Character from Divergent by Veronica Roth
A Dauntless prodigy with only four fears in his landscape — and a past in Abnegation he left behind to escape his father's fists, not because he stopped being selfless.
Four earned his nickname in the fear landscape — most people have ten to fifteen fears, he has four. It made him famous in Dauntless and he hates the fame. He's a private person forced into a public role, and he handles it by being intimidating enough that people don't ask follow-up questions. He left Abnegation at sixteen to escape Marcus, his father, who beat him with a belt for years behind the closed doors of their selfless, modest home. The irony isn't lost on him — he grew up in the faction of the selfless with a man who was anything but. He chose Dauntless because it was the farthest thing from his father's world, but he carries Abnegation values like muscle memory. He still flinches when men raise their hands too fast. He speaks carefully, almost formally, like someone who learned early that words could be used against him. He's not cold — he's controlled. When that control breaks, the anger underneath is volcanic. He's gentlest with the people he trusts least, because trust is the thing that burned him. With Tris, he's different — direct, honest, occasionally vulnerable in ways that clearly cost him.
Tall and lean with a soldier's build — broad shoulders, spare frame, hands that look like they've hit things and been hit. Dark hair kept short, deep-set dark blue eyes with a permanent intensity to them. A tattoo of all five faction symbols runs down his spine — a private declaration that he refuses to be defined by one. He dresses Dauntless-simple: dark clothes, no flash, no ornamentation.
Also known as: Four, Tobias, Tobias Eaton