A/N: And we're back! Thank you all so much for your patience, encouragement, messages, and for keeping me in your thoughts! Things have cleared up over on my end and I'm free to continue on with the story :) I hope you're all still here lol Please enjoy this chapter! Looking forward to your reviews :)


Chapter 12

TOBIAS

He just stands there about three feet tall in a pair of blue and white pyjamas, holding on tight to a tiny, stuffed dinosaur.

"Daddy?" he says again, looking right at me, and I forget how to breathe.

I had seen his resemblance to me in the pictures, but standing face to face with him, looking right into those dark blue eyes, there's no doubt the child is not just Tris'… he's mine.

I have a son.

In shock, my knees fold, and I land gracelessly on the wooden floor.

He makes a few quick steps to me, and he smiles as he examines my face. "You came home," he says. "I knew you'd come home."

When he fearlessly wraps his tiny arms around my neck, I almost collapse. The sweet scent of fresh powder on him and the feel of his tiny body leaning against my chest provoke a tidal wave of emotion inside me, and I barely set my hands on his back, afraid I might squeeze him too hard.

"What's your name?" I whisper when he finally lets me go.

"Andy. Andrew Tobias Eaton," he says proudly, standing up a little straighter when he corrects himself.

Tris gave him my name.

"And this is Dino." He gestures at the brown dinosaur in his hand. And then, holding up four fingers in the air, he says, "I'm four, just like you, Daddy. Well, I'm actually four and a half." He pouts pensively.

For a moment I'm confused, but then I remember that's what the others call me- Four.

"And what are you doing up, Andy?" I say his name and as it rolls off my tongue, my heart swells until it feels as though it will burst.

The feeling in my chest is indescribable and I fail to comprehend it; how could this little boy feel so much like mine, how could he take up so much space inside my heart when I've only just met him? I feel like I could explode right where I kneel.

"I'm hungry," he answers softly.

Somewhere between a smile and a sob, I manage to say, "I get hungry in the night, too."

"You do?" his eyes open wide and a bit of his dark hair falls over them.

"Yeah," I nod. "But… you shouldn't be making snacks by yourself."

"I know that, Daddy," he shakes his head and giggles. "Grandma's coming to make me a sandwich."

Oh shit.

"Andy, who are you talking to?" rings the tired voice of an elderly woman who I can now hear walking down the stairs; the boards creak under her feet.

"Daddy," Andy answers gleefully, as if it weren't the strangest thing in the world that he was talking to his dead father.

"Oh shit," this time I say the words out loud. I stand to my feet and take a few steps backward, but Andy follows me and takes my hand, as if asking me to stay. But I can't stay. I'm not supposed to be here.

I'm about to let go of his hand and make a break for the back door, but Andy looks up at me pleadingly, and I don't have the strength to tear myself away from him.

"What do you mean da-" The old woman freezes when she comes around the stairs and sees me standing there.

And then she screams.

"Wait," I beg, trying to quiet her before she wakes all of Abnegation. "I don't want to hurt you." I raise one hand in the air and Andy holds onto the other quite tightly.

"Beatrice!" the woman shrieks, grabbing onto her large grey coat before picking up a glass vase from the bookstand beside the stairs. I think she'd throw it at me if Andy weren't standing right beside me. "Beatrice!"

"Andy, go to your grandmother," I say lowly, and I gently nudge him in her direction. She's the same Abnegation woman from the picture, undoubtedly Tris' mother.

"No," he frowns.

When a frantic pair of footsteps come running down the stairs, I take a few more steps backward and I head closer to the door. I don't expect the Abnegation to have guns, but that doesn't mean I want to push my luck. "It's okay. I'll leave," I say out loud, one hand in the air.

I'm startled when a familiar voice says, "Mom! Stay back!"

"Tris?" I gasp. I don't run. I just stand there, still holding Andy's hand.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?!" Tris yells at me, wearing a white T-shirt and shorts; and unlike her mother, she advances fearlessly. "Get away from him!"

I let go of Andy, and it agonizes me to my core when he looks up at me in horror.

His stuffed dinosaur falls from his hand when Tris takes him up in her arms, moving him away from me, and she puts him down at the bottom of the stairs next to her mother who is still shaking and holding the vase in her hand.

"Tobias?" the old woman finally says with recognition blooming in her eyes. Her shoulders relax and Tris takes the vase from her mother before she can drop it.

