Henry and G'kar v 0.51

The routine helps. He knows they're both suffering, so it helps, and he understands why.  It's something he's studied, and it's why he suggested she get a dog in the first place.
Henry, Lyta's dog, understands nothing. In fact, it occurs to G'kar, he also understands almost nothing. Why she's gone, why it helps to hew to a routine, why she needed a dog, why he suggested it, and of course why it helps to take care of Henry now that she's gone. He understands it helps, and that's a deeper understanding than all the theory he could muster. He'd studied it, and suggested it from a place of wisdom, that as they fled known space, and she began to fall in love with G'kar, she should get a dog. And then he puts this from his mind and stands up from his chair. Henry leaps to his feet, a lumbering, massive dog, more akin to furniture than to a pet.
Henry had been watching G'kar. He'd been pacing, eyes anxious, but when G'kar sat down, Henry lay down on his side and watched him with those same anxious eyes, ears down, tail limp. Now, as G'kar stood up, Henry knew G'kar knew something the dog didn't, and that meant something might yield an answer. People always came to G'kar for answers. Why should Henry, a dog, be any different?
He thinks of Marcus, and he begins to quote, in increasingly animated tones, a poem. "My name is Ozymandius, king of kings! Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" He kneels, puts his hands behind the Henry's ears and ruffles the fur, scratching where the stiff-jointed dog cannot easily reach. "Nothing beside remains! Round the decay..." He stands, walks away. Henry leaps upon him, his claws scratching noisily across G'kar's thick skin. A year ago this bad habit was something Lyta told him to discourage. Her skin, human, fragile, was easily injured by the tug of this large beast's heavy body pulling the claws along her body when he jumped upon her. ("Then why," he asked, "did you have to get such a **big** dog?" He knew the answer, but it seemed important to him to ask at the time, to help her understand herself.)
As Henry dogs his footsteps, he stomps heavily over to the bag of kibble. He kneels and tilts the bag over the bowl beside it, and Henry suddenly has attention only for one thing.
G'kar has studied dogs. The history of humanity has parallels with the history of his own people, though narn have nothing quite like dogs. The relationship, whereby humans accepted dogs and then made them helpless without humans, is not an entirely equitable one. But what's done is done, and there are and probably always will be dogs, as long as there are people. Humans, too, need this relationship. He suspects so do narn. He watches Henry eat, aware that he should not disturb him. Wolves and wild dogs share their food, he has read, but dogs guard it jealously, as if it were the last food they shall ever have. Wolves do this when food is very scarce. In this way, keeping them afraid, humans have made dogs subservient and kept them as companions. They behave as if there were a scarcity. It makes them act in ways of which they would not be proud if they feel that supply is threatened.  Bred to be this way, domesticated dogs do not magically turn into the wolves and dogs from which they descended when left to their own devices. Both by culture and by nature they now need humans, as humans need each other.
When Lyta left with him to travel to other stars aboard the Na'Toth, two controversial figures trying to find obscurity in time and distance, she had become quite taken with him. While he was not unflattered, he knew Lyta too well, and was exasperated. "Get a dog!" She knew he meant well. In the short time they had been together, he had accidentally become her counselor, and it was not uncommon for humans to fall in love with a person who they trust, who they come to rely on a great deal. In short, to ruin a perfectly good friendship. She had an excess of affection, a starvation, a dependence that he could feel, and Lyta needed a dependent herself, something that would eat up all that affection. A dog. Why Lyta had never had a dog he could not imagine. It seemed perfectly obvious to him that nearly every human should have a dog, and nearly every dog should have a human.

While leaving human space, seeking obscurity, they did find one. A small dog, pleasant and sad. Abandoned and heartbroken, this little dog, whose tag said Isoude, an awkward name for a dog he was never sure how to pronounce, had lost its owner, or vice versa. It was sick, and Lyta angrily saw to its every need, cutting through all resistance to its care. They nearly lost their veil of secrecy, thin as it was with Psi Corps, over that dog. But they got it the care it needed, and left it with a shelter being maintained for lost pets.
This touched him. This colony, Librae Corleone, had been struck by multiple disasters, and Sheridan's attempts to rebuild and create a state had not yet extended this far reliably. There was so much to be done here. The fact that crucial services had been lost made it an ideal place to stay for a time. Yet the people, mostly human, were teaching their children. They had created a communication network that allowed them to inform each other of flooding and other minor disasters, of activity that would endanger each other, and to help them properly distribute their goods. While they had no electricity throughout most of this capital city, they had managed to maintain a constant supply of clean water where it was most needed, and a few volunteers, already teachers in better times, were teaching from books they'd scavenged from the destroyed schools. While assistance from other systems was often intercepted and given to militiae, who had waited for such an apocalyptic event gleefully, it was the people here making the best of what they had left who were the majority.
The majority, it must be said, drank heavily. The Na'Toth did come and go from Corleone, bringing necessities and booze from a station in orbit around the dominant gas giant which sometimes eclipsed this planet. If war, pursuit, or salvation came to 37 Librae and its colony, it would most likely come from that station. Corleone, never an important colony itself, had become superfluous. Yet its people had learned to care more or less for themselves, in the thin band of habitable, arable land which they had secured for themselves there. Ships like the Na'Toth were the only help they were going to get as often as not, and always at a price. At least Lyta and G'kar drove a fair bargain. Bringing alcohol to the overburdened bars of Corleone was a crucial service, allowing the people to cope with the pain of rebuilding, and of abandonment, and of a war which had split their own people in many more pieces than merely two.
Somehow, they had managed to care for abandoned pets. In a surprisingly organized manner they had an infrastructure squirreled away which allowed some of their more empathetic sorts to care for pets whose owners had left, died, or simply been unable to care any longer for something less important than themselves.
Not coincidentally, these people, caring for these abandoned animals, were often teeps. Not that they would say so. It was simply impossible for Lyta not to notice. She said nothing. They could not afford to attract the attention. But here, too, were the seeds of rebellion, and the nail sticking out, waiting to be struck down flush with the wood. Perhaps it would split the grain.
Of course, it hadn't been that easy, either, not even with Lyta, an unstoppable hot knife through a universe of buttery impediment, leading the way. This is because Lyta herself had at first been set on keeping Isoude. "No!" G'kar said, batting her with rolled up paper, a bit of the Book of G'kar he happened to be carrying around to annotate at the time. She looked stunned, angry. He knew she was rifling through his mind, hurt by the admonition despite the humor in it, and despite the trust she had for him. "No! One rescue at a time. Go to a pet store! There's one on the station. I won't rescue both of you, not right now."
So they had left Isoude with a caretaker, among a dozen cats. He isn't sure even now if she ever forgave him for that.

