Chapter Text
When I was born for the second time, I knew someone had fucked up.
Not because of the rebirth, mind you, but because I had become a dog. I was a tiny little German Shepherd, with floppy ears, giant paws, and six siblings who fought with me to get our mother’s milk.
The first weeks of my new life I slept alot, wrestled with my siblings and tried to explore the small enclosure we were in. A woman looked after us, but apart from showing the vet where we were for our vaccines and microchip, she mostly left us alone.
The only notable interaction we had was her naming me Lassie, even though I wasn’t a border collie.
At twelve weeks the police showed up, and I got to learn a little bit more of my new situation.
We were in the United States, in Louisiana, at a kennel.
I still understood English.
We were bred to become police dogs.
The woman let us out into a larger room, so we could get acquainted with the officers. My siblings rushed ahead, tripping over themselves to greet the exciting new people, but I wanted to look them over first.
One man stood apart from the rest, he seemed uncomfortable with the other officers, but looked at us like we were wonderful.
I walked toward him, with much more grace than my siblings could ever possess. Some might claim that a human mind gave me an advantage, but I knew they just hadn’t practiced as much as I had.
The man had light skin, kind brown eyes, glasses, and floppy hair.
“Hi darling,” he said. “I’m Will, nice to meet you.” He took his giant hand and carefully scratched behind my ear.
Okay, I didn’t care if this officer turned out to be corrupt, I would choose him. Loved the scratches, loved the slight Cajun accent, loved the way I seemed to be the only thing on his mind in that moment.
After half an hour he picked me up and went to the woman who took care of me. We went home to his small apartment that evening.
Training to become a police dog was laughably easy when you understood both English and French.
To keep myself under the radar I gauged how quickly the quickest of my colleagues solved whatever puzzle we were tasked with, and made sure to complete it slightly quicker and with confidence.
At first it was obedience, simple commands like sit, lay down and heel. After a week of pretending not to understand, I decided enough was enough and just became the most obedient puppy on the planet.
Will made sure to shower me with praise each evening, we took long walks around the neighborhood and I got fed the best cut of meat his low salary could afford. Sadly I did not get bed privileges, no matter how big my eyes got, since a trainer at the academy told him to crate train me.
Will also seemed to grow closer to his coworkers. They seemed impressed with me, and by extension, him, and often asked for advice for their own dogs.
Will had to admit it was mostly my natural temperament. I was happy he was making friends.
Somehow it was decided I would make a great drug sniffing dog, and so I started training for that. At first the new sense of smell had been overwhelming, but my dog brain seemed to handle it pretty easily.
After a year we could finally start working for real.
Catching people carrying drugs, and drug deals in the making was harder than I first thought.
The number of smells in a city made isolating nefarious ones more difficult, but we both persevered.
Staying in parking lots, or in poverty stricken areas usually helped. I didn’t know if this was the same world as my old one, but the war on drugs, had a very negative societal impact, full of racial profiling and long sentences for minor possession charges.
Honestly, I tried not to think too much about it.
Will became a superstar at the office, my nose and his profiling catching a record number of criminals. Even though he was a little stand offish, the results spoke for themselves.
Life was good, until one day, it suddenly wasn’t.
Will and I interrupted a drug deal. One of the men had a gun.
With steady hands Will picked up his own weapon, but then something happened. He had always been particularly empathetic, being able to look at someone and instantly know how they felt.
His eyes met the criminal. He didn’t pull the trigger.
He fell to the ground.
The haze lifted from my eyes, I jumped on the man and bit him in the hand. The criminal dropped the gun in pain. The other man ran away.
I contemplated running after him, but I knew being aggressive at the wrong time could mean the end of Will’s and my partnership.
Another officer arrived at the scene. A few minutes after that an ambulance came.
I wasn’t allowed in Will’s hospital room, no matter how much I yowled and complained. Instead I got sent to the kennel, where all other police dogs went when something happened.
When I saw Will the next week I knew something was wrong.
He had tears in his eyes as he crouched down to scritch behind my ear. I licked his salty cheek and he smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
“Bye Lassie.” He hugged me. “I lost my job, but they still need you. You’re the force’s best worker you know?”
No!
Didn’t officers get their dogs when they retired? I wouldn’t keep working for some precinct without Will.
“I love you.”
He rose, but I bit his shirt sleeve and whined.
“Don’t make it harder darling.” He never had a problem meeting my eyes, but today he avoided them. Then with authority: “Lassie, drop it.”
I let his shirt go. I knew he didn't want to leave, but it was the stupid police force’s fault.
I wouldn’t stand for this.
For the next month, several officers tried to train me to listen to them.
I knew the commands and I refused to follow them.
“Common girl. Sit!”
Some had more patience than others.
“Fucking bitch, just lay down!”
But I knew all their tricks and wouldn’t let myself be bribed.
Until finally –
“Hey Lassie, guess who’s here.”
The kennel master sounded excited. I opened one eye against my better judgement.
Then I sniffed once, just to be sure before my legs moved of their own accord.
Will grunted when he caught me at full speed, frantically trying to lick his face.
“I heard you didn’t like any of the other officers, huh? Seems like you’re coming home with me then.”
Will had already packed up to move, he’d gotten a new job at the FBI, he told me while we were driving.
He would be teaching forensics of some sort, how to catch killers and the like. He’d also gotten me a new job:
“How’d you like to show puppies in training how it’s done?”
That could be kind of interesting, I supposed.
“We could also do some more training to keep you active, maybe as a hunter or a service dog or something.”
I barked. That honestly sounded awesome.
Sometimes it seemed like he knew I was more intelligent than other dogs. He never talked about it, but he would hold conversations with me as if I was just another human.
The drive took sixteen hours, we stopped at a motel for the night and Will let me out for short run arounds every three hours, which I appreciated.
You couldn’t imagine my surprise when we drove up a familiar drive way, to a house I knew from my previous life. I had watched it and rewatched it.
It couldn’t be? Everything else was different from how I remember.
But we were in Wolf Trap, near the national park, in ahouse that wasn’t ready to be lived in yet.
Will, her owner, was Will Graham, the main character in the TV-show Hannibal. Who would have thought?