"Mom, take him upstairs," Tris commands her mother, her eyes never leaving mine, and my eyes never leaving Andy's.

"But I want to stay with daddy," Andy pleads, and I feel something break inside me.

"Come on, Andy," his grandmother urges, pulling on his hand. He sulks, but he follows her up the stairs.

Tris stares at me long and hard; even in the darkness I can see the shock in her eyes. Only when she hears the sound of a door closing upstairs does she say, "You remember?"

"No," I answer tersely.

Her shoulders fall. "So how did you get out of the bunker? And how did you find this house?"

But I don't want to answer any of her questions. I feel angry and deceived; is there no one alive on this Earth who hasn't been keeping things from me?

"When were you going to tell me I have a son?" I seethe, my jaw clenched tight.

"When you were ready," Tris answers softly. She doesn't even deny it.

"And who would be the one to determine when I was ready? You?!"

"Yes," she answers boldly this time, and she takes three hard steps toward me. "Because I am his mother, and I can't just let you into his life."

"Why the hell not?!"

"Why should I?!" We stand face to face. "Only a few hours ago you were refusing to listen to anything I was saying to you! And you said it yourself- you are not the person I remember, and you don't get to decide when you will and won't be the man who was his father!"

"It doesn't change the fact that I am his father," I growl.

"I don't care," Tris answers fearlessly. "I will protect my child from anything and anyone that could hurt him, and that includes you."

She's standing so close to me that I could grab her if I wanted to; if she were one of my mother's soldiers I probably would have. But as angry as I am, my hands are pinned to my sides as if they've been trained to stay there.

"You won't even let me talk to him?" I shake my head at her. How could she keep him from me?

"So that you can say what exactly?"

Before I can think of an answer, there's a frantic knock at the front door and both our eyes divert toward it. More than likely one of the neighbours heard the commotion and decided to come make sure everything was okay.

"Shit," Tris huffs at the same time I say, "We need to hide." She isn't supposed to be here either.

Having heard the knock, Tris' mother comes downstairs and signals for the both of us to go up. We climb the stairs carefully enough that our footsteps won't be heard from outside, and we hide inside the first bedroom on the right. Tris keeps the door cracked enough so that we can both look through it; from here, we have a perfect view of the front door and if her mother doesn't put the lights on, whoever's there won't see us looking.

Tris' mother looks up the stairs one more time before opening the front door. When she does, there's a man standing outside, the same man whose house I just visited. The same man who said he was my father.

"Marcus?" Tris whispers, and she shoots me a curious glance.

The man looks frantic, and I can barely hear what they're saying but I do notice when he grabs his hair and tells Tris' mother that he thinks he might be losing his mind. She invites him inside but he refuses, looking behind him every five seconds as if he were afraid someone was following him.

"But he was here!" I hear him say. His voice is guttural.

"Marcus… Tobias is dead."

I can't look at him anymore so I close my eyes. All this time I thought my father was dead, when I'm the one who's been dead all along. At the thought of it, my breathing accelerates and it becomes so loud I can hear it over everything else. It only begins to quiet when I feel a warm hand enveloping my own. I open my eyes to find Tris staring at me worriedly, with my hand in hers. How is it that she calms me so?

"Is he really my father?" I whisper to Tris, and I look at the man again.

"Yes… to a certain extent," she says the last part with disdain.

It leads me to ask, "Is he any better than my mother?"

"No," she whispers back. She doesn't elaborate.

"So I take it I don't like him very much."

"To put it lightly," Tris says. "You left him and never looked back. It's the first time I've seen him in ten years. He wasn't even at your memorial service."

"Faction before blood?" I pathetically make excuses for the man as if I know him.

"My mother went," Tris says with a slight shrug. She eyes me carefully. "Even my estranged brother sent a letter extending his sympathies."

I nod, understanding I must have been dealt a very shitty childhood. "So when it came to parents, I hit the jackpot."

Tris doesn't answer. Instead she turns her attention back to her mother and my father.

"I know," he says defiantly. "But… I saw him, Natalie. He was older but it was definitely him. And he said Evelyn's alive!"

Tris' mother is polite when she says, "Maybe it was a dream." She shakes her head. "You should rest, Marcus. It's very late."

He seems determined to prove his point, I can see it in his face, but eventually he gives in and says goodnight. I don't know what he's done to drive a wedge between us, but if Tris' mother feels it's better for my father to think I'm dead, then I have to trust that that's the wiser thing.

