Chapter 16: Traumatic Truths and Built Bridges
Bandit and I both stared at the front of the very house that served as the home of a certain border collie that Bluey was good friends with. Neither of us said a word to each other as if either one of us was expecting the other to speak up. How this all started in the first place was only yesterday when the parents of Mackenzie had contacted Bandit and Chilli, having been made aware of my presence in Canistralia and how their kid had been avoiding me ever since he first laid eyes on me and had requested to invite me over for a sleepover to hopefully resolve the situation.
"You reckon he might give you a chance?" Bandit was finally the first to speak, referring to Mackenzie when he asked that question.
"I kind of doubt it, but let's not count ourselves out until the very end." I replied, feeling that a slither of optimism would help. Bandit smiled a little and patted my back.
"Good on ya, mate. Now if there's any problems, just tell Mackenzie's mum or dad. I'll come pick you up tomorrow morning." The adult blue heeler then waved bye to me before returning to the family car whilst I returned the gesture with a hand, the other clutching my sleeping bag before then turning back to the front of the house to find the front door open, an adult red merle border collie with the typical fur pattern of most of the body being a reddish brown, save for the muzzle, neck, forearms, thighs and the tip of the tail which were instead a creamy white.
"Ah, so you're human fella Bluey's mum and dad's keeping for the time being. Pleased to finally meet ya!" The female collie approached me and held a hand out which I didn't hesitate to shake before responding.
"Nice to meet you too, Miss Collie."
"Oh please, just call me "Molly", mate." The collie requested to which I obliged with a smiling nod before I was lead into the household and met another adult border collie, who almost looked like a carbon copy of the red merle collie but with the common black fur and different facial fur and a few grey dots around the nose.
"Hi there! Nate, was it? Bandit told me a lot about you. Heard you were real great with his kids!" The male said with a friendly grin, making me chuckle a little.
"Yeah, they really do love having me around." I affirmed before remembering why I had come here in the first place. "Speaking of which, where is Mackenzie right now?" As soon as I asked this question, both smiles on the adult collies' faces fell as they knew as well that Mackenzie wouldn't take me being in his home very well.
"He's… in the living room." Molly meekly said, stepping aside to give me access to said room as I only nodded and stepped into the living room to find their young border collie off-spring drawing on a piece of paper. His eyes didn't even glance up to see me but I could definitely see a scowl on his face, making it all too clear that he was aware of my presence.
At this point, I was starting to have second thoughts about patching things up with Mackenzie and resolving the shade we had between each other but I knew that I had to press on and try to ease the conflict, so to avoid the awkward bout of silence currently going on, I slowly paced over to the boy collie and sat down next to him.
"Hi, Mackenzie." I spoke out in the most friendliest tone I could manage, but as I should've expected, that didn't even make Mackenzie budge. In fact, I think his scowl contorted to one of near annoyance.
"I… I know you're not very fond of me. And I understand that whatever it was you went through might be why you don't like me. But the truth is, I'm not here to hurt you or anyone you love. And Bluey's other friends trust me enough to never hurt them. So… do you reckon that maybe we can be frie-"
"DON'T TOUCH ME!" I immediately recoiled in shock as Mackenzie suddenly turned and barked at me, his teeth baring at me. In my moment of trying to reason with him, I had almost forgotten that I had attempted to reach out to him to better ease him. The many other times Mackenzie had interacted with me, it was just a silent disapproving glare, but his aggressive reaction right now only cemented that he wanted nothing to do with me, and even if I had a few hints, I still didn't fully know what made him so distrusting towards me. I lowered my hands to signal submission as he slowly turned back to drawing, still with a snarl on his face.
That was when I felt a hand on my shoulder, making me look up to see Molly look down at me with a saddened look on her face before motioning with her head to follow her, to which I did, being led to another room of the house, supposedly so that Mackenzie wouldn't hear whatever it was that his mom and dad had to say.
