XV

  "You got high off my devotion

We caught as you crutch

Black some sick of potion

I was addicted to your touch

Carried your weight the misplaced way

Had the burden of hate

The decadence of decay"  

"Think of You" -Ms Mr

                The mess hall was busier than usual, as if more people crammed in, or perhaps they were all trying to talk over one another. The initiates had been through a few days of mental training and were all eager to talk about their fears and how they were able to better conquer them this time compared to the times before. Some went after hours to work on it, and others dreaded being forced into the simulation again and again. It wouldn't be too much longer now, a week of mental training had been done and there was only one more week.

One more week until the training was over for good, the final test would be held and then each and every one of those initiates of this year would finally be able to call themselves Dauntless. Harper shoveled a delicious pasta salad into her mouth, piling fruit upon fruit up on her plate, and even grabbed a few chocolates that seemed to be new in the mess hall. A treat, perhaps. 

As she sat with a straight back, she closed her eyes and savoured all the delicious foods. After the mental training, she had been going to the gym to keep up her physical training, her accuracy with knives, and she hoped she would have a chance to do so with guns, since that was the weapon of choice with al security. However, she had already begun thinking of what she might do for work, and she thought training initiates would be something she could do quite well.

"When are you finishing it?" Jenner asked, referring to her tattoo.

"Couple nights from now, it's healed really quickly." She slid down her tank top over her shoulder to let him get a look at it. There were hardly any flakes left, and it was smooth upon her skin. The black was matte in some areas, and looked glossy in others, giving depth to the wings and face. Putting her shirt back on properly, she smiled.

"Looks good," he added. Then there was a brief silence between them, though everyone else chattered on without any care for anyone else's conversation. "So the, erm... Eric thing... Is that..."

"Yeah," Harper replied swiftly, leaving nothing more for him to respond to, nothing he could pry into. 

In reality, with all Eric's disappearances, it made things a little complicated. Of course they had both agreed that it would be low key, at least until after she was done her initiation, and with him not being around all the time she was able to at least pretend that she had a normal life going on, just a normal teenager doing what every teenager had done for... well, a long time. Just surviving initiation. It also gave her the time to have other friends, and it was exceptionally welcome that she didn't have Eric breathing down her neck at any point, especially when things like what Eliza had talked about surfaced. Not seeing Eric daily gave her the time to process these things, store them and file them in her head, and create a wall he couldn't see through. Already it was unhealthy between them, but it was too... exciting to pass up.

After dinner Harper found Eliza and gestured that she wanted to talk to her, alone. As they had done the other day, they maneuvered the faction towards one of the many vacant buildings and climbed to the top. They could scream their hearts out and no one could hear them up there, and so light chit chat about serious topics would not be heard by anyone else. It was a safe place, and it had quickly become their place. Eliza had brought with her a chocolate bar she had swiped from dinner, and was nibbling on it as Harper tried to put together the words she wanted to say. It all had to come out without getting Eliza suspecting anything, without her seeing that Harper was hiding something. She had pondered over it since Eliza talked about the weird way the factions worked, and being aware of the simulations when in them.

Harper was pacing, and it irked Eliza a bit, but she said nothing.

"Okay!" Harper threw her hands in the air, as if she had just forfeited a card game or something. Eliza watched her with sincere and curious eyes. "There is a guy."

"Well I figured," Eliza mused, raising an eyebrow.

"I don't trust him," she admitted, feeling that the words had been sitting on her tongue for weeks now, but it gave her little relief to actually say them. It made it feel more real, more frightening. She thought of the weird version of Eric she had seen in her fear simulation. "I don't know if it is good for me to keep going with it."

"Do you think he will be unfaithful?"

"No, that's not the kind of trust I'm talking about." She shook her head; that hadn't even crossed her mind. "We're not a couple, we're not really anything right now. I could honestly care less if he is seeing other people, though I don't think he is- or would. Not if we... I don't know, I'm rambling."

Eliza could see that Harper was feeling a bit defeated. "Rambling is good, just keep going."

Harper huffed. "All the evidence tells me to avoid him, to stay away from people like him, but when I'm around him, it's like I'm under some sort of simulation that makes me forget everything else that is going on. I know that he might hurt me, I know that he isn't the person I want him to be. Should I be able to overlook that simply because I'm-" she laughed, "attracted to him?"

"Have you weighed pros and cons?"

