Its the start of a new chapter for all of you readers, enjoy and review.

Chapter 10

Tobias

Granger sits in front of me devouring his food that I just set in front of him. We were going to eat together to try to 'bond' as Tris put it, but as I can see that is not going to happen this morning. I remember when I could eat like that, especially in public. That was back in the days of when I was the 'badass' Four and could get away with just about anything. Now, not so much.

Aaralynn comes in looking tired followed by Tris who also looks tired. They were both laughing about something when they came in earning suspicious looks from both of us. Aaralynn shakes it off and starts to pick at her muffin that I set in front of her.

I watch her pick at her muffin for a good five minutes. She loves muffins, there her favorite thing in the world. I didn't even make them so they are edible. "Oh come on Aaralynn what's wrong? I got muffins cause I know that you love them more than anything else in the world."

"I'm not hungry this morning, just really tired. I'll grab a banana for the road if it would make you feel any better, but I'm just not in the mood for a muffin."

Great, not in the mood for a muffin, then something has to be wrong. "We got to go, bye." Aaralynn says pulling her brother out of their seats and they make there way out of the room.

"Granger make sure you tie your tie!" Tris shouts behind them and then follows the kids out the door.

I follow her and that's when it hits me. The last time Aaralynn didn't want a muffin was when she was five. She just started school a week before and the doctors just gave her some new medicine that required her to have tubes in her nose for a few months.

Flashback

"Aaralynn where did you put your shoes?" I says as I run around the apartment trying to find them. What did Evelyn do with them? Or Christina? Which one was it on Friday?

"Grandma put them in my closet." She says from the stool in the kitchen, I left her there to eat her muffin while I got ready for work and to find the rest of her stuff. Man I can't get up this late ever again.

I groan when I walk in, she's not wearing her glasses either. "Aaralynn where are your glasses? You just had them on a few minutes ago."

"I don't want to wear my glasses."

"Aaralynn..." I look at the time and curse to myself, school starts in 10 minutes and I have to be at work in 15 minutes. "We don't have time for this. Go get your glasses and I will attempt to find your shoes. If you are trying to get out of going to school then your going to be in trouble. Oh and finish your breakfast, I picked those up special for you."

"But I don't want to go to school Daddy."

"Good girls go to school."

"But Daddy."

"No buts, I have to go to work today you know that, its very important for me to go to work honey. Now go get your glasses and I will try to find your shoes and then we can get on the road. I'll have to call the school and let them know that you will be late, but we should be fine, okay?"

She crosses her arms and glares at me. "Okay."

She has to be one of the most impossible five year old out there. This is the third time she's done this to me recently. I know Johanna doesn't really care but others are starting to get impatient with me, and I can't afford to have a lot of people mad at me this week. If they are not happy with me, then the city is not happy with me, if the city is not happy with my then things just aren't going to be good. This is coming from one of the men who are working with Johanna on this next project.

I return the to the kitchen and Aaralynn stands by the door with her glasses on. "Okay lets go." I say as I help her put the shoes on. She starts to bend down to tie them and I realize that its going to take forever so I scoop her up and we walk out the door together.

We get to school with a few minutes to spare. "Bye Aaralynn, I'll pick you up after school today, and don't forget to give this note to your teacher so I can get you out of school early on Wednesday for your doctors appointment." I say kneeing down at her eye level.

"Daddy can you help me tie my shoes quick?" Oh crap I forgot to tie her shoes.

"Yeah." I tie her shoes and she starts talking again.

"Daddy I don't want to go to school. If we leave now no body would notice us gone. We could go to your work again and we can have fun like we did when I was little."

I look at my little girl and ask, "Why don't you want to go to school? Isn't being in Kindergarten fun? All the teachers are happy to have you there Aaralynn, they are all really nice I've talked to them all."

"The kids in my class make fun of me for having tubes in my nose. I don't have many friends, my only friend is Cassie and she gets made fun of too. The kids make fun of the clothes she wears, she doesn't have that many nice clothes."

Why are children so cruel? I look at my daughter, who doesn't need to go through this, with the urge to wrap her up and take her home. But she needs to do this. She needs to learn how to be brave. "Aaralynn, I can't say what those kids are doing is very nice, they are being mean to you. But honey, look at me, you are a beautiful little girl that is very smart, and brave. So you just stay friends with Cassie and you two ignore those other kids. They are only being mean to you because they are jealous of you. They are jealous that they aren't as smart, funny, or brave as you are."

"Really?" She perks up a bit.

"Yeah honey. Now you don't want to be late for school so why don't you head on it. Your teacher is giving me that look."

"Okay Daddy. I love you."

"I love you too. Now go have fun, okay?"

She smiles and runs off towards the school and I stand up watching the teacher wait for her and great her at the door with a smile. The teacher smiles at me and I smile back.

When I get to work and sit down for the meeting I don't pay attention to anything that's going on. I can tell that all the council members there are starting to get mad at me, but I don't care. Johanna is in charge of me not them.

"Well I believe this concludes our meeting. Mr. Secretary do you have any record of any unfinished business that should be transacted at this time?"

A weasel looking of a man stands up and says, "I have none, Madame Mayor."

"Then I declare this meeting adjourned." She taps the gavel. I don't understand why we have one for meetings like this, but apparently its official and that's what those council members want. To me its just stupid.

People start filing out and I take my pen out of my mouth, take off my jacket and loosen my tie. "That meeting went extremely long." Johanna says walking over to me.

