Predator (DWT x OC)

59

Cold. 

Hot and cold. Wet and damp. Not home. Not home. Not L'manburg. Always Empty. Alone. 

Him and Tommy, all that was left. Everyone else- everyone else had betrayed them, had left them, watched and laughed as everything was taken from them, everything he had worked for, everything Wilbur had loved, snatched away. 

Niki had just stood there, looking on as they attacked him, forced him out of the rightful position he deserved, Tubbo was a traitor, Wilbur's seat was still warm when he decided to turn on them, offer himself up to Schlatt before the memory had even settled it. Jack was dead, but he was just more of the same. And Fundy-

Fundy had laughed, laughed while they fired arrows at him, laughed while they ripped his world from his grasp. His own son, his beautiful baby boy, smiling like he had never seen him, not in years, at his father's ruin.

They had everything. 

He had everything

And they took it. Schlatt and Fundy and Quackity and George, the rest of his family- such a useless dirty fucking word- turned their backs the mere second, the mere fucking second they had gotten rid of him.

All he had were him and Tommy, a ravine and a cave and infected arrow wounds and stolen carrots, cobbled armour and half melded tools and a fever that won't go away, sickly coughs and  half-dead wheezes, pale sweaty skin. 

So cold. And too hot, all in the same moment. 

Rosemary would fix him, he thought bitterly, but she was just like the rest, probably playing her silly little games with Dream, back in L'manburg. Back home.

Dream. He had won this time, just like he always seemed too, hearts and minds and desires, picking people apart and taking what he thinks is useful, tossing away everything else, no matter how important they are. 

He tears apart people's lives, the villain, the quintessential bad guy, diabolic evil plans and a secret lair and nefarious accomplices, and yet he always fucking wins. 

They'd never win. Not against him, too smart, and powerful and just too goddamn awful, he loves destroying people so badly he'll do anything to succeed. 

Wilbur can only shudder to imagine what Schlatt had done to his beloved country, warped what it should be into a vapid, shallow imitation, erasing the pain, and the heartbreak, and the love that's entwined into it's very walls, painting over it with greed and ignorance. 

Like heavy boots stepping on delicate flowers, intricate beauty crushed and destroyed beneath the uncaring sole. 

Tommy- Tommy is still good. He's still too young, too naive to realise the truth, still hung up of half-fantasies and childish delusions, still so attached to the people that left them behind. He still argues, every person, every time, about how they're not traitor, how they'll come back. 

He won't listen, but he'll learn eventually. He'll learn. 

He'll learnt that they cast him out, jumped ship before it had even began sinking, let them fall while they clung onto life rafts. He'll learn about how L'manburg, their L'manburg, his L'manburg, has crumbled and fallen, ruins paraded around like some dressed up corpse, pretending to be what is once was.

The pitiful remains of L'manburg puppeted by a selfish, sadistic dictator, shark tooth grins and crisp suits a slimy front for the brutality it masks. 

Tommy thinks that it'll all go back to the way it was. Wilbur knows that you don't just get rid of those scars so easily. 

They've seen it in Rose.