AN: Thank you for your reviews, and for your messages. As much as I'd like to respond, I don't want to give anything away. This story is a bit bumpier and more angsty than some of my others. Hang in there.
Cara quietly watches Tris through the window of Eric's secluded recovery room. She's not what she expected.
They practically moved mountains to get her here. They made the impossible possible – they brought the one woman who Jeanine was willing to wage a war for directly into the lion's den. It wasn't easy, and it was met with great resistance from the group who moved their own mountains to protect her, but she's here.
What is even stranger is that she refused to travel without Tobias Eaton, the ex-boyfriend that Cara recently learned that Tris has been living with in Portland for the past almost four months. Thankfully, no one had shared this newfound information with Eric.
Cara knows that Tris is an Abnegation turned Dauntless, but to look at her you would never know it. In her preparation to return to Chicago she made the recommended changes to her appearance. Her light brown hair has been dyed an almost platinum blonde color, cut to just below her shoulders and pulled into the severe slicked-back ponytail that most Erudite women prefer. The unique tattoos of birds in flight on her collarbone have been covered by some sort of makeup, and thankfully it is not wearing off on the crisp white shirt she wears with her blue pencil skirt and matching jacket. She's wearing glasses, and makeup like almost every other woman in Erudite. On outward appearance alone, she blends right in.
Tris is strong, both physically and mentally, and she's also extremely intelligent. It's almost as if she wears her divergence proudly, and it boggles Cara's mind that Eric never saw it. He was blinded by his love for this young woman. The one thing Eric has wanted more than Jeanine's head served on a silver platter is for his wife to return to him. She's been here for almost two hours, and he's yet to regain consciousness to realize it.
Cara continues to watch Tris, and the almost hesitant way she is with Eric. When Peter first led Tris into this room, she was stoic, even when faced with the numerous machines that are keeping him alive. Tris was unsure of the security of the room, and she tried to play a role of a curious Erudite until she was comfortable. Once Peter left, Tris began to relax marginally, but she was still timid when it came to interacting with her unconscious ex-husband. It took her several minutes to even sit, longer to reach out to touch his arm, but she has not spoken to him once since being in the room with him.
Cara didn't intrude on their privacy, she just kept a silent guard at the door. However, she couldn't help but observe Tris. Eric had risked everything for her, and Cara just needed to know what was so special about the woman. She can see the physical attraction that caught both Eric and Tobias' eyes, but her cold demeanor upon both learning of Eric's condition and since she's been in Erudite bothers Cara.
Tris catches Cara watching her and she steps away from Eric's bedside and into the hallway.
"Make me understand this. Explain this in a way that makes sense." Tris says bluntly, gesturing back towards the bed where Eric lies.
Cara knows that Tris wants answers, but she's not sure she is the right person to provide them. As expected, Eric had taken Tris' refusal to speak to him extremely poorly, and once she had their marriage dissolved he had buried himself in his plans to bring Jeanine down once and for all. Eric had planned on tracking Jeanine himself, and he knew in order to do so he needed the device she used to track his movements removed permanently.
"It was a tracker, but it was also designed to be remote detonated to kill him. He knew he needed it out in order to get to Jeanine, or to you." Cara offers evenly.
Tris turns towards her and narrows her hazel eyes at the other woman. "And who are you, exactly?"
"I'm Cara Fox." Cara offers her hand to Tris. The young Dauntless trails her eyes down to the hand then back to her face.
"That doesn't answer who you are, or why you found it necessary to watch me for over an hour." Tris challenges.
Cara can't help the frown that forms on her face. She's trying her best to be cordial to Tris, but everything about her makes her want to just turn and walk away. She takes a small breath in, and pauses briefly to gather herself, because she knows what Eric would want is for her to treat the women he still loves with respect.
Even if she doesn't deserve it.
"Someone is always here to watch him, this is nothing to do with you." Cara answers as evenly as possible. "Eric and I grew up together, and I'm also the lead developer of the implant." Cara finally withdraws her hand when Tris crosses her arms in front of her, and her posture becomes defensive.
"You developed that monstrosity, and then allowed someone to attempt to remove it?" Tris hisses.
"The prototype I had turned over to Jeanine did not have the emergency detonation in place. That was something that she had someone else add before it went to Eric. I also wouldn't have developed it at all had I known it was going to be used on someone I care deeply for." Cara retorts.
"Someone you care deeply for?" Tris replies angrily. "Oh please do explain to me how it came to be that you have those types of feelings for my husband."
"You mean your ex-husband, correct? The ex-husband that you turned your back on while you were playing house with Tobias Eaton?" Cara spits. She has no patience for the woman in front of her, and she has no issues letting that be known. "Not that it's any of your goddamn business, but he is my best friend. My brother William and I have known Eric for our entire lives. My love for him is that of a brother, it's nothing like the love I have for my own husband."
