Poor Unfortunate Bear [closed]

He sat on the couch, learning forward and precariously resting his chin atop his folded hands, staring down his child seated atop the coffee table... If you could even call it as much. As carefully he watched the baby, it always stared back with the same blank expression. Silently, he dared it to make a move, or to make the slightest sound.

His stomach was growling, he hadn't had a good night's sleep in days, and he felt he was losing his wits. The winter truly wasn't cut out to be a parent, or at least that's how it felt. After determining that maybe, just maybe, he could finally have a few moments more of the sweet silence, he pulled himself up and made his way towards the kitchen.

No sooner than did he take one step onto the tile flooring did the familiar screeches of the bear sound off. Ethan groaned and banged his head weakly against the fridge door. "Where is she...?" He moaned quietly under his breath.

Sometimes, even when she was younger, she'd catch herself daydreaming about being a mother. That was a normal thing for a girl, right? She'd always found it hard to imagine a domestic life somewhere as a house wife, cooking and cleaning and looking after a baby, but everyone had those fantasies every once and awhile. After she'd met Jace, those little fantasies felt a little easier to imagine. Yeah, it was stupid, but she felt like as long as she was with him, things would work themselves out on their own... Thinking about the future always terrified her. She wasn't good for anything, so how would she survive out there, without her parents or teachers to look out for her? But then, for awhile, she had someone, and she had something.

And now she didn't.

Even her daydreams had turned sour.

The stupid thing wouldn't stop fucking screaming.

In her own little fantasy world, she'd always imagined herself as being loving and patient, never raising her voice and never losing her smile. Somehow, she hadn't imagined a stupid fucking ball of fur wailing at all hours of the day. Babies were cute, stuffed animals were cute, but this was the worst qualities of both. After awhile of this, she'd broken, and sometimes she'd just slip off for a few moments of peace and quiet and let Ethan take care of the damn thing. Suddenly, she had a new respect for Mother.

Of course, she couldn't just leave him alone. It would've been easy. Ethan wasn't pushy, he wouldn't be able to find her if he tried, and if push came to shove, she could outrun him. But that was the easy way out, and what she needed to do was hard. If she was being honest with herself, she didn't have fuck all to do, and abandoning Ethan to be a single father made her feel guilty enough that it would've ruined any of her fun even if she skipped off to live in the studios or game lounge for the next month or so.

So she was on standby.

And of course, it started screaming again. It couldn't go half an hour without wailing on the top of its lungs, and the dorm walls were thin enough that if you strained to listen, you could hear everyone else's bear going off too. Here and there, every now and then, she thought she could hear a distant pop! like an explosion, but she didn't know if that was just the lack of sleep compounding her paranoia to give her hallucinations.

Evelyn realized she hadn't moved. Maybe she was reluctant. What kind of mom was reluctant about something like this? She stumbled out from her room, rubbing her eyes, and blindly felt her way toward the source of the sound. Oh, if she could just wrap her hands around this little precious thing's neck... She scooped it gently off the coffee table and pressed it against her chest. Blow up, she thought through a haze of sleeplessness. Blow up and take me with you. It didn't blow up.

She waltzed around the living room, gently rocking the bear in her arms and muttering strained, calming words under her breath. The screeches began to subside, but... agh, her head was spinning. Evelyn's gaze scanned over the room, and she found him right away, lightly banging his head against the fridge. Maybe she would've judged him from a different position, but she'd been doing the same thing five minutes ago, so they were both in the same boat. "E-Eth..." Her voice was dry, hoarse, cracked, and she could barely hear herself. She cleared her throat and looked down, lightly swaying in place to try and soothe the cries. "Ethan, d-do you have th-the... bottle...?" If she shoved it in the thing's face, maybe it'd shut up. If not, she was two more minutes at most away from breaking down completely.

Like I didn't have enough stress...

The words had reached his ears, but he hadn't exactly processed them, hearing only the wailing of the awful stuffed animal and his own clouded thoughts. It was only once it had started to quiet down, albeit only slightly, that he realized he was no longer the only one in the room. Someone was indeed speaking to him. He paused his head banging on the fridge door, frantically searching through his mind for what it was she'd asked for. Bottle... Bottle... Oh, the bottle! Of course! Goodness, what was wrong with him...? "Yes, wait just a moment...!" He turned towards the counter, seeing where the toy-like bottle rested. It looked like one of those dolls toys, with the fake liquid inside and the plastic nipple that you let little girls play with. It struck him as silly the first time he saw it, but if it make the thing quiet down, he wasn't one to complain.

