I know a good number of you had questions and concerns about the last chapter, and though I did my best to get back to a couple of you I do remember that at least one was a guest review, which I obviously cannot respond to via message so to that person/those people, I simply want to say that I hope to answer most of those questions and concerns in the upcoming chapters.
Questions and concerns aside, I am always grateful for the feedback, the emails that pop up at random points of my day saying I have a new review totally make my day, so pretty please keep it up!
Hope you all enjoy the fluff. :)
The next couple of weeks went slowly as Eric attempted to adjust to the idea of Kat being pregnant. The reality of it had taken a couple of days to well and truly hit him, but once it did it caused a level of anxiety he had never experienced before. He knew full well that at her age it was going to be incredibly hard on her body, and the chances of her even carrying to term were slim at best.
Kat began getting sick frequently and severely, some days to the point he ended up having to stay home with her and cop out on his leadership duties. Max was fast losing his patience with the whole ordeal, and Eric had finally bowed to the fact he needed help. Reluctantly, he approached Tris at her apartment one evening, three weeks after Kat had revealed her pregnancy to them.
"Eric," Tris greeted in surprise, stepping aside so he could enter the apartment she shared with Christina. "Come on in, what brings you here?"
Eric sighed heavily as he sat down on her couch. "Kat's been getting pretty sick lately," he began, "And it's starting to interfere with my job. I was wondering if you might be willing to help me take care of her?"
"Of course," Tris responded immediately. "I'm not very busy lately, mostly I just help Christina in the tattoo parlor unless I'm needed. Do you want me to come over during the day or stay there with you or what?"
Eric shifted, somewhat uncomfortably as he considered. He wasn't accustomed to asking for help, but there was no way around the fact that he needed it. The nurse in the infirmary had put her on bed rest, seeing as her blood pressure was already beginning to spike and the risk of miscarriage was astronomical, given her age.
"I'm not sure," he answered honestly. "The nurse wants her on bed rest because of her blood pressure and she's been sick pretty much every day, sometimes through the night." Eric ran his hands through his hair agitatedly, completely at a loss. Tris moved to sit next to him, rubbing his back gently in comfort.
"Have you considered having her end it?"
"I've thought about it," he answered slowly. "Physically it would be healthier for her. But she's already in a hell of a state psychologically, what with our parents throwing her out like that and convincing herself I don't want her. Part of that is my fault, I'll admit, but still. She's still seeing what's his face but it's only doing so much good and I really don't want to think about how much worse something like that would make her."
Tris nodded sadly in agreement. "That's true. I've heard it screws up a lot of girls, both mentally and emotionally."
"Exactly. If it weren't for everything else I'd probably push for it, but the state she's in I just don't think it would be healthy. Obviously she can't raise it, which almost definitively leaves it up to me and to be completely honest I don't think I'm any more ready for that kind of thing than she is."
Tris was silent as she chewed over what he said. "I think you're right," she told him honestly. "But I think that you'd grow into it and figure it out."
Eric smiled wryly. "Thanks, I think."
"Anyway," Tris continued. "How do you want to do it?"
He sighed heavily. "It all depends on what you're comfortable with, but if you wanted to just stay with us for however long, that would probably be easiest. I can't ask for another reassignment so soon so you would have to share with either Kat or I, but that can be figured out if you're okay with it."
"Sure, that works."
"I'll talk to Kat about sharing with you," he told her. "She's been pretty anti-people lately, though, so she may not be too crazy about it. If she isn't you're welcome with me if… Um, if you're comfortable with it." Eric averted his eyes, sure that the idea of sharing a room, a bed with him would repulse her. "Otherwise I can always take the couch."
"No, that's fine," Tris assured, blushing slightly at the idea of sharing a bed with Eric. "If she'd rather be alone, I'm okay sharing with you as long as you're alright with it. How is she doing her schoolwork?"
"Zeke's brother and his friends are in her classes, so the teachers send all the material back with them and she does it here. She's bright and bored, so she's actually ahead of everyone else."
Tris smiled at the thought. "Well she was Erudite. Was, is, I don't know. What was it like when you transferred?" She wondered.
