They drag me away, stripping me of my axe and my knives almost immediately. Schlatt has a particular wolfish grin when they fish the one that was sewn into my waistband, raising his eyebrows when one of his soldiers hands it over to him. I keep my expression stony, meeting his eyes with a challenging stare.
All our intelligence reports had described him, but wow, it is a sight to behold in person. He's ghostly pale, the tell-tale yellow eyes of someone who's been overloading their liver, bloated in the stomach. I remember warning him about his drinking, ages ago, when I was put in the jail. I'd almost forgotten about it.
I'm marched back to the white house, looking a little weather worn, sandbags and barbed wire piled out the front as crude defences, manned by a wall of soldiers in those same black and red uniforms. The group enters through the main entry way, and I'm pulled down a few different hallways, before stopping at a door. One of the soldiers unlocks my handcuffs and I'm thrown into what looks like an old meeting room, the tables and chairs stacked on top of each other in the corner, the curtains torn off their railings.
I blink, once, twice, trying to send away the blurriness. The air is clean here, and it helps with my headache. I stand up straight, smoothing my palms down my thighs. I'm here.
"Well, well, well." The crooning voice feels like I've got rats running down my back, and I'm almost worried my lunch might make a second appearance all over this carpeted floor.
"Schlatt." I plaster on a saccharine smile, watching him walk through the door.
"I'll be honest Rosie." He says, pulling out two chairs from the tangled wooden pile, and gesturing for me to sit down. I do, and he hands me a glass of water, before sitting in the chair opposite me. "I knew this would work, but I never expected it to be so fast."
"I'm efficient." I shrug, taking a sip of water.
"So, your little kids do trump everything else." He leans his forearm against the back of his chair, twisting so he's facing me directly.
"Yep."
"And I'm assuming that you came here with a plan to take me out?"
I tilt my head, lifting the corner of my mouth. "Very good Schlatt, you've got me all figured out."
"And how is that going?"
I roll my eyes, setting down my glass. "It was never the priority."
"Oh really?"
"You took Tommy, and I came here to get him back. I've done what I've needed to do, as far as I'm concerned."
"So that's...it? You trade in for Tommy and suddenly you're out of the game? C'mon Rosie, give me a bit more fuckin' credit than that."
"I'm serious Schlatt, I don't have anything else to play. You know me well enough to know I'll do anything for them, even if it means screwing myself out of this fight. I'm here now, Tommy's safe, sure I'd love to kill you, but like you said, the odds aren't looking great."
"Fuckin' hell." He shakes his head. "Look at you, all mellowed out. What happened to the psycho that put a knife to my neck in that graveyard?"
I lean back in the chair, tilting my head back to look at the ceiling. A yellow water spot has bloomed over the white plaster, a brown ring spread out over one of the light fittings. The paint is peeling in spots.
"I'm tired Schlatt, I'm tired."
"So no plan? No do-gooder, underdog spirit? Nothing?"
"Nothing." I crane my neck so that I'm almost looking behind me, lost in the abyss of the rotting ceiling. "Not much left."
"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.
I press my lips together, refusing to rise. His eyes spark with something, and he leans forward like a teenager spreading scandalous gossip.
"Oh wow, you love him, don't you?"
"You jealous?" The deflection gives him all he needs to know, but I couldn't resist the dig. I also couldn't admit it to his face.
"So this is the man that finally got you under control?" He's got that broad smile on despite all the failure of his attempts at digging into me. "I never thought I'd see the day. He's got to give me the secret."
I fix him with a withering look. "He's not a sleazy piece of shit, so that's always a great start. God, you're pathetic."
"Well, how hurtful." The scorn is so thick I can practically feel it.
"What's your plan Schlatt? You didn't kill Tommy because you wanted me, and now you've got me, so what's the plan?"
"You'll find it out soon enough." He shrugs. "I don't want to spoil the surprise."
"I can't imagine it's particularly creative." I mutter under my breath, but if he hears me, he doesn't react.
