AN: Finally, answers. Thank you for the reviews, and please keep the, coming! Enjoy.
She wouldn't let him run off like he wanted to.
He wants to pull away from her, Tris can feel him repeatedly try to drop her hand, but she won't let him. She needs him on her side, for more than just her dealings with Jeanine, and she needs to make him understand why.
He keeps asking her questions, and she keeps reminding him of the cameras that are privy to their conversation. She hates that she led him into that meeting blindly, but up until moments before the meeting she still wasn't sure that their sexual involvement was enough for him to trust him with her deepest secrets.
She grips his hand as hard as she can, she just needs to get him on the train and then she can talk through all of it. She holds his hand like her life depends on it, only dropping it when the train finally approaches. They easily make their jump onto the moving train and Eric immediately turns to her.
"What was all that in there?" He shouts.
"We will ride the train until I get it all out, I promise you." She says as she tugs the heavy door closed.
"Who is she to you Tris? How do you know her?" He asks.
"She's my birth mother." She replies.
He falls against the wall of the train, sliding down to the floor and she drops down beside him.
"You fucking played me." He accuses. "Oh my god, you fucking played me. She's been trying to get me on her Divergent shit for months now, and you fuck me into submission without me ever knowing it. You and Four are just in leadership to do her dirty work. Did he send you to seduce me, Tris? This is all part of your fucking game, isn't it?"
"No, I'm not playing you Eric, Tobias and I are playing her. Caleb is too. Eric, we are trying to bring her down."
"There's no way that three former Stiffs are going to dare take her on. Get the fuck out of here." He replies, "You fucking ambushed me today, and I want no parts of this." He moves towards the door and she wraps her arms around him.
"Please don't do this, please don't just run away from me, just hear me out, please, just listen to me and then decide." She begs as she grips into him.
Eric looks at the door then down at where her arms are wrapped around him. He could easily shrug her off, he could easily subdue her, or even worse he could snap her neck and toss her from the fucking train. It wouldn't be the first time he's killed, but it would be the first time when it wasn't in self-defense.
He cares about her though. That part with Jeanine was real.
"Fucking talk, Stiff."
She tells him everything.
She was the result of a relationship her father Andrew Prior had been carrying on with his childhood sweetheart Jeanine Matthews up until he left the Erudite faction to be with the Dauntless woman he'd also begun seeing behind Jeanine's back. He chose to go to Abnegation to follow Natalie Wright, and they were married immediately because she was pregnant. Unbeknownst to him, Jeanine also turned up pregnant, and their daughter Beatrice was born a mere seven weeks before Natalie gave birth to their son Caleb. Jeanine was incensed, she was focused on her career in Erudite and not interested in being a teenage mother. Andrew Prior had talked Jeanine into letting him raise their baby in Abnegation, and he had done so without ever telling Tris she was not the natural child of Natalie Prior.
She didn't question it at all until she was fifteen, when she realized she looked nothing like her twin brother. Caleb had brown hair, brown eyes like their mother Natalie, and he was barely as tall as she was. He was rail thin and scrawny, while Tris began to develop into her womanly body before she was even a teenager. Her ice blue eyes and blonde hair didn't match the darker hair and eyes of her entire family, the closest was her father's hazel eyes, and even then she realized she looked nothing like either of her parents.
She found her birth records hidden deep in a drawer in her father's home office. She and Caleb had been raised as twins, yet their birth records indicated they were born almost two months apart, and the mothers name on the birth record for Beatrice Grace Prior was listed as Jeanine Matthews. The same Jeanine Matthews that she had learned in school was currently the second in command of Erudite. When she questioned her parents they finally told her the truth. She was distraught and she finally found a way to get to Erudite to meet her birth mother.
Jeanine was impressed when she met the teenager she had given up at birth, and she immediately set out to learn more about her birth daughter. Besides getting her ice blue eyes, she also had her blonde hair, a curious mind and a reckless streak that made her desperate to leave everything about Abnegation behind.
Jeanine had found her perfect way to get in with Dauntless, sending her ambitious daughter there with a goal to make it into their leadership program, one way or another. She made sure that no matter what Beatrice's actual aptitude tests actually were, that she would receive a Dauntless result so she would be swayed to choose Dauntless instead of any other faction. Jeanine knew that Beatrice wanted out of Abnegation, and her teenaged daughter had hinted many times that she wanted to be in Erudite with Jeanine, however Jeanine insisted they keep their family ties a secret and pushed her to to where her aptitude test directed.
"The aptitude test is your guide, Beatrice. You must do exactly as it says." Jeanine reminded her.
A plan had been hatched and a younger and naive Tris didn't realize it at first.
