Second Chances (Eric and Tris)

The Confrontation: Part 11

Christina gasped and took a step forward to defend Four, but he held his hand up to stop her. "You of all people think you have a right to talk to me like that? You, a man that moves in to live with another man's girlfriend. You think that is honorable?!" Four says, his voice raising in volume, attracting more attention than they already had.

Eric just raised his eyebrow. "Honor?" He laughed. "You are talking to me about honor?? I moved in with a friend, a co-worker, who offered a place for me to live while my place is being fixed up. You want to talk to me about honor?" Eric reach behind him and grabbed Tris by the wrist and pulled her forward into the thick of the argument. "You want to tell me how it is honorable to leave bruises on the women that you supposedly love?!" Eric held up Tris' arm for Four to see. His eyes traveled down her arm and widened when they came to the bruises. He clearly had no idea he had hurt her like that. Tris also felt Christina and Will's eyes on her and she saw the shock on their faces and that soon turned to pity as they looked up at her face. She pushed her chin out. She was not going to be pitied. She would not play the helpless victim.

"Tris..." Four started. Tris yanked her arm out of Eric's grasp and held her hand up in front of Fours face.

"No. I don't want to hear it. Everything that you have to say and everything that I have to say was said last night Four. There is nothing else that I want to hear right now. I came over here to make sure that Eric kept his word to me, and nothing more. " Three sets of eyes shifted to Eric. He shrugged.

"Just promised I wouldn't beat the shit out of you, that's all." Four narrowed his eyes.

"Explain to me how you are not a hypocrite Eric."

"Excuse me?"

"You come down here, playing the savior, calling me all sorts of names because of one mistake I made, but you endorse trainees beating the living crap out of each other, male on female, all the time. How is that not hypocritical? You yourself put Tris up against Peter and watched as he beat the shit out of her till she was unconscious but you come down here ready to rip my head off because of a bruise??"

"You want to know why it is different? And it is, very different. It is different because I was teaching them to defend themselves against people like you. People that would want to hurt them. While yes, women will beat on other women, you will most often have situations like you, where men will beat on women. I put them against each other so they can learn to defend themselves in those situations, that is what training is for. Your situation, you were taking advantage of an situation where you had an emotional advantage over someone to cause bodily harm, so yes. I see the situation as very different." Eric made a motion as to move away, but changed his mind and moved back towards Four and lowered his voice to just above a whisper. "And if you so much as come anywhere near Tris without her permission, I will consider my promise no longer valid. I will make it my duty to seek you out and beat the living shit out of you." With that, Eric turned away and started passed Tris, gently touching her arm as he walked passed her. She glanced one last time at Christina and Will, willing her friends to understand. She held Christina's gaze for a moment before turning and following Eric.

Walking back to the line Tris and Eric grabbed new trays and headed to the leadership table. They sat down next to Max and Barb and Jeremy. "What was that all about?" Jeremy asked. Eric just gave him one of those 'seriously?' looks. "Oh...right...never mind..." Eric just shook his head at his best friend. Max called Tris's attention away.

"So I know that you have not been at it long, but have you noticed anything yet in that armory?"

Tris nodded. "Yes, I have noticed quite a few weapons missing. No large amounts of any single weapon, but just a few here and there of multiple different kinds of weapons. Not sure what to make of it yet. Need to finish the inventory first and I was thinking of looking back on the past few inventories to compare to see when this first started happening so we can get a timeline..." The rest of the leaders nodded.

"Great thinking Tris." Barb said."After lunch I will go and pull those previous inventories and lookthrough those for you, so we can save some time. Then once you are done, we cancompare notes. Sound good?" Tris nodded, thankful for the help.
"Eric, can you and Jeremy head out to the factionless sector thisafternoon over by Candor?" Max said. "There are report of them getting overly aggressiveand being in possession of firearms. So take a few members of the squad and begeared up just in case. I don't want to take chances. If they are armed, arrestthem, hold them and try to find out where they got the firearms and to make sure they are not ours." Eric andJeremy nodded. Tris felt her stomach twist. Eric would be going to confrontpossibly armed factionless. While she knew this was a part of her job and his,she had a bad feeling, something was not right, she could feel it, but she had no idea what it was.