"Right, yes! I've got it." Ethan quickly snatched up the bottle in his hands and walking back into the living room. His eyes immediately traveled to the bear, staring blankly ahead as it always did, but crying all the same. Thanks to his power, headaches never came easily to the young man, but this child of theirs was certainly pushing it. For a moment he considered investing in explosive gear and a good pair of ear plugs. "Here." The Winter held out the bottle to her, letting out a low sigh. "Thanks, I'm not sure how much longer I can take having this around." He held his hand over his eyes, trying to still his frenzied mind. "The headmaster has a strange sense of humor. A real baby laughs and smiles and communicates back... This has to be some sort of torture machine." Unless they were truly doing everything wrong. Maybe it's simple crying was the point. If you don't want a little bundle of screams in your life, don't bother risk making one.

Thank God, he had it. Evelyn took it with a sigh and pressed it up against the bear's muzzle. The wailing stopped. For a moment, there was peace, and she felt a flood of relief. God, this thing was stupid. Ethan said what they were both thinking. What was the point of all this...? Yeah, she heard the gossip about the prefects and their little... accident, but why punish the rest of the school with this? She supposed they were trying to drill a message into their head, but did they have to do it with explosions? It felt like she didn't get enough sleep as it was, so waking up at two in the morning to put a toy bottle in a toy bear's face just came across as sadism. Maybe she wouldn't have been so resentful if it was Jace here, and she had a reason to listen to the lesson...

She gave a weak smile. They were being tortured. "H-he's insane..." Between the missions, the monsters, the day-to-day danger and absurdity, the fact that he even managed to become Headmaster in a circus like this, it was all too obvious. Evelyn had been saying it for years, so it was glad to find someone who agreed. How did Jace turn out so normal? Well, he accepted it as ordinary, so maybe he was insane too... and her, and everyone else, for being so used to it. "I d-... don't want a baby an-anymore..." It made sense that the actual pregnant couple who brought this all on them were prefects. John would've avoided them both like the plague, and where else were two model students going to get something to prevent this? The nurse?

Evelyn's eyes fluttered. She just wanted it to be gone, and then she could sleep without a worry in the world. That was too much to ask, though. "Um... a-are you... hungry?" she murmured after a moment of silence, looking up at Ethan with upturned eyes. He had been smashing his head into the fridge, but maybe he'd just thought he'd have a better chance of knocking himself out there than against the drywall. "I-I'll t-t-take care of, um..." She almost called it by its name, but somehow, that felt too embarrassing. "...t-the bear, and y-you can..."

Make them both something to eat? She'd barely eaten anything since yesterday. The words choked in her throat, and she looked down without finishing the sentence. Well, he could take that any way he wanted. She didn't want to impose anymore than she had since this project started.

Insane, was it? Ethan laughed. He had not spoke to the Headmaster himself many times, but he would see him around the school now and then, when either the man visited the infirmary or he'd ever needed to drop reports off at the offices. Whilst he didn't know him, the Winter did know his wife quite well, and she hadn't struck him as the crazy type... Normally, anyways. But perhaps, it was just the perception of a difference in age, or experience, or knowledge about whatever weird world it was that they lived in.

"It has quite the timing," he mused, allowing himself a small yawn. "He just had a new child himself. Besides the rumors around the prefects, may perhaps this is his way of making us all suffer with him." It'd be an even crueler sense of humor, but he couldn't begin to explain what was going on in the mind of someone he'd hardly knew. What struck him even odder was his roommate's comment, seemingly swearing off children. "Don't talk like that. It's just what they want." He smiled then, as if it were some sort of joke.

He was ready to head off to the kitchen at any moment, with our without her blessing, but he had decided to wait and not appear rude any. "Starving," Ethan near sighed of relief, spinning around and headed into the small kitchen once more. He began immediately rummaging through the fridge and cupboards, looking for something. "I'll make you something as well! ... Although I can't promise it'll be of the best quality..." He did try to cook for Kimply a few times, although he'd highly suspected she forced the food down to try and spare his feelings rather than having actually enjoyed it.

Wait, he did...?! Evelyn almost jumped at the news. Jace had a new little brother or sister... Did everyone know that? Was she really that oblivious to what was happening around her? He'd dropped the news so casually, but she just blinked her eyes, stupefied, and her brain didn't kick back into gear until he started shuffling through the fridge. "R-right... Th-thank you..." she murmured, not sure if he could even hear her. Well, it wasn't that surprising, but there would be a a big age gap between the baby and Jayden. Evelyn pursed her lips, wordlessly rocking the bear in her arms. She never knew what it was like to have a sibling. Back home, she was an only child, and it wasn't like there were any cousins around her age... and if there were, they probably didn't want anything to do with her anyways. Sometimes it sounded nice, as much as she prized her alone time. When she looked at the kind of affection Jace and Jayden had, it was just that... well, someone like that would be nice to have sometimes.

