Vegas and Pete: the series

Embrace the Flame

POV Vegas

The room was silent as we both sat there. I don't know for how long. All I can hear is the soft sound of my own breathing and the quiet beat of my own heart. Pete doesn't make a move to say anything or explain himself and some part of me is apprehensive to disrupt the stillness of the moment in case he realizes the fact that he could leave if he wanted to.

I don't want him to leave.

Yet I wouldn't stop him now if he did. I no longer saw the point anymore. The point of anything. If all my life was going to be now was me shut away on this damn lake. It'd be better to let Pete go before he somehow died as well, as everything around me seems to do.

But Pete makes no move to leave. He barely moves at all and finally I take the risk and I open my mouth. "Why didn't you run away?" I ask him. It comes out sounding harsher than I intended it to, but Pete doesn't seem to mind.

I turn to look at him and Pete moves to match me. Our eyes meet in the blurry haze of the deep purple and midnight blue lights and it is hard to read his expression. I don't even know what face to show to him at this point. My mask is so thoroughly lost I'm not even sure where I could find it again.

Pete moves his eyes away and answers me. "I don't even know."

I feel like that could be the tagline to my entire life. I take a breath and feel it choke in my throat. "My dad had me take care of the hedgehogs since I was little." I begin speaking without much thought. I'm not trying to explain myself, more just wanting to talk, to speak ,to give Pete something in return for what he had given me just by sitting there. "One by one they all died. Until there was this one left." I turn my gaze back to the now empty cage still sitting by the bed. "He still left me too." I meet Pete gaze and there is no judgment, no condemnation, no sneer, or revulsion. So I keep going. "I didn't even get to name him." My breath shudders at the thought and I fight to keep my voice steady. " And why do I have to feel so much about this now?"

It was just a hedgehog, nothing more than a small animal, yet every time it was like this every time one died I would cry for it. I would mourn it, away from where my father could see, alone, unable to share that pain with anyone.

"If you're feeling sad," Pete begins to answer me and his voice is soft and calming. "That means it was important."

I suck in a breath and almost sneer at the word he'd ended on. It was one my father threw around with abandon yet never took responsibility for himself. "Whatever Pa gave me to do it's all important." Every order had to be followed, every job had to be done, every deal had to be made, no matter what.

I hang my head down. It's all so useless now, everything that I'd done, everything I'd accomplished, all those important things, they meant nothing. In truth maybe they never had. "Everything that I love left me." I tell Pete in a bitter voice. First my mother and then everyone of the hedgehogs, and so many other small things that I'd ever dared to try to care for. "My life is pathetic, isn't it?"

I was nothing, and important to no one.

Pete is silent for a moment and then he speaks. "But you still have Macau." He says softly.

I shake my lightly. "Macau is no different." He was going to end up like me one way or the other, just more fodder in the main family's pen, or another weapon for my father to wield. That's all I was, all I ever had been. Ever since I continued to be less than what he wanted and nothing he needed. "It's unfortunate to be born in the minor family, minor means second." I turn to look at Pete wanting to convey my point eye to eye. He meets my gaze with that same calm attention, so I keep speaking. Words I'd always wanted to say spilling from my mouth to his waiting ear. "No matter how well we do, no one sees it."