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“I need advice,” Hunter says, dropping into the seat next to Elena on the sofa.
“And you came to me?” she asks dubiously. The last time she’d given him advice had not turned out well, exactly.
“Art advice,” he clarifies. “I know better than to ask you about Mack.” Hunter shudders dramatically.
Elena doesn’t understand Mack and Hunter’s bromance at all. Sometimes she swears they like each other more than anyone else in the world, and sometimes it seems like they can’t stand each other. She’s since accepted Bobbi’s advice to just let them do their own thing, and it seems to be turning out okay.
“Spit it out.”
“Am I a bad artist if I just draw people?” Hunter asks in one blur of syllables. Elena has to take a moment to parse his words, but as soon as she does her mouth stretches into an unamused line.
“Who told you that?”
“I was watching some YouTube videos.” Hunter lifts a shoulder in a half-shrug. “And the guy said on his draw with me that if you can only draw one thing, you’re not an artist.”
"¡Que tontería!" Elena huffs. “You are an artist because you enjoy making art, not because you pass some - some test.”
Elena is more than ready to admit she’s overprotective of Hunter and his love of art. She had been the one he came to when he’d first considered taking up art as a hobby, after his return to S.H.I.E.L.D. She had given him his first sketchbook, and his second, and his third. Elena’s started keeping track of where he is in his sketchbook so she can always be prepared to buy him another, and she’s fairly confident Hunter is the reason none of her Copics seem to run dry anymore. They have a lot in common, between their devotion to the people they love, their generally chaotic personalities, and their roles within S.H.I.E.L.D., but art is the thing that ties Elena to Hunter in a way that’s wholly unique from the way she’s tied to anyone else. Maybe it’s selfish, but she doesn’t want some random person on the internet to take away Hunter’s love of art - and in a way, take away some of his love of her.
“I - I know, but. I really do just draw the same thing over and over. I mean, not even just I draw a lot of people. I -” Hunter sighs. “Can I show you?”
She nods sharply, curiosity piqued. Elena knows better than to ask to see another artist’s sketchbook. She’s offered Hunter looks into hers on different occasions, but she hadn’t done it with the anticipation of it one day being reciprocated - she had just wanted to show Hunter something she was proud of (and, honestly, wasn’t comfortable showing anyone else).
Hunter leaves and returns with his sketchbook a minute later. Elena notes how many pages are left; she’ll need to buy one the next time she goes off-base to make sure she has another ready when Hunter finishes.
“The first one I tried different things, and the second one too, but ever since I sat down and started on this sketchbook, it’s just been… her.” Hunter opens to the first page and sets the sketchbook in Elena’s lap.
Elena had half-expected the her Hunter mentioned to be Bobbi, but it’s not. The woman staring back at Elena from the page is a stranger. Three different busts of the woman fill the first page, all of them with different expressions but undeniably the same person.
Elena takes a moment to appreciate the skill with which the women are rendered. Because she hasn’t actually seen much of Hunter’s art - just encouraged him to pursue his artistic inklings - she’s never realized how skilled he is. The sketches are far from photorealistic, but realism has never been Elena’s preferred style in any case. She much prefers the loose, flowing lines of Hunter’s sketches. He can hint at an expression with a single stroke of graphite, and the subtlety and smoothness of it all is more impressive to Elena than photorealism ever could be.
“You can keep looking, if you want,” Hunter offers when she’s stared at the sketches for at least a minute. “Like I said, it’s all her.”
Elena turns the page carefully, and as expected, the next spread is the same woman. It’s a single, full-body sketch of her sprawled face-down on a sofa, her feet over the armrest on one end and her chin propped on the other.
She keeps turning, and turning, and turning, and Hunter really wasn’t exaggerating when he said all of the sketches are of the same woman. Twice he’s drawn her with a man, but most of the time she’s alone - laughing, crying, blank-faced; sitting, standing, lying down; twirling, dancing, still.
“Who is she?” Elena asks as she flips to yet another page.
