Weaknesses (Eric Coulter)

                                    

                                          
 Your hand pauses slightly, trembling, on your side. You lift up the edge of your shirt just enough to show the skin underneath, pulling until you see it. The pattern marked into your skin, the one you got when you turned 13 and the one that will be there until the day you die. Faded lines, so dark they almost seem like ink, detailed into the space on your side just below your ribs and above your hip. The marker for your soulmate.
                          
	Everyone in this city has one, no matter what faction they're from. Yours happens to be a swirl of ivy, several strands twisting in on themselves with sharp-edged leaves that look more like blades. It looks cool, you have to admit, tough enough even for the most fearsome of the factions. You sigh, wishing you'd find your soulmate soon. You've been waiting for that blessed day for years, when their shirt rides up slightly on their hip and you see that same curl of ivy that adorns your own side. 
                          
	The only problem is that Chicago is just one place. There are so many people in the city, but so many more than that could be on opposite sides of the Earth, or would've been someone's other half had their civilizations not crumbled in the years that have passed. The odds of finding your soulmate are rare, whether that's because you're in opposite factions and your paths never cross or because they're waiting for you somewhere outside of the city. 
                          
The only thing is that those in power around here don't want the factions to leave the city walls, and so talk of soulmates is discouraged. Either you find them or you don't, but you can't just go around suggesting that you leave the city. Most people here don't ever find their soulmates. You find yourself hoping that you won't join their ranks, forever trapped in a relationship walled in by the doubts that maybe your lover isn't the one that's right for you, and that they won't ever love you enough in the way that another could. You've seen it in relationships before, even in your own parents. It's not a path you wish to follow.
                          
However, even with all your wants to find a soulmate and just be happy, the odds are slim of it. Hell, you can't even talk about it without warning glances being cast your way from opposite sides of the room. It frustrates you, this forced silence, and burns away behind your skin, a single ember still struggling to catch flame even as it is suffocated by all other ash and dust.
                          
Maybe that anger's been tucked away inside you for a long time, and maybe it's why you decide to dash the liquid scarlet of your blood onto the lit coals of Dauntless when it's time for you to choose your faction. You'll always have this tension deep within you; at least now you can use it to power your actions and let it grow into a tall flame, just like the ones emblazoned on the Dauntless headquarters.
                          
You know you've made the right choice, even when you stare into the disappointed eyes of your parents. Does it really matter what they think? You were never that happy living with them anyway. You run through the city on newly energized legs, jumping onto the train as if you'd been doing it for years. When you finally leap across the chasm onto the rooftops of the Dauntless buildings, you can't help this funny feeling welling up in your throat as if you've finally found the one place you were meant to be. Home had always been just a word, just a building on one particular street, but it's supposed to be more than that, isn't it? It's supposed to be this.
                          
You turn in a slow circle, taking in the sights around you. Buildings as far as the eye can see, a dizzy rush from the height. You hear a voice calling to the new initiates behind you, and face the front once again to see three Dauntless leaders standing on the edge of the roof. It's strange, though- your eyes feel drawn to the one in the center, the one who calls himself Eric. He has plenty of tattoos even without the soulmate markings, and he stands with a callous confidence that tells you he's not one to mess with.
                          
The thing that seems the strangest about him is that he feels almost familiar, like you've known him for forever without ever meeting him before. He feels like that face you see in a dream, the one that you swear you've seen before yet is utterly unrecognizable. A total mystery, but one you see every time you close your eyes. You realize he's staring at you, too, but he keeps any emotion locked away behind his stare and he turns to greet the other initiates. You blend back into the group, not quite forgotten but no longer a main attraction.