Right to a Bear's Arms, Ch. 9 (Patreon)

They rode up the elevator to Hera's apartment in mostly silence. Kelin's nerves were firing faster than he could ever remember, even more so than even senior prom. He kept glancing up at Hera, who seemingly every time, at the exact same time, looked down at him out of the corner of her bright, yellow eyes.  

He could barely believe that he was here; everything that had happened in such a respectively short amount of time.  He took a deep breath to try and steady himself, just as the elevator dinged.  He followed her down the hallway, her bulk filling it from side to side for the most part, and his eyes unable to look away from her bobbing white tail.

Eventually, they reached the door to her room.  The letters 44C were emblazoned in brass on its green surface and he felt abruptly very small as she fished her keys out of a pocket of her jacket and worked on unlocking it.   The door had to be tall enough to allow larger Anthros in and out, but she also had to unlock three different ones before she opened the door and nodded back at him to follow her.

The inside was dark, obviously, she didn't leave the lights on when she left, which was smart.  He saw the shadowy outlines of chairs and a couch, almost running into an end table set near the door before she closed it behind them and relocked it.  He couldn't help but notice the surge in what he now identified as Hera's Aggro smell right behind him as she removed her coat and hung it up along with her keys.  He shivered only a tiny bit, unable to determine just what was in store for them.  They had both agreed not to jump to sex after everything that had happened today, but he had a feeling that if her nerves or instincts got too excited that she may forget about that.  Not that that was a bad thing, only he had absolutely no idea what to do.

He was blinded temporarily as she finally turned on a lamp and, blinking rapidly, he looked around her apartment for the first time.  It was very, very clean.  It was a large apartment, with a very open combined living room and kitchen, doors leading off down small hallways presumably to bedrooms and bathrooms.  The decor was simple, homey, and rather plain, but it still suited her.  Numerous bookshelves lined the walls around a pair of arm chairs and a large couch that he could have stretched out on and not even touch the armrests with hands and feet extended.  A tv was set up to hang on the wall facing them.

Hera brushed past him gently, smiling and gestured to the room.  "Make self at home, Kelin.  If you not mind, I may take quick shower.  Has been a long day.  You do not mind?"  He quickly shook his head.  She smiled more, a beautiful expression that he would never tire of seeing on her face.  It wasn't a big expression, mostly in her eyes, but those shone and twinkled so brightly that he couldn't help falling more for her every time he saw it.  "In that case, be right back.  Watch something on tv if you want, not much I can offer for food but if anything in fridge appeals, feel free."  She winked.  "I will not even mind if you eat porridge."  She disappeared down the hallway, although a second later he saw her vest flop onto the floor where she had been standing, obviously having been thrown.

Tamping down his excitement and nervousness, Kelin looked slowly around the large room.  He walked around at first, looking at various pictures hanging on the wall.  Some were stock photos still unreplaced in their frames, while others showed Hera and her family, or some of her and her unit.  He smiled when he saw those.  Her military portrait was half-buried on the small end table he had almost bumped into, currently covered in opened letters with crumbled edges.  

He extricated the picture as carefully as he possibly could, but still ended up dropping one.  Bending down to retrieve it, he began to stand with the errant envelope when a rebellious letter fell out of it.  Hand outstretched to pluck it up, he jumped when he heard the rumble of her shower turning on down the hall.  Shaking his head, he carefully pinched the corner of the letter and lifted it up.  It had unfolded from its neat rectangle.

Without meaning to, his eyes scanned across the first line of the letter.  He stopped, dead in his tracks, and stared in horror at them.  Disbelieving, he read further.  His eyes hardened and he gritted his teeth.  Angrily, he refolded the letter and shoved it back in the envelope, plopping it back down atop the stack it had come from.  

Her portrait hung in his other hand, the same one he had seen on the news.  That same innocent, confident smile.  He had never read such vileness in his life.  She had said she had gotten hate mail, but that had been beyond the pale.  Threats, insults, making Leroy Delgado seem like a chastising grandmother.  He sniffed and slumped into the couch, sinking in more than he thought he would, staring at her portrait with misty eyes.

How?  How could people have treated her like that?  He hung his head and wiped at his eyes, unable to believe what was now burned into his brain.  The letter had been carefully crinkled and read several times, obviously, as had the rest of them.  He could barely stand it.  He put down the portrait and ran his hands back through his hair, trying to rub those poisonous words out of his brain.  