"Yeah." I guiltily cover up my notes because they are vague things that I wrote down with a bunch of tornado scribbles on the side.

"Council woman Marx just wouldn't agree to anything unless it was perfect and no body wanted to change anything."

"Yeah."

"How's your daughter Tobias? I haven't heard much about her in a few months other than she started school last week. Does she like that?" Damn she has me. She can figure me out so well now. I can't lie either because she will definitely know if I am lying.

So I shrug and say "She hasn't told me much about it, I just think its a hard adjustment for her."

"Does she have any friends? I know that she must have at least one, she's such a talkative young lady and very charming."

"Yeah she has one, Cassie."

"Oh Cassie, that must be Cassandra Letton that she's friends with."

I throw a question look at her and she sits on the table. "I was at the school yesterday remember? Well I was there for the Kindergarten class just to talk to them and attend there class, I did that with all the classes. I'm going back today to see what needs to be ordered for the elementary school this year. I saw that some of the children are not very nice to Aaralynn, but Cassandra Letton is. I believe that those two are best friends because Cassandra is also made fun of ." She waits for me to say something and I just nod.

"So she has told you about this. I told her to talk to you."

"Yeah she did, I told her to ignore them. But I doubt she will because children are cruel."

"Well I say just try to get her to talk about it as much as possible, and I don't think she will have that much trouble ignoring them over time, she is very confident and generally happy so I believe that she will be fine."

"Yeah I hope."

End of Flashback

"You are worried about her aren't you? I can tell." Tris says as we watch the kids from the cement patio out front.

"You can tell a lot of things."

"I notice a lot of things, that's what makes me a good agent."

"I bet." She wraps her arms around me. Oh yeah that's right the whole husband and wife thing. I notice one of our neighbors get their mail from the mailbox, she watches us. Well mostly me. "Stop worrying about her she will be fine. She is probably just tired from the trip. Now come on you need to get ready for work and I need to get ready for whatever a house wife does..." She breaks off thinking.

"You have no idea do you?"

"No clue."

"Well don't ask me because I'm not a wife and I'm defiantly not going to be a house wife." I say.

"Yeah whatever, I'll figure out what I'm going to do. Oh I know I'm going to go grocery shopping we need food. Granger is not going to happy if we do not have any peanut butter at home."

The kids get on the bus and Tris kisses me under the chin and walks inside the house. She fits into this 'wife' thing so easily, how am I going to fit into the 'husband' thing? I am not going to be good at this. She's done this before, I haven't. I've been in a few relationships and they weren't very serious, a few got serious but they didn't last. Our life styles couldn't fit in together, my life style is just too weird I'm always working and I have a daughter -its just hard.

I finish getting ready and slip downstairs. Tris is playing with a few electronics a laptop, ear pieces, cell phones, some other stuff that I don't even know. "What is all this stuff?"

"Stuff that you will need for work. Some stuff that I can keep around the house to keep us safe. Oh do you want to see this really cool Taser gun that they brought over to us, its new and really cool." She leads me over to a case full of weapons. Knives, a bunch of guns, and some serums lie in those cases.

"I thought these were outlawed all over the country." I say holding up what looks like Amity serum.

"Serums that can induce simulations that can control people are outlawed. Amity serum isn't outlawed because it has a calming affect on people in the right doses. Not the dose that they injected into me when I was 16, that was bad. Candor truth serum isn't outlawed because they have been using it for decades before us. Abnegation serum isn't highly used, most serums developed by the Erudite in Chicago aren't used, and the Dauntless serum is now used a torture weapon for the weak of heart criminals." She takes the Amity serum out of my hand. "There are places like Chicago where serums are all outlawed all together."

"Then what are we going to do with these serums. I could maybe see using the truth serum, but Amity serum? What are we going to do make the leader of the Convergents see rainbows and butterflies and have everything be so colorful to him?"

"How do you know that the serum does that?"

"You said some very colorful stuff the day that you were on the serum."

"Great." She says sarcastically.

I walk to the dining room and walk to the mirror to tie my tie. I can't do this myself very well. Christina found me a bunch of zipper ties. I can't make the mistake of clip ties anymore, but when we moved into the house there were a bunch of nice clothes in here for me and all of the ties had to be tied. "Dammit." I say to myself as I retie it for the fourth time.

"Here let me help you." Tris says walking up to me. I sigh and turn to face her. "You know someone would think that you would know how to tie these things. With being a big mayor of a city and all."

"Yeah, yeah whatever. I use zipper ties."

"Cheater ties?"

"Christina found a bunch for me to use."

She laughs and finishes the knot. "Okay go have fun at work, don't get fired on your first week because of the information that you found out."

"Yes mother."

"Don't get in trouble fighting with the big kids and don't throw the lunches across the cafeteria because I don't want a call from the principal because your are being bad."

"How many times have you given that speech to Granger."

"Too many."

"Interesting."

She walks me to the truck outside the house. "See I am already figuring stuff out for what to do while your gone. I'm going to get the mail and then I'm going to figure out what to do with them next..."

"Okay well then, you have fun with that-"

"Hi Theo." One of our neighbors say running past us. "Natalia." She says later on.

Tris rolls her eyes and crosses her arms. "Well I am going to work. Goodbye Mrs. James."

"Mr. James." She says with a smirk and she leans into kiss me. The kiss was short, but it managed to leave an impression on me all day.