Enjoy! And I am so sorry for the long wait and possible errors in the story. Haha. Whoops.

Disclaimer: If I owned Divergent, Zeke and Tobias would probably be married by now.

Tobias's POV

Tris is still pressed tightly to my chest when Alec comes back in, the huffs of breaths coming from her tired frame and the red splotches that I am sure cover my face not missed by the doctor. Her eyes are still closed and her hand has found its way to a loose section of my shirt, clenching and unclenching the fabric in a rhythmic pattern that had me wondering whether or not there would be a hole in the cotton by the time she came too.

Not that I would care. Tris could beat a hole through my body and I still wouldn't have the strength or want to do anything but take it, blow after blow. The simplicity in the thought offers me a slight sense of relief from all of the poison Marcus has left in my mind. Whatever he thinks is worthy of bravery is pitiful, and I will gladly bend to what he thinks a coward is if it means that I never lay a hand on someone I love.

My eyes lift up to Alec's, and I can feel the weight of my eyelids pulling like a tsunami against the motion. I catch a glimpse of myself in the reflection of the small monitor he has wheeled in and, though I can barely see it, I let out a tired laugh at the sorry looking mess Tris and I have seem to become.

The way we sit is anything but comfortable – my leg twists awkwardly and painfully against the brace that seems to do nothing to hold it together and the way Tris curls herself to me does little to make any more room on the hospital bed.

They say a sense of ease and grace comes after living and loving someone for some time – a misconception in the many romances that Dauntless seem to offer. Not everything in love has made itself easy, not everything we do has the sense of graceful rhythm and consistency that seems to be glamorized throughout the compound. We still bump into each other while we make coffee in the morning, her hip colliding with the countertop as my shoulder bounces of the sleek fridge.

I can't count the number of times I've had hot coffee spilled on my hand or how many times Tris has nearly fallen in the toilet because of the toilet seat being left up. That sense of fluidity that people tell of – of how they work in harmony in the kitchen – one mixing the soup while the other cuts the vegetables, no one bumping into anyone and nothing messing up the synchronization – seems but a mere lie to Tris and I.

We're anything but a harmony.

We fight and scream – the walls of our home not offering enough cushion to catch the harsh words in time. We laugh and cry and sometimes wish we were with anyone else but each other, annoyance and short tempers common between both of our stubborn natures. But that's just that. That's love, and it's what makes what we have between the two of us something worth the grief and the heartache. I could never imagine having a relationship like the ones in Abnegation with nothing but smiles and polite nods and the grazing of hands at dinner time.

We need this passion, these raw, gut wrenching moments, this fire - because we aren't as simple and as boring as a harmony.

We're a symphony – a tirade of violins and drums that clash fiercely and violently against each to make something beautiful.

I glance back down at her and follow the way her long eyelashes fold softly against her cheek.

"Tris."

Though Alec's voice is as close to silence as possible, it cuts through the quite air like a blade and her eyelashes leave her cheek instantly as her eyes flash open. Tris draws her face back from my chest and squints against the bright lights of the room, the side of her face that was pressed to me red with the imprints of the fabric.

Alec smiles lightly at her before glancing up at me. It's obvious in the way he tilts his head that he knows something's up but he leaves it at that as he turns and grabs the cart behind him.

"How about," he starts with a smile, and I slowly pull myself out from under Tris. She frowns in protest but lets it happen nonetheless, even leaning forward so I can pull my leg out without too much trouble.

It still hurt like a bitch though, but it is something I keep to myself as I sink down in the chair next to her bed with silent groan.

"How about we brighten your day a little, huh?" He pulls the monitor forward and my breath hitches as I realize what it is.

"Who wants to see Baby Prodigy number 2?"

Tris lets out a wet laugh and glances at me as she reaches out her hand, and I grab it tightly as a smile flashes across my face at the small joke. Theo had been dubbed the Baby Prodigy by Demetri, the older doctor who had delivered him, when Theo had given him a small kick in the arm when he had been born. Though it had to be anything but hard, Demetri had claimed with a smile that it was the hardest blow he had ever received in a delivery room and wanted it to be known that, when Theo got older, his first spar was going to be with him.

