made a decision that will follow them for the rest of their lives. They will choose whatever Faction their current whim tells them they’d belong in and it becomes my responsibility to determine if they belong. I am the gatekeeper to a future of Faction loyalty.
Four and Lauren have it easy. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. They give tools to these kids; I think of them as kids even though they’re only two freaking years younger than me. I have to break them down and decide if what they’ve learned to do with those tools is good enough to fit in. It isn’t about meeting some quota of toughness. Being able to beat and break another person is a physical expectation for Dauntless. It’s up to me to see past that raw skill and determine if they’re able to perform without breaking themself.
I worry about the gravity of the mantle that I’ve taken upon myself, about whether I’m really the guy who should be making that judgement call when I’ve only just realized what it means to be Dauntless. But it’s also for the best, I think, that I’m the one making that last call. Max and Regina, they’ve been down in the trenches of running the Faction for so long now, long enough to have forgotten what it was like to first earn their stripes to belong in the first place. I can still remember the bite of the needle on my skin that short, short year ago.
I wasn’t nervous that night. My knuckles rub against the side of my neck, unconsciously moving as I draw from that well of confidence once again. Whoever finds their way into my crew of hopefuls is going to have to impress a Dauntless Leader. I have to fill that role, nerves or not.