**A/N Hey guys I know it's been a while but I just haven't really had much inspiration for the story but I saw Insurgent and it definitely helped kick my writers block out so I'm back. I have some new ideas so I've gone back to change some things the changes start in chapter seven. I'm adding the war but with a twist and I'm really excited but it's going to be a ways off.
Waking up the next morning I stretch feeling more relaxed than I had in days. My eyes fly open when pictures of what happened last night flashed in my mind. I feel the heat rising in my cheeks quickly when Eric's hand tightened on my waist.
"Morning", he says.
I look up at him to see him smiling at me and can't help smiling back. I shift up and press a quick kiss to his lips before sitting up and climbing out of bed. After changing into some jeans and a t-shirt I head into the kitchen and start getting breakfast ready. Eric wasn't far behind me coming out of the bedroom finishing buttoning his jeans. I bit the inside of my lip when he left his shirt off joining me at the counter and helping make breakfast.
"What are your plans for the day", Eric asks me.
"I'm not sure. I was thinking since I've barely been around I might spend some time with Christian", I tell him as we move out to the table with our plates.
"That sounds good. I have a meeting to go to and a few other things I have to get done today", he tells me.
Once we finish breakfast he walks me down to the initiate room only leaving when he sees Christian is in there still asleep and that Alexander is nowhere to be seen. I quickly walk to Christian's bed and climb in shoving over and cuddling up with him effectively waking him up.
"What are you doing", he asked sleepily.
"I've realized I've been neglecting my best friend so I figured we could spend the day together", I tell him.
He smiled as he woke up, "So what are the plans"?
"I haven't got any I figured we could find something to do today", I tell him.
Thankfully we didn't see Alexander anywhere all day. We spent part of the day with Kevin and a few other dauntless born. We spent a lot of the day in The Pit wandering around the stores and meeting a few other members of Dauntless. We finished the day in the cafeteria and Eric joined us.
"Are you ready for tomorrow", Eric asks when we get back to his room.
"I guess but it would be better if you told me what I would be doing", I say.
"Not happening", he responds.
I fake pout and sit on the couch. He laughs and sits beside me pulling me to cuddle into his side.
He gets serious suddenly, "I wanted to ask you this morning but I wasn't sure how to bring it up but are you okay with what we did last night"?
"Why wouldn't I be? I did start it", I respond since I still wasn't sure.
"I know but after everything with Alexander I just want be sure", he says.
"I liked it and I wasn't uncomfortable like I thought I would be. I'm happy it was with you and I didn't think about Alexander at all you had all of my attention", I tell him.
"Good, I wouldn't have your mind anywhere but on me. We should get ready to sleep tomorrow's going to be a long day for both of us", he says nudging me up and we move into the bedroom.
We take quick showers and are soon lying in bed. Eric wraps his arms around me pulling me against his side. It doesn't take long and I feel his breathing slow. I lay there for a while wondering about tomorrow.
When I wake up it's to the annoying alarm clock Eric uses. I climb out of bed and quickly change into my training clothes and we eat quickly before heading out.
Eric leaves me with a quick kiss and goodbye at the end of a short hallway with the rest of the initiates. I find Christian along with Kevin off to the side and I join them. Everyone is quiet as we wait and soon enough a door at the end of the hallway opens for Amar and Four.
"Kevin you can come in", Amar says
The rest of us waited for at least a half hour before the door opened and Four comes out. I'm surprised that Kevin doesn't follow him out and it adds to the nerves in my stomach.
"Ana you're up", I hear Four say from the open door.
I stand up and go into the room. It reminds me of the testing room we were in for the aptitude test except there's a computer that Four is standing beside.
"This is a lot like the aptitude test except we'll be going through your fears", Amar says motioning for me to sit. "We'll be watching through the computer. The whole point of this is to learn to deal with your fears rather than freeze". He comes towards me with a needle, "Are you ready"?
I nod and he injects the serum into my neck and I relax back into the chair closing my eyes. When I open them again I'm lying down in the dark with a just a small sliver of light entering the box from the top. I move my hands trying to figure out where I am. I try pushing at the top but nothing moves. I start banging my hands as I hear voices outside of the box. No one seems to hear me and I try screaming along with hitting the box. My throat starts to hurt before I give up.
No one comes to open the box. I can feel my chest tightening as I start panicking and trying to get the top off. I hear something hit the top of the box and I try to listen to figure out what's happening. I hear more drops on the top. Suddenly something covers the small light and falls in on me. I look at it to see it is dirt. This revelation brings out a whole new level of panic.
My feet start kicking along with my hands and I feel the end of the box by my feet give slightly. I place my hands over my head for leverage and shoved both my feet against the end of the box and the wood gives out by head instead. It's a tight squeeze but I fight through the dirt to get out of the box.
