Disclaimer: I don't own Divergent.

Tris

Sweat dripping down my face, both of my hands trembling, I rush down the hall to the place where I know I'll find Eric. He's in the training room, where my friend Christina is also. She'll be hard at work teaching the transfers how to throw knives. As for him, well, he'll be watching her like a hawk, making sure she doesn't step out of line.

When I get close to the door, I pause to catch my breath. I think about what I might say. At first I considered asking Tobias to help me with this, but then I decided against it. Tobias has enough on his plate. He has to work with Eric directly, so his situation's even worse than mine. I wouldn't want him to be retaliated against. So I guess I have to go it alone.

I take what feels like the deepest breath I've ever taken in my life, and then I step into the training room.

Dang, the initiates this year have bad aim. Almost all the knives bounce off the nearby wall, or they spin in random directions. Christina paces back and forth, looking irritated. I really don't blame her.

Finally, she spots me. "Hey! Tris!" Her face lights up and she runs forward to hug me. I meet her in an embrace. It feels so good to be close to my friend again.

"Why'd you come here?" she asks.

"Um…" I search the room until I find Eric. He's barely paying attention as the initiates throw their knives. Instead, he sits at a desk at the back of the room, flipping through a messy stack of papers.

I turn back to Christina. "Got something I need to talk about," I say, steeling myself, and then I gesture to Eric. "With him."

Christina grimaces. "Oh no," she mutters. "Want me to be your moral support?"

"Thanks, Chris, but… no, thank you. You have a job you need to do. Besides, I'm about to become a leader. I'll need to handle these things on my own," I tell her.

Before she can try to change my mind, I turn away from her and wander to the back of the room. Eric doesn't even look up until I'm just a few feet away from him.

Once he recognizes me, his eyes narrow. "Stiff," he says flatly. "What're you doing here?"

All the strength goes out of me. I thought I was prepared, but I'm not. All of a sudden, I remember the last time Eric spoke to me without an audience. He hissed threats at me in that cold voice of his, warning me that if I didn't tell him where I'd been, he'd arrange to have my friends thrown out of Dauntless.

I let him intimidate me then. I can't do that now, for Caleb's sake as well as mine.

So I force myself to speak. "Well… well… I'm just here to speak on behalf of someone. Please, just take the time to listen."

As soon as the words leave my mouth, I want to cringe. I sound so weak and pathetic!

Fortunately, Eric doesn't really notice. He looks distractedly at the papers in front of him, and then back at me. "Well? What do you want?"

I take another deep breath, then I continue. "My… my brother Caleb's condemned under Dauntless law. I'm asking you to please, treat him like the Erudite he is, and don't condemn him for cowardice!" The words come out in a rush, like a stream of water released from a broken dam.

Eric isn't moved in the slightest. "Treat him like a Nose… and, illogically, let him go? No, I don't think I will. I've got to do my job, Stiff."

Defeatism floods through me, and it almost gets me to back away and give up. If I were doing this just for my own sake, I might've. But this is for Caleb, and I still love him. I have to try again.

"But," I ask, desperation creeping into my voice, "must he be killed?"

Eric shrugs. "No way around it, Stiff."

I cross my arms in front of me, then I take a step toward him. "Well," I say, "I think you could pardon him, and neither the Dauntless nor the Erudite would have their feelings hurt."

Eric rolls his eyes at me. "I'm not doing that," he says firmly.

"Okay," I say, "but could you, if, say, Max and the other leaders said so?"

I'm grasping at straws, but it's something. Still, Eric shakes his head at me. "You're too late," he tells me. "You should act fast."

"Too late?" Now I'm less desperate than angry. I take another step toward Eric. "No way. You know that, as a leader-to-be, I have the power to appeal. Well, I'll tell you this. All the honors you could ever earn in Dauntless, whether that's the first-place rank, a leadership role, a medal of valor, or the nickname Four…" Eric's forehead creases at that last one, and I almost laugh. But it would be a mistake to stop now, so I continue. "None of them can compare to the goodness of grace. So please, Eric. Have mercy on my brother, as God Himself would."

