Candor headquarters is along the river. It is a large cement building that overlooks it. Similar to Erudite but with less glass, and actual windows. It is circular, filled with small rooms that have only a single small window to the outside.
I don't read the sign outside that hangs over the entrance and barely nod my thanks to the Dauntless holding the door open for our entry.
Once they have their helmets on I'm unable to identify who is who. Except for the female Erudite we are escorting, everyone else is indistinguishable.
Jack Kang awaits us in the spacious brightly lit lobby.
The suit he wears matches perfectly with the black and white marbled floor and walls. He is accompanied by a handful of other Candor also dressed neatly.
We are escorting the Erudite representative, picked up on the drive over. We'd not spoken a word on the ride and I preferred it that way. We all know our assignments.
"Welcome." Jack says, his expression, pleased as he takes in our accompaniment. His eyes are critical.
I give him a nod, forgoing any pleasantries.
He leads us to an elevator bank and when the doors open, only Jack, the Erudite, two soldiers and I enter it.
We go all the way to the top, to Jack's and his colleagues personal offices. Passed rooms with large printers, and Candor working away at computers and obsolete typewriters.
The main purpose of our visits to the factions is clear. Leaving nothing to be questioned.
Everything from Imports and exports, if applicable, to and from their faction, their population, each individuals profile etc. was to be collected and copied, along with a new system installed to monitor them remotely.
This information is normally sent electronically to Abnegation but with new security measures, is to be confirmed in person, in the attempt to uncover any falsifications or discrepancies, and to routinely inspect their compound for anything suspicious.
A new checks and balances to shift power from Abnegation, until they can be officially displaced as head of the government.
With Candor, Jack, so willing to cooperate and their disposition towards honesty, and transparency this trip will be a quick one. I did not feel it necessary to be overly thorough and disruptive to their day.
The guards bellow will be guided by Candor's other representitives in a tour of their compound. The guards with us, post at the doors. The whole precession is formal.
The Erudite gets to work immediately, seating herself behind Jack's personal computer in the middle of the room. I stand with him to the side, both of us with our hands clasped in front of us. Unmoving and unspeaking.
Their office is large, with a window that overlooks the city just behind the circle of desks, just like Jeanine's but not private, it is communal.
The Candor are used to everything being shared and 'out in the open.' It is unappealing to me, but that is their way.
They value truth, and honesty above all, even if it can be destructive. Using a truth serum developed by Erudite, they interrogate their members and punish liars.
I'd imagine their initiation to be particularly difficult.
I'm brought into my own silent musings over the usefulness of such a serum and am grateful Jack does not strike up conversation.
The view of the city beyond the desks takes my attention and I'm able to lose myself to thoughts of what it would be like under a new rule.
I doubt it would be any different with Dauntless.
But with Erudite, they would make many improvements, and allow for posperity and growth.
Abnegation have just been a boot to the factions necks. Preventing any of it. Everything had to be approved by them and yet nothing they did could be checked by others.
When they, of all the factions needed to be monitored most of all. They have abused their power. For what?
They must have a reason. Something they are hiding. It is the one plausible thought I had, comparing them to the rest of us, we all have our reasons.
I relax my jaw and loosen my grip on my hands.
Glaringly it takes about an hour, til the Erudite had completed her work. I find myself speculating if I could have done a faster job of it.
She had moved from each computer and set up a way for Jack to monitor them remotely, and then for his main console to be monitored by Erudite.
When she stands, Jack simply gestures for us to take the same route to exit.
The soldiers below have all already begun to vacate the building and load up into the truck outside.
There are several Candor children gathered now, watching the procession eagerly, excitedly. Some of them just a bit younger than I, I would assume.
They give gifts of ice cream and sweets, some accept and some deny. These sweets are used in Candor on the children as incentives and rewards for their honesty.
Zeke raises his visor to talk to one of them. She's a slender girl, with a neat bob, just a bit shorter than I.
She tells him she wants to be Dauntless one day and when her eager eyes meet mine, it causes an involuntary frown to pull my face down.
I motion for them to load back up so we can continue our day. Back to Erudite. Possibly Dauntless in time for lunch.
"You know of the pain and anguish. Wars, famine, disease. You've seen it, we've shown you the way the world used to be, the world outside our walls and beyond our borders. That world has long perished. But we are here, we have survived because we do what is necessary, we have our walls, our rules…" Jeanine says. "Here everyone is fed. Everyone is warm and safe and cared for. We do that."