"I was afraid he would be like this with you… I hope you aren't too upset." Mackenzie's dad said worriedly as I held up hand to signal that I wasn't too distraught, having expected my first attempt to not be a successful one.
That was there and then that I remembered my time at the library with Lucky and how I had read a book about Canistralia's history, including one part I had read about which the Canistralian government seemed to had not yet noticed.
"...A few days ago, I read something about a New Zealand war a few years ago that was in a book in a library. And… You were from New Zealand, weren't you?"
Both adult collies' eyes widened at the revelation before quickly closing, their expressions pensive as if they were remembering something.
"Molly..." Mackenzie's dad placed a hand on his wife's shoulder, the latter looking back at him before nodding sadly as they both looked back to me.
"It's something we all want to forget… But it still haunts us from time to time..." Molly said solemnly before proceeding with what she had to say.
It had all started sometime after I gave birth to Mackenzie. Me and Mark were both in tears of joy as we saw our own little boy sleeping peacefully in my arms. At the time, neither of us knew that the human United Nations were still wary of our kind living among them, but most of our human neighbours were nice people and welcomed Mackenzie with open arms. We even had plans to one day enroll him into a nice school so he could make some friends with the humans.
...But that day never came.
It was one morning when he was only five months old that we both heard it. The sound of a nearby bomb going off followed by screams of terror and gunfire. Neither of us dared to look out the window, we instead rushed straight to Mackenzie's bedroom and ran for dear life to our car.
Outside was hell on earth. A few human and dog corpses had already littered the streets, the humans and dogs that were still alive were opening fire at each other, stray bullets hitting citizens left and right. Without another second, we drove as far away from there as possible, never looking back.
We were lucky to not have a scratch on us, but the mental scars it would have on us and little Mackenzie were never going to heal.
A few weeks later, the UN found out about the war and were outraged. Not wanting to take anymore risks, the majority of the human regions including New Zealand deported us and we had to immigrate to Canistralia.
We thought we could start a new life here, but the memories of seeing the war first hand never left us. Mackenzie always had frequent nightmares of that moment and even we were kept awake at night from the experience.
The worst part was… When we found out what had caused the New Zealand war in the first place.
From what we had been told, a dog, one of our kind believed that humans were immigrants to the entire world and wanted it to be abundant in just us and would gladly kill a human if it meant living in a world without them.
When Mackenzie was old enough to attend school, he could still remember the war and we had no choice but to tell him that it was caused by humans. We were afraid that telling him what really caused it would make him fear other dogs for the rest of his life. We didn't want that, we wanted him to just be happy again and have friends…
As more of Molly's story came out, it all made sense. I could now see why Mackenzie didn't trust me at all. His parents had told him that humans were responsible for his trauma, and that lead him to believe that all humans were nothing but dog-hating monsters.
I felt cold. All that stirred in my own stomach was misery and sympathy. War is a horrible thing to witness and poor Mackenzie didn't deserve to be shown such a thing, especially at such a young age.
And I understood why his parents had to bend the truth as one could only imagine what would've happened if Mackenzie had actually known that it was one of his own kind that had caused them all to be banished from the human regions.
But before I could speak, a voice I never thought I would hear at the current moment spoke up.
"You..."
We al turned to see Mackenzie standing just near us with a look of horror in his eyes, but I could sense something else on his face.
Betrayal.
"...You said it was..." Mackenzie stammered out, unable to form a full sentence, having overheard everything his parents had told me and it had hit him like a wall of bricks.
"Mackenzie… I…" Molly gently spoke, trying to reach out to his son, but he immediately backed off, his shock now replaced with both anger and sadness.
"YOU LIED TO ME!" After that outburst followed by a sob, Mackenzie turned and ran off.
"Mackenzie, wait!" The collie's dad tried to call out to him to no avail. Molly on the other hand just collapsed to her knees and began to cry, hands over her face as her husband stood by her side to comfort her.
Even if I wasn't responsible for what Mackenzie was now going through, I felt just as horrible. A young child should never have to go through such moments like this, and yet fate seemed to have it out for him.
