Page 99 of Choose the Bears

“Did you want to have a go as well?” I asked.

“Oh no.” Her hand slid down my bicep, and I may have flexed it just a little. I wanted, needed, those two feelings of pleasure that came from having a sword in my hand and her touch to come together, fuse and become greater than the sum of their parts. “I think I just want to watch this.”

Her eyes met mine, and I admit I searched them for a hint of mockery, her tone for a snide edge, like I often heard when my brothers found out what I got up to in my spare time. Instead, I just saw all this warmth and affection, maybe even…

“Are we going to focus on parrying?” James asked, the first to rush back, helmet pulled on, his sword held at the ready. “I feel like I need a lot more work there.”

“We will,” I replied. The kid was amazing, but his obsessiveness about this topic could get a bit much for the others. “We’ll be practising the same thrusts we performed last time and then using a technique to parry that thrust. Alright, let’s get everyone lined up, masks on, and hold our swords in longsword.”

This was with the point upwards, the blade at the ready. I smiled as the kids did just that.

“Good, now let me see you all thrust on my count. One, two, thrust.” The kids moved as one, thrusting their sword forward with various degrees of efficacy. I walked up and down the line, getting them to do it again as I made a few corrections.

And Imogen watched me.

Or rather, drew me. I’d brought a clipboard and some paper and a pen with me because we tended to take notes to forward to Elodie. The kids didn’t stay at HQ indefinitely, just until their mum’s got on their feet and their abusers were facing some form of justice, from jail time to domestic violence orders preventing them from coming anywhere near the family they hurt. We then handed on the case notes to their social workers, schools, and therapists to help keep a continuity of care. Imogen ignored that, taking a seat on the gym floor and flicking forward to the blank pages before the pen flew across the page.

I wanted to pull away, look at what she was drawing, but that wasn’t what this hour was about. The kids needed me, a male figure who could model healthy ways of interacting withchildren. The sword play was almost irrelevant, except to us, especially James, it wasn’t. If I’d sat him down and asked him about his situation, he’d have clammed up, gone silent and staring, like he was when we met him. Instead, he stared at me, giving me his entire focus as I demonstrated the next movement.

“OK, someone’s thrusting at you with a big sword,” I told the kids. “You don’t want that to stab into you, so what do you do?”

James’ hand shot up and some of the other kids rolled their eyes, but I’d deliberately posed the question to give him a chance to answer. I made sure he didn’t info dump, but he needed an opportunity to feel strong as much as the others did.

“You sidestep,” he said with great authority.

“Because you can just dodge out of the way of a sword,” one of the girls, Eleanor, said with a shake of her head. “It’s not a video game.”

“No, but by having your sword raised, ready to block the thrust,” I said, “you can use their momentum against them. James, did you want to demonstrate?”

He did and he didn’t, I could see that in the nervous roll of his eyes, but he stepped up anyway. He held his sword correctly and then asked in a tight voice, “Am I attacking or parrying?”

“Your choice,” I said, because that was the important thing. In some ways it was the hardest on teenagers, coming out of an abuse situation. Right when they were taking tentative steps towards independence and adulthood, the person who was supposed to be supporting them through that cut their legs out from under them. So, giving him the choice, putting him in control, was deliberate.

“I’ll parry,” James told me through gritted teeth.

“Like you’ll be able to stop Lucas.”

Heath’s fatalism made my teeth lock together. I could see it in the way his sword point dropped, all hope fleeing, and that despair was a contagious thing.

“We’ll see, won’t we?” I said, before turning to James. “OK, so how’s this going to go?”

“You’ll thrust by stepping forward,” James’ voice was stiff, conscious he had an audience now. “I’ll deflect your blow.” A rude snort from Heath earned him a long look from me. “And redirect it past me.”

“Where you want it to go.” I nodded. “That’s it. So, ready?”

James firmed his grip and then nodded sharply before pulling his mask back down.

It was tempting to screw it up, to not use the skill I’d worked hard to develop, but James would’ve noticed that in an instant and been offended at me babying him. I didn’t use the bear’s strength when the man’s was more than enough, stepping and thrusting my sword at the boy in the same moment, the momentum carrying me forward. James flinched but rallied quickly, pulling his feet together and twisting his blade to catch mine and redirect the weapon into the space beside him.

“Whoa!”

Heath’s look of shock as well as Eleanor’s and the rest of the group’s surprise was everything, and when James pulled his mask off, I saw it. An inability to believe what just happened, quickly replaced by a joy that it had.

“How did you do that?” Heath asked, excited now as he rushed to James’ side. “I thought he was gonna skewer you in the guts.”

“He used Lucas’ strength against him,” Eleanor informed him with a nod, a lesson she’d internalised due to being a comparatively smaller girl.

“Show me how!” Heath demanded, and so James did.

---