He abruptly stands up, brushing off his suit. "I'll be down to have a chat again soon, but you know, I've got important business to attend to and all."
"Of course, don't let me distract you from losing a war, I'm sure it's very stressful."
I think I touched a nerve because he crosses the distance in a long stride, leaning down in my face. I don't move a single centimetre, not even blinking. "I am going to make you watch when I get my hands on those little brats and kill them in front of you. You're going to watch me annihilate everything you have left. And Punz? I'll pull him apart until you beg me to kill the both of you."
"You'll try." I hiss. "Maybe I'll just kill you instead, hey Schlatt? I'm sure you haven't forgotten what I did to Fundy. I didn't need knives for that."
He goes a little pale at this, eyes flickering to my unbound hands, before he turns on his heel and struts out of the room. I can hear the lock click after the door slams shut, and I sag against the chair, running my hands through my hair.
They give me not even a minute, when two soldiers burst into the room, armed to the teeth, hauling me up from the chair and cuffing my wrists behind my back and wrapping a blindfold around my head. One on each arm, they frog march me down winding hallways, stairs, and I don't fight them. In fact, I'm so tired I can barely keep on my feet, and they end up carrying me most of the way.
He probably drugged the water.
Oh, he drugged the water. That's why my legs feel like concrete cinder blocks and my mouth feels like it's been stuffed with cotton wool.
I can hear a door open before I'm unceremoniously tossed onto the floor. I collide with the concrete with a groan, but my limbs are so zapped with energy that I just stay there until I finally pass out.
I wake up with my cheek pressed into the concrete, neck stiff. Every joint in my body groans in protest as I haul myself up off the ground, sitting up against the wall. They took my handcuffs and the blindfold off at some point, but I'm still in the khaki medic uniform that I came in. I pull the hair back up off my face and re-tie my pony tail, trying to take in my surroundings.
It's very similar to the larger, open roomed jail I was first put in, the same clinical white, fluorescent lighting, steel bathroom, metal hospital bed, but it's much smaller, the walls closing in, one bed, the bathroom not even separated by a door, just an open doorway.
I just tip my head back to rest against the cold painted brick, resting my elbows on my knees. I don't know how angry I made Schlatt, and I don't know how vengeful he's going to be. Is he going to kill me? Use my suffering as a tool to break the others? Is he going to push, like he pushed that night in the cell that Punz knocked him out, like he pushed in the graveyard?
I don't even know how much I can take, anymore, I'm not who I was, I'm not on a suicide mission with my insides carved out like the girl who sat in this jail cell almost a year ago. I don't want to be her again, I don't want to be ripped from the inside out until I can't breathe, until I can't feel, I don't want everything I've just got back.
Maybe I'll just falter, collapse, maybe I can't do it anymore; maybe I won't go back, maybe I'll just crumble. I don't know what I would prefer.
It's always a prison. Dream's room, Fundy's hidden house, L'manburg's walls, Schlatt's jail, the war camp, Dream's house and Dream's house again. There is no freedom, there is only a different prison, different guards, the same story. It has only ever been the same fucking story and I have always been a prisoner.
The panic that tries to fight it's way to the surface is dulled by exhaustion, by the fact that I have been here so many times before, after Dream, after Fundy. I wish I would scream and kick and bite and scratch but I sit here, against this painted brick wall.
At some point they slide a tray through a slat in the door and I choke down what seems to be a cupful of grain sludge and unripe apple slices. I don't have an appetite and it makes me want to vomit, but there's no sense in starving myself.
I sleep. I wake up. I stare at the wall. I shower. The lights flick off at some point and then flick back on with a whine after some hours. The cycle probably repeats at least four times. Trays come in twice a day, but no one speaks.
The dark green prison tracksuit appears one day, and I change, shedding off my uniform for Schlatt's.
The voices in my head become a routine too. My family, Punz, Dream, Sapnap, Eret, even George makes an appearance from the depth of my subconscious.