Once I'm clear of the box I sit up and I'm back in the room with Amar and Four. My throat hurts and my breathing is still erratic. Amar comes towards me and hands me some water and I notice my hands are shaking as I take the glass.
"You did well", Amar tells me. "You were only in there for ten minutes".
I take a drink of water to cool my throat before responding, "I feel like I've been screaming for hours".
Four chuckles, "You have a good set of lungs; I think everyone believes we were torturing you".
"Will it be like that every time", I ask them.
Amar shakes his head, "The serum searches out different fears until it's found them all once the system finds them all we go through them over and over until you can handle them with a clear head".
"Sounds like torture to me", I mutter.
"You're done today so you can do whatever you want", Four says and opens the door at the back of the room I hadn't noticed.
"Is Christian going through soon", I ask.
"He'll be next", Amar tells me.
I nod and step through the door I move a little down the hallway before sitting and waiting for Christian to come out. I try running through the fears I know I have so I can figure out what I may be facing. Being buried alive is one obviously, heights, drowning, spiders, small spaces, and rape. I can't help wondering if there may be more since I didn't know I was scared to be buried alive. I can still feel my hands shaking at the thought.
The door suddenly opened and I look up to see Christian come out looking really pale. I stand and he jumps slightly. I think this is the first time I've seen him so scared.
"Do you wanna go to the dorm and talk", I ask him.
He just nods and we walk back to the dorm in silence. Once we're back in the dorm we sit on his bed in silence for a while longer.
"That bad", I ask finally breaking the silence.
"Spiders; thousands of spiders", he finally said.
I cringed slightly not only because I hate spiders too but because I know just how much Christian hates spiders.
"I hope that doesn't come up for me", I tell him.
"What was yours? I could hear you screaming in the hallway", he says.
"I was being buried alive and no matter how much I yelled or kicked no one could hear me", I tell him.
"That's horrible", he replied.
"Let's go do something to get our minds of it", I suggest standing up.
He agrees and we find ourselves down in the training area of The Pit and start stretching before working out some aggression with the punching bags before moving on to sparring with each other. When we go to lunch we notice there's not many initiates in the cafeteria and I notice Eric's absence. Once we eat we go up to the dorm to find a few of the initiates sitting around. We all end up in a circle talking about what our tests were like.
When dinner comes around I look around to find Eric missing again. I frown slightly but go ahead and eat quickly before heading up to his room. I find the door locked and I knock. When there's no answer I settle down to wait for him. Thankfully I don't have to wait too long before he appears on the stairs.
Just looking at him I can tell he's exhausted and upset so I decide to wait until we're in and he's settled before I try speaking to him. I watch as he goes straight to the fridge and pulls out a beer before sitting on the couch. I can see he still needs a little bit so I go ahead and get a shower and change.
When I come back out he's still sitting on the couch and there's a second beer out beside the first empty bottle.
"Do you want anything to eat? I noticed you weren't at lunch or dinner", I say as I look in the fridge to see what I could make for him. He says yes and I pull out stuff to put together two turkey sandwiches for him. As soon as I hand the plate to him he inhales the sandwiches.
"Thank you", he says setting the plate on the coffee table and sits back.
"You want to talk about it", I ask.
"I wish I could but I can't", he says pulling me into his side. "Why don't you tell me about your day; was it bad"?
"Well, I was being buried alive and no matter how much noise I made no one would come help me. Though once I came out of it all I had to show was a sore throat from screaming", I tell him.
"The first one is always the worst since you're not sure what's going to happen", Eric says.
"If every day is a different fear how do I know I won't have a worse one", I ask.
"You can't know for sure but now you have an idea on what's happening if you know some of your fears you can think up ways to help calm yourself when you're afraid", he tells me.
"What do you think about"?
"Usually what I'm going to be able to do once I'm out of the situation", he says. "Let's get some sleep it's going to be another long day tomorrow".
I agree and we get to bed.
The next week passed quickly and I had been almost drowned, covered in spiders, stuck at the top of the Ferris wheel, almost suffocated at a huge party with too many people, and a ghost. I'm not sure what else I could have. The week was hard on Eric as well and everyday his mood would be worse than the day before but he wouldn't talk about it just sit quietly and drink.
I'm sitting in the testing chair waiting for Amar to inject the serum and hoping there were no other fears.
"Ready", Amar asks beside me.
I nod and soon feel the needle injecting the serum into my neck. I sit back and close my eyes as usual waiting for it to take effect.
When I open my eyes I'm in the woods and looking down I notice the vest and gun from capture the flag. I look up and see the others just ahead of me and I move to catch up but someone grabs my arm and I stop. Turning around I find Alexander behind me. I suddenly find myself on the ground with Alexander on top of me trying to kiss me. I try to pull away but that doesn't work and before I can try to push him off he already has a hold on my hands. I thrash under him as much as I can to get him to lose his balance but nothing seems to be working.