'They stuck, uncomfortable like a briar in his head, burning like acid.  He had thought internet trolls were bad, that political rants got nasty.  But this...this was real hate.  Anthros felt everything much more powerfully than Humans, expressed them more too.  And she had been alone dealing with that; isolation was often the leading case in Anthro depression cases he had learned through a Psych course.  He didn't know how long he slouched there, what little he had read replaying in his mind's eye over and over, making him feel ill.

Shaking his head furiously he stood up, only to realize he didn't hear the shower running anymore. He saw her standing there at the entrance to the hallway, long silver hair hanging wetly down across her shoulders, fur fluffed up to dry, and her face a mask of worry and concern looking down at him.  She was wearing a simple nightshirt that didn't even cover all the way down her stomach and stopped just at her shoulders and a pair of shorts that were even shorter than what she had been wearing earlier.  He could see the spots of dampness soaking through, as well as the hard lines of her abdominal muscles.  She looked radiant, perfect, and sad.

"Kelin?" she asked, voice soft and worried.  "Is everything ok?"  She hurried over to him, paws already wiping at his cheeks soft as downy.  Her heavenly scent had intensified, now smelling heavenly of cherry blossom and vanilla, all but thrust into his face as she leaned over and close to him.  He realized that her paw pads were brushing away tracks of wetness he hadn't felt spill out from his eyes.

Good Gods; he had really done it now...here he was upsetting her again.  He reached up and touched her paws, taking a deep, quaky breath in.  There was nothing more to do than just rip off the band aid.  She deserved that.

"I'm...okay."  His voice was a little rougher than he had intended but he cleared his throat.  "I just...I wanted to look at your portrait and it was...over there on the end table.  I knocked down a letter and went to put it back and I saw..."  He felt even more invasive than he had before.  Reading someone else's mail...

She flinched when she glanced back at the table with all the letters, ears sinking.  "Oh..." came her voice, soft and quiet, and his heart fell to see the great Ursid beauty shrivel in on herself in the barest of movements, but profound ones.  Her confidence, her playful demeanor, even her constant, near motherly air; all of it vanished in an instant.

"I'm really sorry I didn't mean to read even the little that I did," he continued hurriedly as she turned away from him and sat down, paws folded in her lap.  Her ears were flat and her hair obscured her face.  "I put it back, barely saw anything."  He felt at an all-new low.

"It is ok," came that same voice.  There was a heart-wreching sniff, the tiniest but most meaningful in the world.  Her nose trembled hard and her fur, and bulk, seemed to deflate a bit more.  "Innocent."

He blinked.  "I'm...sorry?"

"You are.  What I was before.  Innocent.  You are good person, too good a person," she shivered a bit and she took a trembling breath.  Her head hung a bit lower and she rubbed at one arm with a large paw.  "Those letters...I do not know why I hang onto them.  Received them for months after riot.  Read them over and over.  It is I who is sorry.  Kelin did not need to see them."

Kelin sank, even more, to see how she wilted.  His hand gently touched her paw and she flinched before seeming to snap out of wherever she was.  Was there even anything to say?  He felt like he had messed up all over again.

Her head turned towards him suddenly and she stared into his eyes.  Hers glistened softly and her muzzle twitched.  "Hard...to forgive.  The words are fair, even if foul and prejudiced.  Hard to remind myself when I read them what I told Leroy back at station.  Sorry for what happened, but not why I did what I did."

Kelin shook his head and hesitantly reached up past her shoulder to brush her furry cheek.  He worried she would shrink back behind her walls, but instead, to his relief, she leaned into his touch.  Her eyes closed and while they still glistened, her muzzle turned up in a soft smile.  His fingers stroked her fur.  "Maybe...it's time you let go of them," he offered hesitantly.

Her eyebrows furrowed and she gritted her teeth.  "Let go?"

"The letters," he confirmed, and her eyes opened again.  "Let them go.  You do nothing but hurt yourself every time you read them.  You've come so far today."

She shivered and looked back at those condemning little slips of paper.  "I do not know...If i can..."

He firmly turned her back to look at him.  "I'll be right here.  We won't do any more than you are comfortable with.  I'm not going anywhere, and I will support you whatever you decide.  But I do think this is something you need to do."

Hera's brow furrowed and she actually leaned back from him.  She stood and walked away from the couch, arms folded across her stomach and stared out of a window for a long moment.  "So much...in one day," she grunted softly.  "I do not...want to do too much all at once."

Kelin sighed.  "Hera, you don't leave a poison inside of you.  You cut it out so that you can heal.  And you definitely don't leave its source laying around just so it can happen again.  You don't deserve this."

