Eric had started to spend a lot of his free time in The Pit. He liked to think it was for the sake of socialization, but he had very few friends. There was always someone wanting to hang onto him to raise their position inside Dauntless, though. It was not hard that night to find an unsuspecting group of last years initiate class. He could tell they were still semi terrified of his presence there. The idea brought a smirk to his lips as he sipped his beer. There was something about being feared that brought Eric Coulter pleasure. He loved the feeling of being a fearsome leader more so than the actual leadership aspect of his job. His smirk turned to a frown as he thought of his job and just why he was there in the first place. Max would not have thought twice about putting him into a place of power if it had not been for Jeanine. He chugged his beer to forget. He could almost relax for a moment but that was before his eyes met hers.
Lucinda Noble was a mystery to the stoic man. He stood still as their eyes continued to meet across the way. With a quirk of his brow he had her looking away. She shared a few words with the dark haired girl clinging to her side before disappearing from the open atrium room. Eric frowned once more and followed her. Hooking a left down the dimly lit hall led him straight to the cafeteria. He rolled his eyes. How typical of her to return to work when it was midnight.
"Are you following me?" She stated abruptly from the shadows of the room. She leaned forward into the light slightly to reveal her crossed arms, narrowed eyes, and tapping toe. Eric barked a laugh, "Why would I desire to follow you around, Lux?"
"You tell me." She muttered almost to herself. She pushed off from the wall with a booted foot and started towards him. Lux's arms were still tightly crossed over her chest. He spared a glance there briefly. Lux was more than blessed in the upper proportions of her slim figure. Eric had never given her a second glance before now, but he was surprised by how trim she was. Lean muscles corded her arms, her hip bones protruded slightly over the tight band of her skinny jeans, and the cropped tank she wore was almost nonexistent. The tiny slip of fabric revealed the expanse of her toned stomach and the peaking of a tattoo decorating her delicate rib cage. He was impressed momentarily for the rib cage was the worst spot for a tattoo no matter the size. Eric had no idea she even had a tattoo.
"Can you stop staring at my tits? It's disturbing." She snapped in irritation which in turn made him grunt, "I was studying your ink, smart one."
"Oh." Lux sighed. Her hand came up to graze over the tender skin there. The tattoo under her fingertips was new. She had finally gotten the courage to visit Tori at the tattoo parlor last weekend. The word there meant a lot to Lux. In her mother's flowing script the black ink spelled out, Remember.
"Remember what?" Eric asked curtly. He sounded, for once in his life, genuinely interested in the ink on her skin. Lux blinked in surprise and looked down at her own skin. She bit at her chapped lower lip wondering if she wanted to share her mother's words with Eric Coulter of all people. He knew who her mother was. Correction: had been. Lux's parents had been gone for longer than she had been in Dauntless.
"My mother always wrote it inside my birthday cards every year. She wanted me to always remember who I was. Who I am." Lux was saddened at the thought of her deceased parents but refused to let it show. She would not allow him to see her weak or broken. Lux refused to let that ever happen.
"It's been awhile, hasn't it?" Eric spoke softly surprising both himself and the petite brunette before him. He did not often take it upon himself to ask personal questions or even care about the answer. For some reason he was intrigued by the discussion.
Normally Lux would have left by now but she stayed glued in place staring Eric down. She nodded to her office door beside her and opened the thick steel plated entrance door with a silver key. Eric followed after her in silence and took a seat atop her used and abused desk which had seen better days. He almost didn't trust the old piece of furniture to support his body weight but remained glued there nonetheless. Lux took to her plush office chair and kicked off her leather boots. It felt good to have her bare feet out and breathing even if Eric looked disgusted by her bare toes spreading in the breeze.
"Did you follow me so we could have a pity party over my parents?" She finally spoke with a deep frown taking over her usual smiling face. She was tired, and Eric could see the lines of exhaustion and stress marring otherwise pristinely white skin. Lux had moved to position herself with an elbow braced on the desk. Her head rested on one dainty wrist.
"You look like shit." He spoke instead of answering her question making her scoff in disbelief.
"I'll remind you of how shitty you look, too, once you're awake for twenty hours of the day taking care of sniveling eighteen year olds who just left their mommy behind in another faction. Do you even remember what it was like for us? I never cried, but fuck, that one boy did the entire two weeks."
"Holden Grant." He pointed out. He remembered his name vividly in his mind because he had kicked the slender Abnegation boy's ass repeatedly the entirety of initiation.
It was not his fault that Nero kept pairing him with the stiff. Eric had not particularly enjoyed beating the ever loving shit out of him, but the kid deserved it. His sniveling kept everybody up at night in the dorms until finally one night Eric threatened to smother him in his sleep if he could not shut up.
