Trigger warning: Non-graphic details of sexual assault.
I woke up next to Eric in my bed. It wasn't unusual at all for us to be in the same room, but I still found it strange that the orderlies rarely asked him to leave anymore. He's still asleep, looking much younger than his almost twenty-one years, and I gently rub my fingers across the soft strands of his shaved hair. His eyes eventually flutter open, and when he sees me he smiles.
"I could get used to this." He murmurs.
"Me too." I admit.
He moves his head closer to me and I keep trailing my fingers along his scalp, letting my blunt bitten nails scratch him every once in awhile. He sighs happily when I play with his ears, and eventually he pulls me closer and tucks his head under my chin.
"You smell good." He says, and I shiver when I feel his lips brush against my neck.
"Christina brought me some body wash. I was finally allowed to use it."
"I like it." He purposely trails his nose up my neck, and when his lips follow I let out a breath, "Is this okay?"
"Yes."
His lips are so soft and warm, and when he reaches the juncture where my neck and shoulders meet I feel his tongue swipe out before he starts sucking my skin. It causes me to arch slightly against him and my core brushes against his thigh where it rests between my legs. I'm sure he's leaving a mark, but I don't care, I'm too lost in the way he makes me feel.
Wanted.
He's soon called away for his mandatory therapy session and I stay in my room to wait for him. I don't realized I had dozed off again until I feel him crawling into bed with me, and pulling me closer to him.
"Bad session?" I ask.
"I still have no exit plan." He replies while staring at the ceiling, "Apparently your therapist has requested a meeting with me, and my therapist Kelly is doing everything she can to discourage me from it. Do you have any idea why your therapist wants to talk to me? Is he going to prohibit us from being together?"
"No. There is something I need to tell you though."
"What?" He asks with an edge to his voice.
"Myron knows who you really are."
He turns to look at me, "I thought you weren't telling him."
"I didn't. I've been playing along with him when he thought I was seeing things. However, once he saw how close we were getting he researched you. He found out that you're identity is purposely being kept from you."
"What?"
"He started talking to me about it a few weeks ago. I've been hesitant to trust anyone, especially when it comes to you, but I think Myron is being honest."
"Why haven't you said anything?" He asks.
I trace my fingers along his sharp jaw, cupping his stubbly face in my palm briefly before running my hand across his buzzed hair. It's soft under my fingers, almost like velvet and he closes his eyes.
"I wanted to be sure. I don't trust easily. I also don't want to let anyone hurt you." I reply softly.
He leans towards me and I turn away. I try to calm my racing heart and Eric simply presses his lips gently to my cheek.
"Who hurt you Tris?" He asks.
"Eric..."
"Someone hurt you. I feel like it was a man, it's why you jump away and flinch when we're together sometimes-"
"I'm not afraid of you." I argue.
"Please tell me. If we... if there's any way we can move forward together... I feel like I need to know. I just... I..." he sighs, "I don't want to remind you of whoever it was. And I need to know my part in all of it. Please."
I know he can feel me trembling and he slowly moves his hand towards me, running it gently down my side.
I've never been able to trust Eric Coulter. But maybe it's time to start.
"When I was in training I was weak, I was terrible at the physical aspect like fighting. But I started getting better when it came to weapons training, and eventually when it came to fear simulations I excelled. My divergence was helping me, but I couldn't dare tell anyone that. Especially you." I whisper and his silver eyes watch me carefully, "My friend was failing, and some of the other initiates had convinced him I was cheating. He was an easy target because he was on the cusp of flunking out completely and becoming factionless. One night he told me he wanted to talk, I mean he was just so sad and I thought maybe he needed someone to vent to, so we went for a walk and he eventually got me alone. He told me he loved me, but I didn't feel the same, I never even looked at him that way... and when I told him that... he just... snapped."
I feel Eric wiping tears from my face and I once again feel so weak.
"Snapped how?" He asks me.
"He forced himself on me."
"Sexually?"
I say nothing, but I nod and close my eyes, unable to look at Eric. The night Al attacked me I thought I would die, he had dipped me over the chasm and maniacally told me I ruined everything. As I fought him, he continued to paw at me until he'd ripped my clothes almost completely off my body.
He kept telling me I was getting what I deserved.
I wished he had of just pushed me over.
"It was Al, right? That name you kept screaming at me weeks ago when you had that flashback?"
"Yes." I admit through tears.
"Tris, did he rape you?" He asks me softly.
All I can do is nod.
I can almost feel Eric's anger and pain, and I turn away from him towards my wall. He pulls away from me and I'm suddenly cold, and terrified.
"Please don't leave. Please. I know I'm fucked up, but I can't take it if you leave me right now." I beg.
