With Dauntless Abandon

Chapter 14

"Be nice, Caleb. He won't hurt me. He loves me."

"He better."

~~~

She helped him decorate his apartment. He doesn't really recall a time when his family had such thing as a Christmas tree, or bowls of chocolates lying around, but now his living room has a small tree and decorative lights hanging around, and bowls of red and green wrapped Hershey's kisses, mini kit-kat bars, and tiny silver Milky Way bars, and other candies, on his coffee table and in the hall, on the table in the entry where he always leaves his keys, and in his room because she swears his bed is a thousand times more comfortable than hers. He pops one of the sweet treats in his mouth as he walks to the door, hoping that chewing his food properly will keep him from grinding his teeth with tension.

She sits comfortably on his couch, wearing a brown sweater dress and warm, brown tights, and ballet flats that are comfortable. She is curled up with his red afghan, reading a magazine, but she is smiling happily at him. "They're your family," she reminds him. "They will love you."

He draws a breath and opens the door.

"Tobias? Wow, look at you, you look..." James stares at him for a long moment, before throwing his arms around the younger man in a fierce hug.

Four stiffens, unsure, but returns the hug eventually.

"You look just like her," James finally says, and Four clears his throat to keep it from clogging.

"Thank you," he whispers. "Uh-come in, come in. I uh... realize it's sort of small, but-"

"Don't worry about it, son. This is my wife Zoey, my sons Hector and Bobby, and my baby girl Kelly." He greets them all as they are introduced, and they step inside.

"This is..." Four frowns as he struggles to find an appropriate word. "This is... my Tris," he finally says.

She beams at him and kisses his cheek lightly before greeting everyone. She sits down right after, and Four watches her, concerned. "Lots of hugging," she mutters. "Two broken ribs."

"Oh." Those ribs will bother her for a long time. It's been just over three months, and she still favors that side heavily. "Do you need a pain killer?"

She shakes her head.

"Everything alright?" James asks.

She nods, smiling a little bit. "It's been a rough few months. He gets worried."

"I'm sorry to hear that, dear," says Zoey kindly. "Do you mind if I ask what happened?"

Tris looks at Tobias, and he stiffens. She takes his hand, and he looks down at her.

"Tell them," she says.

He swallows. "She... um, there was an investigation about me, like I told you... and she got involved, and they went after her to keep me from talking-and they beat her up and they shot her... a lot... and she's still recovering, and I don't want to talk about this anymore."

"Four," Tris whispers. "It's over, you know. We're okay."

He puts his head in his hands. "Fine, okay? Fine. After I ran away from my father, I joined a gang, alright? It is called Dauntless. And someone in the gang got jealous of me... so they killed my girlfriend and framed me. I spent the last ten years of my life a convicted murderer, and Tris is the only one that bothered to notice that I didn't belong there, so they tried to kill her so I wouldn't get out. He kidnapped her and murdered her best friend, and then he shot her three times."

James and Zoey stare at him, speechless. "You... were in convicted of murder?"

"You were in jail? What's that like?" asks Hector curiously.