Her Secret

Planning

TW: brief descriptions of anxiety/ panic attacks

Jeanine had left the meeting without bothering to wait for Tris. When the younger girl had finally caught up, she was carrying the pocket knife the Jeanine had dropped.

"Are you doing alright, Jean?" she asks, her tone laced with concern. Jeanine turns around, and Tris realizes that she is repeatedly clicking a pen.

"Totally fine," she says, putting a fake grin on her face.

"No, you're not. You know you don't have to pretend for me."

Jeanine takes a few deep breaths. "I just don't know what to do to shut it all down, I mean I started this. And then what if I fail. Fuck, at this point I could just be exiled from the city. I mean I've already done so much wrong and I mean, I don't think I'm even fit to lead the faction anymore and I don't want to step down, I mean I've still got another ten years almost and I . . ."

Tris notices Jeanine visibly shaking and reaches for her hand. "Let's go somewhere private, yeah?"

Jeanine nods. The faction leader had dealt with anxiety for a while, and she knew that she ought to get out of the public hallway before anyone could see her. She knew it would just make it worse if she was going to be around a bunch of other people.

By the time they got back to the apartment, Jeanine sits down on the couch. She grabs a pillow and hugs it before pulling her legs up to her chest. Tris grabs her a glass of water and hands it to Jeanine.

She smiles weakly at them and takes a sip. Jeanine quietly does a few deep breathing exercises. It felt ridiculous to her. She was a woman in her early thirties, still dealing with issues that plagued her in her youth. Teenage Jeanine had always dreamed she would grow out of it. But yet, her she was.

"Do you want to talk about anything?" Tris asks, a little after Jeanine had calmed down a bit.

Jeanine stays quiet for a while. "I think the best way to approach this could be to hack into the control laptop and delete all of their files and serums recipes, and other things they could use against us. Eric liked order, and I don't think Max is much different. They'll be a lot weaker without their useful data. Which, not to mention, was not even theirs in the first place."

"That sounds great, Jean. You should probably bring it up at a leader meeting. But that's not what I meant though."

Jeanine finally turns her head to look at them. "It kinda started with the whole court thing," she says.

"About your parents?"

"Yeah, and Norton. They were all kind of assholes honestly. There was a lot of manipulation and abuse that went on with them. I really didn't plan on having to talk about it today."

"Yeah, I get that, but Jean, that was almost three hours ago that you were put on trial. It's not healthy to suppress things for that long."

Jeanine nods. "Yeah, I know that. I guess I've just always coped like that so I don't really know how else."

Tris nods. "And that's okay. We can take baby steps towards improvement."

"On a side note though, could you get us some food?" Jeanine asks. "I still have yet to eat today as I was so rudely dragged out of bed to talk about my trauma," she jokes.

Tris nods.  "I'll go grab something from the commons, how's that sound?"

Jeanine nods. "I'll be okay while you're gone," she reassures.

Tris gives her a small smile before heading out. 

While in the commons, Tris runs into the Dauntless crew eating lunch. She sits down and joins them.