A/N: Not much to say other than THANK YOU everyone who has made this fic so popular. I can't believe how many favourites and follows and reviews this has gotten. And to everyone who reviewed the last chapter and embraced my desire for realism... I don't know... 'thank you' doesn't seem like enough, but it's all I've got. Now that we've entered the last half of this there's two things to keep in mind: 1.) 'intimacy' doesn't have to mean 'sex', and 2.) there a difference between 'sex' and 'good sex' . But I will also start wrapped up loose ends from previous chapters, so though it will be more lemony it won't be all lemons, all the time. As always I appreciate every. single. review. so keep them coming :)

There's a part of me that isn't comfortable with this, with being bare when I should be clothed. And every time I feel the drip of Tobias' release and my blood pooling cool and sticky at the top of my thighs that part of me screams to be covered, to be hidden. But he hasn't stopped touching me the entire time we've laid here, and - like it did in the training room - it feels like his hands are relearning the already familiar landscape of my body.

When I can ignore that voice it does feel good. The cotton of the sheets feels softer than I imagined; cold and silken in contrast the warmth of his body under and around me because he's still naked too. I hear his heartbeat, the rumble of his voice through his chest where I rest against it as he talks.

His trip to Erudite didn't yield any information about what might be outside the fence or anything we didn't already know about Divergents. It did, however, explain the mystery of the computer virus he found infecting Dauntless.

"It's a kill switch. One simple command from Erudite and it would have cut off whatever faction they targeted. Destroyed every computer it infected."

"Yeah, but wouldn't they use paper records for important stuff like Dauntless does? How much damage could it really do?" I murmur, contenting myself with tracing the patch of flames that burn up his side.

"You're thinking too small. Computers regulate everything; how much water and power flow to each faction, for example. Even as self-sufficient as Amity is computers control the water purification system. And what better way to get people to bend to your will than by withholding what they need to survive?"

"Serums with transmitters," I point out.

"Those were recent developments," he says as his fingers ghost over the blue dye that will forever stain my skin. "The virus was Jeanine's first maneuver, a fail-safe in case she couldn't develop the long lasting serum she eventually did."

"If it's still on every faction's computer systems couldn't someone trigger it?"

"Yes. I talked to Tori and Harrison about it today; we're going to tell the other factions about it.

I frown, my thoughts turning to the Factionless and immediately becoming tainted with suspicion. "Do you think that's a good idea?"

"We don't really have a choice. If someone triggers the virus it's not like we can house three other factions here. I already sent messages to Candor and Amity. We just have to do it in a way that doesn't raise suspicion."

"What about Abnegation?"

"Saving them for last. I don't trust Evelyn, and I don't want to give her any more weapons than she already has. With the Factionless inhabiting the Abnegation sector of the city... we can't risk them finding out until it's almost done."

Tobias told me once that he was deeply suspicious of people, that he always expected the worst of them. I wish that didn't stem from his parents. I wish they hadn't given him good reason to be that way.

Then again maybe if I was as naturally distrustful as he was I would have seen Caleb for what he was long before Jeanine revealed that he betrayed me. "Did you see him?" I ask quietly, unsure if I really want to know the answer.

Tobias doesn't ask who I am talking about. He knows. "Yes."

"Did he... how did he look?"

"Scared. Small."

"Sorry?"

He licks his lips, and I know his answer before he speaks it. "No."

I feel my heart clench painfully, hurt that Caleb doesn't regret anything he did.

"You never talk about him."

"I don't know what to say."

He rolls over so that we're face to face, and for the first time I feel nervousness in his touch for the silent questions he's asking me, for the answers he's asking me to confide in him.

"It feels like he's already dead, like I'm mourning the brother I thought I had more than the one I actually did have, if that makes any sense," I say after organizing my thoughts into something coherent.

Tobias reaches out, running gentle fingers down the curve of my cheek and a thumb across my lips.

"I just... don't understand why he betrayed our parents, and me, but mostly I just want him to hurt like I did - still do - and I don't think that's ever going to happen." Because maybe if he regretted what he did I could finally forgive him. "How did you get him to help you with the video?" I ask, pushing the thought away.

