Work Text:
Pete was never the best at art.
He remembers loving art though, expressing all his feelings and ideas onto a blank piece of paper.
Each Friday, after art class at school, he'd come home and proudly show his grandma the picture of scrawny stick-figures standing in front of a shabbily colored house, representing him and his grandparents.
He never drew his father. Not once.
He recalls the fond smile on his grandpa's face as he hung up the drawing in the living room, right above the television unit.
Only for it to be snatched off the wall in rage and break just a month after.
Pete smiled weakly to himself. The piece of chalk between his fingers was shortening with each stroke he pulled across the wall of the safe-house room.
He didn't know what it was that he was drawing; his hand moved on his own.
Pete was halfway through the drawing, so abosrbed in trying to understand what he himself was drawing, that he didn't hear the door open and shut.
"I didn't know pets could draw."
Pete didn't have the energy to flinch. He tiredly glanced at Vegas with no emotion and carried on with his drawing.
He felt Vegas walk over to him, and waited.
He silently waited for Vegas to grab his face and smash it against the wall, he waited for Vegas to pull him by the hair and throw him to the ground- but it never came.
Pete looked up at Vegas with expectanance and confusion as he sat in front of Pete, leaning on window-blinds.
Vegas stared, so did Pete.
Nothing was said until Vegas spoke- "Don't look at me like that. I have pity in me, you know."
Pete dropped his gaze back to the drawing. "I know. I don't need your pity or anyone else's."
Vegas didn't reply. He diverted his attention to the frangipani tree outside, watching, as a few, delicate blossoms fell to the ground.
"Where is your dad now?"
Pete raised his eyebrows slightly, caught off-guard, but Vegas wasn't looking.
"He's dead."
"Did he get arrested? For beating you?"
Pete finally raised his head to look at Vegas and squinted, opening his mouth to speak, but Vegas beat him to it. "Just answer the question, Pete."
Pete shut his mouth, then answered after a pause, "Yeah, he did. Not for abusing me, though. He did drugs and got caught."
"And your grandparents? Didn't they know?" Vegas questioned. Pete shook his head. "No. Seven-year-old Pete was threatened to keep his mouth shut. Grandma thought I was getting bullied at school," Pete smiled humorlessly.
"And sometimes, I think that maybe, if maybe, I'd have just told grandma where the bruises were really coming from and I needed help, perhaps everything would've been easier today.
I don't think I'd be sitting here in front of you if I had."
Vegas turned himself towards Pete once more. He noticed the illustration Pete had made, now finished, the chalk reduced to nothing but a tiny chip.
Pete followed Vegas' line of sight, and at last, realised what it was- a handful of childishly drawn figures, all seemingly yelling at a comparatively smaller one, with a hole in its chest where the heart was supposed to be.
That was the day Pete saw something genuine in his eyes.
Guilt.