AN: There are triggers in this story for sexual assault, I will be including a trigger warning for the next several chapters. Please read with caution.

The conversation on the roof changed something in me, and I finally believed that Eric truly did love me. I also realized that it was only me separating "Paul" from Eric. The man I loved was everything - tender, caring and sweet with me, and fearsome, formidable and stern with his faction, and it was going to be up to me to find a way to accept it.

When he asked me again to define our relationship, I finally acknowledged that we were together. He wanted a committed relationship and I readily agreed; there was no one else I wanted. Eric was the one focused on titles, and I realized this was not something I needed to challenge him on since we wanted the same things out of our relationship, and it was important to him.

Myron has definitely taught me to choose my battles wisely. Telling the man I'm in love with that I'm terrified of a definition of what we are already doing isn't one of those battles worth fighting.

Eric surprised me by not telling me that one of the apartments we were looking at was the one he'd lived in after becoming a leader. I then surprised him by picking it as ours. It was perfect for us, two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a well appointed home office large enough for us to share. The kitchen sold me, with its sleek appliances, large island and smooth lines, and after we'd gotten the keys Eric had told me he'd designed it when he lived there before.

We picked out new furniture, and our friends had helped us move out of our temporary apartment into our new home. Eric had given me free rein to decorate the way I wanted to, and he'd come home one night to find the entire apartment painted in shades of blue, black and grey.

"Is it too much?" I asked him when he looked around the space.

"It's us." He replied before dropping his lips to mine.

We had planned on closing all of our open windows, and then starting dinner, but when his tongue traced my lips until I allowed him entrance something clicked into place. We'd not put any pressure on ourselves to become intimate again, instead choosing to allow our relationship to develop naturally, but I found myself dragging him into our oversized shower so we could wash our day away.

He'd sat on the bench so I could remove his air cast, and I'd straddled his hips and settled on his lap as our mouths worked together. The steam rose around us, and I'd tugged lightly on his hair until he'd exposed his throat to me. I nipped and sucked on the column of his neck as his hands massaged my breasts before wrapping around to cup my ass.

He was hard beneath me, his erection pressed between us and I let him pull me towards him so I could rub him through my soaked folds.

"Jesus you feel good." He murmured between kisses, "Tris, please."

"What do you want from me, Eric?" I ask.

"Everything." He moans as I continue to move against him, and I eventually sink slowly onto his hard cock, "Fuck..." He drawls.

The first time we did this, he was vulnerable and almost scared of doing the wrong things, but this time his fingers are between us so he can rub my clit as I move against him. His mouth is everywhere, hot lips dragging across damp skin, steam rising around us as we find our own rhythm with each other. I can feel his muscles contract under my hands, and his kisses are sloppy and almost as desperate as I continue to ride him.

I cry out when my release washes over me, and my body trembles against his as he kisses me softly while I come back down. The tenseness of his thighs tells me he's close, and when our lips finally part my name falls from them as I feel him fill me with his own release.

His arms grip me, and he buries his face in my neck, trying to catch his breath as our bodies slump against each other. He whispers my name, and confesses all the feelings he carefully keeps hidden from everyone but me. The man who works countless hours to track down the last living war criminals is hard, demanding and intimidating but the person I'm sharing my life with is careful and gentle with both my emotions and my body.

It may have been "Paul" that I fell in love with back in Milwaukee, but today those blurred lines are gone. The man who is currently holding me like I may disappear is more like Paul than I thought he could be, and I now know that there is no separation of the man I fell for and the one I now love. Eric is forced to be someone different because of what his job has always demanded, but the person who exists under that granite exterior is the same person who held me as I cried back in the institution. He's the same person who found a way to talk to me when he was too nervous to approach me.

He's the one who wrote an entire journal in order to remember what we had when his memory was restored.

He's the man who loves me unconditionally, and I love him just the same.

He's the man I am going to love forever. Maybe I should tell him.

"Eric, I-"

We both hear the emergency tones on our communication devices, and we hurriedly break apart and quickly wash and rinse our bodies. Once he's got a towel wrapped dangerously low on his he, he reads the message on his device while I dry myself off.

"I have to go."

"What about mine?" I ask and he passes it over, where I see the message to report to the control room, "Eric, what is it?"

"Perimeter breech."

