Predator (DWT x OC)

73

I was human once. 

They break when you push them too far. They all do. 

I suppose that's what happened to Fundy in a way, granted he was born with the fault lines already etched into his head of course, but shoved too hard, by loneliness and desperation for his fathers approval and the whole awful mess of this world, and it shattered, taking his humanity along with it. 

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Will I end up like him? Driven mad by rage and misdirected grief that I could not feel, that I would not feel, ripping apart the enemies I fabricate in my ruined mind, hurting the people I love? 

Quackity wouldn't have wanted this. 

Quackity, who's barely recognisable body is still lying on a scorched podium in a haze of thick acrid smoke and the stomach churning scent of singed hair and skin, who was ripped from a life that was supposed to be so much better, the man that gave me a home, and love, and light that blinded me then, but is so bright now, like it's waving in my face, tapping me on the forehead.

I'm right here, it says. There's still a chance! I'm still here!

I suppose his final, beautiful, fragile, hopeless gift was a tiny spark of hope, golden white-gold warm glow that shines through the grey smog and the hollow nothing, and the flurry of awful memories looped in my brain.

And my final gift to him is that I keep it. 

I don't embrace it, I don't try and cup my hands around it, fan it into a flame that burns everything up in my head, clears that fucking fog and all the cobwebs of a past that I don't want to think about, of a person that I do not see in that mirror anymore. But I don't throw it away, don't let it fizzle out in a frenzied glint, don't watch the faint wisp of the ash it leaves dissolve into the wind. 

Maybe he will be able to forgive me, one day. Maybe he'll be able to look down, see the girl he remembers. 

I don't hold much hope, but I know he does.

Did. 

Does. 

Did. 

Who fucking cares. 

"Hey, Rosie?" 

Sapnap's voice is soft, pitch lowered like he was speaking to a wounded animal, dulcet soothing tones lathered in pity, aimed at a condemned life. 

"Yeah?" I answer, I think. The voice is gravelly and distant. It doesn't sound like me, the word doesn't feel like it fits in my mouth.  

"We're here." He squeezes my hand. "You ready?"

No.

"Sure."

They aren't going to recognise me, they cannot love me anymore, not this, this thing I have become, a shell, a hopeless, empty shell. The Rosemary they are expecting died along with Quackity. 

She probably died long before that, but I supposed I still had hope of unattainable fanciful dreams. 

I am not ready to see them, I am not ready to watch them cry over the life that bleeds from me. 

I'm covered blood, limping, scratched. It's not even my blood, it's the guard I killed. 

I had forgotten about him.

Maybe I am truly beyond redemption. Maybe Quackity was wrong. 

Loose dirt rumbles, chunks of dried mud and little pebbles skitter down a carved out hill, pushed open to reveal the startling clear figures of my family.