"I put a gun to his head and told him I'd kill him if he didn't," Tobias says simply. "Most people are afraid of dying above all else. So is he."

I'm not surprised. Caleb was might be smart, but he was never brave.

Tobias pulls me close, kissing the Abnegation symbol on my shoulder before fitting me against his chest, offering comfort and escape in his arms. Things have changed between us, but this is still the same. He's still soft and warm and feels like home.

I step out of the shower and look at myself in the mirror. I expected to look different in some way, as if what Tobias and I did last night would somehow be written on my skin. I still look like the girl I was yesterday though, even if I don't feel like her anymore.

I pull open the drawer under the sink, the little pink plastic case of birth-control pills sliding forward to bump against it's wooden confines. The sight of it makes me smile. And like I do every morning I push one of the tiny pills out of the blister pack and pop it in my mouth, dry swallowing it before I brush my teeth.

Maybe one day, when we're not living in a war zone, there will be a time when I won't. Not now though, not for a long time.

xxxx

When I step out of the training room to lock the door behind the last of the trainees to endure the fear simulation Christina is halfway down the hall, chatting with one of them, the same one - I realize after a moment - that was talking to yesterday. His name is Michael, and he's one of the Erudite refugees.

He looks pale and wane and after witnessing his fear simulation I can understand why. I don't know if I'll ever be able to look at any of the trainees without seeing them as they are in the simulations. His eyes drift to me as I walk towards them, widening a little before he offers me an awkward 'hello' as I pass them.

I don't feel like dealing with the raucousness of the dining hall so I go to the library. The beefy looking man sitting at the desk in the front lifts his eyes to mine in greeting, but as soon as I nod to him they fall back to the battered book in his hands.

I never expected Dauntless to have a library, and though it may be heavy on books about fighting and famous battles, even the spines on the volumes of poetry are cracked and well-worn. There's a large group of Dauntless children speaking in half-hushed voices in the section dedicated to them, and it reminds me that they're missing out on a year of schooling; the city is still too dangerous to send them there.

I find a large empty table at the back of the library and start writing progress reports on each of the trainees, noting their fears - if they're new fears or ones they've already faced in the simulations -, how long it takes them to break out of the simulation and how they do it.

I read Christina's notes about them as I go, because unlike our initiation the trainees don't get afternoons off after the fear simulations. Once I'm done with them Christina makes them practice boxing and shooting all afternoon. For some it might be a welcome distraction, but more importantly they're learning how to stay alive when they're mentally exhausted. It's a crucial lesson, one we had to learn in the midst of war, often times to our detriment.

With twenty-two trainees it takes hours to finish up my notes and when I do my back is aching from sitting in an unyielding metal chair for so long. I stretch hugely and get up to walk between the stacks, not really looking for anything in particular, just looking.

The shelf level with my eyes is full of cookbooks from one end to the other. I look up and down at the shelves surrounding it and they are too. I always knew we ate plain food in Abnegation, that there were many ways of preparing the same ingredients, but I can't help being awestruck. There must be thousands of different recipes in the books surrounding me.

I pull down a small, stained book, the words Fifty Easy Muffins & Quick Breads splashed across the cover. I carefully flip each page, stopping at the recipe for banana bread. I run a finger down the list of ingredients fondly. My mother used to make it for the Factionless, and though she would never let me have a bite of it, I think I will always associate it with her.

After a while my stomach pangs with hunger and I realize I haven't eaten since Tobias and I shared a pan of scrambled eggs this morning.

It's nearly dinner time and people are already starting to trickle into the dining hall when I sit down at an empty table, carefully setting down my stack of files the cookbook with one hand and a tray of food with the other.

Christina walks in not long after, still talking to Michael. She rubs a hand up his arm soothingly before waving goodbye. As she sits down next to me, her eyes follow him until he sits down on the other side of the room.

"Everything okay?"