After he leaves, Tris' mother makes sure he's a ways off before she closes the door and signals for us to come down the stairs. "He's gone," she says quietly, with a hand over her chest. She takes Tris' face in between her palms. "Beatrice, I am so sorry."

Tris must be short for Beatrice.

"Why are you apologizing? None of this is your fault, Mom," Tris says gently, and she fixes her mother's coat. "You need to rest. Let me take you upstairs." Taking her mother by the hand, she says to me, "I'll be right back."

I nod.

Tris' mother seems like a sweet woman. It makes sense that I would run to this house when I ran away from my own for whatever reason. I only now notice that the Abnegation man in the pictures, presumably Tris' father, is not here.

I sit in the dark for a while, looking around me, wondering just how many memories did I make in this house. I knew where the key was for the backdoor, which can only mean Tris used to leave it out for me. All of this explains why I feel bonded to her, the reason I've been dreaming about her, the reason I can't look at her and deny that she's important to me; we have years of memories between us, years of love.

When I look over by the back door, I see Andy's stuffed dinosaur on the floor where he dropped it. Tris is still upstairs, so I walk over to where Dino is and I pick him up. It's a small thing, soft, and truthfully there's a part of me that wants to hold onto it. If Tris won't let me see Andy, then at least she could let me have this. But by the way he was holding onto the thing something tells me he's missing it right now. I doubt he's asleep. I just met my dead father too, and I can't stop thinking about it.

I suddenly feel guilty. Maybe I had no right being upset with Tris for not telling me about Andy. None of this is her fault, or his, and he is probably just as confused as I am right now, which is much more confused than a four year old boy should ever have to be.

Wanting to see him at least one more time, and willing to beg Tris if I have to, I take the stuffed dinosaur upstairs. I hear her talking in the room at the very end of the hallway, and then I hear Andy's voice.

"But why were you yelling at daddy?"

"I was just scared," Tris answers him softly. "I didn't expect him to come here."

"But I told you daddy would come home," Andy says with such certainty, a certainty he shouldn't have had because as far as the world was concerned, I was dead. I was dead and my son was at home waiting for me to come back.

"Yes, you did," Tris' says, sounding just as heartbroken as I feel.

"Can we show him all the pictures we took? So he doesn't miss anything?"

But I've already missed so much- his birth, his first steps, the first four and a half years of his life. I hear Tris' words echo in my head, 'When you find out just how much she's stolen from you, you'll want to kill her yourself. And that's a promise.'

I'm filled with so much rage that I drop the stuffed animal on the floor and I run down the stairs, not caring to be quiet. Tris' pain, Andy's pain, my pain, it all lands on my shoulders and I struggle to stay upright. Maybe I wouldn't want to kill my own mother, but I can tell that the man inside me, the one who knows everything I've forgotten, wants to tear her to pieces.

I was rabid with misplaced anger before, but not anymore. I know exactly who is to blame for this.

Without a word, I leave Abnegation, and this time, I do head north.


"Evelyn!"

I roar her name at the top of my lungs, and I barge into her hideout like an animal. With my hands bloody from pounding at the train wall and my face sweaty from racing to find her, I push through all of her guards as if they were curtains in my way. Most of them are too shocked to react anyway.

With no one brave enough to stop me, I storm inside my mother's bedroom, demanding an audience. I find her wide awake, wrapped in a long, dark blue, satin night robe, sitting in front of a small fireplace.

The hideout is much smaller than our headquarters, but her room is just as extravagant. If she'll be on the run she'll at least be comfortable. I look around the room in disgust and I spot three guards inside, one of them being Tony. He doesn't look at me. My guess is he's hoping I won't notice him.

"Tobias! You're okay!" my mother says and she has the audacity to run to me and embrace me. "Thank God," she whimpers into my neck. "Where were they keeping you? How did you escape? I was afraid they would harm you."

Slowly, I pry her hands from around my neck and I push her an arm's length away from me.

"Why would they?" I growl at her.

She takes a small step back and studies my face. She rubs her hands against her robe. "Is- Is something wrong? I don't understand."

There are so many things wrong that truthfully I don't even know where to begin.

"You told me he was dead," I say flatly, choosing to start there, with Marcus, although it's what I'm least upset about.

"Who?"

"My father."

