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Arcade + Boone - The Gospel of Stray Dogs [1/1]
Date: 2011-12-19 11:25 pm (UTC)-------
When he was eleven, he had a dog. Briefly. It was a horribly sad-looking mutt they had passed by on the side of the road while trekking towards some new temporary promise of safety. It was raggedy and looked perpetually wet and like it had been pieced together by some sadistic taxidermist from parts of superior dogs and it had these enormous eyes, tawny tan eyes that shone with so much hope as Arcade fell behind from the group, knelt down to stroke the top of its filthy head.
Doc Henry had done what he could to patch the poor thing up. Johnson had shown Arcade how to train it, teach it to shake and play fetch. It slept next to Arcade, mange-addled limbs folded like bony little wings tucked against his body and starved flanks sucking in with every breath. Arcade named him Odysseus. Made him a collar out of old strips of leather and some fishing lures he found. He howled, though. Odysseus would howl as though some primal grief, the birthright of stray dogs, was overtaking his broken body and he couldn't stop, no matter how much Arcade tried to pet him. The howling tore right through him. He still dreamed of it, sometimes.
Moreno put him down, one day. Didn't tell Arcade until that night when they were about to get a move on and the boy couldn't stop searching for him. "Howling gives us away, kid," Moreno had said. "Dog's a risk."
"He was my friend," Arcade had stressed.
"He was a dog," Moreno spat.
He doesn't know why he's thinking of this now. The usual excuses are spilling past his lips but Boone isn't hearing it, won't have it. It doesn't matter that the Enclave was his birthright, not his choice. It doesn't matter that they've spent months fighting at each other's sides. None of it matters. All that running and none of it ever mattered.
"Anything to say for yourself?" Boone asks around the sound of the hammer clicking.
Arcade had always thought he'd have something, some self-indulgent Latin idiom he could spout for his own lonesome epitaph. But he has nothing. Just this memory of Odysseus.
"No," he says, and closes his eyes.
Re: Arcade + Boone - The Gospel of Stray Dogs [1/1]
Date: 2011-12-20 02:54 am (UTC)Arrrrrrrrrrcaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaadeeeeeeeeeeeeee. <3 Oh, you poor thing. Odysseus is an amazing touch. <3