Predator (DWT x OC)

103

"Wow."

"I get angry, there's moments, but I've got more than this now, more than L'manburg, more than you, more than the war. I don't care enough about you to want get that back, I just don't."

I can tell it angers him, the little flash in his eyes, the clench of his jaw. This is it, his big title fight, the confrontation, the time he can gloat and dance on my grave and the one person he's been thinking of this entire fucking war doesn't give a shit enough to even look at him.

 I finally sit back up straight, tracing my fingernail along the wooden grain of the armrest of my chair. "This isn't going to end well for you."

"No?" He laughs. "What the fuck makes you think that?"

I open my hands out, like he's given me no choice. "You know I'm going to make your life a living hell."

"How about I just execute you?"

"You do that, and I promise you, they will blow this shithole to the fucking sky, and you with it. Now I'm here? You better make sure you take real good care of me, because someone might just snap." I lean in as I say it, watch the anger and the fear take over.

"A pleasure, as always, Rosemary." He sneers, straightening his tie so he doesn't have to look at me. "I'm within my right to execute a Manburg traitor."

I don't even dignify the statement with a pretend look of fear, I just stare at him. "Do it."

He knows it's stupid, because his lips thin.

"Kill me, and you know what's going to happen. They're going to lose all sense of rationality and sensibility and they're going to mow you and your little army down. They only reason they haven't is because they want to preserve L'manburg and life as much as possible."

"They? The whole army is stupidly in love with you now? How'd you manage that?"

I smile. "Just the people in charge, I'm not that good."

"Oh yes, Punz." Schlatt leans back in his chair, eyes flashing like he's a cat that's just caught a particular fat mouse. "I've heard all about that from Wilbur. How is Will by the way?"

"Dead."

Schlatt's eyes almost bulge out of their sockets when I drop that bit of information, his grand, gloating reveal fizzling out instantly.

"He pretty much lied to you the entire time and we figured him out anyway." I let out a big sigh, waving my hand in the air dramatically. "Dream didn't take the news that well."

"I suppose there's other news he'd rather not hear." Schlatt's poker face has recovered and he circles again, a shark smelling some more blood in the water. It's a shame I have to spoil his fun for a second time.

"Oh Punz? Yeah Wilbur beat you to it I'm afraid, dropped the bomb right before Dream crrrk." I mime someone snapping a neck with my hands. "It was a bit touch and go for a while, but we've all made it out the other side, well, except Wil."

"I find that difficult to believe." He scoffs. "We all know what he's like."

"Honestly it surprised me too." I shrug. "I guess he really did love me."

"You two are adorable." Schlatt sneers. "So Punz is the next idiot to fall for you?"

The venom in his words forces a wry smile out of me. "Something like that."

"He's a bit low on the hierarchy for you, don't you usually go for someone with a bit more power?"

You fucking wish. I want to hit him so fucking badly but I can't jeopardise this, end up stuffed in a cell for him to gloat over. I think about the graveyard, about what he almost did to me drunk in that jail if Punz hadn't knocked him out. I sit in the anger.