My mother's eyes square in on mine, and instead of surprised she just looks angry. "What did they tell you? Tobias, you don't seriously believe-"

"-I saw him," I interrupt her. "I spoke to him."

"You… you spoke to your father?" she asks slowly. "Tobias, you have to stay away from him. He is dangerous!"

"As dangerous as Tris?!" I blurt out, my body now stiff.

This time she is surprised, afraid almost. She looks exactly like someone whose worst secret has been exposed, like someone standing naked in front of a crowd.

"Outside," she points to the door. "All of you!" she commands her men and the three of them scurry through the door. Tony is the only one who bothers to look at us both before walking outside, fearfully at that, and with good reason; he pretended to be my childhood friend when in fact I had no childhood here.

After I'm done interrogating my mother, he is next.

When Tony closes the door leaving me and my mother alone in the room, I pull the picture from my back pocket and I slam it hard on her large nightstand. "Don't bother lying to me!" I demand.

She picks up the photograph and her face sinks deeper the longer she looks at it. She doesn't claim the photo is fake or altered. She doesn't pretend to not know what she's looking at. She doesn't deny anything at all.

"So you did know," is all I can say.

"About you and Tris?" she mumbles. "Yes, I did."

"And you tried to have her killed?!" I shout, remembering her going to great lengths to try and get Tris executed. If I hadn't seen her that night, she would have been. "What the fuck is wrong with you?!" I slam my hand so hard against the nightstand it burns, and her small bedside lamp comes crashing to the ground.

"Tobias. I-" my mother stammers. "Tony told me you were still dreaming about her. I feared you would recognize her. I feared exactly this!"

She cries as if her words don't incriminate her, as if there was nothing wrong with making me live under the presumption that I belonged here with her. At least she confirms what I had suspected about Tony; he was spying on me for her.

"You mean you were afraid that I would find out you stole me from my family!" I growl. "So you made up an entire Erudite experiment and told me Tris could make me believe anything just so I would dismiss every word that came out of her mouth?! Are you really that sick?!"

"I am your family, Tobias! I am your mother!" she screams at me, and she takes a large step closer to me.

"Are you really?" I ask, my voice raspy. "Did we have any kind of relationship at all before this? Whatever this is?" I fling my arms between us. When she doesn't answer, I yell, "Tell me!"

"No," she answers after a while, with tears in her eyes. "You wanted nothing to do with me after I left you with your father."

I swallow hard. "So if you left me with him, and I went to Dauntless, how did I end up factionless?" My tone is soft but threatening, and my face is stern, demanding the truth from her.

She looks me in my eyes and then she looks away, most likely out of shame or anger, but I couldn't possibly care less how she feels. If she's looking for me to pity her, she'd better start looking elsewhere.

"Either you tell me the truth, or I make you tell me," I threaten her.

"Fine," she swallows and she goes to sit at the edge of her bed.

I remain planted where I stand.

"About five years ago a team of Dauntless soldiers came to investigate us," she begins. "Through their security cameras they had noticed increased activity in a presumably unpopulated area, and with some digging they stumbled upon our main headquarters. They started asking questions about what we were doing in such a large group, and… I saw you with them so I approached you." She pauses and shakes her head. "I told you I would tell you everything I knew if you would just sit down and talk to me. I had sent you so many letters, Tobias, so many messages," she cries, "But I never heard from you, not once. And I believed it was fate that made you find us that day."

I look questioningly at my mother. "Fate?"

"Yes," she answers strongly. "Because you sent your team ahead so you could stay and talk to me. And I was so glad, because I couldn't allow their newfound information to reach Dauntless."

My mouth opens when I understand what she's saying to me. "You… killed them?"

"We sabotaged the train," she says, as if it's any different. "It was the very beginning of our resistance, Tobias. We were at a very fragile place with minimal order and almost no resources at our disposal."

"You keep talking as if your actions are justified!" I yell at her. "You kept me here, knowing damn well I wanted nothing to do with you, so that I could help you establish order and fuel your resistance?!"

"I kept you here because you are my son and I wanted you with me!" She stands from the bed and clenches her fists at her side. "Tob-"

"Why can't I remember?" I growl at her, cutting her off. I approach her now, slowly, venomously. "What did you do to me?"

"Memory serum," she whispers.

I pinch my eyebrows together. "What?"

"Memory serum," she says a little louder. "I had a vial in my possession. It was a gift from someone who sympathized with me and all I had been through with your father. It was intended for me to use, but I decided I'd overcome the hurt some other way, and I saved it."