The worst is seeing Quackity and Jack again. Fundy's blood sometimes coats the walls and my fingers, but it washes off in the sink, the shower. My fingertips prune under the water.
Wilbur sits in the corner, he laughs. Sometimes it's like he did before he died, harsh, angry, but sometimes it's the hearty way I remember when I was younger. I close my eyes against him.
The cell is dark now, the lights turned off on their timer, I'm lying in between starched sheets, eyes squeezed shut. It's getting harder to sleep, there's more intruders in my head, climbing out at night, not just during the day anymore, and I'm going stir-crazy, trapped in the tiny room, pacing, around and around.
The door swings open on it's oiled hinges, the light from the hallway pouring into my room, hurting my eyes. I use my hand to shield my face, watching a man in a white uniform follow soldiers in.
"Rosemary? Rosemary are you awake?"
"I am now." I snap, hackles instantly raised and on the defensive.
"I'm one of the doctors here in Manburg. President Schlatt's requested that you be assessed before you're transferred."
"Transferred where?"
"You will be sedated if you do not cooperate." The doctor sounds like he's reciting a script, in his monotone voice.
"What are you assessing me for?" I stand up, wearily eyeing the knives strapped to the soldiers stood either side of the doctor, who I can see clearer now. About mid-fifties, thin grey hair swept over his balding head and what seems to be a permanent look of sheer exhaustion pulling his face down, sunken sockets and deep bags under his eyes beneath his thick rimmed glasses, the corners of his mouth drooping into a frown.
"Vitals, any injuries, basic psych assessment, reproductive health, all the standard tests." The doctor reels them off on his fingers. I pause for a moment, staring at him.
"Reproductive health?" My incredulous voice echoes off the walls, and the doctor winces.
"Uh yes, it's just standard procedure for female patients-"
"It's not happening."
"The President ordered-"
"The President can take his orders-" I take a step forward, and the guards' hands' instantly fly to the hilt of their swords; "and shove it up his fucking ass. It's not happening."
"You will be sedated-"
"I don't think you're getting it." I snap, cutting him off again. "You can sedate me all you want, I will fucking find you and rip off every finger you tried to violate me with, I swear to god, so unless you want to practice medicine with two stumps for hands, It's not happening."
"I just need to ask you some questions about your cycle and um- identify any conditions. There's a blood test and that's it, I swear."
I narrow my eyes. "Why does Schlatt want this?"
"The President didn't order it specifically, b-but he was very clear that he wanted the full assessment done."
I drop my shoulders a little bit, letting the tension out of my muscles. "I don't want to be sedated for any of it, I don't care how much it hurts. If anything happens to me outside of what you've just told me? I'm going to take the fingers I rip off and then I'm going to shove them up your ass, okay?"
The doctor, gulps, nodding. I turn around, holding my wrists together behind my back, letting the guards cuff me again. They roughly pull a blindfold back over my eyes and I'm marched back through an unintelligible maze of hallways and rooms, before they all but dump me into something cold and metal.
The sanitising, clinical bright white light burns my retinas when the blindfold is ripped off my head, and my fists subconsciously clench and unclench by my side. There's leather straps bolted onto the armrests and sides of the wide steel chair I'm lying on, but they're undone. They're slightly frayed, like someone was pulling and fighting against them, and there's scratches in the surface of the shiny surface of the metal.
My legs are tucked up near my chest, feet on resting on the seat, my back pressed uncomfortably flat against the back rest. The two soldiers stand either side of the door, and the nervous doctor is running through the bench that lines the side of the tiled room, white and sterile.
My eyes catch the slightly rusted drain in the centre of the room, but I flick them away, like I can pretend I didn't notice it.
The assessment wasn't the worst I've been through. Some poking, prodding, sticking needles in my veins for various blood samples, and a doctor that looked like he almost passed out any time he had to go near me, asking me the questions on questions on questions that I answered with progressively clenched teeth, from a safe distance in the corner of the room.
