#the distilled second person pov version of a future vegasmacau centric fic

[adanima]

you’re in a hospital room and your mother shows you the baby she’s holding and she tells you, “this is macau.” she tells you he’s your little brother and that means it’s your job to look out for him. you've been given jobs before but this is the first one mae has given you. she lets you hold the baby, your brother, and the new responsibility she’s laid at your feet feels more important than anything that has ever been bestowed upon you.

you're in an office and your father yells at you, telling you how you've messed up yet again. this has been happening more and more recently but it never gets easier to withstand. pa sneers and wonders whether you can do anything right. he jeers that certainly his other son can do better than you and you think good riddance, let him try because why should you be the only one to stain your hands and your body red when there are two sons of the minor family? but your mother's voice echoes in your head, it's your job to look out for him and the weight of those words settles hard and heavy in your stomach. and you know even before you leave that office that you'll keep trying to do things right so your brother doesn't have to know what happens when things go wrong.

you’re in your bedroom and your brother is making a nuisance of himself sprawled out on the bed. he’s moody and capricious in a way you recognize from being a teenager yourself. he’s not very pleasant to be around right now and you honestly have better things to do with your time but he came looking for you and you couldn’t find it in yourself to turn him away. besides, he mostly just wants to rant about idiots he's encountered at school and in his video games. the banality of his complaints makes the bitter taste of envy settle on your tongue, but you think if that’s his biggest grievance in life, maybe you’ve done something right.