"Hmm?" She finally turns to face me, taking a deep breath as if surfacing from her thoughts. "Fine," she says hurriedly. "He was just asking about how the simulations work. I think he thought if he understood it, it would make it less traumatizing."

"Oh."

"I told him he should ask you, but he doesn't want to."

"Why?"

"Apparently, you're very intimidating," Christina smirks, pouring herself a glass of water.

I turn my gaze to Michael. He's older than I am, maybe twenty, and bigger; taller, broad-shouldered. "Really?" I ask, dumbfounded.

"That, and I think he thinks you'll find it suspicious if he asks, like he's spying on us."

"And he doesn't think you will?"

"I'm not as scary as you, I guess." She looks down in her glass, smiling to herself.

I may not have an aptitude for Candor, but I remember how she looked around Will, and though this is not exactly the same it's close enough. "You like him," I say, confident in my assessment.

"He's nice," she says, turning around to look at him again despite herself. "Don't you think so?"

"Handsome, too," I tease.

"Yeah," she breathes out before she can stop herself, but immediately blushing deep crimson. "Where were you and Four sneaking off to yesterday?" She asks in retaliation and now it's my turn to burn in embarrassment.

"Oh... um... nowhere, really," I mutter, picking up my fork and eating with a concentration the food in front of me doesn't warrant.

"Guess you guys aren't fighting anymore."

I try to hide the smile splitting my face and fail, miserably. "No. We're not."

"Oh my God!" She gasps and I look up to see her watching me with astonishment. "You and Four... I mean...," she splutters, "oh my God."

"Shhh!" I hiss as her harshly, leaning over the table so she'll be able to hear me. "Would you please keep it down. I really don't want everyone in Dauntless to know." Her eyes gleam with curiosity, but before she can start in on the invasively Candor questions I cut her off. "And I don't want to talk about it," I say firmly.

She grins at me devilishly. "Maybe I should go tell Michael that people can overcome their fears."

The fork drops out of my hand, clanging loudly against my plate. "You wouldn't dare," I breathe out, horrified.

She laughs giddily and rises to join the food line. "No, I wouldn't." I still watch her closely, suspiciously, until Tobias sits down next to me and she gives me a knowing smile.

"What was that about?"

"Nothing," I mutter, turning my attention back to my dinner.

"How did it go today with the initiates?"

"Trainees," I correct him. "And it went well. They're getting out of the simulations faster."

"Any Divergents?"

"I'm not sure. A few of them seem more aware than the others, but none of them have manipulated the simulation like I did."

"No one's ever manipulated a simulation like you did," he scoffs. "You scared the hell out of me when you did that; might as well have put a big target on your forehead."

Our conversation is cut short by Tori and Harrison joining us, their talk of the trials going on at the Hub overrunning us. "For the first day it went well," Harrison says. "Max implicated a couple people we didn't know were as deeply involved in things as they were, so I had to send a message to Amity to our guards to bring them in, but we always knew that could happen."

I lean in close to Tobias, whispering in his ear, "I thought the trials were supposed to start weeks ago?"

His attention stays focused on Harrison, but he leans back, whispering, "they were supposed to, but the snowstorm kept people from getting to the Hub. We had to wait for the snow to melt so the buses could run."

Tobias getting injured and then everything else that followed that had so thoroughly eclipsed everything else, I had not even realized how serious the storm was. And part of it too is that I so rarely leave Dauntless the world outside it concerned me less and less since we've been back.

"How have we been getting food? Don't the Amity have to drive it in?"

Tobias shakes his head, eyes still focused on Harrison as he talks. "When the weather is that bad they load it onto the trains; it's the only time they ever stop at each faction."

I look down at the tray of food in front of me. I never thought about how it gets from Amity to my plate, the same way I never thought about how computers control everything in the city. I've been 'thinking too small', just like Tobias said.

By the time Harrison stops speaking, Christina has come back, Uriah, Zeke, and Shauna filling up the empty spaces at our table. "I heard back from Johanna. She yes, and she said Saturday would be best," Tobias says cryptically. Clearly it means something to Tori and Harrison, and I can guess at what he's talking about, but everyone else at the table looks confused.