“I don’t know.” Hunter clears his throat nervously. “At least, not for sure.”
“You have an idea?” Elena prods.
“I think she might be my mum.”
Elena’s thoughts come to a screeching halt. She’s heard half a story about Hunter’s family from Bobbi, and another few sentences from Mack, but nothing ever from Hunter himself.
“She died when I was young,” he says softly. “Dad didn’t keep any pictures of her, after. But I just - I see her face so clearly and I have to draw it to remember.”
Elena makes a soft noise in the back of her throat, resting a hand on Hunter’s knee. “If it’s what you need to draw, it’s what you need to draw.”
“Yes, but…”
“But what?” she pushes.
“But no one else does it.” Hunter looks suspiciously close to pouting - or maybe that’s how he looks before he cries? Elena wouldn’t know. It’s startling to realize she’s never seen the man she counts as one of her best friends cry.
(She’s never seen Bobbi cry either, come to think of it - or Piper. The only one of her friends she can remember crying with startling clarity is Daisy.)
“When my cousin died,” Elena begins slowly, “all I drew for three months were trees. Not pretty ones, either. They never had any leaves. They were just… dead.” Three months had been an entire sketchbook for her, too, and part of the next one she worked on. She’d tried to make herself draw something different, but every time she did it either turned into Francisco’s face staring back at her or another dead tree. Even her attempts at scribbling technicolor rainbows onto the page had turned into twisted branches.
“I didn’t understand why. I didn’t have any memories of him with trees. We didn’t even see dead trees that often, living in the city.” If her memory serves, most of her drawings of dead trees are more what she imagined a dead tree to look like, not even drawing from life. “They were all black and white, too.”
“You drew in black and white for three months?” Hunter asks, shock coloring his voice.
“I didn’t see a reason to use color.” Things had changed so quickly, and not exactly for the better. She was powerful, but also alone, and scared, and sad.
Hunter mirrors her, putting his hand on her leg and squeezing comfortingly. “I’m sorry.”
“Está bien,” Elena says softly. “I grew out of it, eventually.” Now her drawings are bursting with color again, but because she wants them to be and not because she feels like she needs them to be.
“What did you do until you did?”
“I drew the trees.” It’s the simple answer, and probably the one Hunter doesn’t want to hear. “It didn’t make me less of an artist. And now I am very good at drawing trees.”
He chuckles at that, which had been her goal.
“If this is your mother’s face, someday in the future when it’s not so clear in your memory, you’ll look back at this and be glad for it,” Elena tells him. She has photos of Francisco, yes, but her drawings of him are how most of her memories live on; she’d drawn her cousin because he’d done something to inspire it, and those moments are pressed between the pages of the sketchbooks she has from that time of her life. She wouldn’t ever wish for them to disappear, and her heart aches that Hunter is feeling guilty over remembering his mother because of what some stranger said about art.
“And if it’s not my mum?”
“Then you’ve gotten very good at drawing this face,” she answers simply. “I could tell you how this improves you as an artist, but I do not think that’s what you want to hear right now.”
“It’s not,” Hunter admits. “I just… needed some good advice.”
Elena offers him a small smile. “I am always happy to give it, if you want it.”
“I know.” Hunter flips his hand over so it’s resting palm-side up on her knee. Elena threads their fingers together and squeezes.
“If you ever want to talk about the trees, I hope you know I’m here. Even if I’m rubbish at advice.”
Elena’s heart tugs. “You’re not, really.” There are few people she trusts as much as Hunter, even if she’s not good at saying it.
“And neither are you. Even if Mack is still mad at me about -”
“Not my fault,” she interrupts, her smile growing.
“Sure it isn’t.”
“It’s not!” she insists.
Hunter’s sketchbook stays open on her lap as they bicker good-naturedly.
The next time he shows it to her, he’s drawn a dead tree in the corner of the page, and she knows - they both hear the things the other person won’t say.
(It’s nice to have a friend like that.)