"He's okay?"

"Tris," Alec says, placing a hand on her shoulder as he messes with the machine. "Everything is okay and everything will be okay if you do everything right." He squeezes his hand and then proceeds to position the machine.

"Now, you won't see much," Alec warns. "I'm pretty sure that your still very early on and this is more of a test to see how far along you are. But you've been through this drill before."

Tris nods eagerly and my breath catches when she glances at me, her eyes like sparks as she smiles slightly. Her hand clamps around mind, tighter than before, and I realize that though Alec has been offering her explanations and answers and enough to quell her worries, her stubbornness wouldn't let her agree.

"It'll be cold," he warns with a laugh as Tris just nods her head even more, her eyes trained on the machine. I bring her hand to my lips just as the image appears and, in that moment, the only thing I can hear is the quiet breathing of everything in the room.

"He's so small," Tris murmurs and, though I know it's impossible to tell now, I still tilt my head in question.

"He?"

"It's just a guess, I don't know." Tris mutters sheepishly, her cheeks blushing red as her eyes stay on the screen.

I nod slowly, not quite trusting myself to speak as Alec talks.

"You look to be around 8 weeks, give or take. And he," he glances at Tris and winks, "looks absolutely perfect. Do you see that flickering?"

He points to the image and I look closer to see the slight rhythm that had appeared when we first saw the baby.

"Is that her heartbeat?" I ask, my voice coming out thick and raspy as I quickly press our intertwined hands firmly back to my mouth. I swallow hard as I watch the small flicker, my eyes blurring over with each beat.

Tris tears her eyes from the screen and looks at me, her eyes just as wet as mine.

"Are you crying?" She teases with a laugh, but it comes out as more of a quick gasp as Alec chimes in.

"Ah, so Dad thinks it's a little girl."

I let out a wet laugh as I squeeze my eyes shut, letting the tear fall onto my cheeks as I breathe in a ragged breath, trying to make my voice solid in spite of the quiver I feel rising in my throat. Alec is probably the only other person than Tris to ever see me cry this much – pain, happiness, all of it.

"Just a guess," I rasp, my eyes flashing from Tris to the monitor and back.

"Yeah, that's the heartbeat. The baby's too small right now to really hear anything but if you look," he points at something and we both lean in like eager idiots, "it's a strong one."

We stare at the tiny screen for a while and, though the baby is small and resembles the slight bearings of a peanut, Tris jumps at the idea of a picture – it's rare, to have one, because of everything that's happening between the factions. The materials are just not something worth wasting on the brink of a war. We only have a few of Theo, and Tris keeps them locked in a book that only we're allowed to touch.

I don't know how long Alec leaves us with the small photo, but we manage to wake from the haze that surrounds us by the time a flustered Christina comes charging into the room, her eyes trained harshly on the two of use.

"Why on Earth did I have to hear from skank number one that my best friend is in the hospital?"

"Hey now, I'm starting to like Jordyn," Tris counters, and I nod in agreement. That girl was a tough one to crack – too annoying to even make us want to try – but after getting a glimpse into her fears all the stuff she had been doing seemed to make sense.

Christina prattles on though, as if she didn't hear anything.

"And please tell me you two made up. Dinner was so awkward with the two of you sitting like angry little idiots. You need to lighten up and get out of that brooding, sulking mood. We get it, your leg is broken and Tris is stubborn and the factions are going crazy. Deal with it."

Tris snorts and my eyes widen as I lean back while Christina moves in on me, her finger pointed like a weapon in my face.

"And you," she says, turning from me to Tris in a whirl, her eyes sparking, "You need to eat and listen to people. I don't care if you're stubborn for him, missy, but the day you stop listening to me is the day I take you by the pony tail and knock you in front of a train for some common sense. And now I find out that you are sitting in a hospital bed for God knows what? I mean, just last week we were in here because of that idiot. Do you guys think that hospitals are the shit? Are you guys like, 'Hey, you know where we haven't hung out in a while? A hospital. Let's do stupid shit and wind up in there to see how fun it is'? What the hell is wrong with you two?!"

