A/N: Long wait for this update but life intrudes and must be attended to. This is short but hopefully, the next part will come soon, it is a bit longer and I wanted to break it up. Hope you enjoy though!

Part 10

I hate being rushed or running late. It always leaves me out of sorts for the rest of the day and that was exactly how the morning started. Not a great start when I was already feeling anxious about going back to the place I had once called home.

Eric and I set off from his apartment and split up temporarily. He went to get us some coffee and food from our normal place while I raced to my apartment to get my things. I was thankful that I had least gathered most everything and left it on my bed the morning before.

When I got to the apartment it was to find a zombie-like Sadie shuffling around and my bag almost fully packed. When I hadn't come home to pack, she figured I would be in the predicament I was in right now and decided to help. She shooed me away groggily then went back to her room to sleep after I put the last few things in the bag and was in the process of thanking her profusely. I darted out of the door then headed towards the garage area where all the transports are kept.

Eric was just getting there himself and smirked at my flustered state before he grabbed my bag then waved me over to the side where there was a bench and a stool set up, the food waiting in a bag and my coffee sitting beside it. I didn't even feel bad about plopping down onto the stool and digging in while he and a few others loaded up the transports and began discussing what was going to happen.

Dauntless would be responsible for hauling all the people that would be in Amity this weekend for meetings and tours. It wouldn't be just us like it had been in Erudite.

Trucks were loaded, inventory checked off, and Eric barked orders while I sat off to the side waiting. Soon others joined us. Four went to assist Eric while Tris and Tori joined me with their own hastily grabbed breakfasts.

"Hey Devi, did Eric tell you that we want you to attend a few things with us?" Tris asked as she pulled a sticky bun from the bag she carried in with her.

I frowned and shook my head then swallowed the big bite of my second bear claw I had just taken. "Not a word."

Tris and Tori share a look but also roll their eyes before Tori takes over. "Remember when we were all talking about the policy of people over a certain age or when they are infirm having the choice of going factionless or jumping into the chasm?"

I let out a little growl as I scowl into my cup of coffee. "How could I forget!"

"You mentioned a set up that Amity had, and that piqued our interest. We would like it if you would check that out and possibly help with developing something similar for our own faction." Tris tells me with a smile, shocking me for a second and leaving me unable to respond.

"I would love to, of course." I agree with a wide smile to both of them.

"Let's load up and roll out." Eric's voice booms out from beside the transport he is standing near. His barked order is for everyone else, but his head motion is for me.

"I'm being summoned," I grumble out amid the chuckles of Tris and Tori, but I toss Tris a sarcastic grin that she pretends not to notice when I see Four doing the same thing to her from beside another transport.

I slide into the back seat where Eric joins me directly after. The driver and front passenger seats are already filled by two of Eric's security detail. I guess a perk of being the senior leader is we aren't forced to squeeze more people into the truck with us or ride in one of the transports meant for the patrols. That doesn't mean it might not change once we get to the hub but I don't get a chance to ask. Eric is already on the phone, issuing various order or getting updates about the other's joining us.

I tune out and try not to think where we are headed to, managing to doze off.

A door slams and the truck rocks, startling me awake and causing me to jerk up and look around. I was laid out along the back seat of the truck, with a jacket draped over me like a blanket.

The door slamming was from the guy driving just getting back in the truck, who was now looking at me with wide eyes then around him and out of the window. We both focused on the form of Eric standing outside of the truck.

I couldn't see Eric's expression but I take the guys hurried reaction and apology to me that it hadn't been a good one.

"Don't worry about it," I tell him in a mumble as I sit up and try to put myself to rights.

The door opens and Eric climbs in, eyeing me while I avoid looking at him. I'm embarrassed that I was asleep so hard that I never noticed we had stopped or that I was being moved to lay fully down by him.

When I do finally look at him, the side of his mouth is tilted in a smirk while he eyes his tablet. The truck roars to life and takes off after a few others pass us by. I look around to see we are leaving the Hub.

I slept through the ride and picking everyone else up.