She places a palm against the window, fingers splayed and I see that she is shaking ever so slightly.
For a moment in her reflection in the glass I think I see sorrow on her face, in the heaviness of her skin on her skull, the faraway tired look in her eyes. The city beyond the glass, not within her gaze but something farther away.
"The reasons for our actions are beyond their understanding. We are willing to make sacrifices for the greater good, something none of them will ever grasp. Their comfort, their safety. It is what we provide… And they all live without ever knowing the horrors they are protected from."
Once I would have agreed. Now I am not so sure. Sitting here, looking at this weary woman. I dont say anything.
These beliefs, were born of a instinct to protect our way of life and peace. What had it done to us? What were we protecting against exactly?
I remember the images they'd shown us. Falen's twins and I, as children. I could never forget them. My fear landscape is decorated with it.
A small person hanging by the neck from a telephone pole. A hole in the ground the size of half the Dauntless compound, full of bodies. Crowds of people mowed down by gunfire, cities reduced to ash, nuclear devastation. Utter ruination.
We were taught the smell of fear, and pain, and the look of it before we learned there was anything else in the world besides it.
Blood, bone, death, empty faces, and soulless eyes.
The chaos and devestation, believed that Divergent could bring about. These individuals that are unable to adhere to, or accept any of the values or morals of any faction.
They are not predisposed to honesty, or kindness, or bravery, or selflessness. Nothing. They are, inside themselves chaos incarnate. Lost.
But how could they be so consequential to us and our way of life?
My thoughts stray to Charles. His red chafed cheeks and curly hair. How his eyes must have been a striking gray-ish blue, and I imagine how his voice and laugh might have sounded, what kind of books might have held his interest.
I picture then, a peaceful image of the tall, lanky Erudite boy that I'd seen on his choosing day, reading a book to a younger version of him.
My neck flushes, the heat of it creeping up over my jaw and along my cheeks as my blood boils. I draw a sharp breath, startled at the direction of my thoughts.
"You enjoy books?" Jeanine asks suddenly, she turns around to face me. Her composure back as if it never left, her expression betraying nothing of the previous conversation. "Do you own any?"
Her sudden interest and topic change takes me aback, or perhaps I had not heard the rest of what she said.
Her eyes examine my face as though she could know my stray thoughts. I swallow thickly.
I try to say yes and no at the same time and instead it just comes out as a unintelligible grunt. I clear my throat and answer properly. "I have several."
Though I wouldn't be surprised if she already knew that. She smiles a little before tapping a nail along the back of her chair and I can tell she has words on the edge of her tongue because she sucks in a cheek.
"You are… Very little like the late leader." Jeanine says, taking a seat at her desk finally. "She never could find wonder in a book, and if she ever owned one, it only held pictures."
She chuckles lightly, for a moment her eyes see through me, as if looking back a long distance into herself now. I see a ghost of a smile around her eyes, they look alike, in that moment. Though Jeanine has always been softer.
"I have one for you… If you would accept it."
I stare at her as she slides a hard covered book across the surface of her desk and I twist my fingers together in front of me until I feel each one pop.
What a small thing. An unexpected similarity to the woman I only ever shared blood with. A reason for my Erudite.
But I also realize then, maybe, Eric had not shared so much about me with them. With her after all.
"Well, I supposed I've taken up enough of your time today." She says, sitting back, the creak in her chair more dismissive than when she turns her gaze and hands to her computer.
I stand and take the book, tucking it under my arm before starting for the door all too eager to leave.
"Genesis, Erudite would welcome you." She says then. With none of her usual imperiousness. "Should you choose us. . .We would not be so indelicate towards your prefrences and state."
I turn just enough to gaze at her sideways, with almost a glare. "Aptitudes are absolute." I say, her answering smile is prideful.
I enter the armory to return my gear. Listening to the sound of the truck peeling out of the lot outside with too much gas, and the screetch of the rubber tires against asphalt is grating to my ears.
I'd told them not to wait, and that I would take the train back but they sat around Erudite causing a scene. The anonymity of the helmets making them brash and foolish.
"How was it?" Max asks with disinterest as he watches me first place the book on the table before drawing the weapon from its holster, removing the magazine from my pistol, racking the slide back, flipping the catch, tilting it to retrieve the bullet in the chamber.