Tris widens her eyes as recognition passes over her face. "You're Will's sister."
"I am." She nods.
"I'm sorry. I didn't realize." Tris replies.
"That is apparent." Cara retorts.
Tris opens her mouth to snap back at the woman, but she closes it. Fighting with someone from Eric's past in Erudite isn't a good look, and as stubborn as she is she knows she needs Cara on her side. She gathers herself before speaking.
"I'm sure everyone thinks I will eventually just get over the anger I have at him. Even if I could, I couldn't stay married to him." Tris says in a vacant voice. "It's not because I didn't love him. I needed to make moves that people would believe. No one would agree to help me if I remained married to him, and I couldn't risk telling anyone that he truly wasn't working for Max and Jeanine. I did what was expected of me – I filed a petition to dissolve our marriage due to fraud. In everyone's eyes he is willingly working with Jeanine. I mean, you could ask your own brother and sister-in-law, they were my closest friends back in Dauntless and they disowned me when they found out I was married to him. The only way I could even begin to bring back the numbers we needed to take Max and Jeanine down was to completely cut Eric off."
Cara narrows her eyes at Tris. She's both impressed and infuriated, the former because she knows that it makes sense to have made that decision, however the latter because she know her best friend has practically killed himself as a result of Tris' actions.
"You should have told him." Cara replies icily.
"I've been angry." Tris argues. "I'm still angry, but I'm here now."
"You think you being here will fix the damage you've done…" Cara begins but she's cut off by another voice.
"This isn't helping anything." Cara looks up sharply at Tobias Eaton as he approaches the two women, stopping only once he reaches Tris and places a gentle arm around her shoulder. "What matters is getting him through this without Jeanine or Max figuring out what's actually going on here."
She doesn't miss the way that Tobias' hand lingers on Tris' shoulder, and the way she leans into him. Tobias Eaton, or Four as he prefers to be called, is an extremely handsome man. Cara is a happily married woman, but she can appreciate the dark haired, tanned skin man who has joined them. She remembers seeing him when she visited her brother in Dauntless, and he's always been known to be a level headed person who people respect.
"Is this why you divorced him?" Cara blurts out. She uses her hands to gesture quickly between the two.
"We have been friends for years, just like you and Eric." Tris replies evenly.
"He cannot wake up and find you here like this…" Cara begins.
"Like what? Like the good friend he's been for my entire life? Or, like the person who has been there for me, without hesitation, throughout all of this? My husband left me. While it may not have been his choice, he still left because of decisions he had made prior to knowing who I truly am. Standing up for him cost me my parents, my closest friends, and MY CHILD. I lost my baby because of his involvement with that woman. I lost everything." Tris replies coldly.
Four can feel her shaking and he pulls her closer to his side. "Our relationship is no one's business. We owe no one an explanation. They are no longer married."
Cara's eyes widen and she shakes her head. "He may be unconscious, but he can likely hear us. We should talk privately."
She gestures for the two to follow her and they oblige. She moves into the private office she once shared with Eric and closes the door once all have entered.
"Is this room secure?" Four asks, while examining for any outward signs of surveillance devices.
"It is. This entire wing is, which is why we have Eric recovering here instead of the main hospital." Cara answers.
Tris looks around the sterile room, and an object on one of the desks catches her eye. She picks up the smooth black rock, recognizing it from one of her early days in initiation. After a particularly difficult day of physical training, in which Eric had forced her best friend Christina to hang over the railing of the chasm, Tris had found a small alcove that was behind the roaring waterfalls of the area. This particular rock was smooth, and almost glittered from the constant water it deflected. It stood out to her for its beauty, and she had carefully removed it and taken it back to the dorms that night.
Eric had found it the next night during a spot inspection, and since it was considered contraband he had removed it. She was already angry at him for his careless actions the day before with Christina, and she was livid when he removed the rock from her storage trunk. Although she had finally forgiven him several days later, she never saw the rock again.
She had no idea he had kept it. Nor did she expect to find it on a random desk in Erudite.
"That's his desk." Cara says once she notices Tris lost in thought. "I don't know the significance of that rock, but it seems to have followed him wherever he goes."
Tris sits at the desk and runs her fingers over the rock. The desk is just like Eric, neat, clean and without fuss. There's nothing personal of his at all, except the rock he confiscated from her so many months ago during her initiation.
"What's happened to him?" Tris finally asks. "I want to know everything."
"Are you willing to listen with an open mind? I'm not wasting anyone's time by explaining Eric's situation to someone who has already written him off." Cara challenges.
"He's my husband…"
"EX." Cara corrects. "Which means you have no right to know anything when it comes to him. Everything I share will be my own choice, and not required by some sort of law regarding next of kin. Your decision to dissolve your marriage also dissolved any rights you have to make decisions when it comes to his current condition."