Oh, but now she wasn't thinking straight. Evelyn gently shook her head and focused back on the bear in her arms. God, she needed sleep...

Surprisingly, he did manage to hear her, and started pulling things out into the counter. Milk, eggs, flour, cinnamon, blueberries; Large bowls and whisks to accompany them. He hardly ever cooked on his own, choosing to spend most of his food money in the cafeteria, but he supposed it was a skill like any other he needed to practice on.

Food was a science. It was mixes of vitamins and minerals, different chemicals that provided the body with different foods, shapes of proteins that changed with mixing and freezing and heating and cooling. It all amounted to what exavtly touched the buds on your tingue and how it benefited your body. The core scientifically concept of it all, he understood quite well. Applying it all, however, was far different story.

Ethan began breaking the different ingredients into the bowl, mixing it all to a syrupy, yet lumpy mess. "Do you cook any? Or have any siblings? Thinking on it, we're roommates but I hardly know a thing about you."

His words broke her out of her stupor. Stupid, stupid stupid... She cast a glance over at the bowl of whatever Ethan was making and quickly glanced back at the floor, clutching the bear tighter. He was right, they didn't know each other very well. Thinking about it, the only times they'd really spoken was when Kimply was around... If only she was here right now. Then there'd be less of a headache. "Um, n-n-not re-really..." she murmured. Well, she wasn't completely helpless in the kitchen, but it wasn't anything that anybody else with a brain and two working hands could make. Mother usually did most of the cooking, and she believed in three meals a deal with the family and nothing in-between. Her attempts to turn her into a housewife tended to end with passive-aggression when they weren't ending with shouting and frustration.

Evelyn shifted her feet uncomfortably. "I'm an only ch-child." Her parents were relatively young, but they'd never said anything about expanding the family. Maybe she was just as much of a handful as it was without another kid in the mix. Holding this bear, she was starting to understand the sentiment. "W-what about you...?" She'd never heard anything about his family either. Or, well, anything about him, really...

The young man finished beating the last of the flour lumps out of the mixture, taking a step away from the counter and brushing the hair out of his face awkwardly with the inside of his elbow. "You are? That's surprising," Ethan mused, glancing in her direction over the counter before clicking on the stove, warming up a small pan. "James seems to have a real liking to you." Or at least, the bear seemed far more complacent in the hands of Evelyn than it did to him, or perhaps he was exhausted from being stuck to it for so long.

Ethan shifted the pan around the open flame, thinking quietly over her question. "I'm a single child as well, I suppose." He said in a dull, matter-of-factly tone. "I hear I might have a half-sister somewhere, but I can't say for certain." It was a suspicion that the school had mentioned once or twice, but he'd never bothered to look into it. If he did have some sort of long lost relative, he couldn't be sure what to feel about it. "I haven't had a family in some time, to put frankly."

It was a fact that he suspected most people would choke up over, but he like to think he'd made his peace with it, putting on a small smile for Evelyn.

Well, not to knock on Ethan, but she also wasn't the kind of 'parent' that left their kid on the coffee table or turned it upside down to see if it'd cry... The more time she spent with James, the more she realized it was just like a normal baby, or at least what she understood to be a baby. He was right, it didn't laugh or babble back, but it didn't take much to trigger that god-awful wail. It was best not to think of it as a stuffed animal, or else you'd start acting careless. "Surprising...?" she repeated. What was so surprising about that?

She frowned as she listened to him talk. Um, he wasn't certain...? How couldn't you be certain about something like that? Evelyn shifted the bear uncomfortably around in her arms. No family... That could've meant anything, but Evelyn couldn't think of a situation where that was a good thing. "Ah..." Was she supposed to say sorry? Was there something she'd missed? Would it be smarter to say something, or just keep her mouth shut? "I s-see..." Awkward, shallow, but it was all she had. She didn't see, or understand, but the best thing was not to ask.

He had known Evelyn for some time. The two of them weren't exactly what you could call close, but hopefully as roommates they knew each other well enough that she wouldn't find herself getting offended if he happened to spout off some off-hand remark. "Surprising that you, as an only child, and with a gift like yours that you have such a natural affiliation with children." The Winter mused, looking over to her - or towards the bear anyways. It's where his eyes naturally fell. "I have spent far more time with it, yet it seems to prefer your company more." Perhaps it was simply some sort of maternal preference.