Placing everything neatly on the table before him, the gun in condition 4. And the stray bullet back in the magazine. Retrieving the book and tucking it under my arm once again.
"Uneventful." I reply flatly, not lost to the look of disdain he held when inspecting Jeanine's gift.
He shakes his head and chuckles, picking the gun up and placing it back into the metal cabinet to lock up. Signing it back in as returned.
"You sure you don't want to join the oth-"
"I'm sure." I cut him off, turning to leave. My mood has darkened considerably due to lingering thoughts.
It would seem these days my mind would never quiet and cooperate very little as well.
"How is your injury faring?" He asks next, as if unwilling to let me go without some kind of conversation.
"Well." I answer, he follows me out, locking the doors behind him. My wound still causes discomfort with every step or strenuous movement but it is healing.
I wait patiently to be dismissed.
"How are things between you and Eric?" He asks, lighting a cigarette up with a match and waving it to extinguish before flicking it to the side.
The smell of it repugnant, as is his question.
I remember Eric saying Max had thought he could convince me to remain Dauntless. The book I hold now somewhat domineering this conversation no doubt.
At that moment I think to tell him the same thing I told Eric at that time, what I had told Jeanine. To even suggest that a mere individual, Eric, could alter or influence a decision like that. . .
Instead I say. "Tumultus. . .Agitating. . .Degrading. Among other things."
He laughs loud and heartily, coughing a bit, pounding his chest with a fist. "You and your big words. . .Do you remember when you were barely this tall?" He puts a hand down to his hip level.
"No." I respond without inflection. Today it seems more that one individual wants to reminisce of impudent days.
"What was it you would say, something about not fearing something already dead?"
My jaw tenses. "I do not fear, that which can be killed." I correct him, suddenly unsure the direction of the topic or his point.
"Thats the one." He says, proudly now. His hand claps down on my shoulder. "You were a small thing, saying shit like that."
"Is there some kind of relevance?" I ask him disinterestedly, my grip on the book bleaching my knuckles of color.
"You were born Dauntless." He says then, taking a long drag of the cigarette in his mouth. "You will always be Dauntless."
"Where the fucks the ice cream?!" Gabriel whines loudly in my ear. I grit my teeth, contemplating giving him something else to whine about.
"It would've melted by the time she got back." Jade says in my stead. She studies my mood, frowning.
"I like the getup." Joseph says, eyeing the empty holster at my side. "Faction's ambassador's have to be armed?"
"It's a show of force, dumbass." Jade answers for me, again.
I take a bread roll and pick bits of it apart, rolling them between my fingers before putting them betwen my teeth.
"You passed up on the ice cream but you brough home a book?" Gabriel continues, he opens it to skim through it. "Did you go to the library?"
"Don't hurt yourself, we all know you don't know how to read." Joseph jokes.
They all laugh, and the book gets discarded back on the table. I pick it up myself, inspecting it for the first time.
It is an old volume, the binding loose, cover faded and aged so much so that you could barely make out the title. The pages feel brittle. It feels fragile.
There are no pictures. I tuck it under my arm and stand to leave.
"You'll meet us in the training room?" Jade asks as I get out of the bench.
I nod, cracking my knuckles audibly. Gabriel and Joseph give me devious smiles.
Gabriel taps out. I have my knee pressed against his back, with his arm twisted behind him lain across the mat on his stomach. I'm off him in an instant.
He pushes himself up, turning back around to face me. His expression fierce, brows furrowed, nostrils flaring and teeth bared, arms back up.
I put my arms up to mirror him, he lunges, his arm swiping down aiming for my waist. I dodge to the right, and he immediately sweeps his leg in a low arch to catch me with a kick that would take me down.
I bring my body down to one knee folding my arm tight against myself to take the kick straight on, and grab hold of his ankle with my other when it connects. I do my own low arch, kicking his other leg from under him shoving him with my weight and throwing his leg from my grasp.
He sprawls back down on his side. He laughs then, standing up immediately with his arms guarding once more.
Jade and Joseph watch, silently. Their earlier cheers now quieted, paying close attention with rapt interest.
My body is covered in a sheen of sweat. I wipe my forehead with the back of my arm, just smearing it.
"You okay Gene?" She asks suddenly, when I move my arm to guard my wound instead of high.