I knew what I had to do now. With Mark sticking by Molly's side, I made off in the direction Mackenzie had ran off to.
To my luck, Mackenzie hadn't run off very far. As soon as I had stepped into the back garden, I heard faint sniffling coming from a nearby garden shed and I knew to well who it was coming from.
As slowly as possible, I made way to behind the shed to find the little collie curled up in a fetal position, tears in his eyes as he continued to sob quietly.
"Mackenzie… Do you know why your parents had to lie?" I asked in a low volume, the collie in question lifted his head up to me, his expression no longer showing any aggression at all.
"...Because they wanted to protect you." I sat down onto the grass before continuing. "They didn't want you to think that all dogs were mean creatures who just fight and hurt each other. There can be good dogs out there as there are good humans. Do you remember when you first met Bluey and the others?"
Mackenzie glanced down for a moment in thought before slowly nodding.
"I know she and the others have been good to you, and I know that you enjoy having them as friends. The question is… would you be able to trust them if your mom and dad told you the truth?"
There was moment of silence before Mackenzie spoke, his voice trembling.
"N-No… I don't think so." After hearing that, I gave a nod as if to say "Exactly" before speaking once more.
"They weren't lying to hurt you, Mackenzie. They didn't think I'd ever end up here in Canistralia so they did what they felt would be best for you."
Mackenzie then stood up, but his sorrowful expression didn't fade and his gaze was avoiding mine.
"...Are you still upset with your parents?" Mackenzie quickly shook his head "No" at that question.
"Then what is it?" I gently asked as Mackenzie sniffled once more.
"...Y-You lost your own mum and dad, right? When you came here?" I didn't expect to hear such a question from Mackenzie but regardless, I nodded.
Another long pause as I didn't take my gaze off the sorrowful little pup until I finally heard him mumble something.
"Mm srmy..."
"Huh? What did you-?"
"I'M SORRY, NATHAN! I'M SO SORRY! I WAS SO MEAN TO YOU AND YELLED AT YOU BECAUSE I THOUGHT YOU WERE HORRIBLE! I COULD'VE LOST MY OWN MUM AND DAD BUT I DIDN'T BUT YOU DID AND I JUST…!" Mackenzie suddenly yelled out in nothing but despair before finally breaking out into loud sobs, falling to his knees as fresh new tears stained his fur.
Without any hesitation, I reached over and pulled the crying collie into my arms into a gentle hug to try and calm him down.
It felt like nearly half an hour when Mackenzie's weeping eventually ceased. Letting go of the collie, I gently stroked his head to further ensure that there were no hard feelings between us as he continued to look up at me tearfully.
"Mackenzie. Would you like to be my friend?" Mackenzie blinked at the question as he wiped his eyes.
"R-Really…? Even after I…?" I nodded before he could answer his question.
"You're still only a child and I understand why you acted like that to me. And you are right, you may have not had the best past, but you are extremely lucky to still have your mom and dad to care of you and love you, don't ever forget that." I explained to the collie whom sniffled once more before giving me a small smile for the very first time.
"Say, you wanna know what I like to do to take my mind off of things whenever I feel down?" I asked Mackenzie, whom expectedly shook his head as I responded by taking out my phone.
"Woah… Goku is so awesome!" Mackenzie exclaimed with glee as he and I watched on my phone as the aforementioned saiyan had just suplexed his equally as powerful rival, Vegeta in his Great Ape form by the tail, the titanic monkey slamming face first on the ground thus causing it to shudder.
"Oh, that's only the beginning of what Super Saiyans can do!" I said with as much enthusiasm as we both continued to watch the clash between super powered man and a giant ape, both of us cheering when Vegeta was finally down for the count.