"The more time we spent together, the more I realized she's not this intelligent and respectful leader, she's terrifying. She believes that Divergents are actual abominations, and she wants to exterminate them Eric. She wants to kill people just because she can't find a serum to keep them controlled." Tris explains.
"Why do you care about Divergents? Who's to say she's not right about them?" Eric challenges and Tris's icy blue eyes bore into his grey ones.
"You don't believe that. You just said yourself she's tried to get you on this Divergent shit for months and you've avoided it." Tris argues.
"What if she's right? What if she's the one I should really be siding with? What if you three Stiffs are just protecting Abnegation and the bullshit they pull as the main say in the government? What if that whole faction is just a bunch of Divergents trying to take over the city?" He asks sarcastically.
She begins pacing in the train car, "Because we're people. We're not monsters. Just because we don't fit into a perfect little box and can't be filed neatly away in our faction system doesn't mean we're freaks, Eric!"
"We?" He forces her to look at him, "Why the fuck are you saying we?"
"You hide it extremely well, but Divergence recognizes Divergence." She says just loud enough to be heard over the train noise.
"How do you know you can trust me, Tris?" He asks.
"Because you're a good person-" She begins.
"I'm not a good person, I just do my fucking job-"
"She came to you and tried to recruit you for her plans and you turned her down. You are a good person." Tris argues.
"You didn't turn her down." He challenges.
"I'm telling you that the only reason I'm working with her is to bring her down. Why would I jeopardize my career and even my life by bringing you there with me today?"
"What you told her about how you feel about me, is that part of the act?" He asks.
"No." She shakes her head.
"You insinuated to her that you have feelings for me." He replies.
"I do." She replies softly.
"Who are you lying to, Tris? The mother who you fought your way out of Abnegation to find, or the guy you're fucking in Dauntless to get on your side?" He says as he tightens the hands he has on her arms.
"This is more than sex Eric. You know it." She replies.
"You are fucking with my head, Tris. This entire time you've been fucking me to get me on your side. Do you think I don't see that?"
"I'd never do that, Eric. I was a virgin before you, I was raised in fucking Abnegation, what would I know about using sex for personal gain?" She asks.
"You have a birth mother who could have taught you." Eric bites back and he doesn't miss the hurt that flashes over her face.
"You have a decision to make. You can turn us all in, Jeanine, Caleb, Tobias and me, or you can trust me and what we have." She replies.
"What do we have, Tris?" He presses.
"This isn't just sex. You know it, Eric. You feel it too, and I'm telling you I feel the same. I've never wanted anyone like I want you, and it's not just our physical connection that I crave. It's you. I've never felt like this before. I'd throw everything away to be with you if I could, but you now see the layers of complications I've built with this plan with Jeanine that have prevented me from just having a normal relationship with you." She explains.
He doesn't answer, instead he kisses her. When he pulls away he begins speaking, "Tell me how Four fits in to this." He presses.
"You heard her, he's Marcus Eaton's son. She wants Tobias to talk Marcus into replacing all of the aptitude test machines and serums. That's the first step of her plan, to try and expose the Divergents at the start by disallowing for any type of manual overrides. For those of us who are smart enough to manipulate the test, the new aptitude test has a flag to return a Dauntless result, just like she did for me."
"You told me she doesn't know you're Divergent." He accuses.
"She doesn't. She just used an early version of that serum to force a Dauntless result to get me here. They've developed a more sensitive version to detect anomalies in the person being tested." She explains.
"That still doesn't explain why you're in a sexless relationship with Four, Tris. Make that make sense to me." He squeezes her arms and she looks up at him.
"You're hurting me." She says quietly and he drops his hands from her. "Tobias and Marcus do not have the type of relationship that will allow him to speak openly to his father, or attempt to negotiate for the things Jeanine wants. Marcus has previously insinuated to Jeanine that his deteriorating relationship with his son could be because he's... let's just say Marcus calls him immoral. As you're well aware, our former faction is very stifling and rigid with their beliefs, and Jeanine started to wonder if this immorality as Marcus insinuated was instead Divergence. I protected him by starting a relationship with him."
"I've known since our initiation that he's Divergent, so your relationship is to protect him from Jeanine? I'm not quite following this."
"That's part of it." Tris replies vaguely.
"If Jeanine is the only person you have to protect him from why are you two together in Dauntless? You tell her today that you're with me because you've fallen for me, yet you're still parading a fake ass relationship around our faction, why?"
"Marcus is part of it too-"
"Why? I don't understand why you have to be in this long term fake relationship to protect his Divergence from the man who raised him?" Eric asks in exasperation.
"The answer to that question isn't mine to share. Tris replies and she watches as the anger on Eric's face turns into realization.
"It's not his Divergence, it's because he's gay."