I'm speaking with so much passion, I believe I might be able to persuade him. But then Eric just scoffs. "I pray you go away," he says, his voice thick with sarcasm.

I sigh deeply. How I wish God would intervene and get him to see reason. But there are times, I know, when He wants me to be brave and do what I can do myself. So, against all odds, I try to get through to Eric again.

"No," I say with finality. "I'm not gonna leave. Instead I'll show you how it is to be a judge, that is, judge of the Dauntless, as God is judge of us all."

At that, Eric gives me a look of contempt. "Touchy," he says, his voice still dripping with sarcasm. "Too bad what you're saying means nothing. You've never had to supervise a class full of initiates."

"No," I retort, letting my voice steadily increase in volume, "but I don't have to be Erudite to know why they didn't like you. You told Al to stand in front of a target and have knives chucked at him, and you forced Christina to hang over the chasm…"

"Your friend was a forfeit of Dauntless law," Eric interrupts, his voice dangerous. "You're wasting your words."

"No, Eric," I shoot back. "If you'd been Christina and she'd been you, you would've slipped like her, but she, unlike you, would not have been so cruel."

I stop in the middle of my rant to take a breath, and just then I notice something. The sounds of knives hitting the wall have stopped completely. All the initiates in the room stare at Eric and me, wide-eyed and silent. Christina's watching too, and she looks just as awed by me.

Emboldened by this, I keep speaking. "And another thing," I say to Eric. "Rumor has it Edward didn't choose to leave, you forced him to. You told him he couldn't continue, just because he was injured…"

"Be calm about it, Stiff," Eric interrupts. "It was the law, not I, that made Edward factionless. If he'd been my best friend, my brother, or my son, it would've been the same with him. He had to leave."

"But what'd he do wrong? It was someone else who attacked him, wasn't it?" I let my fury push me to my next point. "Just like my brother, he didn't do anything wrong. It was just a misunderstanding. Tell me, who is it who's died for this offense? There's lots of Dauntless who've committed it."

"Well said," I hear one of the initiates shout from across the room. I feel my cheeks warm. I'm actually being supported.

Not by Eric, though. He glares at me. "The law's not dead," he replies, "though it's seemed that way. No one looked into the cause of poor Albert's death, and no one investigated the loss of data from last year's simulations. But the law's awake now, and it's on the lookout. Just like how our simulations can look into a person's mind, and see what they're most afraid of, so the law can tell what a person fears getting caught doing, and put that action to death, before it's even born."

"Still," I answer, "you could show mercy. There's honor in that."

"More honor in showing justice," Eric tosses back. "You Stiffs say you're being selfless when you let go the ones who've done wrong. But I say it's selfless to snuff those people out, for the sake of the ones wronged by them. That's what I'll do to your brother, Stiff. Stay calm."

"So you'll be the first to sentence the Dauntless for this, and an Erudite's the one who'll suffer," I say, making sure he can hear the bitterness in my voice. "It must feel great, having this much power on your hands. But to use all that power on someone with none, well, that's preying on the weak, which is cowardice."

"Yeah, tell him," Christina says encouragingly, from a distance.

"If all the Dauntless used their full strength every day, every second," I go on, "they'd use it all up on our weakest, our most vulnerable. Little boys and girls, the elderly, the factionless who're just scraping by. You'd rather beat on a two-pound baby, than chase after the two hundred-pound child predator."

"Yeah! That's right!" Christina shouts, but I don't look at her. I keep my eyes firmly on Eric.

"Why're you saying all this to me?" he asks, looking bewildered.

"Because," I tell him, "you're a leader of Dauntless, and you have authority, and that makes it easy for you to say that any cowardly act you commit is just courage in disguise. Go to your fear landscape, check there, and ask yourself what you've done that you're scared to let others know. If you confess an act of cowardice that's like my brother's crime, don't let me hear you say a word against my brother's life."

For several long moments, Eric just stares at me. It seems he's pondering what I just said. But right when I think he's going to relent, he looks away, so his gaze is on the papers on his desk. "You know what, I'll consider it," he says. "You can come back tomorrow."