At that moment, out of the corner of my eye, I briefly noticed the familiar sight of Mackenzie's parents looking over at us with warm expressions which suddenly turned to ones of alert shock upon realizing that I had saw them once I turned my head to them. Mackenzie did the same too and his face fell to a look of newfound guilt as he registered who it was he was looking at. It only took one nod from me to tell him what he should do as he slowly approached Molly and Mark.
"Mum… Dad… I'm sorry I yelled at you. I know you were only trying to help."
Without any hesitation, the two adults pulled the little collie into a gentle forgiving hug as his mom, Molly was the first to speak.
"We're more happy that you're finally friends with Nathan." Both her and Mark looked at me with kind faces during that sentence as I replied with a smile of my own.
"Oh! Nathan is really cool!" Mackenzie blurted out as I was treated to him telling his mum and dad everything he liked about me and what I liked, including the anime he and I were currently watching.
Mackenzie's POV
...Where am I? Why do I smell smoke?
…
Oh no… Not again.
I thought I was in my bed with Nathan in his sleeping bag and now suddenly I'm back in New Zealand… except everything was on fire. Screams were all around me as I also heard very loud bangs.
"M-Mum! Dad!" I called out, scared to no end as it wasn't long before I saw humans and dogs fall the floor with red stuff on their bodies… They were dead.
All I could do was run. I didn't care where to, I just wanted to get out of there before I was hurt or worse. The screams and bangs didn't stop, my eyes clenched shut so I wouldn't see anyone else die.
But because I couldn't see, I ended up tripping over something, falling to the hard ground.
...Then I heard footsteps come up behind me. Even though I didn't want to, it felt like something was forcing me to open my eyes and look up.
Standing above me was someone who was shaped like a dog like me but larger and wearing a suit with a very creepy mask with empty eyeholes and two circle things sticking out from the front. The thing was holding something in his hands which was long and metal before pointing it at me. Somehow, I knew it was something bad.
"N-No! Mum! Dad! HELP ME!"
All I could do was scream as the thing made fire spew from the long metal thing towards me as I saw nothing but yellow and red…
Nathan's POV
"NOOOOOO! MUM! DAD!"
"Mackenzie, wake up!"
"HELP ME!"
Mackenzie screamed once more before his eyes finally shot open and he lunged forward, sitting upright on his bed, panting and trembling, sweat running down the sides of his head. My sleep had been disturbed by the need to relieve myself in the bathroom during the night and the second I stepped back into Mackenzie's bedroom, I saw the collie squirming and whimpering in his bed and I knew very well what was going on.
"N-Nathan…!" Mackenzie cried out before latching onto me in a tight hug which I returned to calm him down.
"Shhhh… It's okay. It was only just a nightmare." I felt Mackenzie's breathing on my clothed chest gradually slow down before we both soon let go of each other.
"I was back in New Zealand… Everything was on fire and… Mum and dad weren't there..." I nodded in understanding before gently rubbing one of his ears to ease his worries.
"You're safe and sound here with them. And Bluey and I are your friends, we'll make sure nothing like that happens to you." I said quietly to Mackenzie as he took a deep breath and managed to calm down, now knowing that everything was okay.
After a little while, Mackenzie was comfortable enough to fall back asleep once more and thus so did I, however, I made it a priority tomorrow to suggest to Mackenzie's parents to take him into therapy to help prevent further bad dreams relating to the New Zealand war.
But before I fell to a sound slumber, I felt some weight on the side of my sleeping bag, making me open one eye to see the sleeping form of Mackenzie laying next to me, nuzzling my arm.
All I did however was smile at this as I let the border collie sleep by my side before I soon slipped into a deep sleep.
A/N: Awww, isn't that just precious?
So yeah, after another bout of lost motivation and procrastination, I have finally brought you all another chapter with the long awaited moment where Nate and Mackenzie finally build bridges. (Insert the readers cheering like Cr1TiKaL)
So even with that roadblock out of the way, Nathan's adventure is far from over however as next time on 'I Among Dogs', our human hero will learn to fight with honour with help from a new friend. Same Bat-Time, Same Bat-Channel.
