Leo just wants to stay forgotten.

In the HMU Block at the edge of Fort Stratton, he lives in the shadows that the city gifted him. A place for veterans who have faded from public memory to forget. His only companion is Bear: an emotional support unit he was warned never to tell anyone about. A unit that is now refusing to charge.

As Bear’s battery drains, the isolation Leo built around himself shatters. A nurse, an archivist, and a military engineer start appearing at his door. Strangers, each carrying their own pieces of a fractured puzzle. They're asking him about vanishing files, glitches, and systems behaving strangely.

They’re looking for answers Leo doesn’t have.
He wants to be left alone.

He needs to fix Bear.
Before he loses him.
Before he loses everything.


The Things We Would Bear is the first in a thematically linked trilogy that explores empathy, memory, and identity across a fractured world.