"Eric, it's not my place to discuss-"
"It all makes sense. I heard you two that day in the gym, when you said something about him not being able to be with who he wants to be. Then your brother during that earlier meeting, his reactions when Four would come up. Four and Caleb have a relationship, one that would have been extremely taboo in your former fucked up faction, or immoral as Marcus calls it, so you all left. You're covering his sexuality and his Divergence, one of which Jeanine cares about, both of which Marcus would lose his shit over." Eric replies as he pushes her hair out of her face.
"Marcus abused Tobias because of his sexuality. I can't have more people hurt him for something he has no control over...he loves who he loves..." She trails off.
"You're not betraying him Tris, I am putting it together myself." Eric replies. "I don't care that he's gay. That's his business and it has nothing to do with me. I just care how it impacts you."
"Marcus went to Jeanine about his own son, calling him an abomination because of his suspected sexuality, so he and I got together to protect him. If Max were to casually mention that there was no relationship between Four and me, it would get back to Marcus, and Marcus may be angry enough to up his pressure for Jeanine to do something about his 'immoral' son. Marcus has threatened to expose his Divergence before." Tris replies.
"Jesus Christ, Tris. I had no idea what you were fucking carrying."
"I've been with him for almost two years to convince the world that he's a straight, non-Divergent man. I've convinced my birth mother that there's nothing Divergent about him, and I've covered his relationship with my brother Caleb by pretending that he and I are in one ourselves. When I realized that she also suspected you of at least being a Divergent sympathizer because of your reactions when she'd try to get you on the team, I distracted her from that as well. She believes me when I tell her my version of these things because she trusts me implicitly. The minute I slip, the second she realizes she gave birth to a Divergent, and her Divergent daughter is protecting others like her, it's over. We're all over." She replies shakily, "That's it, Eric. I've trusted you with my secrets, now are you finally willing to trust me?"
He sighs, "I will do whatever you need."
"I'm asking you for a lot Eric, you said it yourself earlier. I don't want to put you in the middle of something you never wanted any part of."
"I had no idea she was approaching anyone else with her bullshit about Divergents. She has some wild ideas, but they get no traction because she doesn't have a lot of people on her side. However, knowing she's been recruiting more than just me, and that at minimum she has people in Erudite who are willing to entertain her insanity, I want to fight it. I want to be part of what brings her down, because she is dangerous to our city. I'm with you for this, not just as a boyfriend or whatever, I'm here because it's the right thing to do."
"Thank you. I can't properly express how much your support means to me." She says quietly and he leans down and kisses her.
"I don't know what this is, but I want more Tris. If you want me to believe that this is real, you need to leave him."
She wants Eric, but she's terrified of the prospect of a life without Four in some capacity. Their relationship may be for show, but their friendship runs deep, and there's never been a time where he hasn't been on her side.
"Eric…"
"You've done your part, he's protected, you can have a civil breakup Tris, stay friends and you're fine. You already mentioned that to Jeanine and she didn't even blink. You've covered him."
"What happens when I leave him? He's been my entire support system since I came to this faction. We've been there for each other, and what happens if I leave and this thing between you and me doesn't work out?" Tris replies nervously.
"This thing, as you call it, is something real to me." Eric replies angrily and she presses her lips to him briefly in an effort to avoid a fight.
"I need to talk to him first, can I at least have that?" She asks and he nods, "It will help if you talk to him too. If he understands that you are truly on our side it'll make the relationship between all of us stronger."
"If I do that, know I am only doing so for you. I don't fucking care if he and I have a relationship, I just want you."
"To have me, you have to have him in your life as well. He's important to me, Eric. I need him, and I need you to care about his wellbeing much like you do mine. I know the two of you have had a terrible relationship, but I need you to understand that the things he's been carrying have been heavy too. If you and I do this, we still need to all work together to bring her down."
"For you, I'll try." Eric agrees.
"Thank you." She kisses him softly.
They're interrupted by her phone ringing, and she sighs heavily when she looks at it, "It's him."
"You don't answer to him, Tris. You're allowed to be your own person, and do what you need to do to make yourself happy."
"I've never been able to make my own choices. You're even telling me that I have to leave him and be with you. How is that any different?" She asks and he watches a tear slip out of her eye and trail down her cheek. He wipes it away with his hand and takes the phone from her hand and silences it.
"You're going to lump me in with everyone else, Tris?" He asks softly and she cries harder, "I'm not them. I care about you and I sure as hell don't want to watch you fake a relationship with someone else while you're fucking me. Ultimately, you make the decisions, Tris. You decide what will make you happy, even if it's not me." He replies as he wipes her tears away.
"I'll tell him about us, but right now we have to focus on bringing Jeanine down. Once that happens, I can focus on everything else." She says, "Is that okay?"
"You make the decisions, not me." He replies.