Gabriel thinks it is an opening, he swings high so I duck low, to the right once more, my fist connects with gut, my bare knuckles meets the tensed muscles of his abdomen.
He grabs that arm still pushing to now bring us both to the ground, so I check him, steping one leg between his spread too wide, the other just behind his outside foot bringing my other arm around him grabbing him by the nape of the neck, using his forward momentum and my opposite force to twist in his grasp and trip him. My trapped arm acting as a fulcrum.
Gabriel flips and falls flat on his back, the air knocked from his lungs and he clutches at his gut.
I walk off the mat and accept the bottle of water from Jade. Slumping unceremoniously to the ground near their knees, breathless.
The lightheadedness rushes to my head from overexerting my body after lack of use. I feel my muscles protesting, and my lungs equally distressed.
My wound, burning me on the inside out. Pulsing in waves. Hands shaking a bit as I uncap the bottle and drink thirstily. Wiping my mouth on my tshirt sleeve.
After a few breaths I am certain I am able to hold down the food I'd consumed hours ago. My hand moves to my abdomen and I wonder whar condition it is in now.
Gabriel lays on the mat just laughing.
"I don't remember training being that intense." Joseph says with a nervous laugh.
"You're gonna destroy us during initiation." Gabriel says, propping himself up on his elbows.
"We can practice." I tell them. Though I'm unsure if it is against the rules, and then I think the leaders would acquiesce if they thought it meant I would stay.
Eric had said I could try asking them for anything. There might have been some truth to it.
"Won't the leaders and instructors be mad about it?" Jade asks after my own thought of it. "We'll already have an advantage over the transfers this coming year and the new rules. . .Limited spots. . ." She shakes her head disparagingly.
"Your advantage, can possibly become their advantage." I reply, imploringly. "Find a way. If everyone gets a high score, the leaders won't be wasteful."
"I think there will be more transfers than us though." Gabriel argues. "Plus we'll be separ-"
"Why did you say it like that?" Joseph cuts him off eyeing my speculatively."Your advantage? Don't you mean our advantage? Find a way? Just us?"
I press my mouth into a hard line as all three of them look at me quizzically.
"We haven't taken the aptitude tests yet." I say simply, deeming it suddenly unavoidable. My entire body becomes tensed, muscles wound tight. I hold my abdomen.
"You're more Dauntless than any of us." Jade insists, her brows turn up, suddenly concerned.
I pinch the bridge of my nose, pushing into my closed eyes. Gritting my teeth.
Had I just intended on surprising them on choosing day? Or was this talk imminent?
As if Jade didn't just go through the throes of her fears, of abandonment. Her jacket still hiding the bandages around her wrist. What would it have wrought if Eric's action had done that much?
It was imminent. It was something I was considering more of late. I'd blame Eric for causing such introspection, inciting a psychoanalyzing of myself and my predispositions but I'd always known on some level, enough to try and ignore it.
I'd considered this before. Is it bravery if I can calculate my odds of success or failure before acting? Is it courage I use to conquer my fears or knoweledge of them and the effects of fear on the body?
Do I really care for the weakness of others? Or is it their ignorance that incenses me? For they could have the knowelege to overcome it.
Am I Dauntless or just smart enough to know how to act like one?
I'd been repressing my more inherently Erudite tendencies in myself, as Eric had said, over a depreciation of them.
My arrogance, curiosity and hunger for knoweledge, but doing so has only put me at a severe disadvantage. If I'd embraced it, I would be in a different position.
"What faction would you even go to? Erudite?" Gabriel asks incredulously. "You're not that smart, dumbass."
"You could still choose Dauntless." Joseph argues. "We're told that we can still choose, it's not like you would fail initiation."
"I mean. . ." Jade starts, her gaze is downcast. "I know that you're really smart, you always liked to read. . ."
I open my eyes and shoot her a stern look. She meets it with a guilty frown, shrugging her shoulders.
Harsh words sit on the sharp edge of my tongue but their accusing faces keep them from escaping my lips.
"I know you'd have your reasons too." Jade says, sitting straighter, giving me a nod. Her eyes hardened once more. "I'd understand, at least it wouldn't be a -."
"That's bullshit." Gabriel spats, angrily cuting Jade off. "What reasons would you have? We're literally the best faction!"