"You should have woken me up," I grumble to him as I primly adjust my clothes and try after trying to subtly check to make sure I hadn't been drooling in my sleep.

"Relax." Eric drawls out from beside me while flicking the screen of the tablet a few times, then looks over to me. "It wasn't like you missed much besides a bunch of whining and annoying questions from the pains in the ass from Erudite and Candor."

"That's not the point," I huff and glare at him. "I had wanted to talk to Tori and Tris more before we get to Amity. It seems someone," I narrow my eyes at him as I draw out the last word meaningfully. "Forgot to inform me that I was being asked to attend certain meetings at their request."

Eric had a second where he looked like he was torn between a grimace and a blush before he shrugged and leaned closer to me. Not that there was that much room for him to go because he had crowded into my space as soon as he climbed back into the truck.

"In my defense, that was the reason for me being at the clinic when I was. I had gone there with the intent to tell you what Tris and Tori had asked during the briefing for the Amity visit that morning. I went there with every intention to see if that would be something you were okay with, Devi."

He was speaking lowly to me, something that could sound menacing and probably was meant to seem that way to the guys up front. But the warmth of his tone and the fact that he had one lock of my hair that had come loose from my ponytail wrapped around his finger and was using his thumb to stroke it, let me know he wasn't his intent.

"You aren't the only one worried about how this is going to go." Those words were even softer and cause me to turn my head so that our noses brush against each other and our breath mingles.

"Why are you worried?"

A part of me already knows the answer. The signs have been there for me to see from the first time Eric denied me, using the reason of me drinking. I had the horrible habit of speaking my thoughts out loud but Eric had his own slip-ups. It wasn't an aimless ramble but his strong convictions of that he would or would not allow between us when he would allow it. I ask but I am not sure I really want to know, or how I am going to react once I do.

Eric pulls back ever so slightly and studies me for a second before answering. His lips thinned.

"I know what you are afraid of, Devi. What you fear most. Maybe I worry because I have the same fear." His words are clipped as he lets my hair drop and pulls away completely.

The rest of the ride to Amity was awful and most of that was because of my handling of the Eric's confession.

"I know what you are afraid of, Devi. What you fear most. Maybe I worry because I have the same fear." His word are clipped as he lets my hair drop and pulls way completely.

The words had seemed to bounce around in my mind. Hitting on different emotional centers in me but the one that I seemed to focus on was the anger.

Anger at what his words implied to me. He certainty that he knew my worst fears. Those words spoken in any other faction would never have the meaning they do for Dauntless. They could be taken very literally here.

Eric saying he knows my fears means he knows them because he has seen them and that has left me livid. I has left me stripped bare and vulnerable in a way that blows what I felt when I standing naked in front of him completely out of the water.

There was more to his words, more words that he shared but I can't….won't….focus on them. I stay silent and try to avoid any contact with Eric as we share that same seat but that is easier said than done.

The roads to my former faction would never be described as paved in gold. Hell, they can't even be described as paved at all. They are so bad that our trucks used to haul the goods from our farms and communities broke down at alarming rates. Axels snapping in half. There is a reason Amity is seen as living in the stone age because of the use of horse drawn carriages but most of that is because it is much easier for a cart to be repaired and replaced than a truck.

Dauntless trucks are better built for this road conditions but even in one of them, I am almost being tossed around with the violence of the rough conditions. I tried to jerk out of his arms, when he wrapped me up and pulled me to his side and tried to secure me as much as possible. Even turning so that he took the worst of the jolts and jarring.

"Just stop, Devi." Eric hissed at me when I once again tried to jerk away and almost flew up to hit my head on the roof of the truck at the same time when it came in the middle of a large and unexpected drop. "You can be pissed when we get out of this shit later."

"Don't think I won't." I snap at him but stop trying to break free.

"I know." Eric replies and there is a sigh at the end of it.

I don't reply. Talk isn't feasible and I don't want to shout out my business in front of the two driving. It might distract them and I am already worried about their ability to navigate with how they seem to be hitting every single bad part of the road they can.

All in all, this is not a great start to my return home.