71. Bertram
Bertram
“Have you ever realized that you really, really, really fucked up?” Bertram asked.
“Praw,” said Lovey, which Bertram had to assume meant “absolutely not.” As far as Bertram could tell, Lovey was of the belief that she had never done anything wrong in her entire life.
Of course, it’s possible Bertram was just making up Lovey’s interiority, and he had no idea what the fuck Lovey was actually thinking or feeling, because apparently that was something Bertram was prone to doing.
Bertram felt like shit.
No, actually, he didn’t—shit was useful.
Shit could be gathered and analyzed as a noninvasive means of data collection, yielding such information as prey availability and even stress levels through the measuring of glucocorticoids.
Shit could tell you if an owl-bear was likely pregnant (or gravid, although it couldn’t tell you which term to use).
Bertram felt like trash, which was utterly useless and indicated only that anthropogenic influences had encroached on valuable natural spaces.
He felt like a plastic bag in the belly of a dead leviathan.
Yes, that was a much more apt metaphor.
“Praaawgh,” said Lovey.
Bertram noticed that the third toes of her back feet were swiveling back and forth.
“No, Lovey,” Bertram said. “Not right now.”
Lovey clicked her beak and swiveled her toes more insistently. Her front talons clenched and unclenched. She lowered her head.
“I’m going through something kind of big with your mom right now. I know that’s difficult for you to understand, but I need you to try.”
Lovey spread out her tail feathers and wiggled her haunches, so that her tail swayed back and forth.
Bertram had to assume that this was baby owl-bear for “yes, hi, hello, I am a baby owl-bear, I still do not speak English, I do not understand anything you’re saying, I do not care about what you’re saying, and I will be pouncing on you in the next thirty seconds.”
Bertram sighed and walked over to where he kept the dragon-scale glove.
Lovey’s toes swiveled back and forth faster and faster with excitement.
Lovey’s joy was often infectious, particularly when she was in a playful, rambunctious mood like this.
But Bertram simply felt ill.
How could he have gotten things so wrong?
Helena was right. She had never given a single indication that she was anything other than earnest and genuine and dedicated and loving. And yet he was willing to completely give up everything he thought he knew about her in the blink of an eye.
Why had he done that?
Bertram clenched and unclenched his fist as he pulled the dragon-scale glove tightly over his forearm.
Lovey leapt with enough force that she managed to tackle Bertram to the ground.
She was getting bigger and more powerful every day.
Bertram maneuvered his landing in such a way as to make sure he didn’t fall on any rocks when he hit the floor.
Maybe he should have, though. Maybe bashing his head against a rock could knock some sense into him.
The conversation had taken place when he was young and drunk and stupid—so fucking stupid, as it turned out.
Thinking that Helena had hated the very core of who he was, the very core of who his parents were, had felt like such a knife to the heart that he never even bothered to look at the weapon.
He was too busy trying to stanch the blood and sew himself back up.
All he could see was his own hurt. He never took the time to think about what might have caused it, to think about who it was who had caused it.
Bertram tried to raise his arm, to give Lovey something to fight against, some resistance.
It didn’t really matter, though—Lovey was strong enough that the weight of her full body—all four limbs, all twelve claws—on top of Bertram’s one arm was plenty enough to keep that arm down.
The Helena he knew would never have thought such hateful things.
But that’s what had made it so painful at the time—the feeling that everything he thought he knew about her was a lie. He never stopped to consider that everything he knew about her had been true, and it was this new story he told himself that was a lie.
Bertram wiggled his fingers and Lovey delightedly took turns nipping at each fingertip in turn.
He made a fist, concealing all of his fingers, and Lovey cocked her head, as though confused as to where her playmates had gone.
Bertram extended his pointer finger and Lovey cooed with delight before biting hard.
When Bertram believed that Helena had believed something so hateful, he had put space between them. Miles of space, years of space. Vast, devastating, endless echoing silences.
Helena, it seemed, now felt more or less the same betrayal and anguish that Bertram had.
Perhaps he owed her the same space.
Perhaps he should leave the research project, give her room to process and heal from the horrible accusations that Bertram had leveled at her.
Lovey tilted her head so that she was able to take Bertrams entire finger horizontally in her mouth, chomping down repeatedly.
Bertram was quite confident that if he had anything other than dragon-scale between his skin and Lovey’s beak, his finger would have been swallowed whole by now.
He was also quite confident that he couldn’t just walk away from this little monster, even if he did feel like a monster of an entirely different kind.
He and Helena had come too far in raising Lovey for him to back out of the project now. If nothing else, it wouldn’t be fair to Lovey.
And for that matter, he and Helena had come too far with each other for him to simply leave.
When Bertram thought Helena had betrayed him, he had pushed her away as hard as he could, as far as he could, and yet somehow, somehow through some miracle, she had returned to him. And now he was at risk of losing her again.
He couldn’t lose her twice. He just couldn’t.
Not without trying, at least.
If he had to spend the rest of his life making it up to her, he would, if she would only let him.
He wouldn’t blame her for discarding him the way he once discarded her.
And if that’s what she needed, if she needed him to abandon the project and find her a new partner, then he would leave.
She deserved to feel comfortable and safe as she fulfilled her dream.
He wanted so desperately to be a part of that.
But if he couldn’t be, then that was him reaping what he sowed.
Still.
He wasn’t going to give up without a fight.
“Alright, Lovey,” Bertram said, as he pried the baby owl-bear off of his arm. “We have to go woo your mama.”
“Mraw!” Lovey chirped happily, and Bertram liked to think that if the baby owl-bear had any clue what the fuck he was saying, she would have approved.