Henry was the biggest dog in the pet store. It was no contest. "You should get a toy poodle," he said.
"No!" She crossed her arms and looked him in the eyes, as intense as ever. "He's perfect. If you wanted a small dog, you'd've let me have Isoude." She looked pouty. He knew it was play, a hint at what she was holding back, that nothing could stop her when she wanted something.
He waved a finger at her disapprovingly, equally playful. "On your head be it!" The unstoppable force and the immovable rock, arguing over a dog. He knew when to give ground.

How he misses her now.
Having Henry around was not unlike having a child. They had new surprises every day, often unpleasant ones. There was nowhere aboard the Na'Toth for Henry to void himself. While video tutorials existed for teaching a dog to use a regular place for such things, somehow it had slipped their mind that Henry, being as large as some furniture, would be unable to make use of a litter box. Eventually they found a means. A large plant, a heart tree, native to Libra Corleone, with a shallow but wide root base. It could sit, corraled, low to the floor in a wooden box. The smell was impressive, incredible even, but this was far better than cleaning Henry's leavings off a cermaic floor tile, scrubbing the grout and sealant.
He usually made her do it. "This was your idea," she would complain. But it was easy for her. He had to get down on his hands and knees and scrub. She had other means. Means which, wielded carefully, wouldn't strip the very atoms of the grout to vapor. Still, this give and take was part of their relationship. Just because something was easier for her doesn't mean it wasn't worth doing for him. Admittedly, it was difficult at times to find the dignity in the honest, hard work of cleaning up dog shit.

So now they had the heart tree. Once Henry is done eating, he turns to G'kar, breath smelling pungently of dog and kibble. His ears are up, aloft, expectant. "Yes, yes," G'kar mutters, "we'll get to that." He realized he had been kneeling too long, and his own joints had become stiff, like Henry's. He rolls to his feet, no graceful warrior just now but rather a leathery, slow, methodical man. His voice had been the only voice in the ship, his thoughts the only thoughts in his head, for too long. Henry is his only company just now. He stands, stretches. He doesn't even have to beckon; all he has to do was walk to the heart tree, and Henry follows, his claws clicking loudly on the floor.
He tires of the silence. He thinks of Marcus again, who always had something to say. "Nothing beside remains!" He shouts, almost railing, a fist closed. He wasn't Marcus, but he could fill the air with furious sound if he wished. "Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away," he says, and drops his hand to his side. His eyes meet Henry's, who looks up at him, distracted from his mission. Henry needed that noise, too. G'kar knows things Henry does not, things he cannot explain. Lyta is gone. She went to war and never returned. The media has reported her death, like so many of his other friends. Like so many of his other lovers.

So too was Henry like a child in that they could not make love without worrying about his intrusion. Finding time to themselves sometimes required that Henry be asleep, and at a year old that was surprisingly seldom, despite his size. Large dogs, he knew, would eventually make good on their promise of being furniture, but like their research on walkies and such, they too had failed to research what it meant to take care of a puppy, and how long a dog, fully grown, would remain so. Curious, entering uninvited, many a coitus would be interrupted. While G'kar was not against their liaisons, he knew she could be more. It was why he had suggested she get a dog, and why he had rebuffed her first advances. But once she had begun to know herself, through caring for Henry, G'kar was more than willing to entertain the thought of this lovely woman in his bed. Their bed, soon enough. But often, unfortunately, also Henry's. Sometimes his hard lips had just parted, the folds of his firm yet delicate cloaca inviting her touch, when Henry would bound upon them, tail wagging. Lyta often slept curled around him, or with him at her feet. There was nothing for it. It was what he'd wanted for her, and what she had discovered she did in fact need. They were not exclusive, either. Neither, it turned out, was well suited to that. Lyta's libido had, if anything, diminished once she had Henry around, since she was no longer touch-starved, as many teeps constantly are. Seeing that need for companionship, always denied, had been what had eventually driven her to join the war. To lead in it, and to die in it.
Now, Henry and G'kar both missed her touch, in keenly felt ways, though not the same ways of course. Touch was so very important to mammals and narn alike.

Thinking of that, he strokes behind Henry's ear, scratching again. "Go on now. The tree needs you! You have a duty." He decides that joke was terrible, and is glad its only audience is a dog whose grasp of spoken language is limited to a few familiar words. He resolves that won't be one of them. He pats Henry's side, and Henry sniffs the tree.

(minor edit 4-6-23: word "hammer" replaced with word "nail"; noted in case author later determines this was a deliberate word choice and appropriate.)