Predator (DWT x OC)

78

"He's finally gone completely off his rocker, I mean you working for Schlatt? How cooked does he have to be to actually think that?"

"Pretty far gone." She agrees. "He's slipping."

"I know." I press my lips together. "I know how bad it is."

"What's bad?" Tommy's voice breaks the monotonous grey, bright and with a glimmer of life that's been long bled out of me.

"Everything." I respond tiredly, forcing a smile on my face that hurts my jaw. I nudge him as he sits down next to me. "But we're going to fix it, aren't we?"

"Of course we fucking are." He grins back. "I came back to tell you I got a couple of wild pigs, they're back at the ravine."

"You didn't want help carrying them?" I ask.

He scoffs like I've offended him with the mere question. "I can carry a couple dead pigs, Rose, I'm not weak."

Niki rolls her eyes. "Of course you aren't, doesn't mean we still can't help you."

Tommy laughs. "Can we go back now? I want to show Tubbo what I got."

"Okay." I say, pulling myself to standing and holding my hand out to Niki. "We're going, don't worry."

Niki grabs onto my hand, hauling herself up and then looping her arm around mine, linking us at the elbow, while Tommy bounds ahead of us. When we reach the entrance, he's already disappeared down the staircase, and I can hear his footsteps thundering against the rock, something dragging behind him.

Niki goes down after him, and I rummage around in the chests, pulling off my dirty shirt and jumper and pulling on a clean grey singlet and a deep blue woollen jumper, a quarter zip with a light grey inlay that shows when I flip the collar over, burn holes on the right side of my stomach, barely larger than a fingernail.

I dump my dirty clothes into the bucket we use as a laundry basket, and then make my way down the stairs, where the smell of smoke and copper intertwine in the thick air.

Tubbo's sitting in a makeshift chair around the main fire, Niki and Tommy in the process of butchering the pig carcass with a dull cleaver and a considerable amount of determination. Wilbur isn't around, probably off staring at a blank spot on one of the walls, mumbling to himself about grand plans and misguided dreams, mind sick with paralysing delusion.

Delusion that will lose him this war.

Delusion that will kill him.

The water service that sits over the fire, an iron cylinder with a spout, resting on a grate, gives us all the hot water we need. Granted, plumbing is a lot more efficient, but you take what you can get in a cave. I tip the spout, filling in the cold river water to collect the steaming hot water that pours out into a tub, scrubbing my hands clean of the day's dirt.

Once my hands are clean, I sit down next to Tubbo, pulling out more bandages.

"How's it feeling?" I ask him gently, unwrapping the cotton padding I've placed around his eye. The sores are still weeping, red raw and swollen, and the eye has faded to a grey-milky white.

"I can't see out of it." He says quietly, while I try my best to clean it out without hurting him, applying another layer of antibiotic ointment.

"I know, I'm sorry Tubs, but you know your vision isn't coming back." Everytime we have to have this conversation I want to cry, and then I want to scream and kill Schlatt, or Dream or raise Quackity from the dead just to smack him because how could they let this happen to him?

"Yeah." He sighs heavily, with too much weight, a burden no one, especially not someone of his age should ever have to carry. "I know."

"It's all cleaned up now." I say brightly, wrapping the last of the bandage around the fresh padding. "How's the other eye going?"