Predator (DWT x OC)

91

"It's okay. He's-he's okay. We get along, I'm not a prisoner, it's different now." It's also a lie. 

I sniffle, setting a smile on my face that's so unconvincing I can feel the disbelieving looks from the slabs on stone set in front of me. "I'm alright, it's not as bad as it sounds."

The irony of the whole situation is the fact that all three of us know I'm not saying this for their benefit. 

"I'll be okay." My voice cracks so hard that I barely get out those words, choked by a sob that echoes over the riverbank. "We're all going to be okay."

Their silence stretches out over the grass, immovable, empty. As empty as the graves beneath them, most likely. We never found Jack, and Schlatt probably didn't care for giving up Quackity's body to let people mourn. 

So we all sit, silent, not really there, markers in the place of people we were. 

I'm as dead as my friends, and they're probably better off. There's types of death that don't smell, that no one can see. The kind that doesn't end in funerals and gravestones. The kind that hurts just the same. 

The kind that leaves you walking around, living a life you swore you never world. 

I feel someone standing behind me before he even gets a chance to talk, the hairs on the back of my neck raising, skin prickling so uncomfortably it snaps me out of my thoughts. 

"Well, well, well."

I whip around at the sound of Schlatt's voice, shooting back onto my feet. 

"Schlatt."

"Rosemary. What a surprise." He grins widely, the bags under his eyes have sunken in even more since a last saw him, emboldening the yellowing that lets me know he hasn't taken my previous advice to stop drinking. 

"Get out." 

"Or what?" 

I step right up to him, right into his face, remember the smell of alcohol on his breath when he lent in close, the way his fingers felt digging into my cheek, the way my own body felt so soiled I wanted to strip off my own skin. 

I remember killing Fundy. 

I remember the nightmares stopping. 

I remember the freedom of knowing the monsters in your life have been banished, that they can never hurt you again. 

I arch an eyebrow in response, because he knows. He knows well enough that I don't have to tell him, that neither of us have to say it out loud. 

"You're not going to kill me." The grin broadens. My index finger twitches next to the knife I have shoved into the lip of my leather boot. "I know all about your little arrangement with your boyfriend."

He takes my silence as a victory. "In fact, I'm surprised he's even letting you out. We all know what happens when you get too much freedom."

I try to imagine what it'd be like to slit that smile permanently onto his face. 

"We have a mutual interest. I made a decision." I respond stiffly. Most of its for show, to pretend like I've finally been conquered, like they've all finally won. Only a bit of it is true. 

"Ah yes, Tommy and Wilbur." He chuckles, and it sounds like sandpaper rubbing against stone. "You'd do anything for them, wouldn't you?"

"I have a fucking backbone, unlike you." I sneer. "You wouldn't piss on your allies if they were on fire."

"Oh you didn't like that, did you?"

"Do you want something? Or can you fuck off, so I can say goodbye to my friends in peace."