Jack moved about his room, unpacking his things as he thought about the trip he had just returned from. The winter Wonderland trip had been enjoyable, more than that though it had been fun. Despite the fact that someone had started to call him name. The teen was unsure if the older women had been joking or not, not that it mattered much to him, he had been called much worse than a ‘beast’ when he had lived with his father.
It had been a long time since he had had any fun, and he was glad that he had gone on the trip. Xander had gone as well, which help with her nervous ness and He had managed to win a pokemon during the trip’s snowball fight. The teen had been surprised and pleased when the higher ups let him keep the pokemon, a Teddiursa that was currently curled up on top of his bed. He would have wondered if the bad reputation that the company had was blown out of proportion but he had heard Xander’s tale of the events of the cruise and he was glad that nothing went wrong with this trip. Even the ice on the lake was frozen enough that there were no incidents when people started to skate, the snow has been soft and deep enough that although you had to trudge through it, you were unlikely to get hurt if you fell.

”There was snow, on that day too.” The unexpected though hit him in the gut like a wall of brick and the teen stumbled over to a chair, shaking he sat down and tried to calm himself. The Teddiursa had woken up and spotting her trainer wandered over to him and put her head in his lap looking up at him. She made a soft noise trying to get his attention without startling him, the bear cub was hoping she would get treats or be petted.

If the bear hadn’t been in his lap, Jack would have curled up, pulling his knees to his chest as images of blood covered snow flashed through his mind. He knew what he would be seeing next and he needed to think of something else, the nausea had already taken hold and he was starting to feel faint and dizzy.

Noticing that Jack’s breathing was erratic; Viper slithered out of the warm confines of the bed she had curled up in once they got back. As she got closer the Ekans noticed just how bad her trainer was and slithered up the chair and wrapped herself around him.

Jack shuddered as he took a deep breath which didn’t really seem to help calm him. He needed to focus on something else before the images got worse. His mother, the way she was when she was alive, not the gruesome bloody corpse she had ended up. The teen thought that it seemed like the easiest thing to focus on.

“Hey jack!” The warm voice of his mother called out and the boy looked up at her. “Want to play a game?” She asked. “What kind?” His voice was full of excitement as he hurried over to where his mother was setting things up. “A fun one” she teased lightly. “I was thinking that we could try playing a game with anagrams” She said as she started laying out the scrabble letters on the floor. “Anagrams?” He asked curiously. “Yeah, an anagram is when you take a word and you re-arrange the letters in it to make another word.” She explained as she spelt out her name with the blocks. “For example Elizabeth can be rearranged as hazel bite” She moved the letters around so that they showed the two new words. The child let out a shocked gasp at that. “That’s so cool!” He said wiggling in excitement. The memory started to fade and Jack couldn’t hear what they were saying anymore. “I’m sorry mom.” He whispered hoarsely.

After a moment, the teen’s ‘daydream’ was over and he was back in his room, calmer than before but still shaking and upset. His face was buried in his Teddiursa’s fur and he felt Viper coiled around his body, pinning his arms to his sides with her vicelike hug. His lower arms where free and he moved them slightly to pet the bear’s head. It was another couple of minutes before he had completely relaxed and he felt Viper releasing her grip on him so that she was simply hanging on him like normal. He gave the Teddiursa another pat as he sat up. “Thank you.” He looked at the bear as he tried to think of a name. “I guess I’ll call you Hazel.” He said softly.

It would be a lot more work to take care of Hazel than it was Viper, who only ate once in a while and was rather clean; she had yet to shed her skin. A bear however would be a lot more work. The fur would need to be brushed daily and it would be a lot messier than a snake skin when it started sheading. She would need to eat more too, realizing that he had a lot of research to do the teen extracted himself from the two pokemon and headed to the base’s library to learn more about how to care for his new friend.