"It's not Eric is it?" Joseph asks seriously eyeing how I clutch my side. "We heard a rumor that he hurt you, but you guys still s-"
"You'd be a coward if you left to escape him." Gabriel is on his feet again towering over me, with his fists clenched.
Jade gives me a knowing look, as if supporting me, because she thinks she knows the truth, that I might be escaping from much more than Eric.
Even that is an affront to my ego. Would I run from that such a scenario, even if it weren't just a farce?
No, I don't believe I would, I'd be smarter about it. Though I couldn't imagine what it would be like to actually be a Divergent in such case.
Gabriels face demands an answer. His hazel eyes are alight with accusation.
Normally I would rise to the challenge, probably beat Gabriel for such an insult. But instead I sit there, leaned back, staring up at him, considering it.
Joseph looks away as if he couldn't have said it better than Gabriel had. He really couldn't have.
But the thought that they would assume such a reason as to why I would transfer, that reason, is too repulsive.
"I would not transfer over such trivial, inconsequential. . ." There doesnt seem a word strong enough, it comes through my teeth then builds in volume.
"You transfering at all is per- pre-" Gabriel stutters as if the word is just out of reach, eluding him. "Perpost-"
"Preposterous." I finish for him when I realize the word he intends to use. Jade and Joseph laugh. "I did not realize you had that in your limited vocabulary."
"Shut up." Gabriel says but without his earlier anger, letting it deflate as the throws himself onto the mat, once more, flat on his back. "Smart ass."
"It's not like we wouldn't be able to see her again if it's another faction. . ." Jade says, talking to herself as much as them. "We'd be able to visit. . .You could still visit."
"Thats if they don't change the rules again." Joseph says with a sigh. "I'm betting they would. That Eric would."
"Fuck that guy." Gabriel says flippantly. Joseph and Jade both repeat after him. "Fuck that guy."
For a while we all sit there, in silent contemplation.
I value knowledge and appreciate that it is a form of power. That it is Power. With it, anything could be overcome, anything can be accomplished and explained. Controlled, you learn the means of how. Anything and everything can be learned.
"Erudite does work real close with us though." Joseph says, assuming my choice as well. "Maybe we could all become leaders, if you're smart enough." He nudges me with his boot. "Smart as Jeanine Matthews."
"Gabriel maybe you can be faction's-ambassador, with your charm." Jade jokes sarcastically.
"What happened to 'Dauntless, from diapers to death'." Gabriel says more seriously, almost sullenly, with his arm draped over his face. Ignoring them.
"Consider it the death of me, then." They all laugh at that, including Gabriel begrudgingly, as though I've told a joke.
Many of the squads have not returned for the day yet. At dinner the canteen is nearly deserted.
The ones that did, after turning over their weapons, still wearing their uniforms and helmets, would saunter into the canteen to get some food and leave without engaging anyone.
Though there were many cheers and compliments over their appearance. The actual individuals involved in the faction-less relocation and repression, now lost all excitement for it.
Younger Dauntless crowd the control room or the Lounge, where there are screens dislaying live security footage of the happenings outside.
Many disappointed.
The entire time Lauren is trying to instruct me on various computer related processes and functions, and explaining the rules of programming, she fidgets, nervously. Biting the rings in her lip, or pinching the jewelry in her ears between her fingers. Looking to the door.
It would seem, her previous attitude towards teaching me, somewhat changed. I can only assume who caused it.
She paces behind me after imploring me to do the same programming test the leadership candidates went through. I gather that it's just a distraction.
It is the same test they introduced when Dauntless first underwent the upgrade to computerized technology and I'd done it before.
Instead of saying so, I go through each of the screens, reading what the program is supposed to do, and then finding an error in its code that prevents it from performing the function properly. Mostly by memory.
When I complete the test she finally says. "I don't think this is a good idea anymore. . ."
I tilt my head and raise my brow at her. I mean, I had already gathered by her obnoxious fidgeting.
"The leaders ordered me only to gauge your interest, not to oblige you in them."
"Leader." I correct passively, although it is an assumption.
"Well at first yes." She relaxes marginally to lean against the desk, crossing her arms over her chest. "Then I argued that he was just being a control freak and then Max. . ."
He went to Max and had Max reiterate the order.
Eric may be trying to appear as if convincing me to stay Dauntless, at Max's behest, discouraging anything Erudite in nature, while also trying to appear to Jeanine as if driving me toward Erudite.
Playing the favor of both sides.