Harper scoffed, rolling her eyes. "Way too many cons. But the pros are very, very heavy."

Eliza grinned. "I have a feeling this has something to do with that great dream you were having."

Blushing, she shrugged her shoulders. "I won't deny it."

A harsh gust of wind brought in some rain; the weather was beginning to take a turn as the season moved into late fall. The sky was grey like Abnegation's attire was, and at night it became so black, it was as if the moon and stars no longer existed. There was something welcoming about the dreary, overcast weather. Harper just seemed to enjoy the colder weather, the bleak weather. As she looked out over the dead city, so many buildings tarnished, destroyed, abandoned, she wondered what it used to be like before this world took over. There weren't factions, she knew that much, but Erudite ensured that history was not taught, not that far back at least. That way, no one would think of trying to bring the old ways back and disrupt the perfection of how it was now.

But it was far from perfect. Harper was beginning to see that.

"Do you think that if you go with it, this untrustworthy fella, that you will be able to step out if you have to?" she asked. "Enjoy it while you can, but end it when you have to?"

Harper dropped her shoulders. "That's just it... I don't know. Already when I'm around him, I start to forget about what I should be focusing on, it's like I lose my mind around him. What if I get lost?"

"Is losing yourself so bad?" she asked. "I mean, didn't we join Dauntless for some excitement? To pretend that we were brave and strong, to lose ourselves in this exciting faction?"

"I guess." Harper felt drained, but at the same time, she was almost feeling better about Eric. She could be with him, and maybe in a month or a year he would do something that drove her crazy and she could leave, she could get back on her path. As they noted before, they were a ticking time bomb, the two of them. She realized that she might as well enjoy it while she could, while he wasn't aware of her and her father's plan. A guilty pleasure. She felt that smile tug on her lips, the one that came every time she thought about Eric, especially after the dream she had.

"It's Eric, right?" Eliza asked, her expression cool and relaxed.

Harper gaped at her. "How did yo-"

"Candor," she replied swiftly. "Besides, I saw the way he looked at you during training, his eyes always focused on you whenever he was around. The way he would smile when you hit a target."

Harper blushed. "I didn't notice he came around much after he knocked me senseless."

"Yeah, he popped his head in a few times," she explained. "While you were busy showing us all up."

"Well, how about that." Harper lost herself in thought.

Even though it was late when Eliza took off to the dorms, Harper directed herself to the gym to blow off some steam. It wasn't as if she was upset or mad about anything, but she had considered a lot, and had a build of excitement she thought would be best used in the gym. Changing into shorts and a tank top when she was there, she left her shoes and clothing by the door, and focused on the punching bag that had become her must sturdy friend here in Dauntless. Without bothering to wrap her hands, since the real world fighting wouldn't exactly allow her to have such protections all the time, she began to punch at the bag, throwing in kicks here and there to practice hitting high and low. She couldn't work that smile off her face though.

"Don't you do anything else?" Eric's voice sent chills down Harper's entire spine, and the memories of the dream flooded her mind.

"I don't know, what else is there to do in this faction?" She turned to face him, sweat on her brow, a smirk on her lips. She almost wished he could read her mind and see what she was thinking, but she also knew that their idea of waiting until she was no longer an initiate wouldn't hold strong if he did. He walked across them gym with such confidence, as any leader should, and Harper felt her heart beat faster as it always did when she was in his presence. She placed her hand on her hip, jutted it out to the side a bit to give her a cheeky appearance. Eric couldn't help but grin a little wider.

When Eric was right beside her, his hand on her hip now, he pulled her close. "I can think of a few things."

She leaned her head in close and brushed her lips against his. "So, hurry up and show me."

His lips collided with hers, and he pushed her back so that she was flush against the gym wall, his hand trailing down her bare leg and bringing it up around his hip just as he had done in her dream. A ripple of nerves sparked inside of Harper, the feeling was startling but welcome. She rolled her hips against him, reminding herself that this was real and not a dream. Her mind was not playing tricks on her, and she found herself closing her eyes, drowning out everything around her as Eric hungrily kissed her. His lips found her neck and he left a dark purple mark there, something for her to blush about when people asked on the morrow. The game was that she couldn't tell anyone, and that aroused Eric and Harper alike. Thinking of what Eliza said about enjoying while she could, Harper wondered if she could ever turn this sort of attention down, and realized that Eric was not her fear, but her weakness.