This is the last chapter. I want to thank you all for reading and reviewing my first fanfic. You all made this a great experience for me. I'm looking forward to sharing more Eris stories with you, maybe I'll venture into FourTris as well. :)

Eric POV

Lives can be lost, hearts can be broken and some things can be beyond repair. However, there's always hope.

The day that Zeke and I told Tris about Tobias' suicide, something shattered inside of her. No amount of talking or consoling could help her. She read the letter that he left, and its contents shook her to the core. Tobias was mentally ill, and his letter showed glimpses of both hope and despair. He believed that kidnapping Tris would give him the ability to make her love him again and also save her from his father. His father wanted revenge, and Marcus' plan was to kill Tris so that his son wouldn't face any charges. In his letter he said that he finally figured out that the only way he could truly save her and also save himself was to kill himself and his father. He blamed Tris for leaving him, and all but blamed her inability to love him for pushing him to suicide. Tris was devastated, knowing that with the proper mental health care, and with Marcus locked away for his own crimes Tobias could have been saved. She pushed everyone away that day, and entered into a deep state of shock.

It took several days for Tris to talk, and when she did it wasn't to any of her friends or to me, it was to Evelyn Johnson. Both women, bonded by a common loss and feeling of helplessness, leaned heavily on each other. At first I resented Evelyn's intrusion in our lives, but I came to appreciate the friendship and surrogate mother she became to Tris. Tris didn't forget anything that Tobias put her through with his years of abuse, but she mourned the friendship she had lost from her childhood, and the man she thought he could have become with the proper treatment. I tried my best to understand and respect Tris' need to mourn Tobias in her own way, but her despair and depression caused her to end our relationship without warning. Three days after she was released from the hospital, she waited until I went to work and moved out of our apartment. I was devastated, and I later found out she was staying with Will and Christina.

Christina became a lifeline of sorts for me. She was a wonderful friend to Tris and also to me. It was through Chris that I learned that Tris started talking to Dr. Jack Kang again regularly, and with his help she voluntarily checked herself in to an inpatient facility that focused on sexual assault and domestic violence survivors. She spent 60 days in their care, refusing to see anyone, and only sharing weekly phone calls with Chris and Evelyn. When she was released I found out that she had moved back in with Chris and Will.

I also relied on Chris for information about Tris' pregnancy progress. When Tris moved out of our apartment, she also cut all communication with me. I learned that the baby was healthy, the pregnancy was going extremely well and that Tris had been thriving in the care of the facility. It was a bleak couple of months, but I had promised Tris I'd never give up on her, and I kept that promise. After a few days of her being back at Chris and Will's, I was told she wanted to see me. The first time I saw her was extremely emotional for both of us, but we talked for hours and Tris finally told me everything that happened those 4 days she was gone, and she apologized over and over for shutting me out of her life. The only thing that mattered to me was her health and happiness, and that our baby was healthy. That one day was enough for us to both realize how much we loved and needed each other. I brought Tris home that night, at her request, and she never left again.

Tris and I started seeing Dr. Kang together, and it helped our relationship greatly. I finally had someone to help me understand what Tris was going through, both as a survivor of domestic violence and sexual assault. He also helped explain the impact of Tobias' death on Tris, and the guilt she carried that nearly ruined her. Dr. Kang was instrumental in helping Tris understand how the things that happened in her life impacted me as well. This was a touchy point for Tris and I to try to deal with on our own, it was difficult to not seem insensitive to the ordeal Tris went through while explaining how everything affected me. Things weren't perfect, but we worked together to rebuild everything we had lost, and Tris and I became closer and more intimate than ever.

Zeke had his own difficulties processing everything that happened with Tobias. The letter he left for Zeke left so many questions unanswered, and he often struggled with self doubt. He felt like he should have paid more attention to the signs of Tobias' illness, and also felt like he let Tris down after hearing some of Tobias' drunken confessions but never reacting. He's worked hard to exorcise his own demons, and he finally accepted it when Tris and I both repeatedly told him he had no reason to blame himself. Zeke has become one of our closest friends, and when Pete and Susan moved to Boston for Susan's job, Zeke became my partner in the undercover unit. As much as I've missed Pete, I truly couldn't have gotten a better partner than Zeke. We work very well together, and he is as close to me as my own brother.

Our friends were absolutely amazing, they had such patience and strength while Tris and I worked on our relationship. We never felt alone, and our friends truly put their own lives on hold to help us pick up the pieces. Weddings were postponed and rescheduled just to ensure that Tris and I were ready for the festivities. Not many people are lucky enough to have friends like ours.

Once we found our new normal it was a whirlwind few months for marriages, with Chris and Will's long overdue extravagant wedding, followed closely by Zeke and Shauna's more subdued event. Molly and Lynn became engaged, and Uri and Marlene continued to be "happily unmarried".

