Heartless

Epilogue

~Eight years later~

I leant against the wooden doorframe as I sipped my milky coffee, I felt a pair of arms wrap around me and a kiss on my neck, I twisted in their arms and saw Eric in some running shorts and trainers, his wireless earphones still looped around his neck. "Where did you go today, I heard you get up early."

"Ran around Chicago for a bit, then went to the boxing gym near the compound." Many of the Dauntless didn't venture to far away from the disbanded compound, some are scattered more near the centre of the city, and about a third moved out of Chicago all together.

"Like a typical day at Dauntless?" I pointed out, he smirked and we lapsed into silence. The entire city seemed to regress on this day.

Today would be Choosing Day, if the factions still existed.

"Happy Choosing Day." I murmured, he kissed my cheek "happy Choosing Day." He echoed, distantly, and I knew he was thinking about anything but this 'happy' day.

I always wondered what it was like for Eric without factions; he wasn't Divergent and fitted perfectly into Dauntless.

Now, it was all different.

Eric was the commander of the entire police taskforce and he also trained the new recruits every year- he was as ruthless with them as he was with the Initiates at Dauntless- but I guess to him there wasn't much difference.

We talked about it a lot. His job. My job. Our life. The kids. The past. The future. We learnt the hard way that that was needed to make our relationship work. We had less arguments now, once we finally talked about things that had gone wrong, either at work or in general.

"How's the house going?" I questioned, lightly kissing him, smiling, he lifted me up and held me against the wall.

He shrugged "shouldn't be too long now, I'm finishing the flooring today and then the furniture can go in."

Eric and I brought a plot of land that ran along the marshland- which has now been refilled and is now a large lake- a year ago. We had outgrown our current apartment, and had moved out of our original apartment about a year after the wedding. It wasn't right to stay in our apartment once so much had changed, it would've been like trying to grasp at the past, and that's not possible.

He let out a almost inaudible hiss of pain when I touched his spine, "what's wrong?" I asked, eyebrows furrowed, in answer Eric slipped off his top.

On the left side of his chest was the angel wing he got two years ago, and on the right he had Evie's name with her birthday and he also had Emmett's name and birthdate and then he had my name with my birthday and our wedding date, the numbers were in Roman numerals while the letters were shadowed italics.

Eric turned around and I traced the words on his spine with my eyes, on the base of his back is the Erudite symbol with the Dauntless symbol for the pupil which he also got in Dauntless but he now had added parts of the Dauntless Manifesto 'We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.' and 'We believe in freedom from fear, in denying fear the power to influence our decisions.' along with 'we believe in facing that fear no matter what the cost to our comfort, our happiness, or even our sanity.' and 'we believe in shouting for those who can only whisper, in defending those who cannot defend themselves.'