It was almost smooth sailing from that point forward. The stiff had not made it into Dauntless. This was before Max changed the rules regarding initiation, too. Holden had given up and left on his own accord to be factionless. Eric shivered at the thought. Who would chose to live on the streets instead of just trying? All it would have taken is the stiff to suck it up and deal. He could have succeeded but he did not have the heart to punch someone back, or shoot a gun, or even drink a beer. Holden should have stayed in Abnegation where he belonged.
"I didn't think you would remember his name." Lux stated. It was her turn to quirk a brow in Eric's direction. She watched the man before her shrug nonchalantly, "It's hard to forget someone that annoying. Kind of like you and Four."
"Four is a good guy."
Eric scoffed and rolled his grey eyes towards the high ceiling, "Four is a chump and a half. Don't tell me you like that loser."
"What if I did? I'm allowed to like whomever I wish. Plus, Four is sweet under the hard exoskeleton he surrounds himself with. Unlike someone I know who is just a complete and utter asshole for no reason whatsoever."
"You better not be talking about me, Noble. Remember who is a leader here these days. I would hate for you to take up guard duty at the wall instead of baking cookies all damn day long."
"Newsflash, Eric, but I do way more than bake cookies all day. I run a restaurant for the most part. I feed hundreds of people every single day several times a day. If you want to trade jobs for a week be my guest."
"You wouldn't be able to handle my job." He laughed bitterly at her suggestion as if it were the funniest joke he had heard. It was almost truly a joke to him. His job was a nightmare at times. Running a kitchen could not be that difficult. She was exaggerating the hardship.
"How about this," she started with eyes alit with fury, "you can help me in the kitchen for a week so you can see just how difficult it is. Then when the new initiates start I will help you with training. We'll see who had the harder job afterwards. Just so you know it will be me."
He furrowed his brow, "Why the hell would I take time from my already busy day to help you? What do I get out of this?"
"Max said he would send in extra help for me. Maybe it will show initiative in his eyes. I mean, I know you're busting your balls trying to get his job."
"So is every other fucking leader out there! You don't see any of them helping you out for the sole satisfaction of you proving your job is hard. You wanna know what's hard? Pulling the trigger on a living human being and watching them die. You couldn't handle one minute as a guard or outside this complex. My job isn't just taking care of sniveling teenagers. I deal with real problems and without me this faction would be shit. Don't ridicule me about my dedication to Dauntless. I live and breathe this faction. Do you?"
Without another word Eric rose from his perch on her desk and stormed from the office. He ran a hand over the shaven side of his head and smoothed back the longer top. Lux had this unique ability to push his buttons. Nobody in Dauntless could make Eric break like she could, and he hated it. He really enjoyed messing with the former Erudite for various reasons, but she was just so infuriating at times.
"What a fucking snob. Who does she think she is?" He sneered as he stalked towards the long hallway of apartments in which leaders called home. The doors were plain black but numbered kind of like the old hotels they scouted on occasion booting out the lingering factionless making homes there amongst the debris. Eric stopped in front of number fifteen which was his apartment. He unlocked the door and swung it open into his living space.
It was small, but perfect for just himself alone. A sleek charcoal couch hugged one wall with a coffee table placed before it. He rarely used the coffee table for anything other than resting his boots upon, but he stacked books there on occasion to make the room look more homey. He was not home very often truly to read the books waiting there. He thumbed through the weathered shelf of titles: Tom Sawyer, Call of the Wild, Pride and Prejudice. Eric was a collector of old books and he enjoyed finding new ones in their long treks throughout the city. He had read them all slowly over time. Most novels in the case were dog eared and worn, obviously loved by tender hands. The spines were cracked and abused. Eric ran his finger over them one at a time with a sigh. He just didn't have the time any longer to sit down to read.
Beside the shelf was his own desk in which he did all of his filing, paperwork, and computer correspondence. Currently the space was messy with papers much like Lux's had been. Eric paused to neatly stack the papers and Manila folders so they did not appear so haphazard atop the wooden surface. He ran a hand over his face and glanced at the digital clock reading the time: 1:24 am. He needed sleep, but he needed to finish the paperwork for Jeanine more so. After a hour of nonstop typing he had converted the files needed to pass along to Jeanine herself. He saved them and sent out an email marking the message as Attention Jeanine: Divergence. He hated these emails. They made him feel a wrench of guilt straight through his gut. It was like someone was sucker punching him over and over again right in the stomach. Eric shook out his head and sighed powering down the desktop computer. His head was pounding, and his eyes were blurry as he settled down for bed amongst clean sheets and soft pillows. Sleep found him easily, but he dreaded waking in the morning. It was the first day of aptitude testing before the choosing ceremony commenced. He always dreaded that one day of the year because he knew deep down he was killing kids. Innocent children were dying all because of their traits marking themselves as different from the rest. The thoughts almost kept him awake some nights. Some nights he woke up soaked in sweat saying her name: Jeanine.