Christina thumps my forehead back as a smile breaks across my face and Tris downright loses it, laughter and giggles spilling from her lips like bells. It must've been the high strung emotions of today and the tensions of everything going on because soon enough the laugh turns into a string of tears as Tris turns and buries her face into my neck – heaving sobs moving her shoulders up and down.

If it were anyone but Christina, I'm sure they would have been scrambling with awkward apologize and trying to make a beeline out of the room but it isn't – it's her and, as I glare at her heatedly and angrily, she raises her eyebrow at me and moves to the bed to sit next to Tris, her hand rubbing her back.

"Let it all out, girl. Alec told me everything. I'm just here to offer some emotional relief."

Of course her tactic of making her friend feel better is to get her crying first but, after the teary heart to heart Tris and I shared earlier, I could see the reasoning behind it.

"You're mental," I mutter, shaking my head and turning to press my lips to Tris's forehead. "You're okay." I whisper, forgetting that Christina is sitting inches from me with a small smile as I rub my hand up and down Tris's arm.

Her tears have stopped, as did her sobs, and she nods into my neck before pulling away slightly and rubbing her eyes with her fist. She turns to Christina, eyes red and swollen, and gives her a light punch in the arm.

"I hate you."

Christina just laughs as she takes the small sonogram from Tris and smiles, her voice coming out as a soft coo as she looks at the small peanut shaped blob.

"Aww, looks just like Four. What a nut."

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I sit on the couch next to Tris the next night as we both stare blankly at the television for different reasons. Tris's attention is diverted unevenly between the mindless show and the giggling baby in her arms, Theo reaching up to pat Tris's face whenever she glanced anywhere but him.

My attention, on the other hand, is everywhere else, slipping into the masochistic and grey parts between the black and white. It isn't the place in my mind where I'd liked to be, but I find comfort in it because of the familiarity.

My leg throbs violently as I lean my head against the couch and close my eyes, Marcus's face appearing yet again.

The nightmares were back. Everyone single one of them; me being beaten by Marcus, me becoming Marcus, me hurting Tris or Theo, even a new, sick one in which I craved to be like him. I don't remember the last one in a vivid nature– it was more of a feeling that had me waking with bile in my throat.

Tris had been knocked out cold through each one, the stress of the day taking its effect in terms of a deep sleep, and by the third nightmare I had crept to the floor, finding comfort from the cool carpet against my sweat drenched body.

I didn't want to have to explain to her in the morning that the lamp was shattered from my flailing and thrashing, so the floor and all its glory beckoned to me.

It didn't help that I couldn't fall asleep until the early hours of the morning, and Tris woke to see me sprawled on the floor next to her.

"Hey."

I jump when I feel Tris's hand brush through my hair, and I turn to see her facing me, her eyes scrunched up in what seems to be a permanent concern. My head still lays back on the couch but I can see Theo's little hand reaching to my big one, and it scares me when I feel the urge to pull away.

I jolt into a sitting position and rest an elbow on my unbroken knee, my forehead colliding with my hand with a quiet smack.

It also didn't help that while we were leaving the hospital yesterday, I had seen Marcus getting some bandages removed – had seen the bruises and scars that I had inflicted on him. It makes me shudder, thinking about it. I had done that. I was capable of that. And, though I spent my entire teenage years dreaming about how I would feel if I had just fought him back, nothing had prepared me for the vile sense of betrayal and disgust I would aim at myself when I did.

I was just like him, really. The only difference was that I hated it.

"Tobias?"

I snap out of the haze of thoughts and find Tris's eyes, grey and striking against the mist that had been forming around me.

"You okay?"

I shrug, tired of hiding things and lying, before pushing myself up and grabbing onto the crutches propped by the couch.

Theo reaches towards me and I the only damn thing I do is smile at him. I don't pick him up. I don't give him a kiss. I just smile, like he's some random child and like I don't give a damn, and Tris doesn't miss the internal battle going on in my head.

