Predator (DWT x OC)

105

They come for me in what I think is the middle of the night, pull me out of my bed, still half asleep, tear the stitches in my neck enough for blood to start soaking through the bandage. I'm reduced to some sort of feral animal, clawing at their hands, screaming and twisting in the air as they drag me down a hallway. 

The world around me floods in too quickly for my eyes to adjust, a flurry of concrete hallways and bright lights, the black sleeves of the Manburg uniforms that cuff the wrists of the hands clenched around my wrists and legs. 

The rest of my senses have finally caught up to me when I look up to see Schlatt standing at the end of the hallway, which is blocked off my some kind of chain link gate. I wish I'd started fighting again, but I just sag in the soldiers' hold. 

He's in his suit, but he's missed a few days of shaving, the scruff starting to grow in on his neck, high up on his cheeks. His black eyes have sunken, wrinkles pulling his eyebrows down into a permanent scowl. He still smiles when he sees me, still pulled tall by his bravado. 

They drop me on the floor, and I'm too stubborn and too angry to to anything other than pull myself to my feet, even if it's just to rob Schlatt of any of his satisfaction, even if I'd rather melt into the floor and stay there. 

"Good morning." The chipperness is more forced than his usual display of drama, like it takes energy he doesn't have. 

"You look like shit." The same exhaustion hangs in my own voice. It's the same dance, the same game, habit more than anything. We don't know what to do with each other otherwise. 

He doesn't even flash me a smile, but the corners of his mouth twitch a little. It feels more like the old routine, a little nod to what we were, not deserving of fully stretched lips, exposed teeth. He runs his hand through his hair. 

"So I've been told."

"They're coming for me, aren't they?" I see the defeat in the creases of his suit, in the bags under his eyes. The hopelessness that's begun to settle, rob him of his arrogance. 

Not even Schlatt could hold onto that in the face of what he's about to lose. 

He scoffs a little, looking around the corridor, hands stuffed into his pockets. His shoulders hunch a little, curling forward under the weight of knowing what's to come. "You fuckin' assholes- your little family, all your little dreams- you'll run this place into the ground."

I arch an eyebrow. "I didn't think you cared that much about L'manburg."

"I could've made it great, you know that? I could have taken this shithole and made it something, other than some hole in the wall, back-water village."

I shake my head. "It was never supposed to be something big, Schlatt, Wilbur-"

"Wilbur was a sad, hopeless idealist, and he clung onto his stupid fucking morals . He had no vision, no ambition, he had no fucking idea."

"You might have made it something, but you'd just be running the people into the ground instead." 

He scoffs. "So what? Sacrifice has to be made for greatness Rosie, c'mon, you know that. You think you'd be a fighter if Dream had never taken you? You think you'd have been able to do anything if you didn't go through that shit? A few people for the prosperity of others, for a future, I think that's more than fair."

"I didn't sacrifice anything, it was taken from me." My lip curls into a sneer, and I can't help it. There's no anger to accompany it, just a flash of residual irritation. 

He waves my words away with a casual hand. "If any of you people had any fucking brains you'd have done the same thing."

"I don't trade human lives."