Predator (DWT x OC)

70

TW// Some minor trauma flashbacks and descriptions of minor panic attacks

Quackity winces, as I pull off hastily applied dressings from old wounds, loose gauze and misshapen bandages. 

"It's infected." I groan. "How did you let it get this bad?"

"Doctors ask too many questions and I don't know shit about medicine."

I rummage around the sparse medical kit Tubbo brought with him, finding a sealed sterile saline pouch, and soaking a clean cloth in it. 

"Ow fuck!" Quackity hisses through gritted teeth, while I gently work away the dead skin, congealed blood, and the oozing pus. 

"It wouldn't hurt if you kept it clean in the first place." I point out, throwing all the dirty dressings in the bin and scrubbing my hands clean with hot water and soap. He looks over at me while I rip open the new dressings in crinkled plastic wrapping. 

"Yeah yeah whatever." He nods to a spot behind me. "How's Tubbo going?"

I glance back, even though I know Tubbo's in my room, already patched back up, curled asleep in my bed. I've already resigned myself to the fact that I'll be sleeping on the couch. He had nasty cuts under his dress top, thankfully not infected or as bad as Quackity's, and I bandaged up his ribs, but it's more of a precaution. 

"He had damage to his ribs, some cuts, and I can see all the old bruising." I say, pursing my lips together. "He's sleeping now."

"He missed you." Quackity tells me quietly. "He thought you hated him, and he hated himself for it."

I silently smooth the gauze over his now clean and anointed wounds, wrapping crepe bandages securely around his torso to keep them covered and safe. 

"I know." Is all I say. 

"I try and protect him, but Schlatt- I can't stop him all the time." He admits, lowering his arm and leaning down to pick up a shirt from the ground. 

"Quackity." I say abruptly, hands pausing over my clean up efforts. "I don't care about how bad Schlatt is, I don't care about how much you don't like him. I already know. Unless you're about to try and fix the problem, I don't need to keep hearing about it."

"But Tubbo-"

"Tubbo's different, and you know it." I say, sharper than normal. "He's not the one that has to pick a side, he's not the one that has to make that decision. That's you."

Quackity pauses, protests dying on his lips, eyes fixating on a time long ago, thoughts in his brain, things that I can't see. 

"What?" I ask, noticing his blank eyes and wistful expression. 

He shakes his head slightly, focusing his eyes back onto mine. "Uh- it's nothing, just reminded me of something George said to me before he left."

He pulls his shirt back on before I can get him to elaborate, so I finish throwing everything into the bin and packing everything back into the kit. We work in silence, hundreds of questions and thoughts left unsaid in the tense air. 

I'm here, that counts for something. But he's also here, and that counts for something else. 

And now, we're left in a sullen stalemate that's full of too many emotions and feelings, entrenched in history so deep that it feels impossible to break. No one will blink first, and the longer we're here, the more we're going to hurt each other. Wounds cutting deeper and deeper, all the harder to heal. 

When this is all over, if it ends, there will be scars that last a lifetime, that neither of us will be able to shake.

"He said, when the war comes, I'll have to pick a side." He says, so quietly I almost miss it.