(A/N: This was written as a prompt-fill for the LJ falloutkinkmeme (yes, it's a lotta fun over there, go fill good prompts for them). The idea came from the realization that, though Rex obviously was a Legion dog at one point, what if he wasn't Caesar's?)
Rex's eyes scan the interior of the voluminous cave, his ears pushed forward and fanned as wide as they will go, nose twitching, dark and glistening in the shadows. Something smells familiar. An odor of long-ignored gunpowder and the flesh of men, mixed with the acrid scent of sticky blood and pain. Rex is no stranger to pain, but this mixture of things makes him pause.
His New-Master, the Female-Afraid-of-Nothing, steps forward in front of him. She left the Male-Who-Smells-Of-The-Earth outside of the cave, and Rex is not afraid of the separation but inquisitive. After all, they are a pack of two, they need no interlopers.
Before them Rex sees a Male-Who-Smells-Of-Pain, a figure moving gunpowder-and-oil-scented devices across a worn table that smells of blood. He is not worried about this either, because the Female is with him, New-Master, and this man's body language is calm and controlled and even, his hands with their long fingers that Rex can only dream of owning moving rhythmically, mechanically, over the space before them.
The Male and his Female are talking, and Rex slinks behind her, protective, hiding in the shadows, but not so much that he cannot react instantly if it is required. The man suddenly gestures towards Rex, and he is taken aback, because that movement is familiar, though the scent is slightly off. Then he remembers why, distantly, in the way that all animals live in the present with few ghosts of the past.
The Pain-Male is one that he knew, long ago and many memories away. He wags his tail hesitantly, and the man merely looks at him, the man that still smells faintly of dust and their long-far-gone-home.
"Umbra," the man whispers into the silence, his voice a forgiving rasp of sound, "Umbra, canem meum?"
His New-Master watches him slip out from behind her, brain case glowing mutely in the ebon of the cave. He does not mean to disobey her, but the pull of a voice which once commanded him, of a hand ruffling over his ears in the warm stillness of a Colorado night, are all things he had longed for many miles ago and feels again.
He jumps up beside the table, sits as he was taught at the feet of this memory from long ago. The hand which reaches for his brain case, runs slowly over it and to his ears and cheeks, is bandaged and blackened but Rex does not care. They were both broken by the fires of this world, once. And now they are made again in this silence.
o O o
The Courier looks up at Joshua Graham, the man whom legends have told her should be trying to kill her. She does not understand at first why Rex has left her side, why the Burned Man is feeding her dog slices of Cram from the ancient container on his work table. She begged Jed to let her take the dog earlier, now she is wondering if it really was fate that marked her passage to Zion. Fate, perhaps, and a little bit of absolution.
Graham strokes Rex's cheeks once more, then pulls away, looks up at the Courier.
"Forgive me," his deep voice cuts through the silence, "this was once my dog. I thought never to see him again. And though I am well aware he is now yours, thank you for letting me say goodbye."
He reaches to the pocket of his jeans and pulls out a scrap of fabric, unrolls it and holds it to the light of his single lantern. It's a bandanna, old, worn, but on it is written a collection of things, psalms, she'll notice later, words of protection and kindness now finding their home with a companion thought lost.
He wraps it gently around Rex's neck, the dog licks his bandaged hand, and the Courier wishes she could capture this moment and preserve it in memory for the crystal-clear sharpness of regret and forgiveness that it is.
"Vaya con Dios," Joshua tells his dog of steel and blood and memories. "Vaya con Dios, my old friend."
Umbra - Shadow
Canem meum - my dog
Vaya con Dios - go with God