Vegas and Pete: the series

Broken Bonds

POV Vegas

I'd taken my hedgehog back into its bedroom. Pete was asleep when I came in. I set the cage down and took the hedgehog into my hands. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what I could do. I wasn't a damn vet. I stare down at the small delicate creature cupped in my palms.

I hear a rustling beside me and Pete awakens and shifts on the bed. I can feel his eyes on me as I look down at my small friend. "What is it?" Pete asks me his voice rough from sleep. I don't turn to look at him. I keep my eyes on my hedgehog as he blinks, his breath comes in small gasps. "Vegas?" Pete shifts on the bed and leans more toward me. "Is he sick?"

I still don't move my eyes away. I feel that if I take my eyes off him he'll just stop breathing all together. I don't want that. "He's been breathing abnormally for a while." I inform Pete. "His feces is watery too." I'd been monitoring him for the last hour, I don't know why I hadn't noticed it before. I mentally punched myself a few times for not taking care of him better.

"Do you have medication for him?" Pete asks me, and I shake my head numbly. I didn't have anything, nothing at all that could help me. "Tell the guard outside to take him to the vet?"

"There's no one." I tell Pete softly. It was just the two of us here. Just me, Pete, and this little hedgehog. All the other guards had been sent back the first day. There was no one else that I could turn to. The only person this little guy had was me, his owner, and I was stuck on this damn lake without a vet for miles. And if the main family caught me while I was out-.

I grit my teeth, fuck that, I don't care, I wasn't going to let him die, not again, not this early, not when there was still something I could do about it.

Decision made I grab quickly for the small towel I sometimes held him in and wrapped him up softly as I got up to my feet and headed for the door.

"Where are you going?" Pete asks me.

"I'm taking him to the vet."

"But its-" Pete interjects with a trace of concern.

I ignore it. "I'm not asking you." I snap at him, and then leave the room quickly shutting the door behind me. I nearly ran down the stairs and over to where the vehicle is parked on the long driveway. I open the car door and get inside. Then I move to set the little guy down on the passenger seat. When I do though I notice how still and limp he is. I take my hand away from the door that I had just been about to shut, and reach over and unwrap him fully from the towel. I put my finger up to his nose.

There is no breath.

His eyes don't blink.

He's dead.

I sit there stiffly as I stare down at the small dead animal in my passenger seat. Then I move and wrap him back up in the towel and hold him in my hands. He'd been so small, so young. Numbly I get out of the car and shut the door. My feet pad across the concrete of the driveway and I find myself walking back toward the interior of the house, up the stairs, across the small deck, and down the other stairs and out onto the lawn. I get about half way across the grass before my knees give out and I crash to the ground. I'm not sure where I was even going, where would I take him? What should I do with him now?

I sag down to the ground and I sit with my legs stretched out in front of me and my small dead friend resting in my lap. I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to do anything. He was dead, it wasn't going to matter anymore.

Dead, I stare down at the small white towel. Death was something I was familiar with, something I'd caused before, to people. So why did it hurt this much when it was just a damn hedgehog? Why did it always hurt this much?