AN: My God, I took long to put this out. Hopefully it's a worthy continuation.
"You're not going to jump, are you?" Tris asks Eric, seeing his back as he stands on the ledge. He has a half-gone cigarette hanging from his plump, pink lips.
A smirk seems permanently etched on his face, even as she's seemingly caught him doing something shameful—like tempting the Chicago Winds to blow him from the roof. The roof where they first met.
He'd stared right through her at first, she remembers it just as clearly as she felt the fear from her first jump.
Her pin straight hair blows, whipping forward just as he finally looks up at her and snorts. "Are you following me now?" Eric asks, his voice is thick with cockiness and cigarette smoke.
"Those are bad for you," Tris says instead. She stands tall, daring to take long strides towards him. She's seen him twice more since their weird encounter in the gym. She saw him at dinner earlier that evening and in passing right before she and Chris reported back to the initiate dorm.
"So are a lot of things, Princess." Eric quips, taking a long pull from his cigarette, before he flicks ash off and over the ledge.
"Could you not call me that?," Tris asks nervously, brows furrowed. They got to pick their names their first day—she hates nicknames. And she hates that he doesn't seem to care about anyone's feelings but his own. If anything, he only likes to inflict pain and discomfort in her and the rest of the initiates. And she hates just how nervous she feels around him.
He stares at her, brows lifting, but still his smirk is unmoved. "I could write you up for that tone, initiate. Or dock points."
"Do it, then," Tris quips, without thinking. He leaves her feeling tongue tied and anxious—like a child being scolded. She's been in Dauntless long enough to know an empty threat when she hears one, but still.
He's been so caught up in whatever else he has to do as a leader, she's surprised he's out so late.
"You shouldn't even be up here," he barks, "and your presence is grating my nerves."
"I just needed some air," Tris defends herself. His upper lip curls in disdain, but at least he doesn't look so damn smug anymore. She keeps space between them as she sits on the ledge.
"And what—what are you going to tell Four if he checks to make sure you're all in bed?" He asks, taking another pull from his cigarette. He's turned his back to the ledge now, sitting some weight down comfortably. His free hand tucks to support the hand holding his cigarette. The tattoos on his forearms are just as aggressively dark as always—starkly colored and apparent. She does her best not to stare at him. Despite her girlish crush on Four—not that he needs to know about it—she's been curious about Eric since she'd seen him in the training rooms. Though, he seems more interested in the skyline than her.
"I—" she hesitates and he scoffs.
"Don't worry your head over it. He's not going to tell you anything. You're his favorite student," Eric shrugs.
She frowns at that. "I don't want special treatment."
"Then you should be factionless, shouldn't you?" He says, pierced brow quirked. "I never did get a thank you for not actually cutting you like I said." Eric chuckles at the flummoxed look on her face. He doesn't see what all Jeanine's fussing was about. She's spectacularly plain and was just barely passing the first stage of initiation. There's not much time from now and the final test. But the erudite disguised as a dauntless leader insists he keep a close eye on her progress. There are plenty of alternatives that he'd rather not reflect on anyways. "It's too late now, though." He adds quietly, meaning it in more ways than one. He crushes the butt of the cig in the gravelly rooftop rocks.
They sit in silence with basically the entire space of the rooftop between them. She reflects and realizes just how lucky she got that he accepted she wasn't going away. He simply accepted that she wasn't going to just lay back in the medical bay. But she supposes he could have made her life miserable if he wanted. But he couldn't break her. Perhaps he realizes that himself.
"Thank you," she says, "for not kicking me out… and for showing me proper fighting techniques."
"What?" He asks, looking at her. Then he realizes with a snort. "oh, right. It was physically paining me to watch you be so ill-prepared for a real fight." If he hadn't been up relaxing, nicotine running through his system, he probably wouldn't be pretending to be so decent. He has to keep some snark, though. She doesn't mind, apparently.
He can't figure her out. And she doesn't seem to know just how infuriating it is that he hasn't pegged all facets of her personality yet. Does she know that her progress absolutely annoys him? That he hasn't been able to break her spirit and not only that...Jeanine has tasked him with personally monitoring her. Soon he'll be grooming her for leadership—if the fates decide to really torture him. Despite her irritating persistence, he can see that she'll make for a tenacious soldier.
"I don't understand you," Tris sighs.
"And you never will, Prior."
He'd been so wrong to dismiss her. He'd been so wrong to think her so weak. And as he stands there, beside his damned lawyer, in a damned suit, his palms sweating and his throat dry, Tris leans forward, offering his hand a squeeze, without a care for the rules here.
"It's going to be okay," she whispers it, so lowly he almost misses it.
Byers folds her hands on her desk, glasses hanging from her mouth until she puts them back on. "Has the jury reached a verdict?"
"We have, Justice," a woman with red hair and frail disposition stands, hands shaking. She looks around the room, prepared.
"What say you all?"
"We find the defendant, Eric Coulter, not guilty."
And as the words leave her mouth, and Eric hears the deafening silence he could collapse right there. And when the whole room erupts with noise, he does. He grips the arms of his chair, before leaning forward to hold his face. His eyes were wet with tears when hands reach out, whether they're his lawyer's, Tris, or his mother he doesnt know. And he knows he should feel relieved; when he turns to accept their hugs, burying his nose in Tris's neck after kissing his mother's cheek, and squeezing his baby sister in his arms—Four is standing there in the back of the courtroom, arms folded. His eyes scream his anger and his flared nostrils show he's ready to charge. Instead of losing control, he stands. Four stares him down. He doesn't know what to make of it, but it's not good. He knows that—irrevocably, in the pit of his stomach—Eric can feel it.
And when Tris wraps herself in his embrace, all he can do is anchor himself to her in his relief. Through the fog of his boggled emotions, he doesn't register the look on her face or the tears he's wiping from beneath her eyes. When she kisses him—rising on her toes to do all the work—it takes him an embarrassing amount of time to kiss her back. But he does. And it's not perfect, but it draws him back, it pulls him in. She is the reason he's here. She's the reason he feels so free.
"Thank you," he says to the top of her head, once she pulls away in embarrassment. Elizabeth lifts Stephanie and cries in relief as they have a group hug, Joshua leaving them to convene with the opposition; undoubtedly reveling in the win Tris practically handed over.