Some of the best days of my life soon followed, the first being the day our beautiful son was born. Elijah Benjamin Coulter came into this world the perfect mix of his mother and me. He had her beautiful eyes, my lips, and the light complexion and hair we both shared. We fell in love instantly with our little boy. The next being the day that I finally made Tris my wife. It was a simple ceremony, held in the backyard of the house that Tris and I bought together, with Eli, our closest friends, my brother and his family, and Evelyn in attendance.

The relationship between Tris, Evelyn and myself was quite a shock to everyone at first, but she became the grandmother to our son that we never thought he'd have, given that both sets of our parents were gone. Evelyn saved Tris that day, she made her choice loud and clear when she risked her life and turned her back on her own flesh and blood to save a woman she barely knew, and I am forever grateful to her. She will always be considered our family. She loves Tris and me unconditionally, and we return the emotion to her. Evelyn struggles with the guilt of leaving Tobias as a child, but Marcus had manipulated both parties. Tobias believed Evelyn was dead, and Evelyn believed Marcus when he told her that Tobias hated her and wanted nothing to do with her. It took a lot of courage on Evelyn's part, first to seek out her only son and try to build a relationship, and second to then turn her back on him in order to save Tris' life. Tris and Evelyn needed each other, and in my own way I found I needed Evelyn too. She filled a void in our lives.

Another surprise came in the form of Max and Evelyn dating. Max had lost his first love Celia to suicide just when they were ready to start a family, and he'd buried himself in work for the next 25 years as a coping mechanism. He and Evelyn found something in each other that is truly special and they have a very good relationship. They always have a good chuckle telling the story of how Max put her in handcuffs the first time they met. Max, never having had children of his own, became a surrogate father to me, and he easily stepped into the role of grandfather, spoiling and doting on Eli every chance he got. We fell into our own version of family, and it couldn't be more perfect.

Baby fever was the next thing to strike our group, and it was hilariously unplanned. Zeke and Shauna wasted no time in getting started, a fact they loved to share with anyone who'd listen, and were pregnant within weeks of their wedding. Chris and Will followed shortly with their own pregnancy announcement, and 2 days after Eli's first birthday several home pregnancy tests confirmed that we were expecting another Coulter. The beautiful Kelsey Jade Pedrad was the first to make her appearance, much to her parents joy. She was followed 6 weeks later by William Michael Davis, Jr., or Liam for short, and 3 months after that our Jackson Caleb Coulter made his debut. Eli was thrilled to have both a baby brother and cousins, and was always proud to be the oldest. Not to be outdone, Uri and Marlene soon had an announcement of their own when they found out she was pregnant with twins, and we all gathered as a family when Jacob Daniel Pedrad and Marley Rose Pedrad made their appearance after being 3 weeks overdue. Molly and Lynn adopted a beautiful boy named Spencer Ryan Andrews, who just so happened to be exactly 1 week younger than Eli.

Today, we are celebrating Eli and Spencer's fourth birthday surrounded by our perfectly unconventional family unit. Max is manning the grill, while also periodically tickling his grandchildren, Evelyn and Hana (who is Zeke and Uri's mother) are the perfect doting grandmothers, spoiling their little princes and princesses. The greatest part of our family is that all of our children are "cousins" and they all consider Max, Evelyn and Hana their grandparents. Zeke is happily sitting with Shauna on his lap, lovingly rubbing her round belly, heavily pregnant with their second daughter. Will and Chris sit on the ground, blowing bubbles with the kids, Uriah works on setting up the inflatable ring pool with Marlene's help, Molly and Lynn are busy putting the finishing touches on the side dishes while Tris and I are once again in a bathroom together. My beautiful wife is dealing with the all day "morning sickness" during the first trimester of her pregnancy with our third child, and just like with her other pregnancies I sit with her, hold her hair back and rub her shoulders and back. Our friends love to give us a hard time, saying that I like to keep Tris barefoot and pregnant. The truth is that when she and I finally had that talk about children, we both knew we wanted a large family, and we wanted them close enough in age that they grew up together. We are secretly hoping for a girl this time to balance our rough and tumble boys, but if Eli and Jack have their way they'll have as many little brothers as Tris and I want to give them.

I often felt guilty for a peculiar reason, and that is that I somehow came in and took over Tobias' life. I married his girl, became best friends with his former friends, had the relationship with his mother he never had and lived the life he had wanted. It took many sessions with Dr. Kang to help me understand why I felt that way, and for me to come to terms with my place in these people's lives. I don't believe in fate, but something cosmic brought Tris and I together that night. She saved my life as much as I saved hers. I spent most of my life not knowing where I fit in. I lost my parents when I was 16, became reclusive and focused only on school and work, avoided most social interactions and friendships and had a reputation for being cold and even cruel with the way I dealt with people in general. I wasn't a happy person, until Tris. I didn't start living until her; she woke me up and made me want to be a better man. My wife and our children are the best things to happen to me, and our friends are truly the family that we got to choose. Although we are all reminded of the tragedy that brought us together, we are also so thankful to have each other.

Life is great.