Predator (DWT x OC)

36

TW// Minor panic attack, descriptions of self harm (anxiety coping mechanism) and discussion about self harm/self harm denial. 

I kick my bare legs back and forth, hovering just over the still pond surface. I keep my eyes glued on the flashes of peach skin and green leaves, letting myself get lost in the blur of colour and life. 

Everything else is too fucking loud. 

The early winter chill cups my cheek with its icy fingers, brushing tingling numbness over the pout of my lips, freezing the tip of my nose, curling a breeze over the nape of my neck. I don't stop it though, just close my eyes against the cold, and hide my fingers inside the sleeve of my jumper. 

The crunching of leaves stands my hair on end, and I my whole body snaps to the side. 

"We've got to stop meeting like this." A voice says, one that chills me right to my very core. 

It's like someone shoved cotton wool down my throat, and all I can do is swallow, pinned my fear and adrenaline to my spot on the rock, staring straight at the man I never hoped to see again. 

Fundy steps out from the tree line, black suit identical to Schlatt's. He must of told him where to find me. 

"We didn't get to talk at the rally." He says, hands casually in his pockets, as if his being hasn't stripped me of everything I was. 

"Please leave me alone." I shock myself by my words, barely above a hoarse whisper. 

"We can't even talk Rosemary? We've got a lot to catch up on." He says mockingly. 

"I don't want to talk to you." I say, slightly louder, drawing myself away from him. 

"Because of the whole hostage thing? Come on Rosie." Fundy steps closer and I flinch violently, recoiling back. 

"Please just go away." I mumble. I want to scream, make him see how badly he hurt me, how I'm still trying to put the pieces of myself back together that he tore apart without even fucking blinking. All I can do is beg him to leave. 

I feel pathetic. 

His next words surprise me. "How are your arms?" He asks, tone softening around words that otherwise would be kind. 

Coming from his mouth? They're daggers spewed to slice you to ribbons.

It pisses me off enough to snap me out of the terror that sedates me. 

"Ruined." 

He blinks, the tiniest ripple of emotion wavering over his features, the ones seared into my mind, contorted into the devil himself, the face I see when I jolt awake in the dead of the night, body paralysed, scream stuck in my throat. 

"I did it for L'manburg." He settles on, but its like he's trying to convince himself. 

"You did it to be a hero that nobody needed." I say tearfully, looking at him in desperation. He can't possibly believe that torturing me was for anything good. Can he?

"I did it for my country. That's why I'm back, we're gonna win this election, and L'manburg will finally be the country it should be. Dream and all his friends won't get to control us anymore!" 

"Dream and Schlatt are working together you fucking idiot!" I yell back at him. He stops dead, mouth hanging wide open. 

"I heard them talking in the woods about an agreement, and when I confronted Dream he just pretended like it never happened. Except I know, Fundy, I know his voice. You know why? It's the shit I hear in my sleep, right next to yours. I'd never mistake it. Never. It's fucking branded into my brain!" I scream, because the more I talk about this out loud the angrier I get, red hot rage engulfing my veins.