Her once true love defects to Dauntless, abandoning her.
Penelope finds herself lonesome two years later. She has everything she could ask for, but nothing is fulfilling. That's until she comes across Charlie again. Old feelings are lost but somethi...
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ERIC was in the same place Penelope had been in months ago. He stood at the foot of the bed, his eyes gazing down at her sleeping form. The sheets were pulled up to her chest, one of her hands over her stomach and the other off to the side. He didn't know how long she had been sleeping, but it was for the best.
He slowly walked around the bed, the other two people in the room with them watching him closely. His fingertips ran across the white sheets, eventually falling over the soft skin of her hand. Eric didn't know whether to grab it and hold on tightly, or just watch her and wait for the moment she would stir from her sleep. He wasn't prepared for a situation like that, but there he was, unaware of how to approach things.
"How. .How long has she been here for?" Eric murmured, his voice hoarse.
"About an hour by now," Marisol answered softly. "We had to sedate her. Calm her down."
"What about the, um. . ." Eric drifted off, finding it hard to say one simple word.
The redhead shook her head, despite Eric having his back to her and the man next to her. She was hesitant to tell him but he needed to know. And when Penelope finally woke up, she, too, would need to hear the news.
"W—We couldn't do anything, Eric. If you had seen the way he brought her in." She paused for a few seconds and took a deep breath. "It was too. .too late. ."
Eric finally turned to look at the other two, his eyes landing on the tan man standing off to the side of Marisol. He met his eyes for a brief second before they shifted over to Marisol. She looked as though she had been crying, her eyes puffy and bloodshot. And she had been crying. She cried over the pain her friend would go through once she found out what happened.
"When I found her. ." the not-so-mysterious man began. "Penelope really was in hysterics. I thought maybe something happened to you, but I saw her on the floor against the wall, then there was her dress and hands covered in. . ."
"In what?" Eric questioned a bit harshly.
"Blood."
Eric looked back over to him, his scrutinizing gaze lingering over the unlikely hero. The man Eric once saw as a threat during initiation and fought with every last bit of strength, but wasn't able to defeat, was Penelope's hero. For obvious reasons Eric didn't wish to acknowledge, he felt he owed him so much for what he'd done, in the past and in that moment.
"Thanks, Four. For bringing her here before things got even more complicated."
Four nodded subtly. "Just be glad she's okay for now."
For now was the right choice of words, because Penelope was unconscious, in a heavy sleep she wouldn't wake from for a while. She wasn't aware of the situation for now, but would eventually know. She would wake to the terrible truth. She lost the last thing that had given her hope.
