Cable lay back and watched the walls shimmying slowly across the room with mild interest. Walls. Shimmying. Weird. But not as weird as, say, the ceiling suddenly growing a big fat moon-face that winked at him and warned him about mutant pickles, and that had happened this morning, so maybe the walls weren't so bad. And... he snuggled under his blankets and eyed the walls distrustfully... as long as they stayed away from his bed, then he wouldn't tell Dom about them. She'd seemed so worried when he asked her to stop the kippers from singing...

His bed stood up on its long, thin legs, and he gulped, feeling a little sick again. He'd spent a lot of yesterday throwing up, and dimly remembered that he hadn't enjoyed it much. "Could you not rock so much?" he asked hopefully. The bed creaked an assent, and he dozed off, the feeling of motion soothing him as they stayed absolutely still.

When he woke up, there was a cloud floating an inch away from his nose. A very small, pale pink one. "Hello..." Cable said muzzily. The tiny cloud jumped, obviously startled, and zipped behind a... a... he wanted to say it was a cloud-tree, but even in the feverish haze of delierium he was absolutely certain that there was no such thing as a cloud-tree. So it hid, all right, behind a very soft and puffy looking but perfectly ordinary tree. Right.

"Hello, friend!" chirped a high-pitched, determinedly cheerful voice. Cable looked down. With a bit of grunting and squeaking, a little brown teddybear was dragging itself up on the bed. When it finally reached the top, it stood up on its bottom paws, revealing a pink heart on its round white stomach. "How are you feeling?"

Cable blinked. "There's a teddybear talking to me," he said with the careful enunciation of the drunk or very feverish. "I feel crazy."

The little bear looked offended. "I am NOT a teddybear. I'm a CareBearTM and I live in Care-A-LotTM and I'm here to tell you about the importance of CAREing."

Cable sat up carefully, so as not to make the bed spin again. "No, you're a teddybear," he disagreed firmly. "See, you've got these little round ears...."

"Ow!"

"...and little flappy paws..."

"They're not-"

"...and a little pink nose..."

"Yes, but-"

Cable picked it up and held it upside down, ignoring the frantic struggles. "... and a little silly tail and no hole in your bottom," he finished triumphantly. "You're a tebbydare."

"WELL!!" The bear scrambled down to the other end of the bed, sounding mortally offended. "Don't you know that you should treat people with politeness and respect?! Don't you CARE?"

Cable pulled his blankets around him and thought about it for a minute. "About what?"

"About..." the bear trailed off. "Let me start this over. I'm TenderHeart, and you're... uh..." He pulled out a little clipboard and inspected it worriedly. "Christopher, Nathan, Cable, Askani'Son or All Of The Above?"

"Cable will do." Nate looked around. "Are we in Cloud Land?"

"No," the bear said patiently. "This is Care-A-Lot, silly. This is where all the CareBears live."

"All the..." Cable looked suddenly worried. "You mean there's more talking teddies than just you?"

TenderHeart put his paw over his eyes. "Yes. Lots. But we're not here to talk about them, we're here to talk about you."

"We are?"

"Yes, we are. Cable, we here in Care-A-Lot have noticed that you don't seem to CARE about people much anymore. We think it's very sad when people stop CAREing about other people and..." Cable tuned the bear out. He'd heard this one. From lots of people. Only without the reverent emphasis on the word CARE... gah, now he was even THINKING it in capitals. Lying back down and tucking his pillow under his head, he watched with vague interest as a little pink bear with two smaller hearts on his stomach and a blue one with a small raincloud toddled out of a cloud-house and over to his bed. Which seemed to be parked in the middle of what passed for a street.

"... and when you CARE about people, you'll find that people CARE about you, and... oh, hi, LoveALot. Hi, Grumpy." TenderHeart waved to the newcomers.

"Hi, TenderHeart!" The pink bear chirped in an even more gratingly cheerful voice than TenderHeart's own. "How's our new friend coming along?"

"Friend, HAH!" The blue bear snorted.

"Why Grumpy!" The pink one looked shocked. "Cable is on the Side Of Good!" Was it supposed to be male? It sounded kinda male. On the other hand, it was bright pink. Maybe it was gay. Could teddies be gay?

"He's a gun-happy obsessive-compulsive geriatric with a messiah complex," the blue one growled.

"Now now, Grumpy!" TenderHeart twinkled. "Sure, Cable's had his down days, but if we just encourage him a little I know that he'll improve!"

"What's to improve?" The little blue one hauled himself up and slumped on the edge of the bed. "It's all downhill from here. The future's only going to be worse than the present. Why bother?" Cable was starting to like the little blue one.

"Yeah," he agreed. "Take it from me, guys, th' future sucks."

"That's not true!" TenderHeart and LoveALot chorused.

"Yes it is," Cable said fuzzily but firmly. "It's absoludely awful. And there's no coffee at ALL."

TenderHeart and LoveALot looked at each other sadly. "We'd hoped it wouldn't come to this," TenderHeart said regretfully. "All right, LoveALot. CARE BEAR STAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIEEEEEEEE!!!"

Cable and Grumpy watched as the other two bears flew through the air in two almost identical arcs and landed in a fountain. "Good kick," Grumpy said, sounding a little more cheerful.

"Thanks." Cable felt sleep approaching again, and snuggled down in his trusty bed, under his trusty brown army blanket that Dom had swiped just for him. "Any parting words of advice?"

Grumpy thought about it. "Do I have to?"

"It's tradishnul."

"Okay... uh..." the little bear shrugged. "Remember, no matter how bad things get, *I* have it worse. I have to live with *them*." He pointed to LoveALot and TenderHeart as they dragged themselves out of the fountain.

"Thass true..." Cable drifted off in a happy cough-syrup-and-aspirin haze.

Dom was sitting on his bed when he woke up. "How do you feel?" she asked gently.

He tested the waters of subjective reality cautiously. "No dancing walls or singing kippers or talking bears... better."

"Good." Domino smiled and patted his chest. "Nate... you know how the kids brought you a whole bunch of Get-Well stuff?"

He nodded cautiously. "I kind of remember something like that..."

"Well..." She eyed him suspiciously. "Why are two of the CareBears stuffed head down into your vomit-bucket?"

Cable looked down. He looked at her. He shrugged. "They're jerks."

"But not GrumpyBear?"

He looked at the small blue bear sitting carefully propped against his pillow. "Uhm... well..." he gave her his best I'm-sick-and-don't-know-what-I'm-doing look. "He keeps the kippers quiet?"

The End

Disclaimer: Okay, okay, it's dumb. <*g*> But Alicia and Oberon really did make me do it. None of the characters, furry or otherwise are mine, even though I do have a TenderHeart Bear around someplace. Needless to say, I didn't make any money.