Chapter Text
His mouth was already full of blood from the split lip, from the fight, from the cut on the inside of his cheek from his teeth pushing against the tender skin. Blood trickled down his chin when the clone pressed in for a kiss, bruising his mouth, pulling hard on the hair on the back of his head.
Vegas had always known his father hated him. That he hated him, didn’t trust him, despised him, thought him weak. Perhaps he should have considered the possibility of his father having a clone made of him, yet he never had, even when he’d seen the puppets that Gun had made to replace Kinn or Khun or Kim if given the chance. Vegas had walked in on his father sampling the clones made of the mystery woman (later discovered to be Porsche’s mother) and never questioned if there was a version of himself out there who also doted on his father.
After all, if his father hated him, why would he make another?
“You’re pathetic,” his clone bit out and Vegas bared bloody teeth and jerked the clone into another biting, heated kiss.
Neither of them was doing well. A clone’s lifespan was short. They burned out quickly, their bodies given out if not stuck full of wires or tucked back into the tubes that fed them nutrients and protected their bodies from the world. How his clone had managed to live a year after his father’s death would be something to be investigated later.
“You’re trash,” Vegas muttered around a tongue shaped like his own.
They were both bleeding, glancing gunshot wounds, knife slices, the fractal scratches left behind by nearby explosions had burned across the clone’s cheek. Vegas licked his own skin and tasted shrapnel on the tongue.
The door opened noticeable only because it had been set badly on its hinges and squeaked.
Pete, in the doorway.
The clone and Vegas clenched each other tight, hands fisted in a suit jacket and a torn shirt, their faces turned toward the door.
Pete, his Pete, because there were no other versions of Pete in the world with a gun in his hands and a level gaze. Pete would take care of it. So it didn’t matter if he held the clone close, it didn’t matter if the clone didn’t let him go.
“Macau’s dead.”
Words louder than the gunshot that followed. Vegas’ knees gave out and his grip on the clone’s clothing went along with it. Dead weight his knees hit the ground almost in time with the clone fallen down dead, a bullethole straight through his skull, his mouth still spread in a cruel grin.
“Sorry, Vegas, sorry,” Pete hurried close, his steps unnaturally quiet when all Vegas could hear was the gunshot and his last words, his steps quiet because that was his training. “Sorry, I needed to know which one of you was real.”
The only way difference between the two, the love of his brother.
Vegas nodded.