(cloneness) interlude

The puppy was staring at him again. Heero ignored it; he was busy fixing the doors of the farmhouse and it wasn't a threat in the least.

Its mother had been a threat. She'd been hungry enough to attack him. He'd shot her, several times -- she'd finally fallen with her huge jaws snapping a few inches away from his leg. Even dirty, her black and white coat hadn't been suited for stealth, but even despite her painful thinness, she'd been an imposing dog, standing waist-high, with ears ripped into shreds and yellowed fangs, and she hadn't gone down easily.

The puppy had followed a day and a half later, whining pitifully as it tracked its mother's scent. It was white and black too, with more white than black. Heero hadn't said anything as it growled at him and stole the bird he'd been cooking. After all, he'd eaten its mother already; it seemed fair enough.

The puppy never quite left the area after that. Its few packmates left after Heero shot enough of them, but the puppy stayed. It wandered around the yard and through the forest all day, but whenever he sat down and put something on the fire, not ten minutes later, here it was. When Heero fell asleep -- he'd stayed awake once to check -- it crept closer and stole the leftovers. Heero didn't mind. It meant he didn't have to bury them.

Progressively, it grew bolder. It waited less and less before coming to the place where he threw his leftovers. One day, when he'd been so busy with the roof he hadn't found any time to hunt, the puppy even whined toward him, as if asking where the food was. Heero thought about killing and eating the puppy all of five seconds, and then got on his feet and climbed a tree to catch a nesting bird. He ate the eggs, and left the bird for the puppy. He wasn't that hungry anyway.

And then one day the farm was ready, or as ready as it would need to be when the children got there. Duo was waiting. He hoped he'd be happy. He left.

The puppy followed. It whined a lot, but it followed. Heero wanted to stop feeding it so it would leave, but it was young enough that it wouldn't leave; it would just die. So he fed it, but less, hoping to encourage it to hunt on its own. It needed a few days before it understood what Heero was expecting -- and looked very miserable in the meantime -- and it wasn't very good at it, at first. But it was getting better. Heero thought that soon, it would be ready to take its independence.

The puppy brought him a mouse. Dropped it right at the edge of the circle of light his campfire made, then stepped back, watching him and waving its tail shyly. The mouse was chewed up and more than half of it was missing. Odin had told him to be nice to people who gave him presents. Heero picked it up by the tail and pretended to eat some of it, then gave it back.

The puppy followed a lot more closely after that, never quite in reach, but always in sight whenever he looked over his shoulder. It had trouble following sometimes when Heero crossed difficult ground. Heero didn't care at first, but the pitiful whining got so loud that he slowed down. It would have been stupid to get noticed and attacked because of that.

One day he woke up to the sound of raindrops, to find it curled up over the end of his new coat. The puppy slept in a little ball of fluffy fur and baby fat. Its fur was short, and it wasn't eating enough to maintain much fat anyway. It was probably cold. All around the bus stop canopy it was grey and wet and cold, so he decided not to leave right away. When it woke up with a sneeze, he pulled the coat out from under it and got up.

The puppy trotted after him, tail dropping dispiritedly -- maybe it was the way the water killed the smells all around, or maybe it was the wet and cold seeping into its fur. Heero didn't manage to hunt anything either, so there was no food come evening.

There was thunder that night, and as he lay down and stared at the cracked ceiling, the puppy crawled close and curled up against his thigh. It reminded him of Duo's closeness as they slept on the same mattress. The morning after, when the puppy started wheezing and sneezing and lagging as it wobbled after him, he picked it up and tucked it under his arm. Its short fur was wet, but at least the rain had cleaned it a little. The coat was lined with thick, warm material. The puppy didn't struggle all that long.

He walked on, back to Duo, the puppy tucked in the crook of his arm.