We dressed quickly and when Eric was just about to open our apartment door he had turned to me and cupped my cheeks with both hands, "Be safe." He murmured before pressing his lips to mine.

"Come home to me." I reply shakily, as the adrenaline began to wear off I had been getting more apprehensive about the current emergency.

"I love you so much Tris." He said before kissing me one more time.

This kiss was filled with a desperation that we'd both had swirling around in our subconscious, a buried shared fear of abandonment that we were trying so hard to work through with Myron's help. Eric and I both had major abandonment issues, his stemming from his mother leaving him as an infant, walking away from her family because she decided she wasn't ready to be someone's wife or mother. Eric lost his mother as a baby, his father is in jail due to his own cooperation with Jeanine Matthews, and his brother died just because he was divergent.

I lost my entire family in that war. I lost the first person I ever loved when Tobias left me in Abnegation to become Four in Dauntless, and I shot and killed one of my close friends after watching him kill my mother in the same fashion. Between the two of us, our fear of abandonment ran deep, which made us more aware of our feelings for each other.

I don't know why I never replied when he told me he loved me that day before we parted, and it was that thought that plagued me when I woke up cold and alone in a dark, damp room. My head was pounding, and I could take the coppery dried blood when I wet my cracked lips with my tongue. My hands and feet were bound, and with my arms pulled uncomfortably behind me I couldn't even wipe the sticky blood from my face.

It was too dark to see my surroundings, all I knew was the stone floor was freezing below my prone body, and I struggled to try to sit up without the use of my extremities. Movement caused a rush of dizziness, and the feeling that the room was spinning caused me to become nauseous, so I pressed my injured cheek against the cold floor.

Bright light rushed into the room when a door opened, and I closed my eyes to ward off the pain in my head.

"She's awake." I heard someone call out, and I tried to open my eyes but the light was too bright after so long in the dark.

"Copy." A familiar voice replied and I could feel something nudging my leg.

"Open those pretty eyes of yours sweet cheeks, we need to get you ready for your close up." The gravelly voice called out.

I turned my face from where the voice was coming from and I felt myself being snatched up by my arm, causing me to yelp in pain.

"Listen here girlie, I couldn't give two shits if you died down here, but boss lady thinks you're some magical key to her getting the power she's looking for, so you've got to be cleaned up so your ex-boyfriend will call off the dogs." He growled at me and I grunted as he pulled me out of the room.

I couldn't see where I was being taken, but when I was roughly shoved into someone else I heard a female voice, "I've got her from here. Just watch the door."

I could feel someone unbuttoning my shirt and I began to cry, "Please don't do this."

"It's just a shower, you've been here for two weeks and you fucking reek." A male voice replied and I opened my swollen eyes enough to see dark hands, "She's gonna untie you, but I guarantee if you do anything stupid that it won't be you that dies first, it'll be that stupid traitor bastard you're with."

"He's here?" I murmur and hear an ironic laugh in return.

"No girlie, he's probably balls deep in someone else by now. He's made it abundantly clear that he's not worried about you, but maybe you can get the golden boy out of Dauntless. That one loves you, even though you both are sowing your wild oats." He scoffed.

I squeezed my eyes shut as tears flowed down my face, and I could feel cold hands removing the ties from my wrists. As soon as my shirt and jacket were off, the ties were replaced, much like the ones on my ankles, and I stood in front of these strangers completely naked and shivering.

"The water doesn't get too hot, but it's better than nothing." The woman said as she yanked me under the freezing shower.

I cried as hands wandered while they scrubbed at my filthy skin, thinking of the way Al's hands moved over my body during the attack. It was the last time someone had touched me without my permission, and I didn't realize I was sinking to the ground until the female spoke up.

"Chuck, get away from her."

"The fuck?" The man said angrily and I curled in on myself on the floor of the shower.

"You're not here to get your rocks off on her, so stop touching her there." The woman said and I silently thanked her for the small amount of kindness she was showing.

For the rest of the shower it was primarily the woman who washed me while the man simply held me up. I was dressed again in clothes that weren't mine, but smelled clean like the rations that were handed out in the Hub. It made me miss Abnegation.

"Drink." I was told when a cup was placed against my lips. I shook my head and the man sighed, "Look at me." I did as he demanded and even though he was blurry I could see him being the cup to his lips and heard him take a drink, "It's water."