But I could possibly convince Jeanine that he is a threat to my decision. My being an inexperienced teenage girl, as she had said herself. . .
I pinch between my brows and run my fingers outwards to my temples when I feel the headache forming. I would not submit myself to such indignity.
It is a fleeting thought then, that maybe Divergence could be developed, much like a cancerous tumor and that Eric is trying to create the toxic conditions in me to cultivate and culture it.
I calm myself immediately, taking a deep steadying breath. It is an unreasonable and unrealistic theory.
I also have to remind myself that I am not so against the existence of Divergent anymore. My old presispositions still weigh heavily on my subconscious and reactions.
Lauren warches me more nervously now, with an awkward apologetic smile possibly wondering at my odd restraintive behavior, as my mind goes through many tangents of thought.
"He can be aggravating, but what guy isnt?" She asks assuming he is the cause.
I ignore her and push myself away from the desk to stand but she puts her hand on my forearm to stop me.
My muscles tense.
"He's in over his head, taking on too many things at once, and I know he's fucking things up with you but-"
"He has discussed me, with you?" I ask levely, though my hands clutch the end of the table tightly.
She removes her hand from me and scans the room as if she would be sharing delicate information.
I relax marginally, slouching back down into the chair, shoving my hands into my jacket pockets. My freshly wrapped abdomen, wound a bit too tightly and pushes into my lungs.
"He's been obsessed with you." She says, her tone hushed, secretive. "At first I thought it was cute, you know first love type, but he's on some other level shit."
"Has he divulged anything important?" I ask petualntly, disappointed with the lack of real information.
I already know about Eric's previous interest in the inner workings of Dauntless, through me, and discovering unimportant things about me. It must have come off as an obsession.
Her brow raises and she looks confused. "Like what?"
I consider for a moment, then decide that he wouldn't have told her, otherwise she may have been more weary of me.
Instead I say. "Like the fact that he and I are nothing but a pretense, he was employed by both of the leaders to inconvenience me and this was the way he chose to do so." Heavily annoyed and building in volume. "That his obsession lies not with me, but with the leader Falen? That I am just a tool, he would use, ancillary to that end? Or that he had a -"
"Yes!" She says almost putting her hand over my mouth. She stops just before making the mistake of it. Her frantic eyes scan the doors before locking back to mine.
I can smell her fingers and the metal of the rings she adorns them with. My jaw tenses, I know exactly what I sound like to her, to myself even.
"He does have a vendetta against Falen. . .He's blamed Dauntless' loose rules for that accident a few years ago. Thats why he wants to change things."
I frown at the direction of my thoughts when I ponder just how much he's told her about himself how much more she may know of him and his other motives, that I don't. Wether or not he'd manipulated her or told her the truth of them.
"But you've got it wrong it's not a pretense for him, Gene. He has a shitty way of showing his feelings, because hes afraid of them like most men and you're not exactly. . .like most girls."
I dont take that as a complement or an insult in the way she says it. My wrappings pressing into my chest make it uncomfortable to breathe so I shift.
"And you're not a tool. . .I think he's taking on so much, that he's doing too much, because of you and that should show you something, if not a little of Eric."
"What do you mean by that?" I ask flatly against her implying tone. He is a master in manipulation. I know that I am a tool, a pawn in their games. "That I am to blame?"
"Not to blame, why would you say it like that." She laughs. "You're really oblivious aren't you?"
I huff petulantly and glare at her. It is apparent, but she is the one harshly ignorant of Erics true design.
"In Erudite he was never-"
"So you did know him in Erudite?" I interrupt, suddenly curious instead of put off by it. I sit up in the chair and lean in, interested.
Lauren looks taken aback. "Well yeah actually, but there was nothing between us then and there is nothing like that between us now if that's what you-"
"Did you know his brother?" I ask.
"I knew him." She frowns and tilts her head, confused. "Why?"
"What were they like. . .together?" My question comes out quieter. I feel an involutary flush on my neck that rises to my cheeks. "What was Eric like before. . . Everything?"
She considers me a long moment, before uncrossing her arms and leaning back on the palms of her hands.
"They were two peas in a pod." Lauren answers with a sad laugh, her eyes get a faraway melancholy look. "I babysat them a few times. . .They were almost always together. Goofing off, troublemakers honestly. . .They were young. It's like that when you have a sibling. . .Like with Lynn, Shauna and little Hector."
