Predator (DWT x OC)

93

Life settles for a while, I find comfort in a mundane routine, sharpening knives and repairing leather and cooking, stitching it all back together with thick flax thread. Dream comes and goes, and we keep pretending like the conversation we had fixed us, fixed the problems so deep in our relationship that they're the rotting stumps it stands on. 

The guilt eats away at both us, and we're left unsteady, ready to topple should the wind blow too hard. 

I think about Punz, and then I don't, and Dream doesn't mention the others anymore, and that's how we get by. I see Sapnap occasionally, whenever he can drop in, Eret once or twice. Nobody talks about George, but the empty space he left, gaps between sentences, lingering stares between us where everyone knows but no-one will say it, are there, reminders.

Reminders of how far we've fallen, mostly. Reminders of how much has been taken by the battle no one will put down. 

Sapnap tells me Punz is in the Badlands, organising a crew to start digging the newly approved supply tunnels underneath Lmanburg. Sapnap knows I don't want to know. 

Life with Dream isn't as bad as I thought, and that's probably the worst thing. It's easier to find something to get angry at, something to pour all your hatred into, rather than a quiet defeat, a delicate implosion. 

I asked him to go to Pogtopia with him, argued that we could have both, I could have both, my family and my boyfriend, but he shut me down. For all his posturing, he's still needy, insecure. For all his bravado about the strength of my love, he's still terrified that it'll crumble in the face of something real. 

"You know I love you, right?" I purr, with my back turned to him, because I can't look him in the eyes and say it. He laughs, sliding in behind me with his arms around my waist, but he doesn't say yes, not out loud. He doesn't mention it again, and so I don't, and we pretend. 

Construction has started on the tunnels underneath L'manburg, so I hear, concrete holes that are about to become tombs, mass graves of people who are about to die for people they don't even fucking like, for Dream and for Schlatt, a death I don't think anyone set out for. So many people, so many lives, and for what?

The mornings are the most peaceful in our house, because Dream leaves, and I can keep up the placid act without it wearing thin on the edges. 

"Promise you'll fill me in?" I cling around Dream's neck. 

He kisses me quickly, chuckling as he untangles himself. "'Course I will, don't forget that Eret might drop in later."

"I know, have a good day!" I call out to his retreating back, which he returns with a wave. 

"I will, I love you!"

"Love you too!"

I've started swallowing my pride and saying it back. Never first, because I can't stomach it, but I choke down every protest that my heart screams and spit them out like acid. It burns, and leaves an ache, but I'm a big girl. I can deal with the pain. 

The day is like all the others. Long, empty, alone, full of useless chores I bury my head in like sand, to pretend I'm doing something, anything, not walled up in a glorified prison waiting for a war to start. 

I'm fletching arrows, splitting the quills with my knife and and tying them down with sinew to the wood body. The splinters embed in my fingertips, and at the end of the day they're swollen and raw. It feels worth it. 

I can't tell whether I'm just desperate for anything I'm doing to mean something, or there is something so fundamentally wrong with me I can't live without suffering, or hurting, or pain.