"Who's making medical decisions on his behalf?" Tris asks angrily.
"I am." Cara replies in an equally angry voice. "Before he underwent this procedure, he learned of your legal moves and he filed his own paperwork to make me his power of attorney."
"We were told that no one outside of the medical team assembled for this knew of his procedure." Four interjects.
"That is true. Jack approved the power of attorney request rather quickly since he knew that Eric's current role in the government carried its own risks, and since he knew Eric's wife no longer wanted the role."
"I just told you why I made that choice!" Tris shouts and Cara just cuts her icy blue eyes at her.
Cara takes a deep breath, calming herself before continuing. She goes on to explain how she was initially brought into what she had thought was the inner trust by Jeanine when she was tasked with developing the prototype of the implant that was ultimately placed into Eric. She explains that she never truly bought into all of Jeanine's explanations about divergents, but she did her best to remain loyal to her faction. The first seed of doubt for Cara was when she learned her device had been implanted into Eric, who she believed Jeanine trusted almost as much, if not more than Max.
Jeanine could never give a satisfactory answer as to why she would need to implant Eric with such a device, and once Cara and Eric were back in regular contact it became apparent that his cooperation was being forced. Eric was able to easily convince the already wary Cara that Jeanine had been lying and leading by fear mongering during her entire tenure, and that her cause was about the love of power and control and not for the betterment of the people of Chicago.
Jeanine is a monster, the signs were always there, and it just took time for people like Eric, Peter and Cara to finally see it.
"Although my main concern is one hundred percent regarding Eric's well-being, right now the relationship troubles the two of you have, coupled with whatever is going on here between you two isn't important. If you've decided to cut yourself off from Eric to build trust between parties who wouldn't have otherwise worked with you, I'd like to hear more about it. We need all the help we can get to end this nonsense once and for all." Cara explains.
"While I personally may not agree with all of her decisions, she did manage to bring some pretty important people into the fold. We now have trust between Portland and the people here in Chicago that want to see Jeanine and Max pay for their crimes. We have the numbers to bring them down." Four explains.
"We have successfully bridged the gap with my father, and with the de-facto leadership in place within Dauntless. We have Jack on our side. We even have Johanna." Tris offers.
"Oh my goodness…" Cara whispers.
"Jeanine and Max have gone into hiding for a reason – to me it says she realizes she doesn't have the numbers on her side and she's in protection mode. Jeanine is brilliant, there's definitely a reason she's laying low again." Tris replies.
"I would agree with that, however she has plenty of loyal followers here who aren't going to give up on her cause without a fight. Are you certain your group has the necessary numbers?" Cara asks.
"We are sure." Four answers emphatically.
"Also, when looking at the bigger picture, the people who are here that have been fighting for Max and Jeanine will soon realize they were just a pawn. They went into hiding and left even their most trusted colleagues, like Eric, Peter and you here to deal with the fall out." Tris adds.
"What do you think the odds are that you and Peter can get the numbers here on your side?" Four asks.
"That's never going to happen without Eric." Cara replies with a shake of her head. "When he was first brought back here, there were people leery of him. However, he's played the role of the perfect soldier for Jeanine and Max, and he's earned the trust of the people who remain loyal to their cause. If we can't put him in front of a movement against them, it won't work. He's in no condition to lead."
"How serious is his condition?" Tris asks.
Cara makes no effort to hide her anger, "I find it ironic that the first time you seem truly interested in his recovery is when it benefits your own causes. For an Abnegation born, you are incredibly selfish!"
"You bitch…" Tris growls.
"Enough!" Four slams his hand on the table, getting the attention of both women. "This is getting ridiculous! Of course she is concerned for Eric…"
Cara turns to face Tris, "Then YOU say it! Stop hiding behind your new boyfriend!" She yells, "You're perfectly content to sit there and let Four fight all of your battles…."
"You don't know a fucking thing about me!" Tris argues back. "I loved him, deeply, and it cost me everything and everyone. He loved his FACTION more than he loved me. You can judge me all you want, and you can come up with whatever excuses you can think of, but you will never be able to disprove that fact. If your husband had done the things Eric has, would you be so ready to forgive?"
Cara stares at Tris, and for the first time her façade has dropped and she can see how truly broken the young woman is.
"I'm not sure that I could." Cara finally says. She offers Tris a tissue, which she gratefully accepts.
"No matter how much I still love him, I can't just forget the fact that he was willing to kill my entire family in his pursuit to defend his faction. He caused us to lose our baby. He may have even killed me, if his hand was forced. Faction before blood." Tris sobs.
The anger Cara felt at Tris is quickly dissipating and she can feel the unfamiliar sting of her own tears threatening to fall. As much as her heart is breaking for her best friend, she can admit that Tris is more than justified to be acting the way she is.