I think that's what pulls at my chest the most – I do care. I just couldn't bring myself to hold him like I used to. Not yet.

There was something I had to do first.

"I'll be back later. I have to check on something in the Control Room." The lie comes out swiftly, easily, and it makes another cringe surge through my body.

"Now? It's so late." Tris sighs, grabbing my arm. "Can't Eric do it?"

I offer her a smile and a shrug and she drops my hand, looking away like it's a lost cause.

"I'll be back soon, okay?"

"Yeah, okay."

"Tris," I say, begging her to look at me. "I promise."

"You're not leaving because you're still mad, are you?" her voice is meek and small and everything about her demeanor shrinks before my eyes in defeat.

"No," I say fiercely, wishing more than anything right now that I was able to crouch down to her eye level. Instead, I reach down and pull up her chin. "Tris, I promise you, I'm not mad. I love you, I love Theo, I love the baby. I really have to go settle something, though."

"Last night you slept on the floor. I thought it was – ,"

I cut her off as quickly as she starts, "I got kind of restless, that's all. You had a long day and I didn't want to wake you."

Or break the lamp.

"Yeah, okay. Just come back soon, alright?" She whispers, tightening her grip on Theo as she yawns.

"Alright, Sleeping Beauty," I chuckle.

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My footsteps echo louder in the upper hallways. I chalk it up to the fact that it's quieter up here, that I can actually hear myself think in the silence. In reality, it's the weight of dread that pulls my feet harder towards the ground as I near the fear landscape.

I don't know how wise going into the landscape is with a broken leg – especially without letting anyone know – but my mind is too focused on putting one foot in front of the other right now to even think logically.

Plunging the serum into my neck is just as easy as breathing, and I don't even seem to feel the slight pinch as the serum flows into my body. I don't know if it's because I have grown used to it, or if I was really this terrified to see what was to come.

I shake my head and close my eyes, rolling my shoulders back while letting out a puff of air.

When my eyes open, they sting with wind and cold, and I find myself balancing on the edge of the Hancock building.

I look down to see my crutches and broken leg have made it into the sim with me and, as a move it around, I know the pain will be twice as much when I'm splattered like a pancake on the ground. I close my eyes and in my mind there's a wisp of blonde hair and a spark of grey eyes and, before I know it, I'm falling through the air – a scream ripping from my chest the entire way down.

It's a white hot flash of pain that sears through me for an instant, and then it's gone.

I open my eyes just in time to have my back slam into a wall, the sides closing in on my fast and hard. I yell when one wall collides with my broken leg, and black spots plague my vision as I try to focus, I breathing becoming sharp and haggard with the combination of pain and fear.

"Tris," I grunt out, and I don't care if it seems stupid to say her name. My mind is too muddled to imagine her here with me, so the only defense I seem to have left is to say her name – and there's strength in that, at least for me. There's power in her name. Because when I say it, I see a family. I see love and joy and hope and belonging and suddenly the walls have opened and the pressure against my leg is gone.

The next one is harder because I can't use the strength of her when I have to kill her. I stare at the gun in my hand and then back at Tris's wide eyes. They're blue this time, calm and at peace, until they realize what I have to do – they turn grey then, and tear after tear flows down her face as she tries to fight the restraints that had appeared.

"Tobias please." Her cries tear a piece of me each time she calls out. "Tobias, the baby. You can't do this. Tobias please!"

My chest is heaving and my eyes are just as wet.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry," I stammer out, my hand shaking and my eyes burning as I stare at her distressed features – the lips that she and Theo share. A shot rings through the air, and I turn away as I hear her body crumble to the floor.

I throw the gun to the ground and let myself collapse – I let the crutches fall and my leg collide with the ground because at this point I'm just done, physically and mentally, and I can't fathom the next sequence that's set to come.

But nothing happens.

I sit there, in a haze, before I realize this, wiping the wetness from my cheeks and glancing up. I'm back in the room, the syringe laying out where I left it and as I pull myself back up, I can't seem to shake myself back into reality.

