30. Bertram
Bertram
But he at least expected them to have a fighting chance.
He did not expect to feel the frustration, anger, and betrayal that plans had once again been decimated by Helena de fucking Narbon’s selfishness.
Bertram didn’t know who she was trying to fool.
“Helena,” he said, sternly. “I am quite literally looking at the proof. You can’t pretend it didn’t happen when I can see the silver in your eyes. Just admit it. You got the baby owl-bear to imprint on you.”
“Got the baby owl-bear to imprint on me?!” For the first time, Helena pried her silver-ringed eyes away from V-2’s silver-ringed eyes and looked directly at Bertram. “ ‘Got’ the baby to? As in, you think I did this on purpose somehow?”
Bertram shrugged. Helena’s tone was indignant, but he noticed that she wasn’t outright denying his accusation.
“My goal is to keep this owl-bear as wild as possible,” Helena said. “This owl-bear imprinting on a humanoid form is the last thing I want!”
“That speech would be more convincing if you weren’t cuddling her right now,” Bertram said.
“I’m not cuddling—” Helena looked down and gasped softly, as if it were a surprise even to herself that she had pulled V-2 close to her chest and had been snuggling her tightly for most of the conversation.
Bertram raised an eyebrow pointedly.
“Okay. Um. That’s—that’s not great,” Helena admitted, which Bertram still found this an understatement. “Definitely not, uh, best practices for protected contact with . . . trying to maintain boundaries to . . .”
Helena swallowed.
“I promise, I want V-2 to be rehabilitated and released, to have as little human contact as possible!” Helena said. “I’m so sorry. I—I got caught up in the moment, somehow. But I’ll—I’ll go; you stay here with the suit. You can put the mask back on—we can still fix this.”
Helena lifted V-2 off her lap, set the baby owl-bear down, and got to her feet. She turned to go, but an earsplitting SCREEEEEEEEEECH pierced the air as V-2 ran after her. V-2 launched herself onto Helena’s back and tackled her to the ground.
“Oh, wow,” Helena muttered from the floor. “She’s really strong for how little she is.”
Bertram would have thought that obvious from the way the owl-bear had burst through a glass incubator seemingly unharmed, but he supposed it hit differently when you were the one being (literally) hit.
Bertram moved to remove V-2 from Helena but found himself severely restricted by the owl-bear suit. Helena managed to roll herself over onto her back, V-2 climbing onto her front as she did so. V-2 proceeded to nuzzle Helena’s face with her beak, cooing happily.
“Listen,” Helena said to V-2, desperately. “I’m not your mama! You need to be wild, okay?”
Helena picked V-2 up and tried to lift the cub-chick, but V-2 hooked all four of her multi-taloned feet into Helena’s shirt, zygodactyl feet allowing her two sets of toes to pivot this way and that.
“No—no! Let—go!” Helena tried in vain to pull the baby owl-bear off of her. “You—have—to—stop.”
She unhooked V-2’s front left foot from her shirt, talon by talon. But the moment Helena moved to undo the talons of the right foot, V-2 immediately hooked the talons of her left foot back in.
“Ah, shit,” said Helena. “Bertram, can you . . . can you help remove her?”
Bertram wriggled out of the suit, finally regaining full use of his body. He was extra irritated to not only have worn such an annoying outfit, but to have it completely fail at its intended purpose.
He walked over to Helena and V-2.
“Okay, baby, you need to let go now,” Helena said, sweetly. “This is our friend and he’s going to help us, okay?”
Bertram reached out and grabbed the baby owl-bear gently around the middle.
V-2 turned and sunk her beak into Bertram’s forearm with all her might.
“OUCH!” Bertram yelled.
He had somewhat succeeded in his goal of removing V-2, because the owl-bear did release Helena, but it was specifically so that she could leap at Bertram.
“No! Absolutely not!” Helena said as she tackled V-2. Helena turned so that it was her back that hit the floor, and V-2 was cradled safely against her. The moment Helena’s arms were around the cub-chick, V-2 relaxed, cooing happily against Helena’s chest.
“Mrawpreekaarraaawr,” V-2 purred.
Helena pushed herself to her feet, still cradling V-2. She looked at Bertram with concern.