I feel a hand around my throat, "Shut up".
I freeze at that voice and open my eyes to find Eric instead of Alexander. I just lay there unsure what's happening. I finally come back to fighting when I feel cold air on my legs and realize my pants are down. He's able to easily hold both of my hands in his one as he gets his own pants open.
"Eric stop", I say as he moves between my legs.
"Maybe you should have stopped teasing me", he growls out.
I freeze for a moment but as I feel him too close to me I realize my hands are free and I'm able to grab my gun. Suddenly Eric's frozen and I push him away before pulling myself together. As soon as I stand I'm running and I see the Ferris wheel through the trees. There's just a little further to go and when I finally leave the woods I sit up in the chair.
"You okay", Four asks quietly.
I shake my head and stand, "I think that was the worst".
"Me and Eric have never gotten along but I don't think he would ever do anything like that", Four tells me.
I nod, "I figured after what happened it would be a fear but I never imagined it being Eric".
"I don't really know about your relationship with Eric but the serum finds our smallest fears even if we didn't consciously know about them", Amar adds.
I think over the past week and the distance growing between Eric and me along with his anger and drinking. I know it's not directed at me but I also didn't think Alexander would do what he did.
"Why don't you and Christian join us for dinner tonight", Amar offers.
"I'll ask him", I agree.
With that I was finished so I head back to the initiate room and I climb into Christian's bed burying myself in his blanket.
I don't think Eric would ever do anything like my fear but lately things were changing and I don't know what I can do to fix it. He's been pulling away all week and I know he's stressed but part of me wonders if it was something I did. Rationally I know it's stupid to think that way but it just keeps coming up in my head.
I startle when the blanket is pulled back but I settle as Christian climbs in beside me bringing the covers back up over us.
"Bad one today", he asks and I nod. "Want to talk about it"?
I just shake my head and move closer as he pulls me against his side holding me.
I must have fallen asleep because suddenly Christian is shaking my shoulder telling me it's time for dinner.
I climb out of the bed putting my shoes on that I didn't realize I had taken off, "Amar asked if we would join him and Four for dinner".
"That sounds fine", Christian agrees and we head out to the cafeteria.
When we get to the cafeteria it's pretty easy to find Amar and Four and we slide into the seats across from them. I let my eyes drift around after greeting them and I find Alexander just two tables over and he smiles at me before I look away. When I look away I find Eric with the other leaders but he doesn't seem to be paying attention to them as he glares at our table.
"Are you alright now", Four asks.
"I've just been trying not to think about it too much honestly", I respond.
"That's understandable but it might be best now that you know what is to think of ways to get out of it", Amar tells me.
"After what happened that's what I thought constantly but when it changed it threw me off", I tell him.
"Are you gonna tell me what it was because I'm kind of lost", Christian asks.
"It was what happened with Alexander but then it changed and it was Eric", I tell him softly.
His arm immediately came around my side pulling me into a hug, "From what I've seen when it's been just the three of us it will never happen".
"I know that. It just startled me that it happened under the serum", I explain.
He nods and finally lets me go. The rest of dinner is mostly uneventful we just spend some time getting to know each other. At the end of dinner we decide to hang out some more and find ourselves wandering around The Pit.
While wandering through the shops we seem to split into two groups and I find myself with Four.
"Are you going to talk to Eric about it", he asks.
I shrug, "I know I should but I don't know how to bring it up".
"I think you should try he's been much calmer since you've come here. Though the past week his temper has been coming out more", Four tells me.
"They've been having a lot of meetings and he's been stressed over something but he can't talk about it", I explain.
I decide to change the subject, "Were you always in Dauntless"?
"I transferred from Abnegation", he tells me.
"Did you know you were going to transfer before you're test"?
"Yeah, I had known for a while that Abnegation wasn't for me", he says.
"Christian and I were the same we had known for a year we would choose Dauntless", I confide.
"Was that why you were holding back in training", he asks.
I look at him surprised, "You could tell"?
"It wasn't very obvious but there were some small tells plus one morning when I came in early I saw you working out. It also helped me figure out there was something starting between you and Eric when he looked about to kiss you".
Looking at the time I realize it's getting late, "I guess I should back and get some sleep".
He nods, "Do you want me to walk with you to Eric's room".
"I think I'm going to stay with Christian tonight I haven't spent much time with him lately", I tell him.
He looks skeptical but we find Amar and Christian quickly and go our separate ways.
"Do you mind if I sleep with you tonight", I ask Christian as we near the initiate room.
"You're not going back to Eric's room tonight", he asks surprised.
"No, I'm not ready to see him after earlier", I tell him.
He agrees and we get changed and I climb into his bed instantly curling against him when he lies down. We don't speak and I find myself falling asleep quickly.