Predator (DWT x OC)

51

TW// Attempted sexual assault (act does not happen and is not described, only the lead up)

"Hi Rose."

I look up from the blanket I was shredding, pulling stiff cotton threads apart, soft frays at the otherwise perfect edges. The guards were swapping over for the night shift, all regular, all routine, the same as its been for the one and a bit weeks I've been in here.

Except for the fact that George is here.

That's new.

I just look at him, waiting an explanation, waiting for something, as he stands there, goggles masking his eyes, but fidgety and nervous. The guard makes no move to stop him, but I assume that's the perks of being apart of the administration.

In fact, George looks at him, and he leaves through the open door, shutting it behind him.

"I thought I wasn't allowed visitors." I say blandly, leaning against the far wall.

George shrugs. "They made an exception."

We stare at each other for what seems like hours, tense silence and the horrid vacuum of a million minutes of unsaid words that we both needed to hear. He doesn't make a move to inform me of why he's where he is.

"What do you want?" I ask, still looking at him over the top of my forearms, which rest on my elbows, scars on full display. Normally people flinch when they see them, but George pretends not to notice.

He shrugs again. "I thought we should talk."

We've never been good at talking, not me and George. We used to just stick by each other, a comforting presence, no judgement or pressure, just the steady reassurance of heartbeats in chests and air in lungs.

Then he left. Not much more to say.

"About what George? How you chose to betray your supposed friend to join up with the man that tortured her for power? How you helped keep me locked up in the war? There's a lot to talk about George." I say, but there's no malice there, I'm just reciting the facts, committed to memory through the past year.

"Yeah I guess."

I sigh, tilting my head side to side, rolling out the stiffness that seems to form in every crevice of my body in this fucking prison. "We could talk about it, you could give me some kind of self-pitying apology and I could say I forgive you in a brilliant display of my eternal humanity, and we could all be a happy family again. The thing is George, I don't really care anymore."

He doesn't try to interrupt me.

"You made your choice. I learned to live with it. Bit late now, don't you think? Pretty unfair to make me deal with it all, then come running in once all the difficult shit is out of the way and weasel back in."

"If that's how you feel-"

"I'm curious George though, what exactly did you come here to say?"

He presses his lips together, pressing his palms into the sides of his legs. "I don't know." He admits quietly.

"I have nothing to say to you." I say honestly. "But I guess I would like to know why you did it."

"Quackity convinced me, he said we could have power, and still do the right thing. I just wanted to do something different, something on my own." He tells me. "When Schlatt and Fundy joined...I don't have an excuse for that, I just didn't say no. I was too far in."

He seems to be agitated by my lack of reaction, the way my face stays held closed off, lips pressed into a flat line. "That's my reason."

"That was as entirely selfish as I thought it would be." I remark tiredly. "I used to hope there'd be some grand insane reason that would justify it all, that it would all make sense and we could just pretend it never happened." I shrug. "World doesn't work that way, does it?"