“You’re bleeding,” Helena said.
“No shit I’m bleeding.” Bertram walked across the room and grabbed a towel, which he held against the bite. “I was mauled by a monster.”
Helena adjusted her grip on V-2, so she had one hand free. “Let me see.”
Bertram shook his head. “I think it’s better that you and V-2 stay away from me.”
“I’ll keep her under control. You just shouldn’t touch her—”
“Yeah, I got that, thanks,” Bertram said. “I’m fine.”
“I can help!” Helena insisted. “I’m a doctor—”
“I fucking know you are!” Bertram snapped.
“Because maybe if I were here with an actual research scientist instead of a medical doctor, I wouldn’t have been attacked, because the egg would have hatched properly, the rehabilitation plan would be on track, and this baby owl-bear would have a chance at a good life in the wild! ”
Helena fell silent.
Bertram almost felt bad.
Almost.
Helena walked across the room toward the first aid kit, V-2 still babbling contentedly in her arms. Helena stopped in her tracks as she passed the shattered remains of the incubator and the partially-destroyed egg within.
“Oh,” Helena said, quietly.
“What is it?” Bertram walked over, still pressing the towel tightly to his arm.
Helena pointed to the egg. “That.”
Bertram looked more closely at the shell. One side of the egg had been all but destroyed by V-2’s hatching, and the top was gone altogether. But the side of the egg Helena and Bertram were looking at now was still completely intact . . . with the exception of one tiny hairline fracture.
“That could’ve been there a while,” Helena said.
“I bet she saw me through that crack days ago. That’s why it didn’t matter that the owl-bear suit was the first thing she saw when she hatched.
She must’ve already imprinted on me while still in the egg.
I must’ve been . . . I must’ve been in tune to her somehow.
That’s why I could hear her purring before you could. ”
“Huh,” Bertram said. “So. How’d you do it?”
“How’d I do what?” Helena asked.
“Put the crack in the egg.”
Helena’s jaw dropped. “Are you fucking serious right now?”
Bertram shrugged. Sort of. It was really more a lift of his shoulders, since one hand was still clamping the towel to his bleeding forearm.
“I can’t believe you!” Helena said. “You seriously think I wanted this? That I’m happy about this?”
“You seemed pretty overjoyed getting to a cuddle a baby owl-bear a few seconds ago,” Bertram said.
Helena huffed as the baby owl-bear in question munched on Helena’s hair with her sharp beak. “I’m pretty sure that was just the imprinting bond filling me with euphoria at the sight of my baby—”
Bertram raised an eyebrow. “Your—?”
“The baby!” Helena snapped. “The baby, who put that crack in the egg herself—
whether that’s a purposeful strategy to imprint on the mother during nesting or just an accident, I don’t know, but either way, I had nothing to do with it. Neither you nor I even noticed the crack until right now!”
“Which means it was very discretely positioned,” Bertram said.
“By coincidence!” Helena fumed. “We had no way of knowing that her eyes would be open in the egg! I was the one who came up with the owl-bear suit idea to prevent this exact thing! I was the one who said you should be the surrogate parent, because I didn’t want to be!
You really think I would have sabotaged this study?
Sabotaged V-2’s future? You think I would do that, just so I could—what did you say? ‘Cuddle a baby owl-bear?’ ”
“Among other things,” Bertram said.
“Like what?” Helena cried.
“I don’t know,” Bertram said. “Maybe become the first human ever imprinted on by an owl-bear? Make as huge a contribution to the scientific literature as is even conceivable? Be as famous as my mother?“
“You are so wildly off base and out of line,” Helena said through gritted teeth.
“Oh, am I?” asked Bertram.
“Of course I care about being a good scientist, but I care about that because I care about animals! Not the other way around! Do you really not know anything about me? You don’t even know my very basic core values?!”
“No,” Bertram said, “I don’t. Because I thought I did. For ten years, I thought I did, and then it turned out I didn’t know you at all.”
Helena laughed. “Because I went to med school instead of moving in with you? I’m sorry I didn’t give you more warning—”
“It’s not about how much warning you gave, Helena!
” Bertram ran his fingers through his hair, frustration and fury mounting.