"How do you know that?" she snapped suddenly, turning to look back at him.  All at once, a new smell entered the air, one he had not smelled truly since their first meeting.  Aggression leaked out of her like a crack in a dam, only this one held back over eight feet of hulking, Ursid warrior woman still barely in check.  She had gone through so much today; could he even begin to predict what she might do?

His fear certainly didn't help.  He noticed her muzzle sniff silently, her pupils high above dilating, black lips trembling, and deep, deep hurt in those eyes, vented into anger, into words.

"Kelin starting to sound like therapists, push push push.  Not your business to decide how I deal with pain, is it?" Normally, he would have shrank from the face and voice she was using, letting her get whatever was inside of her out.  Getting angry back at her would not help.  Pushing more would only push her away.  

This wasn't logical, but it wasn't supposed to be.  She was so fixated on her pain, punished herself daily with it, that she could not see or justify a world where she was not suffering.  He realized too that she hung onto those letters as a way of not having to let go of her old friends either.

He was quiet for a second as she glowered down at him.  A second that turned into longer than it should have.  He felt conflicted.  Here was a chance to finally let her recover, to let her really move on.  But moving on hurt.  And sometimes it was more painful than the actual pain of the past.  He took a deep breath.

"You're right," he began, words careful, deliberate, and slow.  She barely stirred, still alert and wary, as tense as coiled spring.  "It isn't my decision, it isn't my life."  He slowly opened the front of his shirt and pulled out a necklace.  It was simple and unadorned, chain double-braided and on the end of it was a silver arrow-shaped medallion.

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*Image belongs to me*

"We all hang onto things that hurt to look at, but we also remember why they are important."  He met her eyes.  "Christine gave me this, as a birthday present."

Hera's eyes twitched and her ears rose a bit.  "Christine?"

"From high school."

Hera went still and he felt her eyes flick towards his wristbands.  He nodded.  Her eyes returned to the necklace and she warily walked forwards.  He didn't move.  Her paw brushed the tiny sterling-silver charm, lifting it up higher so she could lean over and inspect it.  He didn't even try and notice the low-cut front of her shirt, keeping his eyes solely fixed on hers.  She sniffed at the metal and then met his gaze.  For a long moment she stared, and then her expression softened.  The Ursid sighed softly, nose flaring, and it was a if watching a glacier melt rapidly under the warmth of the sun.

"Now I am feeling foolish..." she sniffed and stood back up, walking back over to the window.  "Forgetting that I am not only one here who has lost, not only one bringing around baggage.  But while you let it be a part of you, I let mine become who I am.  So scared of who I will be without it." Her head thumped the glass.  "Forgetting everyone who wants me to be better."

He heard her sniff deeply and she made several long, growling sounds before she finally turned back to face him.  Her smile was soft, painful, but genuine.  She looked more fragile than anything or anyone he had ever seen.  Combined with who and what she was, it was like a stained glass portrait shining before him.  Perfect in its imperfection, flawless in its flaws.  He smiled wider.

"I...can try," she managed, voice still soft.  "If you are here with me."

He smiled even more.  Beamed really.  "As long as you need me."

She crinkled her mouth.  "Do not make promises you won't keep," she warned him, but earnest hope shone in her expression.  She walked over towards him and sat down to hug him abruptly and hard, pulling him into her furry bulk.  This close, her scent was far more sweet and overpowering, Aggression mixing with her body wash.  

They held one another for just a moment or two longer.  Then, she stood, reached up to disable her smoke detector and the one in her kitchen, and then walked back into the living room with a cooking pot.  Her paws only hesitated when she picked up the stack of letters, but she firmly plopped them down in front of him before getting to work on finding a lighter.

Kelin was so proud of her.  "Just one, to start off with," he offered gently.  "You're right, rushing it won't help.  But maybe just like with Leroy, a small beginning can lead to a much better future."

The Ursid woman nodded, face steely, as she lifted the lighter, clicked it on, and then held the gleaming teardrop of flame towards the first letter on the pile.  She hesitated then, face a mask of indecision, worry, resolve, fear, and then she looked at him.  Her stormy expression calmed, her eyes softened.  

The flame met the crinkled edge of the letter and took root.  She dropped the smoldering letter into the pot and together they watched the bright, cheerful flames devour the poisonous black words one by one.  Her paw remained in his hand the whole time.

