A/N: I am so sorry for the lack of update, guys! I got so wrapped up in figuring out Ronnie's fears that I suffered a little bit of a writer's block with both of my fics I've got going on right now. But, luckily, I got a little inspiration from a review, and after mulling it over for a while, it seems I've been run over by the Inspiration Truck! So, have this as an apology for being gone for so long! (Also, I would like to apologize in advance to those who can't leave a new review on the chapter because I've replaced the previous content with all of this. You're more than welcome to flood my PM with reviews or leave one on the first chapter or something so your voice can be heard again!)
And as always, please R&R because your support keeps me going! :D
"Get the extraction kit! Hurry!"
"He's waking up again!"
"Where's Ronnie?!"
"Hold him down! I can't have him fighting us right now!"
"Eric! Eric, you have to get still! We're trying to help you!"
"Get your fucking hands off me!"
"Fucking tranq him! Now!"
"He's losing a lot of blood! We need a transfusion!"
"He's fighting the sedatives!"
"Give him more! I need that shrapnel out before it rips him to shreds!"
"Tell me where she is!"
"Eric, you need to calm down and let us work, dammit!"
"Son of a bitch! Someone go find that fucking girl and find out what the fuck happened to him!"
I barely heard the voices screeching from inside the emergency wing of the medical ward. Barely heard the crashing of metal against the tiled floor. All I could think about was the look of shock and pain on Eric's face and the way he fell to the ground over and over as I had to practically drag him down two blocks of darkened street before a patrol guard saw us. Part of me was desperate to believe this was all a simulation. That I was back in my fear landscape. That I wasn't covered in blood, slumped down on the floor against the wall and staring across the hallway like some kind of robot while people ran frantically in and out of the room as the man I loved fought for his life on the operating table.
But it was happening. This was real. Eric was hurt. And his instinct to keep fighting anyone who came near him was only making things worse. If I could just get in there. I could calm him down again. I could get him still so they could help him. But my body refused to move from where I was. I mentally screamed at it to push up from the floor. To go inside the room with the doctors. To go to his side. Touch him. Let him know I was there and I was okay and that he needed to be still for them.
But I just couldn't do it. I just couldn't force myself to move at all.
"Ronnie."
I heard Four's voice break through the chaos I could hear from behind the closed doors. Vaguely saw him come to kneel on his haunches in front of me. Felt him reach out with one hand and touch my cheek. His touch was what broke me out of my trance and made me blink to bring him into focus.
"Ronnie, you need to tell me what happened."
"I... We..." I choked back the tears as the events suddenly came flooding back and slammed into me like a truck. Two hours rolled into mere seconds all at once and I suddenly couldn't breathe. My palms hit the floor and my legs twitched as I shifted senselessly where I sat. I needed in that room. I needed to be by Eric's side.
"Breathe, Ronnie," Four said firmly. "Start from the beginning. After dinner. You went to the Pit, right?"
I nodded. The Pit. Yes. I went with my friends to have a few drinks. Our final test was next week. We were getting nervous about it. We weren't having to go to the sim room unless we really needed to now, which meant we were handling our fears really well. But this was the big test. We were going to be scored on it. It would determine our final rankings.
"Then what happened?"
"I... I snuck out to the roof. I needed a little time to myself. To think."
Mostly true, but not entirely. I did want a little time to myself, yes. But I also knew that if I slipped away from my friends, Eric would come find me just like always. We'd get to be alone together for a while. And I'd get to have his arms around me and his lips on mine again. Get to feel the fire run through my blood. Smell him. Taste him. Claim him as my own as he did the same to me. My Eric.
"Eric found you."
It was a simple statement. Four knew exactly what was going on between us, but he held no judgement for or against it yet. I knew he was concerned for my well-being, but I also knew that he really did believe that I could be what Eric needed in his life.
I nodded again. "We went for a night run."
Eric could tell I was restless. He'd seen it before when my arm was wrapped up. It was a kind of restless not even mind-blowing sex could cure. So he decided to give me something that would work. A run through the Dauntless sector. The streets were supposed to be basically empty at night, save for the guards posted around to keep the peace while the city slept and a few roaming Factionless. It should have been perfectly safe for us to run around in the dark.
Four held something up in front of me. A knife from the training room, covered in blood. We'd grabbed a few before setting out. Just in case. Eric knew I loved the knives. I had learned well how to use them, and not just for throwing. I could fight with them, too. And I was deadly.
"Just in case something did happen. I'd rather have a knife than a gun."
"I know," he replied softly. Four had seen me, too. He'd trained me with them. Shown me how to make them an extension of myself. He knew very well how good I'd gotten. "Keep going."
"Everything was fine. We ran down South Michigan. Nearly all the way to the Erudite tower before turning back. We'd just gotten back into Dauntless territory when we saw them."
"Factionless?"
I nodded.
"How many?"
"Eight."
He frowned. "Did you recognize any of them from the attack a couple weeks back?"
I nodded again. "The leader from last time, and four from that group. The others were new."
This time, he nodded. "And?"
Again, flashes from the fight filled my head. I looked at the doors they had taken Eric through. There was blood smeared across one of them. I stared at the crimson streak. There wasn't any yelling floating out now. I couldn't hear anything anymore. Had they sedated him? Was he okay? Why couldn't I hear anything? What was going on?
"Ronnie. Focus." He used his finger on my chin to move my face back to his. "What happened?"
"They attacked us. We fought back."
They'd come out of nowhere. Just like before. And they were armed again. But not with homemade bats or Molotov cocktails. They had knives of their own. Brass knuckles with sharp little spikes. One had a length of very thick chain wrapped around his fist with a good bit of it hanging down to the ground. We knew the instant they stepped out of the shadows that they'd watched us run by the first time and had waited for us to come back through to ambush us. They'd recognized Eric. Knew he was a leader. Knew that by killing him they would send a brutal message to the rest of Dauntless that they meant business. I, on the other hand, was just collateral damage. Wrong Faction in the wrong place at the wrong time.