“Although yes, springing it on me at the last second was really fucking shitty. But it wasn’t about when you told me you were going to med school; it’s about why you told me you were going to med school! ”
The owl-bear nuzzled Helena with her cold beak, and Helena tried to hold her a little farther away from her neck.
“Look,” Helena said as she tugged at the cub-chick, “I’m sorry if something I said hurt you—”
Bertram scoffed. “You’re sorry ‘if’ ‘something’ you said hurt me? That’s the most bullshit, insincere apology—”
“I can’t give a more sincere apology if you don’t explain to me what I did!
” Helena cried. “And you have had NO interest in having this conversation with me until now? Until fucking now when we have a newly hatched baby owl-bear to keep alive? We had weeks of wandering around looking for any sign of owl-bears where you were happy to keep your mouth shut, then weeks of waiting for this baby to hatch where you were perfectly happy pretending to be my friend—”
“Oh, you’re one to talk about pretending to be friends—” Bertram started, but Helena ignored him and plowed ahead.
“And now? Now that we have a delicate little life in our hands, now you suddenly feel the need to have a heart-to-heart about what happened between us half a decade ago? Like it suddenly matters this particular second?”
Bertram shook his head. He couldn’t believe how easy it was for Helena to dismiss and wave away what had been such an earth-shattering moment for him.
“Well, I don’t fucking have time for this right now,” Helena said.
“Despite what you think, my priority is this baby owl-bear. The same does not seem to be true for you. And for the record, why the fuck would I have actively argued for you to be the one in the owl-bear suit getting imprinted on if I wanted it to be me?”
“So you would have plausible deniability when the owl-bear imprinted on you,” Bertram said.
Helena laughed. “Do you know how ridiculously paranoid you sound right now?!”
“And why would I possibly be paranoid around you, Helena?” Bertram asked, sarcastically.
“Name one thing I’ve done—not five years ago when we broke up—one thing I’ve done this particular study that would make you think I’m not trustworthy as a scientist,” Helena said. “Name one thing that makes it seem like I had any idea this tiny goblin was going to get attached to me like this!”
“To start with, you stepped between V-2 and me when she was going to attack me,” Bertram said. “How would you know she wasn’t going to hurt you if you didn’t already know she was imprinted on you?”
Helena fell silent.
“See?” Bertram began triumphantly. “You—”
Then he stopped short. The look on Helena’s face didn’t look guilty, as if he had caught her in a lie which she couldn’t explain away.
She looked genuinely sad. Embarrassed. Almost shy.
“Helena,” Bertram said, voice strained as the new possibility washed over him. “Tell me you knew that you weren’t going to be hurt when you stepped between me and that owl-bear.”
Helena shrugged but didn’t meet Bertram’s eyes. “You seem to have all the answers to what I do and why. You don’t seem to need me to say much of anything to explain myself. You have all the explanations you want.”
Bertram’s heart pounded in his chest. “She was leaping at me claws-first! If you didn’t know she was imprinted on you—Helena, she could’ve ripped your throat out!”
“Which would have been devastating to you, I’m sure,” Helena said, with an eye roll.
“Yes, of course!” Bertram said. “Even when I’m pissed at you, I obviously don’t want to see you get hurt!”
“Well, maybe I don’t want to see you get hurt, either!” Helena snapped. “Maybe I actually care about you! You took care of me after V-1 died; you kept me safe and warm. You protected me. Is it so impossible to think that I want to protect you too?!”
Yes, Bertram thought. It is.
He said nothing.
But his expression must have betrayed when he didn’t dare voice, because Helena’s eyes shone with hurt.
“I wish you didn’t always think the worst of me,” Helena said, quietly.
“I wish I hadn’t seen the worst of you,” Bertram said.
He knew it wasn’t a kind thing to say, but it was the truth.
“I don’t have time for this,” Helena said, her voice hollow and flat.
“No matter what you believe, my only goal right now is to take care of V-2. So, unless you’re ready to help with this owl-bear, you need to get out of my way.
Either believe me that this was an accident and get back to focusing on the study, or just leave the lab. ”
Bertram hesitated for a moment.
He left the lab.