"What?" I'm taken aback. "No, wait. Please."

"What else do you have to say?" he demands. I'm dismayed by the annoyed look on his face.

"Eric," I say insistently, "I'm asking you, no, I'm begging you to think of more than just this life. Think of your soul. Think of all our souls. We've all sinned at some point, we've all told a lie, or wished harm on someone, or lusted after someone for selfish reasons. God could've punished us all, but He offered to save us instead. How would it go for you if He, the greatest judge of all, decided to judge you for who you are? Just think about that, and maybe you'll find it in you to show mercy."

He looks at me like I'm talking gibberish. I don't even know if he shares my faith, so I'm gambling here. But my passion kept me talking, and it makes me want to say more. I'm not simply doing this for Caleb, or for myself, or even for the other Dauntless.

I'm doing this for God. And for Al.

The morning we heard that Jeanine Matthews had been arrested, I sent up a silent thank-you to God. I was well aware He'd worked a miracle that night, and answered my prayer that the innocent Abnegation not suffer. But after thanking Him, I suddenly thought of Al. My friend. My fellow initiate. My attacker, whom I'd wanted to forgive, but turned away out of bitterness and hardness of heart.

After he died, I realized I'd wanted to forgive him. I so badly wish I would have. Because I know he's not the only one who's surrendered to his emotions in the moment. I have, too. When Christina struggled to maintain her grip on the railing overlooking the chasm, I allowed fear and hesitation to keep me rooted in place, even though I knew the right thing to do would be to help her. When I fought Molly, I let my anger take over, and I kept kicking her when she was already down, and felt very little guilt over it.

I still don't want to be Molly's friend. But if she were to confront me now, I'd ask for forgiveness for what I did. Yet I hadn't forgiven Al. I'd wanted to, but I hadn't.

"Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful." That's what it says in the gospel of Luke, chapter 6, verse 36. I'd wanted to follow those exact instructions, but I hadn't. And for that, I felt unworthy of God's love, unworthy of His grace and mercy.

Still, He showed up right on time, answering my prayers and saving me and the Abnegation from unnecessary suffering. I know that He heard me repent. And I know that it was out of His abundant love that He came through for me, in spite of all the sins I'd committed.

Now I need to strive to be better. To sin no more, and do what I know is right, one hundred percent of the time. I have to resist my fear, my hesitation, and my doubts, and stand up for those who won't be allowed to speak for themselves. I have to show Eric the value of showing mercy, as the Lord showed mercy to me. Most of all, I need to continue to turn to Him, because as I learned the morning Jeanine was arrested, it is only with Him that I have any hope of staying on the right track, and living up to those Abnegation ideals I've always admired, but never felt I could attain.

My final words to Eric seem to have gotten through to him. But it's confusion, not clarity, that I see on his face. I'm disheartened again. I wait for his response, my breath held.

"Well," he says at last, "I'll think about it. Come back tomorrow."

I sigh heavily. It was a good effort, I think to myself. "What time?" I ask Eric. "And where?"

"Anytime. Long as it's before noon," says Eric. "Just make sure you meet me by the chasm, where there's no one else around."

"I will," I promise him. "See you then, sir."

As I'm walking out, I notice the knives have started to hit the board again, and the initiates have resumed their training for the day. Christina raises her eyebrows at me as I'm leaving, and I nod at her briefly to show that, for the most part, my discussion with Eric went well. But my nerves are starting to tingle. He told me he wants me to meet him alone, but why? What's he got to say that's so secret?

I so badly want to save my brother and make things right, that I tell myself it doesn't matter. I'll go regardless, and I'll try to come to an agreement with Eric. I just need to trust that God will protect me, and in the end, everything will be all right.

AN: Fellow readers, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and I hope it inspires you to do some good today. Talk with that person online who pissed you off, instead of blocking them. Reach out to that friend of yours whom you haven't spoken to in a long time, since that big fight or argument. I'm not ashamed to say that I need God in my life, and it is only with Him that I have any hope of changing my life and being better!