Disclaimer: Don't own anything.
AN: Hey, more angst fic!
When Carson was twelve his older brother had brought home a puppy. It was a rangy mutt, the runt of a litter only eight weeks old, but Carson had taken to the little thing immediately.
Carson named him 'Shaggy', which was neither particularly cute nor particularly original, but it seemed to fit, and Shaggy seemed to like it.
The pup took to following him everywhere; a constant shadow. This lasted until school resumed in September. Shaggy whined for three days until Carson's mother became so tired of the noise that she locked the dog in the shed.
When Carson returned home from class to find the puppy cowering in the corner of the pitch-dark building he had the first argument he'd ever had with his parents. As would become the norm for the rest of his life, he won. Shaggy stopped whining and Carson's parents considered it a win-win situation.
When Carson was fifteen, Shaggy broke his left leg in a rabbit hole and Carson spent the better part of six weeks carrying the dog everywhere he could. Once the cast came off he devoted his time to helping the dog strengthen the weakened muscles.
Carson's mother thought it was sweet. Carson knew he'd found his calling.
He left for school the summer he was eighteen, and Shaggy contented himself with following Carson's younger sister around instead.
He returned home from university one weekend in the cold of winter and was surprised when Shaggy did not race out to greet him. Brigit explained between choked gasps of tears that she'd taken the dog for a walk down the lane to the town road and that a car had swerved on the ice. She'd narrowly avoided injury herself.
Carson cried himself to sleep that night for the first time in years. He was inconsolable. When Sunday evening rolled around and he refused to return to school his mother put her foot down.
"It was only a dog," she said, though her voice was not entirely unkind.
"But I loved him."
"Too much," she responded.
He ignored her. His unconditional ability to love is what would make him the brilliant doctor he was born to be.