I'm trying to picture again, the image I had conjured up in my head when I was at Erudite but instead my mind goes off on a tangent and I'm reminded of Amar.
At how he had said I was the only family he had left. What it was like to have a brother, a sibling. All this time.
My cheeks flush warmer, uncomfortably so. I make a mental note to find him when I can.
"Eric. . . Well, hes a completely different person now. . .When you lose someone you love, it changes you. Even if you don't want to admit it." She says softly, eyeing me sympathetically. "The pain turns you into something. . .different, before you can stop it or even realize it, in Dauntless you let go of the person but you don't let go of everything, it's impossible."
I know it must be true. I put a hand over my wound and I feel the pain acutely something within unlike physical. I had been changed, but I would not accredit one thing to its cause.
It is then that I realize, without a doubt. With absolute certainty who is the blame for all of it. For everything.
Who my true rage and fury is directed at. But also how powerless I am against him now because I am forced into submission on several accounts.
I would not risk Garrett, in his position more precarious than my own. Nor would I risk the deals they made with faction-less over the Divergent and their safety.
I even believe that Falen means what he said about change. It is imminent.
"Was that. . .Really Eric?" She asks gesturing to how I clutch my side. "There was a rumor that he had hurt you."
"No, it wasn't Eric. Though I wouldn't be surprised if he spread that one himself." I tell her, she laughs. "It was the leader. Falen."
The truth. It felt so sure and true.
Her laugh is cut short and she scans the doors again. Her eyes become hard. "Revenge isnt the Dauntless way, but justice is." She says, quietly. "I don't think Eric cares to make the distinction between the two, as long as the end result is the same."
I nod my head slowly.
"You can't just kill a leader though, unless you intend to make yourself into a martyr."
Eric had warned me against killing Falen that night when he suspected me of some ulterior motive, unsure what.
My neck and face flush again and this time I put my cold hands over them because the heat is uncomfortable.
Eric had not wanted to make me into a martyr even though it would have been the easiest route to his "justice". He knows what I am capable of and could have asked me to. Manipulated me into it. I've already many motives to.
He's in over his head, taking on too many things at once.
He is trying to find another avenue instead, anything he can use against Falen that would weigh too heavily for Max or the other leaders to deny. Solid indesputsable evidence. . .He said he had warned me. . .He'd known there was a chance Falen would kill me, the tracker he had installed did not just track, it monitored my vital signs. Falen knew, he had even said that Eric anticipated I'd be injured during that task.
My mind begins to spin things in an unreasonably and outrageous direction heavily speculative and foolish on my part.
But it persist, the train of thought inplacable. This is what Falen must mean to use against Eric, to control him into submission. Me.
Eric had made the wrong moves in the beginning, a grave mistake but it must've been too late, already discovered.
It stopped being a pretense at some point.
But Eric intentionally led me on to believe it was, all of it, the whole time as it had been for me. Made me believe it was all just a show for the leaders, then I would never know or learn that I could be used against him.
He is taking on far too much, and yet also still trying to antagonize me. As if his true opponent weren't formidable enough. Maybe Falen believes Eric could be a way to control me as well. Maybe he'd intended for it to become so. . .Is that why Eric yet lives?
"Are you alright?" She asks, looking at me strangely. Her brows furrow.
"Fever." I lie, putting my hands into my pockets once more. Something in my gut flutters uncomfortably, I feel my own brows furrow and forcefully smooth my features that had become scrunched with focus.
Transfering would mean relations would be prohibited, but I would be out of the way for Eric to carry out his justice.
He said he would do whatever it takes, perhaps that includes driving me to Erudite. It would explain some of his actions, attempting to sever my ties to whatever attachments I have here, severing anything that might have developed between us. Making it easier for me?
"You sure? Looks kinda like you're blushing, or processing something very unpleasant." Lauren says with a light laugh interrupting my thoughts once more. "I used to be an erudite, remember?"
"Do you know when the leaders squads are supposed to be returning?" I ask, ignoring her teasing. I check my watch and it turns out to be much later than expected. I must confront Eric about all of this to be sure.
"I heard they aren't returning, they'll be staying at the wall and might be back tomorrow but not for long, turns out its a bigger job than orignially suspected."
I sigh in response and she laughs again.
"Worried about Eric?"
"No." I reply, a little to quickly which she finds even more humorous.