"It was difficult," he answered. "For our initiation they thought it would help if we knew our fears before we started stage one, so they sent us all through our fear landscape our first day here." Eric chuckled as he remembered. "That was something else. Coming from Erudite helped though. In Erudite logic is a big thing, it's something we learn really young so that came in handy, that's how I got through it."
"What, just reasoned your way through it?"
Eric hummed in affirmation. "Well he told us it wouldn't move on until we had either beaten it or slowed our vitals. And since you know it's a sim in stage three, I used that. Kept reminding myself none of it was real and forced my heart rate down." He grinned, clearly still prideful over it.
"That's impressive," Tris admitted, remembering her own journeys through the fear landscape all too well.
"I was a skinny little shit too," he said after a moment. "Had to use the same strategy you did during my first couple of fights until I'd put on some muscle."
Tris laughed at the image in her head. "Really?"
"Oh yeah," he grinned. "I might still have some of my shirts and stuff buried in the back of my closet. If my parents saw me now I doubt they'd recognize me." His tone turned sad at the end in a way that made her heart twist.
"You haven't seen them since you transferred have you?"
"Nope. I expected it though, they always said Dauntless were stupid to do such crazy things. Kind of the ultimate betrayal."
"Like my brother transferring to Erudite," Tris said quietly.
"What?" Eric's tone reflected shock.
"Yeah, last year with me, we were both sixteen. I always thought he was the perfect Abnegation. Then he went up on the stage and transferred to Erudite, never said a word to me about it. I wish he had, it would have been nice to know I wasn't the only one who didn't fit in." Tris looked at him curiously. "Did you tell Kat you were leaving?"
Eric nodded. "Yeah. I couldn't believe it when Tori gave me the result, I was in a daze the rest of the day. Finally that night after my parents had gone to bed I went to her room and woke her up. We were always close, there was no way I could just leave and not tell her. Even though she was only ten, all she had to do was look at me when I walked in her room that night and she knew."
"How did she react?" Tris asked, already having an idea what the answer would be.
"Exactly how you'd expect. She was heartbroken, sat on my lap and cried for over an hour. She never begged me to stay though," he reflected. "She knew that if the test said I was Dauntless, I had to join Dauntless." Eric's gaze grew distant as he relived the memories, and Tris was struck by how young he looked. It was easy to forget that he was only two years older than herself.
"I told her all about the day she was born, the first time I ever held her, everything I could remember. I fell asleep sitting up against the wall with her in my lap," he recalled with a smile.
"You were what, six when she was born?" Tris asked, trying to keep him talking. Clearly he adored her, and she couldn't help the warm feeling in her chest when she watched his face light up as he talked about her.
"Yeah, I was almost seven, I remember when they let me in the room and I got to hold her, she was so small..." A look of nostalgic wonderment came into Eric's eyes as he talked, and Tris couldn't help the indulgent smile on her face as she listened to him. It had been obvious from the moment she brought Kat to him how much she meant to him, but she had never truly gotten an idea of just how much until now. She had to have been his whole world before he transferred.
"Her first word was my name," he said proudly, grinning from ear to ear. "I was always her favorite, even when she was a baby. I could get her to eat or sleep when all she would do for our parents was scream. They put her in my room when she was about six months old because she kept waking them up every hour and a half. First night with me she slept all the way through, didn't make a peep."
"I can't imagine what it was like to leave her," Tris said softly, more to herself than him.
"There aren't words," he said quietly. "That was the only reason I wished my parents would have shown up on Visiting Day. Not because I wanted to see them, frankly I couldn't have cared less, we never got along anyway. But I wanted them to show up because I knew if they did they would bring her, but they never did."
"So you hadn't seen her in over two years?" Tris asked. "Even after initiation?"
"Never could. Before the last few months I wasn't ever really over there, and when I was it was never alone. God I wanted to though," he told her. "It was almost impossible to resist, but I knew what would happen if I decided to try to see her."
"Faction traitor?" She asked uncertainly. "Just for that?"
"Yep," he responded. "When they say faction before blood, they're not kidding."
"That's..." Tris trailed off. Eric was right, there really weren't words. "I can't imagine what that must have been like."