I lie there, staring at the ceiling. There's a long lull of silence as the doctor fiddles with something behind me. I look on to the soldiers, blank faced, shoulders up, hands at their sides. The one of the right's uniform is too big for him, loose at the shoulders, the back too broad, bunched up at his legs like the trousers were too long for him. The helmet tilts down a little over his forehead, slipping almost over his eyebrows.
I think of the red-headed kid, acne scars and crooked elbows that stuck out when he saluted, back at mine and Dream's house. I think of Tommy and Tubbo. I try not to cry.
My feet freeze despite my black socks, and so do my fingers, tucked into the sleeves of my green jumper.
The doctor turns around, standing to the side so I can see him. "The final part of the assessment is just cataloging existing injuries and identifying marks."
He looks noticeably a little pale, shuffling back half a step when I tense up a bit. "N-normal protocol is to have you remove your clothing but we have a previous record, s-so we just need to double check the recorded information. You can volunteer any new ones."
I narrow my eyes, but don't move. The doctor's breathing is panicked, I can see his chest from here. "C-can I see your arms? Please."
I push my sleeves up to my elbows, holding my forearms out. The doctor leans in, visibly wincing at the thick lines of scar tissue raised on the thin surface of the inside of my arms, down to m pinky fingers. He scribbles something on his clipboard and I pull my jumper back down. He looks over my cheek, the side of my face.
"Anything new?"
"No." I roll my head away from him and his gaze, the pale, almost lifeless eyes.
"Well uh- everything looks good. I noticed that-"
I never do find out what the doctor noticed, because the double surgical doors fling open with a dramatic flourish, cutting him off, revealing Schlatt, who's smiling widely as the doors swing on their hinges behind him.
"What's the diagnosis doc?"
"L-looks good, Mr President, Sir. Everything looks fine."
"Wonderful, I wouldn't want our prisoners in poor health, would I? What kind of leader would that make me?"
I fix him a painfully fake smile. "An infinitely better one than you are right now."
"That was rude Rosie, didn't all that alone time teach you some manners?"
I press my lips together and ignore him. He turns his attention back to the doctor, covering his mouth with his hand and fake-whispering. "So what was the psychological diagnosis for all of this?"
I roll my eyes dramatically.
The doctor clutches his clipboard, beady eyes darting from me to Schlatt.
"Well- um- I did the basic assessment like requested, not enough for a formal diagnosis, as you know mental conditions aren't really my specialty- but it did uncover clear-"
"I think we can just settle with crazy." Schlatt interrupts loudly. "I think that covers all our bases, right doc?"
The doctor just nods, clutching his clipboard like it's a lifeline, like it's a shield that could protect him.
Schlatt lets out a big, theatrical sigh. "It's not a surprise to us, is it Rosie? But it's still hard too hear, I know. At least we can-"
I think, that maybe, being stuck in that room did break me, because hearing him talk this much snaps something inside of me. "Oh my god, do you ever shut up?"
His jaw snaps closed, and he looks like I've just punched him in the face. I look at him.
"I would rather be trapped in that cell with the voices in my head, then listen to the shit that comes out of your oversized mouth for another second. It is the worst torture I have ever been put through, and I was imprisoned by Fundy and Dream."
The silence after my words makes the room feel like a vacuum, like all the oxygen has been sucked out, crushing in on all of us. I can hear ringing in my ears, the blood pumping in my temples. The little vein in my forehead flutters, leaping a little under the skin.
I don't miss the slight hint of a smirk underneath Schlatt's beard, the twinkle in his vast, black eyes. His eyebrows raise.
"The worst torture? Oh sweetheart, we can do so much better than this."
----------------
A/N Yo he's evil, who could have thought that?
So close to the end, I'm going to sit down soon and plan it out, so I can see how many more chapters I need, rather than just starting a new one and just going for it on vibes alone. I never have any plans I just get possessed at some point of the night and go crazy. Apparently it's worked?
Anyway, I do hope you guys have enjoyed,
Oopsies x