He watched the white paper turn into a small blackened ball, stroking her fur gently and leaning against her as much as she leaned against him.  She shivered multiple times as they watched the smoke rise from the now burnt ball of what once was as a viper of vitriol and hate.  Her eyes watched the dancing spirals of its remains wafting into the air.  She bit her lip.  And she smiled.  It looked like something was rolling off her back, a weight that she had been carrying for too long.

"Good?" he asked, holding his hand out for the lighter.

"No...but better," she breathed.  She noticed his hand, shook her head.  "One more...maybe."  He beamed, handed her the next letter without a word, and let her light that one too.  "Try making the same decision as I did," he heard her mutter, staring angrily at the burning paper inside the pot.  She lit another one.  "Nothing you can say is worse than what I tell myself.  Have told myself."  She lit a fourth letter.  "Easy to say for you.  Cowards.  Furless raven-starvers."  

Her face was slowly contorting into one of anger, satisfaction, a grim pleasure of watching those horrible letters go up in smoke.  Her paw reached for another and his hand laid atop of it, stopping her.  She met his eyes in surprise, seeing his worry for her.  She understood, and nodded, her feral face calming, the light and smell of Aggression fading again.  She looked down at their hands, and then blinked.  Her hand left his and plucked up the letter beneath.

"Not this one," she announced firmly, and placed it off to the side.  At his look, she smiled again.  "Not same kind of letter.  This one, this is good."  His curiosity must have shone because she actually laughed, nose twitching.  "Go ahead, it is not snooping."  She turned back to watch the latest set of papers burn to smoke and ash, a pleased, happy expression on her muzzle now as he unfolded the letter.

The paper was actually construction paper, thick and coarse beneath his fingers.  It was bright pink, and had a drawn picture of what looked like a little girl, given the dress and pigtails, standing next to a house with a larger pair of people who were probably her parents.  The mom wore a long dress and the dad had glasses and a smudge of coloring across the face like a beard.  

His heart wrenched a bit to see that the girl had also attempted to draw a huge bear, silver tinfoil for hair, in a blue uniform.  Crudely written letters spelled out "Thank U 4 saveing my Daddy and Me.  You did good. Kelsi."  At the bottom edge, there was another note.  "P.S. U R my Hero.   P.P.S U R prettie.  P.P.P.S Do U like fish?"  And there was a picture of a fish.  A bear was eating it.

Kelin grinned down at the picture and chuckled, looking back up at Hera and refolding the letter.  "That's adorable," he delcared and leaned against her again.  The stack of letters had shrunk considerably and she seemed to glow more and more as she literally burned away the toxicity from her life.  "I can see why you would want to keep this one, for sure."  He delicately placed the letter on the table away from the pot.

Hera glanced at it once before finally giving a long, cathartic sigh and put down the lighter.  "Think that is enough for one day...honestly should have stretched them out more.  Come home from day out, burn a letter for therapy, feel better."  She put a lid over the pot to smother any remaining embers and leaned fully back into the couch, dragging Kelin down with her to lay in the crook of her arm.  Her warm, soft fur surrounded him and he couldn't help but snuggle in a bit deeper.  Her gentle little growls of pleasure at that made him grin even more.  "I guess that is your job now."

They lay like that for a long time, her paw idly stroking up and down his arm, while his free hand roamed along her exposed belly, shyly tracing the lines of her abs and petting the soft fur.  The only sounds came from the occasional protesting 'beep' of her smoke detectors being turned off, and her breathing right next to his ear.  His eyes even began to hover slowly lower and lower, only ever startled back into semi-wakefulness by the continuing beep.

"Pretty sure I died," he yawned softly, voice a little slurred from his drowsiness.  "I died and this is heaven."

"Heaven is a pillow of bear boobs," Hera yawned too, as if agreeing with him.  "And little boyfriends to snuggle with."

"Boyfriends huh?" he asked, yawning.  "One of me not enough for you?"

Her paw tightened on him and she slowly rose up, leaning over him now and her hair, still slightly damp, falling all around their faces.  She placed a huge paw on his chest to keep him still, claws lightly teasing the neckline of his shirt.  Her eyes gleamed in the light, almost glowing all on their own, and the subtle scent of her Aggression rose just a fraction higher.  His face began to feel hot from the weight and heat of that gaze.  Her expression did not change, staring down at him intently, as if he had become the only thing in the universe to pay attention to.  The only thing worthy of her time.

She said something then, in Russian.  "Ya tebya lyublyu."