I touch the walls, the door, and even talk to Tori for a minute in the hallway as I make my way back to the apartment – to Tris and I wonder if something had happened to the serum – if I had used the wrong dosage, because though four fears were rare, three seemed downright impossible.

I turn the knob and stare in to see Tris and Theo where I left them, Tris half asleep and Theo clutching onto her shirt.

"Tris?"

She jumps and stares at me with wide eyes before laughing to herself.

"Oh my god, you scared me. Did I really sleep that whole time, or are you just back early?"

I find myself smiling with her, partly because of her expression, but mostly because I had come home in one piece and seemed better off than I did before.

Tris gets up and turns to rearrange the pillows, and I step back suddenly, seeing the long and wide purple bruise covering the right side of her face.

"Tris - ,"

My eyes flash up and I see Marcus standing behind her.

"What the hell is he doing here? Tris, how'd he get in here?"

She looks up at me, her eyes now filled with fear and apprehension as she looks behind her.

"No one's here, Tobias."

My breath catches as I look at her again, this time her entire face a different assortment of cuts and bruises, the colors contrasting harshly with her skin.

"Who did that to you?" I fume, my chest burning with hate. "Tris who the hell did that to you?"

I walk closer to her, and she scrambles backwards just as quick, her lip trembling as she clutches Theo to her chest.

"S-stop."

I do – I stop, almost instantly, and I glance up to see Marcus walking towards me, a tightlipped smile on his face. He seems to pass right through me and, as I turn to look behind me, I realize he's gone. I hear a faint whisper in his voice – in the same hiss that I had come to fear as a child.

"I'm proud of you, son." He hisses, and I claw at my hair as I hear his voice bouncing in my head. "You're just like your old man."

"STOP!" I yell, but it's Tris who hears me and she pushes even further into the wall, her shoulders shaking and her eyes blurred with water.

"You said you'd stop. You said you wouldn't keep doing this."

Doing what, I'd meant to say. But what comes out is completely different.

"Shut up, bitch."

The voice snarls, and the words that leave my mouth are anything but mine. I walk closer to her, my feet listening to some other command, and I feel my fist pull back, ready to spring.

I catch my reflection in the mirror behind her and I beg to anything and everything that I would at least look like Marcus – that maybe I was having an out of body experience in which I was Marcus.

But the blue eyes that look back at me are one hundred percent mine and, as my fist collides with her face, all I see is a vile and putrid look of content flowing through the irises.

And it's that same feelings of content and approval that seem to course through my veins, somehow mixed with my own conflicting emotions – like it was both Marcus and I battling for dominance and every time he landed a punch, his hooks dug themselves deeper and deeper into me.

I can hear Tris's screaming as she falls to the floor, hear her begging me to stop. Theo's cries fill the air and I'm glad that I don't look down to see the true nature of what is going on.

I think that's when I realize that I'm still in the landscape – that I'm still bound to the serum and the fears within it.

My fists won't stop moving and she won't stop screaming. Any sort of control I thought I had had vanished and I was left to succumb to the will of the serum – of Marcus.

"You promised."

The words are fleeting and weak, but they trigger something inside of me.

"ENOUGH!" I yell, and know then that I'm back – that they are my words and my own actions that are pushing me back from Tris and Theo and out of the apartment, down the dark hall.

Within seconds I am back in the room, but whatever trust I have left in reality is gone and I sit there, crutches far too out of reach, trembling and shaking against the thing T-shirt I have on. I jolt up as I feel the bile rising in my throat, and I can only dry heave again and again as my hand holds me up against the wall – nothing in my stomach to throw up.

I can hear someone coming up the steps – I can hear the door opening – but they are both muffled by distant inhumane growls and yells.

It isn't until I feel a hand on my back and see Zeke and Gwen's faces concerned and wide eyed before my own that I realize I had been downright sobbing into my the crook of my arm.

"Four, Four. Look at me."

I shake my head, shutting my eyes as more tears spill out, and let my head fall back against the stone wall, another groan ripping through me.