But they also know better than to ask what he's talking about. I'm not sure if they trust that if it was something they needed to know Tobias would tell them, or if they trust that he will tell them in time, but it doesn't really matter. They trust him. Being a leader was never a job that Tobias wanted, but he is good at it, wears that mantle of responsibility well, and it makes me proud of him.

Eventually the conversation peters out into topics unrelated to factions and war; Christina and Shauna gossiping, Zeke and Uriah thumb-wrestling and teasing each other, Tori and Harrison talking about things that happened when they were initiates.

I look around the cafeteria, seeing a dozen similar scenes at the tables crowded around us. It seems happier now than before the war. People seem less scared, but maybe that's just me. Before the war I had so many things to hide, so many people to fear discovering those secrets that I don't have now.

Tobias touches the small of my back, pulling me out of my reverie. "Are you ready to go?" His voice is low enough that only I can hear it, but there's a note of awkwardness in it that's foreign for such a simple question. Still, I nod and let him lead me towards the door, glaring at Christina when her 'good night' sounds chock-full of innuendo.

"I have to go to Amity this weekend," Tobias says once our apartment door closes behind us. "Get the computer virus off their system."

"Funny enough, I kind of figured that out," I smirk at him. I flip the switch for the fireplace and sit down on the couch to pull my boots off.

"Yeah, well," he says, clearing his throat. "It might take all weekend, and I was thinking - wondering, really - if you wanted to come with me?"

"Why? Do you need me to talk to Johanna or something? Despite what you think she doesn't like me that much." I say, confused.

"No, I just thought you'd like to come with me, get out of Dauntless for a few days."

"Okay."

He sits down on the couch next to me, pulling my legs into his lap as I stretch out. He runs a lazy hand over them as a comfortable silence falls between us. "Tired?" He asks eventually.

"No, just relaxed."

He watches me watch him for a moment before he moves to lay down next to me, but stopping halfway to push up the hem of my shirt and kiss the freshly exposed skin. It doesn't feel right though; it feels unfamiliar.

"Are you sore?" I feel his lips form the words, feel them condense against my skin and cling to it.

For a second, I contemplate lying to him. There's something about his actions that's too sudden, that's too forced and unnatural. I fit my fingers around his chin and force him to look at me. "What are you doing?"

He sighs, defeated, and shakes my fingers off to press into my palm. "Being an idiot. I just don't like the idea that while I was feeling... what I was feeling, all you were feeling was pain." His cheek burns against the cool of my fingers. "I thought maybe tonight," he says uncertainly, "but you're still-"

"I'm not."

I am actually, but I have a feeling explaining that to him is a losing proposition. It's not even that bad. No real pain, just a little tenderness; I've had bruises that have hurt worse.

"I didn't think 'next time' would be tonight, but I'm not saying 'no'. I just don't want it to be like this."

"Like what?"

"Forced, and..."

"And... what?"

"Do I look like Peter?"

"What?" He chuckles, once, confused.

"I don't want it to be like you owe me, or I owe you. I don't want to live that way," I scowl at him.

And I don't want sex to be expected, not because it hurt - which it did -, but because I can't imagine it being everything I want it to be if it's as routine as brushing my teeth.

But I don't tell him that either.

I'm still wrapped in a towel, the warm steam from the shower wafting around me when I check on the doorstep of the bathroom. The sun streaming in through the floor-to-ceiling window of our bedroom glints off the gun sitting on top of the dresser Tobias is rummaging around in.

"What's that for?" I snap without meaning to.

Tobias looks from me to the gun before carefully picking it up and tucking it in the waist of his jeans. The butt covers the Amity symbol on the small of his back.

"I have to go to Candor today."

I feel panic stab at me, sharp and cold. "And you need a gun for that?"

"Yes," he says simply, pulling on his jacket and walking over to me.