"What does that mean?" he asked, shaking his head slightly to the side to dislodge a strand of her hair that had fallen across his cheek.  It was soft, silken, and thick, but also tickly.

She used a paw to comb the errant strand back up behind one of her perked up ears.  It refused to stay but it didn't fall back where it had been.  "You are one in millions, my little human," she spoke, tone utterly solemn.  "My life used to be dark cave with steady uphill climb.  No light, no friends, no one to reach out and offer hand.  I was to make my peace with how my life had become, sure that nothing good would ever happen again.  But then..."  She leaned down further, sliding her furry bulk more fully atop him without using her full weight.  "Little, obnoxiously cute human asks me if I can spot him for favor.  Gives his hand to pull me up from my darkness.  Defends me from the people who I was convinced had every right to hate, despise me.  Teaches me that life is not letting go of things you love, it is learning to treasure them all the more even if they are gone.  To dance in the rain.  Gives me courage."  Her muzzle drifted lower and brushed against his ear.  She repeated that same phrase again, whispering it now, followed by a soft kiss to his earlobe.

His arms slowly lifted up and wound around her gently, digging his fingers into the fur and clutching her to him as they stared into one another's eyes from only a few inches away it seemed, both of them seemingly memorizing the other's face.  "I only gave you everything you always deserved, Hera," he whispered.

She shook her head, long silver mane waving slightly back and forth like the waves on the ocean beneath bright moonlight.  "I never dared dream I deserved anything as wonderful as you," she whispered back.  "And now that you are here, and everything of my past is out in open, you chose to stay, with me.  I am selfish, needy, emotional."  She stroked his cheek with a padded finger.  "It is late, and I do not want to be saying goodnight."

He thought of making a joke, try to lighten the mood, but gazing into the yellow orbs of golden warmth, he felt the humor die on his tongue.  "Does that mean you want me to...?"

"Spend night," she finished for him firmly.  "I can make couch, you sleep in my bed.  Text each other like teenager romance till we fall asleep."

He frowned up at her, shaking his head.  She seemed a little disappointed before he quickly, and quietly asked, voice a low murmur of both confidence and vulnerability, "What makes you think I'll be able to sleep without my polar bear next to me to cuddle into?"

Her eyes lit up and her smile grew wider, showing a few teeth unaggressively.  She wiped at one eye and chuckled.  "You just wanting to snuggle more into the bear boobs."  He gave her a very insistent, firm nod.  She laughed, growly voice filling the room with its merriment.  "As you wish," she announced, voice softening again.  

In a simple twist, she had flipped them up and rose.  The Ursid moved like lightning, quickly turning her smoke detectors back on and turning off the lights, grabbed blankets from under the couch, and before he could really catch up to what was going on, she had laid out flat on the couch in front of him.

Hera's face lit up with a playful, come-hither look that made his stomach clench, and she lifted the blanket up across one arm and beckoned for him to join her.  There was no room to lay anywhere else, and she had positioned herself that there was really only one place for him to be.  He reclined carefully, having to almost climb fully atop of her, and his head coming down to rest firmly between the two rounded mountains of her chest.  From here, he could hear the thud-thud-thud of her heartbeat, a comforting drum in his ears.  Her fur was as plush as any comforter ever could have been, and to top it off, she covered them both in a blanket before her arms wrapped gently around him.

Craning his neck up, he stared into her eyes as she did his, her thumb stroking his cheek over and over.  She said it again, that Russian phrase, barely even audible, as if more saying it to herself than to him.

"What does that mean?" he asked again, laying his head back down upon the world's greatest pillows in existence.  Shyly, he observed that despite their incredible size, they were both firm and soft, perfectly conforming to him without losing their own shape.  He tried to repeat what she said, but mangled it horribly.

Giggling, she helped him sound it out, and once he had said it correctly, she beamed even more and hummed deep in her chest, arms wrapping around him tighter.  "Do you really want to know?" she asked, closing her eyes and putting a paw on top of his head to keep him against her.  Kelin nodded, his own eyes drifting slowly closed.

She said it once more, purposefully slow.  "Ya...tebya...lyublyu...  It means..."  Kelin's exhausted mind drifted slowly away to the monotonous thudding of her heart, the swell of her breathing, the stroking massage of her paws, and the heat of her fur.  He didn't know if he dreamed what she said next, or was barely conscious enough to still understand her, but her voice filled his dreaming mind as he slowly fell into the most relaxed sleep he could ever remember having, safe, warm, and happier than he had ever been.  

"I love you."