"I'm just like him," I mutter, to whom, I don't know.

I glance at Zeke and see him standing there hesitantly, and I'm sure I've scared him off for good. I can see him piecing together bits of information in his head – the articles from Erudite, the standoff between Marcus and I in the cafeteria, my fear.

I wouldn't be surprised if he'd run miles away from me.

But what he does next warms me, and does more than he knows to bringing me back.

He sinks down into a sitting position next to me, completely ignoring the fact that my chest was still heaving and my eyes were streaming, and pats my unbroken leg.

He doesn't say anything, or offer words of sympathy – he's just there and, right now, it's all I think I can take. Not pity or disappointment.

I see Gwen walking back with a concerned looking Tris behind her and I want to be mad at Gwen – I do, but seeing Tris without any bruises, seeing her actually come towards me willingly stops the heaving and the gasping.

She kneels down beside me and grabs my face with her hands, but I'm quickly shooing them away as I pull her face into mine, inspecting every inch of it before pulling her in tightly to me and breathing into the blonde strands of hair that fall from her pony tail.

"I killed you. Twice. And Theo, god he was screaming." I can't do anything but mutter into her as she holds my face against her neck. I can hear Gwen and Zeke leaving and I'm glad – I don't think I could take it if they heard what I was saying.

"I couldn't stop hitting you – kicking you. And – and then I heard my dad. Said he was proud. Said I was just like him."

Tris pulls back and I tighten my grip on her, not caring in the slightest that I am being selfish.

"I saw him yesterday – I saw what I did to him. I am just like him Tris."

She pulls back even further and removes her hand from mine.

"Please don't go," I try weakly, completely giving in to the vulnerable child that had been here all along – giving into the lost boy. "Please don't leave."

She places both hands firmly on each side of my face. Whatever trace of tears she had had in her eyes are gone as she looks at me, her gaze very much alive.

"I'm here. You never touched me, you never hit me, and you never will hit me. You are nothing like the piece of shit that's wandering these halls and I swear to you Tobias Eaton, the day you turn into that man is the day hell freezes over and the world combusts because there is absolutely nothing in this world that would make you do the things he did. You could have killed him in the cafeteria. You could have broken every single one of his ribs and, to be honest, I would not have stopped you. But you didn't. You threw three punches, Tobias. Only three. And you were done. Tell me if he would have done that?"

Her eyes gaze fiercely into mine and once again I am truly reminded of the strength that courses through her – of the reason Dauntless was her home.

These past few days had been filled with nothing but vulnerability and helplessness, but I suppose we need both to make ourselves braver.

"You don't have to hide these things from me Tobias." She whispers now, as she moves around to grab my crutches.

"You're the bravest man I know."

I snort as I gesture to my helpless leg and face, scrubbing at my eyes with my hands before accepting the crutch.

"You are. Brave doesn't mean fearless, Tobias. It doesn't mean emotionless. You of all people know that emotions can be dangerous – you of all people know the importance of trust and control."

She stands up next to me and wraps her arms around my torso, and I do my best to hug her around my crutches. She talks into my chest, her words slightly muffled my the shirt.

"Don't for one second think you and him are the same person, Tobias. What he does is something you fear, and because you fear it makes all the difference in the world."

I hadn't forgotten Tris's bravery or strong demeanor, I hadn't forgotten her independence – but I do get a strong reminder of it when she glances at me with her hard eyes.

I brush my calloused thumb against her fare and unblemished cheek, checking once more to see it clear of bruises. Her eyes look tired, but the youth in their depth is apparent.

I think we both sometimes forget how young we really are – how, in some ways, we're all still kids without direction.

"God, we're fucked up," I mutter, before pressing my salt stained lips firmly to hers.

Okay. I'm sorry for the long wait – but school and procrastination and, eh, you know the drill. But honestly, it's been extremely hectic so I do apologize. Thank you to all my reviewers, you guys are amazing. Please tell me what you think; I love it when you do. Also, if you haven't read my other stories,

Two Idiots and a Baby

And

Puppy Love

Please check them out. Thanks!