He slides his hands over my shoulders, around my neck to tilt my face up so our eyes meet. He sighs heavily before fitting his lips against mine. I grab onto his hip, and it takes a conscious effort not dig my fingers in, to hold him to me. I don't understand my reaction, I've never been that girl, even when we were living in an active war zone.

"I'll be back tonight." Childishly, I want to make him promise me. Instead I wrap my arms around him and pull him close. "It will be okay," he says soothingly. "Zeke and I are going with a group of Dauntless to the Hub, and then the Candor will escort us to their headquarters and back; at night we'll travel back from the Hub with the same group of Dauntless. It will be okay."

And I let myself believe him.

And then I let him go.

xxxx

"Tris," Uriah grits out, "if you click that pen one more time I'll break it in half."

I glare at him before dropping the pen on the table and walking out of the dining hall, walking out the compound entirely. I climb up the same rusted fire escape Christina and I did to escape the snowball fight all the way to the top of the abandoned building it's tacked to the side of.

I don't even know why I'm out here other than I felt like I was losing it inside the compound. Too many people smiling and going about their lives like tragedy couldn't befall them at any moment. I sit down on the roof, leaning up against an ancient air-duct.

I couldn't focus on anything, was only half-away of the trainees and their fear simulations. It took until lunch to figure out why I was even so upset. It shouldn't have bothered me, Tobias going to Candor. We had lived through so much worse, nearly died so many times between us I was dangerously close to running out of fingers to count our close calls on.

But that was before Tobias got thrown from a train, and casualties in the Fog of War seem so much less threatening than an assassination attempt, especially since whoever tried to kill him hasn't been caught yet. You expect it then, in the haze of gun fire and blood. Not when all you're killing is time waiting for him to come home on a day like any other.

And as many times as we almost died I never saw Tobias broken and weak like he was after that. They aren't even words I should associate with him, but right now I can't help it because he was.

As the sun goes down I scrape together some pebbles and start throwing them at a spot in the wall surrounding the roof. I breathe just like Tobias taught me when I shoot, calming my mind down and focusing only on the target.

It works for a while, until I start shivering with cold and couldn't hit a target two feet in front of me, let alone twenty. My fingers are numb as I climb back down, but when I get to the door of the Pire there's a figure standing there, waiting.

Uriah turns and smiles at me, and affectionate 'hey', slipping off his tongue. Like his brother he's quick to forgive even if it doesn't come in the form of a 'sorry'.

"Thought you'd be waiting out here," he says as he rocks back and forth on his feet, heel to toe. He pulls a flask out from his pocket, silently passing it to me. Like before it doesn't taste good, but it does warm me up. "I thought I'd wait for Zeke."

His voice is too forced to be casual, and it makes me realize that I'm not the only one in Dauntless worried about a loved one tonight. Zeke was with Tobias when he was attacked after all, and I feel stupid for not remembering sooner.

"You sure you don't want anymore?" He asks when I hand him back the flask.

I shake my head, tucking my hands back in my pockets.

"I bet you'd be a fun drunk; very giggly." He offers me a crooked, mischievous smile before taking a pull on the flask.

"Ha, ha."

"She speaks!"

I punch him in the shoulder, just hard enough to let him know I'm joking. Our heads whip around to stare at the tracks when they start singing with the vibration of an approaching train. A moment later it comes into view and people start jumping out. I count each one, my eyes staying focused on the last jumper. It's a moonless night, but there are a million tiny things that tell me it's Tobias even though I can't see his face.

Maybe we'll never be the couple who does that running-jumping-squealing 'hello' after a day apart, but the smile that breaks across his face when he see me warms me more than anything you could put in a flask.

His arms wrap around my waist and I wrap mine around his neck, and for the first time since he left this morning I feel like I can breathe. He lifts me up, and my feet dangle off the ground as he kisses a trail from my lips to my ear to whisper, "I'll always come back to you, Tris."

A chorus of catcalls breaks out, lead by Uriah and Zeke, who adds a jovial, 'looks like someone's getting laid tonight'. Tobias holds me tighter with one hand and flips him off with the other before setting me back down on my feet and leading me inside.