Predator (DWT x OC)

45

Waking up the next days doesn't get any easier.

It still hurts, a lot, like bone deep, underneath your skin, fire in your veins hurt, the kind that doubles you over in unexpected waves, and paralyses you to the fucking ground.

The realisation sinks a little deeper, but I don't know if that's just me getting a little more numb, letting the words that blister like acid in my brain seep in past all that blind pain and rage, and strike me where I can feel it.

I think what's so terrifying about sleep is the fact you'll have to wake up. That every single day you'll have too learn that the people you love are dead again, that you'll have to embrace the human-sized hole of fucking emptiness that nothing, no conversations or burning alcohol or pretending can fill.

At the end of the day, Jack's gone and we're still left behind.

It's a little easier for me. I've lost people before, even though I'm not very well equipped to handle it, my Mum, my Dad, my brother, all gone in one way or the other. I lost myself too, a long time ago, buried beneath stone walls and iron bars and suffocating loneliness.

Niki and I don't talk about family, but then again no one does. I don't know if she's lost people before, but even then her heart was still pretty much whole, and well, it hurts a lot fucking more to break it the first time.

I leave her in bed, pulling my hair up and out of my face, trying to pull myself together despite the thudding headache that's drilling into the side of my skull, and they way my throat feels like sandpaper.

In fact, I feel like someone just ran me over with a minecart and left me to peel myself up off the ground. I guess that's what happens when you drown yourself in liquor and dulled grief and self pity.

I freeze at the sight of Sapnap, who's picking up shattered remains of glass bottles in the morning light of the kitchen. He looks up, dropping the bag he was holding to rush towards me with his arms open wide.

I collapse into him, gripping onto the back of his shirt like that's going to somewhere keep me together, like if he wraps his arms around tightly enough he'll somehow stop everything from falling apart again.

I know I'm soaking the shoulder of his shirt, but I can't stop crying, and he just holds the back of my head and keeps the other one glued around my shoulders and I know he knows, because of course he does.

"I know Rosie, I know, just let it out." He soothes softly, when I try to gasp out some sort of explanation as too why I'm breaking down in his arms. He doesn't try and make me calm down, he just holds me tighter and tighter until my chest doesn't feel like it's being stomped on, and that no one is digging a particularly nasty dagger directly into my heart.

Doesn't mean it stops hurting, but at least I can breathe.

We sit down on the couch, and I curl up on one side, tucking my knees up to my chin. Sapnap sighs.

"We couldn't find Jack's body." He settles on, even though I know he has a million other things to say.

I don't exactly know why he tells me this.

I look at him blankly, because what am I even supposed to say? That he could be alive? That we should find it? I'm lost in my own mind, drowning in grief and heartbreak stronger than almost anything I've ever felt.

"Dream and Eret tried to find it- him, they uh- they found where it happened, but no body." Sapnap says awkwardly, trying to fill in the blank silence.

I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to shield myself from the horrible, horrible scenes of mangled limbs and blood splattered leaves, especially the way blood looks a ruby red against the green.