It took a moment, but gritting his teeth, Ber finally let go of Winters’ hair when she grabbed his finger and bent it backwards. Depending on the amount of force she used, his wrist and elbow would awkwardly follow to reduce the strain while he tried to yank his hand from her grip. To facilitate that, he would try to kick her feet out from under her and topple her to the ground.

Ber was fine tumbling to the ground with Winters. As he felt his legs go out from under him, he did his best to fall heavily on top of her with the intention of using his bigger size and weight to pin her down. On her front, on her back - it hardly mattered how they landed as long as he could keep her there and land a few more punches to her face or to her side in the meantime.

As intended, Ber fell on top of Winters, and as Winters intended, he regretted it immediately. Though vaguely aware that he had made some noise, he could not have identified it for the way that his focus narrowed to her knee and the nauseating pain that it left in its wake. All thoughts of winning the spar vanished as he spat out a - regrettably - ineffective curse at the officer and rolled to the side, where he knelt hunched over on hands and knees and tried to recover. “Fuck.” Gritting his teeth, he breathed through the throbbing pain as it spread up into his gut. She could attack him, and still reeling from the force of the blow, he would be in no state to defend himself.

He heard her predictable laughter in the background but couldn’t be bothered to do anything about it as he straightened up somewhat, sitting back on his feet with his fingers clenched on his thighs. Let her laugh. No witch would ever understand the— Movement in the corner of his eye had him moving away, but not fast enough to avoid the feeling of metal resting across his throat. Ber froze.

When she stepped back and reiterated the lesson, he looked up at her for a moment. She really was such a bitch. “Okay,” He said, taking a deep breath and gingerly starting to push himself up off the ground, though it took another few moments before he dared to straighten up fully. “What would you have done then?”

Winters, to his surprise, seemed actually interested in imparting useful information rather than unnecessary insults. Standing there, he focused on her and did his best to shove his awareness of the lingering ache in his gut to the back of his mind. When she turned, Ber limped forward a step - that still hurt - before forcing his remaining steps into something of a smooth stride to cross the distance between them.

Reaching out, he grabbed a handful of her dark hair close to the root and yanked back, not with as much force as he could have used but none too gently either; despite the lesson she had chosen to impart, Ber wasn’t feeling particularly charitable at the moment. “Oh. Yeah. Okay.” Still, apart from that first pull, he wasn’t particularly rough as he tested out how easy it was to move her head this way and that before letting go, unwilling to hold on to her for any longer than necessary.

Damn. Not being here would have been his answer. Ber, who had nodded along at her second piece of advice, now paused as he thought back over the course of the spar. Despite some officer or another instructing them to do otherwise, reflecting on whatever poor decisions that led to him losing a fight was not something that he did particularly often – and for the most part, he seemed to manage fine without the extra work as well.

“Uhh,” He said intelligently, scratching the back of his neck while he stalled for time. She’d had an easy enough time dodging his first punch, so maybe something with that? “Well, I… probably could’ve done something other than charge at you at the start.”