It is a privilege to touch Tris Prior. The fact lingers unrecognized in my mind every time I take advantage of a chance to idly guide her somewhere with a hand on her back or help her onto the train, but I don't fully realize it until the day I catch her with some of the Dauntless-borns, goofing off in the training room. I bark at them; I am sure that she knows my bite will be nonexistent, even if the others don't. When everyone files out, I hang back to have a word with Tris, and before she leaves again, she reaches back to grasp my hand.
Being raised in Abnegation instills in you a reverence for physical contact, sometimes positive and sometimes negative. Before Tris, my two years in Dauntless had been nearly devoid of touch, barring the fights I had to participate in, where contact was only used to inflict pain. Before that, my only tactile experience had been my father's beatings, where I was the one inflicted upon. If my mother had ever been tender with me, the feeling is forgotten.
Tris' hand in mine is like nothing I've felt before. Even the contact initiated by me has never been so open. She is giving herself to me this time. One Abnegation-born touching another: this is truly surreal. Or is the novelty in that it is these two Abnegation-born, Beatrice and Tobias turned Tris and Four?
My hand tingles in hers, the buzz spreading up to my brain until she lets go. It makes every other sense duller, and for the first time in a long time, I find myself not thinking about anything, simply relishing the feeling I am experiencing. It is brand new and so familiar, as if I've been touched like this before. I have not, though, and that is what makes it extraordinary.
I feel colder as she pulls away and makes her way down the hall, wish she would come back, again grace me with the quietness that only she has ever inspired. Her touch is a gift, and I want to deserve it.