Predator (DWT x OC)

101

"Rick and Cheryl." Ebony nudges me, whispering in my ear. I let out a snort of laughter, which earns me another pointed glare from Sam. 

"-have made themselves known." Danny continues over us. "They wished Wilbur would take over as leader of L'manburg. It also poses another problem, what are we going to do if we take L'manburg back?"

"We can hold an election, but we'll have an emergency council in place until then, some people from the resistance and the original L'manburg leadership." I say. "It's not important right now, we need to hold this shit together until the war is over."

"Schlatt's issued more demands." Sam sighs, rubbing a spot over his eyebrow with the side of his thumb, and in that split-second, he looks so much like our Dad. I blink, and then it's Sam again, standing in a war room with the leader of an almost futile resistance. 

Punz rolls his eyes. "What does he want this time?"

Sam pulls a piece of paper from his pocket and unfolds it so painfully you'd think it physically exhausts him to have to do this. "Our unconditional surrender, rescission of taken land, apologies, leaders and commanding officers handed over for justice yada, yada, yada, Rosemary immediately turned over as an escaped convict, blah, blah, blah."

"Seriously? Me?" I groan. "I thought when he left me off the list last time that he'd finally gotten over this."

"Apparently not, considering you were on top of his list of demands. He had it specially slotted in."

"He wants an immediate release to him as proof of good faith." Danny takes the paper out of Sam's hands, brow creasing. "Considering you are still a convicted fugitive under the current system."

"We reject the legitimacy of his system and consider me a political refugee." I wave my hand exasperatedly. "I mean seriously, the heads of this operation are my brother, my boyfriend and a man so in love with me he started this entire war, does he really think this is the hill to die on?"

I don't mention that my unwavering faith in Dream may have faltered a little, but Schlatt doesn't know that. 

"Great, we've re-established that Schlatt is stupid, this has been such a valuable use of our time." Ebony sneers from her seat next to me. "We've stalled on our attack, we're now putting pressure on a man so unstable we don't know what's going to happen when he explodes, and now we're about to break out in infighting. We need to do something."

"We need time, to solve the Wilbur problem." Danny tries to add. 

"We don't have time, we're fighting a war." Sam snaps at him. 

"Ceasefire then!"

"Oh, because Schlatt can be trusted with a fucking ceasefire can he?"

"He needs it too, he can't afford to keep fighting a stalemate."

"He's insane, he just had a bunch of his generals killed because he's so paranoid!"

"Wait-" The news dawns on me, but they ignore my slow realisation. 

"We can't-"

"Wait!" I raise my voice over the top of whoever was trying to get their point out. "Schlatt lost most of his high ranked military?"

"Yes." Sam looks at me incredulously. 

"You know how we scrapped the whole 'kill Schlatt instantly' plan at the beginning, because he was only the catalyst, and not the whole operation, right?" I look around the room, the degree of confusion on some of the faces. Some are nodding, some staring blankly at me. "Well he's just kind of collapsed the support system for his whole regime, hasn't he?"