Eric shook his head slowly, lost in memories. After a moment though, he looked up at her and smiled. "And then there was one day a few months ago that I was having a horrible day. Just one of those where nothing is going right, know what I mean?" Tris hummed in assent and Eric continued, still smiling at her.
"Everything that could possibly go wrong is going wrong, up to my ears in paperwork and bullshit, and then out of the blue you show up at my office door with my favorite person in the world," he said quietly, looking at her in a way she couldn't quite identify.
Eric's gray eyes met and held her own with an intensity that drew color into her cheeks.
"You know, I don't think I've ever really thanked you for that. She means the world to me, she always has. You were the one to bring her back to me."
Somehow, impossibly, the air around her felt heavier. Tris could feel her heart pounding abnormally hard in her chest, perhaps in response to the intense way Eric was looking at her. When she looked in his eyes, she noticed they seemed brighter than usual.
"What else could I have done?" Tris asked softly.
"Ignored her, like anyone else would have," Eric whispered, "Like I would have if she had been anyone else." She could hear the pain in his voice.
A lone tear welled up and broke over his lower lid, tracing a wet path slowly down his cheek. Tris reached up slowly to wipe it away, hesitating momentarily before her fingertip made contact with his skin. His eyelids fluttered closed as he leaned slightly into her hand, and Tris felt a tingle of a feeling she couldn't put a finger on swell in her chest.
"Thank you," He whispered softly, winding an arm around her shoulders and pulling her against his side. Tris returned the gesture and leaned her head against his shoulder, feeling the heat of his skin through the thin fabric of her shirt. When she looked up at him she found him watching her again, moving his gaze from her lips to her eyes when he felt her stare.
Something about being this close to him when he was looking at her that way made her heart pick up speed, and her breath grew shallow as his eyes flicked back down to her lips again. She thought she saw him start to lean in, but the next moment he had closed his eyes, pulling back from her and standing in one smooth motion.
"Come on, I'll help you get your things together."
...
It hadn't taken long to get Tris's things together, although she wasn't bringing much to begin with. After they brought her stuff from her apartment to Eric's Tris had gone to the tattoo parlor to tell Christina what was going on, but hadn't lingered. Christina had a waiting list of people wanting tattoos, but had hugged her and told her to stop by as often as possible. After that Tris had gone back to Eric's apartment, now hers as well, so they could talk to Kat once she woke up from her nap. At ten and a half weeks along, Kat had a tendency to sleep half the day.
"How are you feeling?" Eric asked softly when Kat emerged from her room, yawning widely.
"A little better," she replied. "Kind of hungry, I hope I can hold something down tonight."
"If it doesn't get better in the next couple of weeks I'm going to ask for that medicine," he told her. "I know it's technically normal but this is getting out of hand. You need sustenance."
"I've been doing a lot of reading about it," Kat told him. "Honestly, it could be a lot worse."
"Well, be that as it may Tris is going to be staying here with us. She hasn't been very busy lately so she's going to help you when I'm not around, okay?"
Kat grinned. "Seriously? That's awesome!"
Tris laughed and walked over to hug the younger girl. "Well I'm glad you approve."
"Where will you be staying?" Kat asked curiously.
"I was actually going to ask you about that," Eric told her as Tris wandered aimlessly across the room, letting them talk. "It would be ideal for her to share with you, but I know you've been wanting your space lately so if you'd rather she can share with me."
Kat regarded Eric carefully, noting the way his gaze seemed to linger on Tris just a few moments too long and the smile he probably didn't know he wore when he looked at her. In truth, she had no problems sharing a room with Tris, but the look deep in her brother's eyes stopped her from saying so.
"Honestly you're right," she told him, feigning regret. "I wish I could say I wouldn't mind but..." Kat trailed off innocently, faking a sad expression and widening her eyes slightly.
Sure enough, Kat saw a flicker of happiness in Eric's eyes when she answered.
"That's perfectly fine Kitty," he assured, draping an arm around her shoulders.
"Thanks Eric," she smiled at him before wandering off to the kitchen, a sly smirk forming on her lips when her back was to both of them.
'You're welcome, dear brother,' she thought to herself as she heard them moving Tris into his bedroom.
Yes I know, cop out. Don't hate me, I promise it'll happen!
And hooray to me for finally figuring out how to insert page breaks!