As for his supposed sister, well. Maybe he was just because he was being alone after so long that he had no desire to meet her. Whilst Evelyn found what comfort she could in awkward silence, he had little issue continuing on talking. "My father left when I was a baby. They say that he's her father as well. She even goes to this very school, or so I hear." Strange enough coincidence. As far as he knew, he had gotten his gift from his mother's side. What were the odds, he wondered. "However, I'm selfish. I've been alone most of my life, it's easier to simply continue on in that same way, don't you think?" Even Kimply was gone a lot of the time for one reason or another.

In the short string of silence, he poured batter in the pans, poking at the soon-to-be pancakes as they began to rise and form.

A natural affiliation? Evelyn gave a small, timid laugh, brushing off the random comment. "No, I'm s-sure it's j-j-just... fickle." She almost felt a little bad for him, the way he said it. The thing was just a stupid doll at the end of the day. Who it cried less with didn't really mean anything. It wasn't like it mattered, either... Both of them could hear it just fine whenever it started squealing. Right now, she just wished she could put that into words, but it all faded away, and he kept talking.

She couldn't hide her darkening expression as he continued his story. No matter how she thought of it, it didn't mesh with the image of Ethan's life she had in her head, and who knows what other kinds of details he'd chosen not to mention. Did he really grow up in an environment like that? Maybe it'd always just been a stupid generalization, but she'd always imagined something so much more... well, not that. Of course, he'd always been a deeper person than the quiet Winter that hung around Kimply, but she'd never put much thought into his life before he came to Beata. There was more to him than the cliches she had in her head.

Evelyn turned the words over in her head before she tried to speak. "No, it's n-n-not se-selfish..." she said. Well, maybe it was selfish, but it wasn't bad. At least, she could understand him, on some level... Wanting to connect with your long lost sister was the "correct" way to feel, but when she slipped into his shoes, it was easy to see his perspective. "I w-w-wouldn't know wh-what to th-think, or do, or s-say... So it w-would be easier to just ignore it..." Maybe that was too callous, but didn't he feel the same way? "Th-they're basically l-like any ot-other stranger, if y-y-you've never kn-known them..."

"It's nice to hear you say that," Ethan muttered, finishing up his mess of a breakfast.

There was some sort of comfort in hearing his own thoughts from someone else, as is if that served as some sort of reassurance that he wasn't wrong for thinking the way he did. Despite being sure in the way he thought it through, there was that small feeling of guilt that had persisted in following him around. Then again, Evelyn didn't quite know the whole story. As far as he knew, this girl might have very well been the last blood relative he had left. He supposed that was an afterthought that would always haunt him though.

Thankfully, he'd managed to make enough batter to give them two of the flat flour cakes. As they landed on the plate, it was clear they weren't the prettiest things. Some spots were undercooked and a bit battery, while others were somewhat overcooked and a dark brown. It had it's good patches though, which he was quietly proud of. He grabbed their plates, some forks, and a small bottle of syrup, walking back into the living room and setting their food down at the table. "What about you, though? Tell me more about yourself?"

How was her home life? Or her family? She could've said just about anything to satisfy his curiosity, from her pet goldfish to her horoscope.
People were interesting things.

Was it? Evelyn clammed up, silently rocking the bear in her arms. If he said so.

The clatter of silverware and plates shook her out of her thoughts. Pancakes. She'd never been the biggest fan, but she could hardly be picky considering the circumstances. Evelyn settled down on the couch with the bear still in her arms, giving him a small, fluttering smile. "Th-thanks... It l-looks, um, good." You didn't need to be a cook to see that they weren't perfect, but at least he hadn't insisted on frying up some bacon too. After how he'd put himself down about it, she'd been expecting worse, so in a way this... was a pleasant surprise.

Herself? What was there to tell? "Oh, I d-dunno..." she murmured. "I just li-lived with mmmy mom and d-dad, in, um, Montana. M-my life's not very int-i-inter... interrrerer—... exciting."

Ethan smiled to himself, as if he found that little comment of hers funny. "No need to flatter me on my account." He knew his cooking skills were less than desirable, he had only yet to find where his faults were exactly. Lessons to be learned like any other. The young man took a seat on the couch next to her, pouring too much of the sugary sweetness over his meal.

Although he listened quietly, he continued to keep his eyes focused down on his plate. For a moment, he wondered if their conversation was worsening her stuttering, which he found annoying, but bearable. Or perhaps it was because he'd simply never talked to her so much quite before he was now noticing it's frequency?

"What is Montana like then?" He asked, beginning to cut himself up his first slice of flour-y delight with his fork. "Or your family? Favorite color? Favorite memory?" Straight forward questions was the best way to get to know someone, after all. "If you want it to be fair, I'll answer anything you do all the same." Ethan eagerly took his first bite of his breakfast.