There was no way Eric would ever back down to anyone who was a direct threat to himself, Dauntless, or the balance in our system. And he'd especially never back down to someone who was a threat to me. I didn't know why these men were so angry with Dauntless, or what had happened that day he'd went out to settle the dispute that had sprung up. But whatever it was had left them with a thirst for blood over it.
"Why didn't Eric have his gun?"
"We thought we'd be fine. We were on a major street. There's guards all over." I sighed and pulled my knees up to my chest. I wanted to cry, but it wouldn't come out for some reason. "It's my fault, Four. I convinced him to leave the sector. I thought we'd be fine as long as we stayed on Michigan. It's a big street. It was supposed to be safe."
"It's okay, Ronnie." His voice was softer now. He shifted off his feet and sat beside me, his back against the wall like mine was. "It was an honest mistake. One that Max is beyond pissed about, but still. It's not entirely your fault."
"Yes, it is, Four," I whispered, the tears finally starting to flow down my cheeks. "He was trying to make me happy. If we hadn't gone running in the middle of the night, he wouldn't be in there right now. He'd be asleep in his own bed. And me with him. This wouldn't be happening."
"Stop thinking like that," he said firmly. "They caught you between rounds. They planned the attack out. They knew how to catch you when you were vulnerable. This is not your fault, Ronnie."
"Four."
We both looked up at the new voice. It was Doc, coming out of the operating room and wiping his hands on a towel that was quickly going from white to red. Four rose quickly to his feet to meet him in the middle of the hallway.
"He's stable," he said with a sigh. "We got the glass out of his side and the piece of knife blade from his back before they could do much damage. He's going to be fine. Grumpy as all hell for several days, but fine."
Four's shoulders fell low as he sighed in relief. I sniffled and tried to stand up. But now that the adrenaline and shock had worn off, I suddenly felt very wrong. My body started aching sharply in several places and I collapsed back onto the floor. Then I remembered. I hadn't escaped the fight without injury. The Factionless had gotten a few good hit in on me, too.
"Ronnie?" The Doc looked over at me, his eyes filled with concern at first and quickly turning into alarm. "Shit. Four, help me get her into one of the open bays."
Anger started to move across his features as they both reached for me. "Why hasn't she been looked at? She's clearly injured, too."
"It's nothing," I tried to say. But I could feel it. The pain was kicking in.
"Like hell," Doc hissed. "You're bleeding all over the floor."
I looked back as they walked me into an open med bay. There was a small pool of blood where I'd been sitting. I hadn't even noticed. I'd been too concerned with Eric and his condition just like the other doctors and nurses.
"She's got a good gash on her arm," Four said once they'd sat me down. He lifted the back of my shirt, leaning to get a good view. "Several bruises on her back. Couple small cuts. Is that... It looks like links from a chain."
"One of the guys had a big chain," I mumbled, flinching when his fingers came in contact with the strip across my back where I'd taken a blow.
Suddenly, my shirt was being yanked off, and I hissed at the rough movement. I heard a sigh of relief. I wasn't sure if it was Four or Doc, though. My eyes were shut tight at that moment. Fingers prodded my left shoulder, wiping across it and along my collar bone.
"Another cut here," I heard Four say. "Bruising on her ribs."
"Minor enough?" Doc asked an instant before I felt a pinch on my arm were I'd gotten cut in the fight. I opened my eyes and saw him removing a needle and tossing the syringe onto a tray beside the bed. An anesthetic, I realized as I watched him grab a paper package, rip it open, and pull out a curved needle to stitch me up with.
"Yeah. She'll be fine. She's still on the med packs, right?"
"Twice a day."
"Yeah, she'll be fine," Four repeated.
"Someone still should have checked her over," Doc grumbled. "The bleeding is minor and all, but that's not the damn point."
"Eric was the priority, Doc," I said, looking at the Doc before turning my attention to Four. "They focused more on him than me. They wanted him dead. Didn't really care as much about me."
Four frowned. "Well, they won't be a concern anymore. You both saw to that."
My eyes dropped to the floor. Yeah, we took care of them, alright. Eric and I had killed all eight of them right there in the middle of the street. I rationalized it as an act of survival to fight the bile rising in my throat. Which it was. These men weren't innocent. They wanted to kill us. Tried to kill us. So what we did wasn't murder. It was self defense.
"Hey," Four said softly, laying a hand on my shoulder. "You did what you were trained to do. I'm proud of you, Ronnie. You were brave tonight."
I gave him a weak smile before turning my attention back to Doc. He was wrapping gauze around my arm to cover the stitches he'd just given me. It was a little surreal to watch him do something like that to me and not be able to feel it.
"Okay. You're all set now. Try not to rip these out, okay? I'll remove them in a few days or so once the med packs seal up the cut enough that you don't need them anymore."
"Can I see him?"
Doc's face shot up. He blinked and looked at Four. I saw Four nod out of the corner of my eye. Realization settled into Doc's eyes. Now he knew, too. He pressed his lips together in a tight line before sighing.
"Okay. But he's asleep right now. We had to give him a pretty big dose of sedatives just to stop him from fighting us so we could work on him."
I nodded. I already knew that part. But I had to see him. That was my Eric laying there in the next room. He'd suffered a lot of his wounds because he'd been protecting me. He'd been fighting the staff here in the med ward because he didn't know where I was. I had to let him know somehow that I was fine. That I was still with him. That we were both safe. And I knew that the only way I could do that was to go see him right now. Otherwise, they'd have a whole new set of problems when he woke up.