I complied when he pressed the cup to my lips again, and the cool liquid felt amazing slipping past my dry throat.

"What are you going to do to me?" I asked and the man scoffed but never answered.

I'm led through a series of hallways until I'm put in another room. There's a table with several chairs, and I'm pushed into one. I feel my bindings being adjusted, and when the man is done I'm tied to the chair I'm sitting on.

"Hello Miss Prior." A different female voice says and when my blurry eyes finally adjust I see an olive skinned older woman with a slightly hooked nose. Her dark brown eyes are familiar, as is her intense stare, "I'm Evelyn Johnson, and it's a pleasure to finally meet you."

"Why am I here?" I ask and she smiles at me.

"My team has already informed you that I need an audience with your leadership team. You're the key, Beatrice. Not only are you involved with Eric Coulter, but my own son has been taken with you for years now. He may love another, but a boy never forgets his first."

"Tobias..."

"Oh yes, Tobias Eaton, who for some reason wants to be called Four in your faction. I can't understand why my son would want to be known as a number."

"Then it's obvious you don't know your son very well." I reply.

"Oh, but I do. He and I have had years to get to know each other again. I suppose he never told you that he was sneaking around in Abnegation with more than just his dalliance with you."

"He wouldn't have hidden you from me." I reply.

"He certainly did, just like he hid his current girlfriend from you when he left Abnegation. You see, Tobias carries guilt from the way he treated you both. He's told me that he was intimate with both of you, and that he's had to work to earn the trust back from both you and the young lady. He also struggles with his feelings for you today, and how to approach you since you're now involved with the faction traitor." She sneers.

"Eric is not a traitor!"

"Isn't he?" She asks with a smirk, "He helped plan and carry out a war, and is the only one who did that lived to talk about it. I don't find that to be very fair, and I'm sure my son is just biding his time until he can exact his revenge on Eric Coulter. Now, enough chit chat, let's get this show on the road."

"I won't do this." I reply adamantly.

"We almost killed Eric before, Beatrice. We did so to send a clear message to your faction. I suppose they never told you that he was targeted, did they?" She asks.

"What?"

"Tobias has been keeping secrets, hasn't he? We've been very clear with our communications, Eric was our first target to get Tobias to meet with us. When we learned that Tobias didn't seem to be concerned about Eric's well-being, we decided that the next target would be you. We'd informed Dauntless leadership of this, and received a response that they would not be entertaining my request for a meeting, much like they did the first time we'd contacted them. We had no choice but to act on our threat."

"I don't believe you." I replied angrily.

"You should, I was the one who delivered the messages." The familiar male voice was back, and I turned to see Edward, recognizable by the eye patch he wore after losing an eye during our training class in Dauntless.

"Edward..." I trailed off.

"You need to cooperate. You're valuable to her son, but Eric isn't. If you don't give her what she wants, she'll kill him." Edward replies.

"He's right, you know," Evelyn says with a sick sneer, "except I won't make it quick. I'll also have to spill all of his secrets."

"We don't have secrets." I spit and her only reaction is to smile wider.

"Maybe you don't, but he does, and I'm sure if everything about his past was to come to light, he wouldn't be a leader, nor would he be free."

I want to believe that Eric has been completely honest about his cooperation in the war, however I also realize that even if he's told us everything it's still enough that Jack Kang and the rest of the city may want him to pay the same price as the other war criminals.

I took a deep breath and looked at Evelyn again, "Let's send this message."

"I knew you'd see it my way." Evelyn smiled widely and handed me a handwritten script to read. I waited as they got the camera and lighting ready, and then learned they were not recording a message, they were tapping directly into the citywide video system.

Edward was holding the camera, pointed directly at Evelyn as she spouted off. I listened as Evelyn repeated her threats, and when the camera was turned to me, I held the paper up and began to speak.

"Dauntless leadership, this is a warning from Evelyn Johnson, leader of the factionless," I read, and then glanced up at Edward, who nodded slightly, "on her behalf, I am supposed to demand a meeting, but I won't. I don't care what she does to me, fucking end her." I said and I felt a hard yank on my hair, "Don't bow to her threats!" I am pulled harshly to the ground, but I keep speaking, "I'm underground! She has armed guards, and I know I'll die. I love you, Eric!" I shout before a blow to my head causes everything to turn black.