Predator (DWT x OC)

72 (Part Two)

My jaw aches, and so does my chest, and my back, and my hip throbs excruciatingly. I wince, as I try and pull myself up off the ground, and it's like brightly coloured fire is raining down on me, the bright blue sky set ablaze with magenta sparks and lime green flames and canary yellow, muffled booms, that sound so, so far away, the ringing piercing right through the side of my head. 

I wobble dangerously, blinking, and the blurry, twisted shapes in my vision start to right themselves, and the podium reconstructs itself before my very eyes, swimming into view with startling clarity. 

People are screaming, so many people are screaming, and the bangs have stopped, and the flashes of violent light too, and the dust is settling on us like a blanket, too still and too calm for a place that just completely imploded, wiping my feet out from under me, twisting everything on it's fucking head.

The podium. I see the podium, and my legs, the ones that feel like useless jelly, the ones that can barely support my weight, inch forward, towards the podium, the black streaks the mar the wood, the bodies strewn, twitching and writhing and groaning, and some just deathly still, out on the ground. 

I clutch onto the pillar for support, blinking, trying to shake the blurriness, the way everything still feels like I've been dunked underwater and I haven't surfaced for air since they brought Tubbo up on that stage. I can smell burnt flesh, thick suffocating smoke in the air, acidic tinges that scratch up my throat.

I don't know who anyone is, I can't see anyone, and I stumble, falling down on my hands and knees, the force painfully thudding through my shaky joints, my aching body, and I don't know if I could even stand up again, crawling, inching my way forward across the burnt oak platform, until I reach a boy in a suit. 

I blink again, clutching onto the boy, trying not to throw up all over him. 

He's breathing. He's alive. 

He's Tubbo. 

Tubbo's alive. 

"Tubbo!" My voice is scratchy, almost imperceptible, but his eyes are on me, and the grimace on his face gently stretches into a ghost of a smile. I laugh forward, the sudden movement sending a wave of horrible, sickening dizziness crashing down on me, and I fall onto him, squeezing him so tightly, as tight as I can. 

I push myself up, grabbing his face, his bloodied, burnt, white face, with open eyes filled with undeniable life, features scrunched into an expression I can only describe as human, and kiss his forehead, cradling him in my arms. 

"Quackity." He croaks out, tapping my elbow faintly. I let go, looking down. 

"What?" I think I'm yelling, I can't tell.

"Qu-ack- Quackity." He says again with a shuddering breath, and I can see him now, the ribbons of skin ripped from his face and his arms, the singed tie and black-brown scorch marks on his shirt and body, the bright red blood that's soaks through the thin white dress shirt, the pulsing, split wound that opens right on his face and his neck, papery white skin flaking off around shiny, blistering burns. 

The right side of his body is swollen, so puffy it pushes up his eye, with the glossy sheen that makes the skin look fake, like a plastic doll that's been destroyed, not a human being who was just almost blown up, and it disfigures him into someone unrecognisable. 

I can still smell burnt flesh. 

I want to vomit. 

"What the fuck? What- Quackity?" I say, I don't know if he can hear me over this ringing, while my groggy brain spins trying to understand what the fuck is going on.