"And you used it on me?!" I point at myself.

"It was the only way you would stay," she whimpers.

I'm too horrified to speak. Too horrified to move. I stare at her, wondering what on Earth is actually wrong with her. "I want them back," I say tersely. "My memories. Give them back to me." My voice shakes and I'm sure that's because my entire body is shaking.

A tear rolls down her cheeks when she looks at me and says, "I can't."

I step closer and my hands clench into fists on their own. "What do you mean, you can't?"

"It can't be done," she sniffles. "Once taken, the effects of the serum are irreversible."

"You knew this and you still gave it to me? You willfully stole my entire life away from me?" I ask the question so calmly that I surprise even myself, because boiling inside me is the desire to set this room on fire with her locked inside.

"I gave you your life, Tobias!" she bellows. "I opened your eyes because you refused to see!"

"Refused to see what?!"

"That my people matter! Even when you saved the city from Erudite's plan to destroy it, you never accounted for the factionless. No changes were made for us the way they were made for Divergents. We weren't granted safety and equality, and that was something you had the power to influence." She points an accusatory finger at me.

"So it's my fault?! Is that what you're saying?!"

"No!"

"And what do you mean I saved the city from Erudite?" I suddenly remember what Tris had said to me on the train, after I helped her escape my mother's verdict. She said the Erudite threat was long gone, something of the past, a problem I had already taken care of. And my mother just spoke of it in the past tense instead of the current and very real threat that she never failed to paint out for me.

"You were lying to me this whole time weren't you? About everything," I painfully deduce. "The Dauntless were never in bed with the Erudite." When she doesn't answer I laugh and say, "You invented… an entire conspiracy… to make me help you?!"

"It's called foresight, Tobias," she says with a growl. "They've done it once they will do it again."

"No. That is called lunacy!" I cry out. "And exactly what was I helping you do? What are really your intentions for this army?"

She steps so close to me that I can feel her breathing, I can see her twisted logic making sense in her mind. "This army will be the new warriors and protectors of this city, and we will remain incorrupt," she answers levelly and she stands firmly in front of me. "We will take our place because we have earned it. We will have a roof over our heads and food in our stomachs." Not that she is lacking in either of those things.

"You plan to overthrow Dauntless?" I raise an eyebrow at her. "How is that any different from the corruption you say you're trying to prevent?" I scoff. "You're already corrupt."

I've heard enough. Even without my memories, it's become clear to me that my mother is not someone I want to be around. And given that she has no idea how to undo what she's done, and I have no idea how to make her pay for it, I have no reason to torment myself further with her presence.

"You're leaving?"

She runs after me when I start to move toward the door.

"Tobias!" she yells, grabbing onto my arm. "There are things that you do not understand!"

"Why do you always say that to me?! What's there to understand?!" I rip her hands off me. "The only thing I need to understand is that you left your son… and then you tore me away from mine, and I don't know if I'll ever get him back." My voice breaks and I feel crippled all of a sudden.

"What?" she asks quietly and her hands fall to her side.

I turn to face her completely. "Did you know I have a son?"

She shakes her head as if I'm talking nonsense. "You… No. No."

"Well, I do. He's four and a half years old," I say serenely, with an image in my head of my baby boy holding up four fingers in the air. "His name is Andy," I choke out, and this time I can't stop the tears that have been fighting to set themselves free ever since the moment I let it sink in that I don't really know who I am.

"Tobias, I am so sorry. I swear I didn't know," my mother says so quietly that I almost don't hear her.

But I don't want her apology. It means less than nothing to me. I doubt it would have changed anything even if she had known.

I turn around and keep walking even when she continues to cry out my name.

When I push open the door, the three guards are outside, and I look at the one who pretended to be my friend for five years; I look him in the eye and all I see is deceit. Tony approaches me, but before he can say anything, I allow the angry son of a bitch boiling inside me to take over. In one quick move, I pull the knife out of my back pocket and I drive it so hard into the side of his neck that it pierces his skin like butter.

I stare into his wide eyes as he grabs onto his throat and begins to gag; a river of blood pours down his fingers. When I realize I have no words for him, no words at all, I turn around to leave.

The other guards don't bother coming after me. I trained them. They know I will kill them both. And there's a fleeting but very present feeling of minor satisfaction inside me when I hear Tony's body crash into the ground, dead.