Because Clary Goodwin is a badass, and this line struck me as unnecessarily cruel.
"Cooper, wake up," Goodwin said. "Now's not the time to be napping. Remember your friend Verene."
Clary Goodwin, p. 417
"I don't know why I said it," she would say later, when she was at the temple and trying to convince herself that she was a good Dog, when she was struggling to believe that the stains on her hands – small hands, fit perfectly into her man's grasp and around her baton, too – were washed away at least partially by the thud of the Rats thrown into the cages.
"It helped," was the later explanation, "And anyway, Cooper's used to it."
And, indeed, she had never heard the Puppy say a word about it – had only seen the flash of blue eyes that could, so easily, turn to ice at the drop of a pin, had seen the way that her back had stiffened, and how Mattes' eyes, too, had flickered to her, with reproach clear in them. He wasn't her man – despite the rumors that had swirled around Jane Street Kennel for years – but maybe he could have been, and the Goddess had set him in her path to keep her straight.
Usually, he let her do her own thing – usually, it was she who was directing a kick towards him that she knew Cooper saw. Cooper didn't usually see the glances he would throw at her, the mild way that he spoke to her that had her back ruffling and her feathers up – however the words worked – and entirely distracted her from the sharp words that would have drawn blood, had her arrows not been stopped in midflight.
This time, he didn't – she knew he had a soft spot for Cooper, knew it like she knew that she had her own, however tiny it was compared to his, like she knew that he grew miniature roses and Cooper spoke to the dead.
But usually, he didn't let it interfere – and she glared back, let Cooper talk, and she'd have sworn if she hadn't been too busy kicking herself for Cooper's attachedness, because when he did start to get in the middle, he usually had a reason.
And it wasn't until later that it hit, that Cooper had buried a friend, and while she could stand and sing a Lullaby to Verene – she didn't even know the Puppy's last name – that Cooper hadn't; it hadn't been another Puppy in a long line of Puppies to Cooper, it had been a friend, and she couldn't remember what that felt like.
It wasn't as though she'd been that close to Rollo, and there were things she didn't think about – because if she remembered the way that the blood had spread over the cloths that covered the bodies, she might have remembered the sudden, sharp fear that came from thinking that someone had said it was Cooper was under there. And that was totally irrational, because she and Mattes, they hadn't let Cooper out of their sight all night – they'd been told, hadn't they, by Ahuda herself, that they weren't to let their Puppy out of their sight.
Rollo and his partner had though and then Verene had paid the price, and it could just as easily have been Cooper.
But she didn't think about that, and she stood slowly, lit the incense under the Goddess' shrine. Her hands were still dirty, her heart was still heavy, and there was nothing that she could do about it.
And it could still be Cooper under that white sheet.