dollsome | Lines (Victor/Sierra)

Title: Lines
Pairing: Victor/Sierra
Spoilers: Season 1 through 1x12 "Omega"
Word Count: 1,150
Rating: G
Summary: Victor, Sierra, and crayons.
Author's Note: Darnit, I can write stuff! Or at least I can try. This is for

allthingsholy's long ago prompt on the alphabet meme: 'Victor/Sierra, Look After You.'

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They’re told to draw something that makes them happy, so Sierra draws butterflies. She makes them big, a whole page of wide wings. She picks out crayons in her favourite colors (all of them but brown and black and white). She tilts her head and the page, careful not to leave any blank colorless spaces. She enjoys the way the crayon sticks a little to the paper when she pulls it away.

When she’s all finished, she sits up taller and looks down at her picture. She smiles, proud of it. She would like Miss Brook to come over and tell her she’s done a good job, but Miss Brook is over with Tango right now talking quietly to her. Her voice is always so soft and kind. It’s so nice when she likes what you’ve done.

Sierra decides to show Victor instead. She likes showing Victor her art even more than Miss Brook. Victor is always happy to see her pictures, and he always says nice things. Victor likes her. It makes Sierra happy. If she could, she would draw that, but there’s no way to draw a feeling.

She stands up and walks over to where he’s sitting. As she gets closer, she notices that Victor is frowning. He doesn’t look mad, though. Just sad. As he stares down at his own picture, his forehead scrunches into little lines. She wants to count each line, and to press them with her fingertips as she does it just to be sure she has the number right. She won’t, though. She knows it isn’t nice to touch without asking permission. She knows that his face must hurt, too. It isn’t good to touch something that hurts. That only makes it worse.

She peers over his shoulder at his picture. It’s two girls and a boy holding hands and smiling. The boy and one girl have very dark hair. The other girl has gold hair. They’re standing outside in the green grass. In the right corner the sun shines down on them in yellow lines.

“Your picture is nice,” she says, hoping it will make him feel better.

He looks up at her. It still surprises her to see what he looks like now. His scars are so big. It would frighten her if it was anyone else.

“Thank you,” Victor says. “It isn’t done yet.”

“Why not?”

He doesn’t answer her question. She wonders if he didn’t hear her. Instead, after a little while, he says, “It’s you and me and Echo. Because we’re friends. Friends make me happy.”

She feels pleased. “Friends make me happy, too.”

She smiles at him, to show it.

He doesn’t smile back, though. He looks worried. It makes her stomach feel strange and tight, like being hungry. They’ve just had breakfast. She wonders if she should ask for a snack.

Victor stares down at his picture. “But I drew myself wrong. The scars are missing. I always forget that they’re there.”

They’re such a bright, angry red that they seem impossible to forget. But Sierra remembers that when you are you, you can never see yourself. She doesn’t know what she looks like unless she has a mirror, and you can’t always have a mirror. It’s just the same for Victor, she realizes. He’s different from her in many ways, but he’s a person, just like she is. He can’t see himself either.

“You can still draw them in,” she tells him, wanting to help. “They’re only lines. Lines aren’t hard to draw.”

“No, they’re not hard,” he agrees. He’s still frowning.

She sits down next to him. She puts her butterfly picture facedown on the table. She can show him later. It doesn’t matter so much while he’s sad.

“I don’t want to ruin it,” he tells her, a little quieter. “I tried my best to draw a good picture. I don’t want to make it ugly.”

“You won’t make it ugly,” she protests. She begins to understand.

“Echo is beautiful,” he says, “And you. You’re very beautiful.”

Under the table, she can feel the warmth of his leg against hers. Their legs touch all the way down to the sides of their feet. His foot twitches a little, as though he’s thinking the same thing. She doesn’t move away. She likes how it feels.

“Thank you,” she says, like you’re supposed to when you’re given a compliment. Everyone is very nice to her, but she likes it best when Victor is nice. His eyes get different when he tells her nice things.

“I don’t look nice anymore,” he says. He sounds so sad. “I don’t want to ruin it.”

“You won’t,” Sierra says. She’s surprised by the way her voice sounds. At first, she thinks she talked louder by accident, but then she realizes that it wasn’t really so loud. She just wants him to understand what she means. “I like how you look.”

“I look ugly.” He’s wrong. Nothing is ugly here. But she can tell that he thinks it is true.

“You look like Victor,” she tells him. She tries to talk like the people who come to take them to their treatments. They sound so kind, but also very sure. You would never argue with them. You would always believe them.

He looks confused. “But I’m not the same as I used to be.”

“You look like Victor,” she says again. Her voice gets a little quieter. She hadn’t meant it to.

His eyes change a little, the way they always do when he looks at her. He doesn’t say anything.

She picks up a pink crayon. It won’t look very different from the peach one he used to color their skin.

“Can I help?”

“Yes.” He’s still looking at her, even after she looks down at the picture.

She touches the crayon to the paper and begins to draw the lines on Victor’s face. She’s careful as she does it, even more careful than she was on her butterflies. She wants this to be perfect. She wants to show him that it isn’t really bad at all.

“There,” she says, when she finishes. “See. Just lines.”

“Just lines,” he repeats. It almost sounds like whispering. She wonders what their secret is.

She smiles at him, then looks back down at the picture. She looks at Echo, then at the two of them. She looks at their overlapping hands.

Victor’s hand rests on the table right now, very close to hers. Curiosity begins to make her fingers tingle.

She reaches over and takes his hand in hers. Victor’s eyes widen a little, and for a second she thinks he might be upset. But then his fingers curve into hers. It makes her think of finding the right puzzle piece. Things fitting together.

Miss Brook comes over, very fast, and asks them to show her their pictures.

Current Mood: groggy
Current Music: In A Song (Trespassers William)