I turn back to Sam. "Anything on Schlatt?"
"Nothing new, he hasn't been sighted for a day now. We just assume he's bunkered down out of the action."
"You should put more pressure on him."Niki suddenly says, before immediately shovelling a spoonful of vegetables in her mouth. We both turn back to her, Sam weary, and me nodding enthusiastically.
"That's what I said."
Sam scowls. "You know it's not happening."
Niki doesn't even look up from her plate, but shrugs anyway. "He'll snap eventually, may as well be to our benefit."
I raise my eyebrows pointedly to Sam. "Exactly what I said."
"The resistance are terrified of him, they'll never agree to it, and so no-one else will either." Sam sighs. I've heard these words recited again and again.
"These people are so- they're just so useless." Niki hisses at her food.
There's tension in the armies, between the resistance and Dream's troops, and the incoming Badlands soldiers, the difference between duty and moral conviction and revenge, a clash of different people with starkly different attitudes to this fight. I can hear the chatter at the bedsides in the medical wing, the contempt in the voices of the resistance, the mockery in those of Dream's army.
There's a reason we call them The Resistance, still, even though we're technically the same. Different stories, different allegiances. The resistance falter for the same reasons they've been able to make it this far, this ideological conviction that weaves through them, as much apart of them as anything else.
It keeps them together, but it makes them stubborn, blind to other options, blind to the nasty, cruel arenas where a war is truly won.
"Sam." Eerily, one of the resistance men materialise at the end of the table, clutching a dirty bit of paper in his hands. He wordlessly passes the note over to Sam, who furrows his brows as he reads it.
"Sam?" I nudge his leg with my foot underneath the table, trying to get his attention, but his eyes are glued to the paper, not even acknowledging me. "Sam, what is it?"
"Uh it's Wilbur." Sam eventually says, sounding thoroughly confused. Even Niki looks up.
"Wilbur?"
"Yeah- yeah it says some scouts saw him in L'manburg."
Both Niki and I freeze instantly, and I know, I know she's had that same stab in the gut feeling that I have.
"Where? Where in L'manburg."
Sam's forehead creases again as he squints at the paper. The man from the resistance is still standing there, looking down at all of us. I can't read his expression. "Doesn't say, but this scouting party was somewhere up North, last I can remember."
Niki and I meet eyes again, the shock mirrored on both of our faces. I've known Wil for long time, and Niki probably knows him better, even through everything, even through his descent into madness.
Wilbur isn't stupid or insane enough to just be wandering around behind the enemy frontlines, despite what people may thing. He hasn't lost his mind so completely he has no bearings of his sense of self. In fact, he never really lost his mind. What he lost, was anything that he cared about, anything that tethered that instability to something to stand for, he lost his values, his beliefs, and with that, everything else around him.
He still has his mind, now I can see that.
"What?" Sam glances between us, more concerned than confused. "What do you two know?"
YOU ARE READING
Predator (DWT x OC)
Fanfiction"Where do you think you're going princess?" he taunts, mouth pulled back in a smirk. I don't move, every part of my body is frozen, every muscle coiled to snap. He closes in, forcing my back against the rough part of a tree, masked face leaning in i...