"I don't want to leave you. I just don't want to scare you."
"I'm not scared of you, I'm ashamed." I murmur.
I feel the bed shift and then the warmth of his body curling around mine. His arm snakes around me, and he threads his hands with mine, and for the first time in such a long time I feel safe.
And I tell him that.
"I would never hurt you. I would die for you. I would kill..." He stops himself.
"I know." I say softly.
"And I... you think... I killed him?"
"For all your previous faults, it's well known that you didn't take certain things lightly." I say and his eyes close.
"I killed him?" He asks me again.
"I'm pretty sure that you did. Four eluded to it, he said it was one of the more decent things you'd done and saved him the trouble of having to do it himself."
"I hate that you went through that. Fuck, Tris, I hate the thought of someone hurting you." Eric says and I shudder against him.
"Four only knows because he's who found me... he heard me scream," I stop talking and Eric wipes the tears from my face, "I've never talked to anyone about this. Not him, not you, not even Christina or Uri. Not Myron, no one."
"You can't hold everything inside." He says softly.
"I feel so dirty. After that, I couldn't be intimate with Four anymore, and he... I couldn't talk to him about it... I just couldn't get better... then he was hiding things too and we just got in a huge fight the night before the war... then I thought he was dead... and now, knowing he's alive and I'm stuck here, I just feel so stupid..." I cry harder and Eric just holds me.
Like he always does.
"I don't know if I will ever be fully whole." I whisper and he presses his lips to my hair.
"Neither of us are, but together maybe we can make it work." He offers.
After breakfast, I went to see Myron with Eric in tow. If Myron was surprised, he didn't show it, and when I closed the door he simply nodded towards the couch in his office so Eric and I could sit.
"Please don't make him leave." I say to Myron and he nods.
"This is your appointment, Tris. If him being here will help you, I support it." He replies.
With Eric's warm hand in mine, I finally tell Myron everything. The incredible guilt I still carry because of the long belief I've held that Tobias chose Dauntless because of me, the heavy grief I was going through in mourning the loss of my entire family, the despair I felt when I had to kill one of my closest friends, after watching my mother die. I told him how I now felt, knowing that Tobias had sent me here and purposely stayed away, and the fear I had of leaving these walls without understanding what was left in that city for me.
I told him I hated my divergence, and the lengths that Jeanine Matthews had gone to in order to open a useless box.
Finally, I told him about the rape, and how Al had once been my friend. I told him how broken it had made me, especially when someone I once loved refused to even touch me afterward. I told him that I had truly wanted to die that day that Zeke had to yank me away from the edge of the building, and how much I hated myself when I first was forced into this institution.
But today, I also told him I was glad I was alive.
I admitted I knew that there was more than I could even imagine still going on in Chicago, and that people who were once my closest friends were likely working against me this entire time, and even with the fear of the unknown I was still thankful to be here every day.
Myron listened to it all, and he never once judged me. Eric alternated between holding my hand or wrapping his arms around me when the sobs threatened to break me.
Then, Myron had told me he was proud of me, for trusting him, and for being brave enough to pick myself up and move forward.
He once again explained he knew exactly who Eric was, and how the other staff had warned him about allowing Eric and I to be together. He offered his help in getting to the bottom of why Eric was still being held without any hope of getting his memory back, and he said he would give Eric the reversal serum himself if he could track some down.
Eric's response shocked me.
"If I take a reversal serum and it works, what happens to everything I know right now?" He'd asked.
"It would be like waking up. You'd be taken back to the day it happened, and you'd need some support and help in understanding everything that had happened between then and now." Myron replied.
"Will I remember her?" Eric gestures towards me.
"Sure, you knew her in Chicago, so you'll retain that memory."
"What about now? What about everything she's finally shared with me-"
"Eric, no," I argue and he shakes his head.
"It's taken you weeks to get all of this out, and for the past two months you've been everything to me. I don't want to lose this." He argues.
"Eric, it's possible you could build the same friendship again." Myron interjects.
"And it's also possible I'd shut her out and be the same cold asshole I was to her before. I'm not ready for that. I need to think. I need time." Eric replies.
"Okay, you can take the time you need." Myron agrees.
As we walk to dinner I can feel Eric's anxiety, I squeeze his hand in mine and he glances over me and smiles.
It doesn't meet his eyes.
"Let's get food and go watch a movie." I offer and he nods.
As we're in line waiting for our trays he trails his silver eyes to mine, "Would you be able to have this with who I was before?"
"Eric, that's not fair-"
"Would you?" He presses.
"Back in Dauntless I didn't know you well enough to build this." I admit.
"Then please understand why I need time to think about this." He says and I sigh.
"Okay."