Predator (DWT x OC)

99

I sit outside the block of rooms used for meetings, resting my back against the sun-warmed brick, arms loose around my legs, which are tucked up into my chest. There's a buzz of activity all around me, the echoing bangs of the mining and farming equipment, the conversations of people hurrying past, floating in the air behind them.

Tubbo sits next to me, fiddling with something in his lap. Tommy stormed off the moment he woke up, and no one's seen him since he disappeared into the woods.

"What are they gonna do to him?" Tubbo asks me quietly. I look at him and give a half-hearted shrug.

"No idea, they're waiting for Dream."

"Are they going to kill him?" The question is casual, and it's just another fucking reminder of how far everything has fallen. There's been so many they don't even make me flinch.

"I don't know." I answer honestly. "Depends on what kind of mood Dream's in, maybe."

"Would you stop them?" Tubbo sets down the piece of metal, and finally looks up at me. "If they decided to kill him?"

I pause, biting the inside of my cheek, watching him. His good eye doesn't betray any emotion, no fear, no sadness. He's just genuinely curious.

"Would you want me to?"

It's his turn to pause, sunken in thought. "It's not really Wilbur anymore, is it?"

"No. No it isn't." I agree. "I don't think I want him to die."

"I don't think I'd stop it though, either."

"I know, he's hurt a lot of people, and he'll keep doing it." I acquiesce. "But- fuck- it's Wil. I wish there was another option."

"Tommy wants him dead, he told me last night."

"Tommy's angrier than us, he was closer to him, in the end."

"He's only been close to Tommy. He never loved me."

I almost rear back in shock, whipping my head around to face him. "What? Tubbo, no, he loved you."

He sniffs, his bottom lip trembling, like he's trying to beat back tears. "Maybe, he hasn't for a while."

It feels like his words squeeze my heart, constricting it to the point of pain. "I don't think he's been capable of love for a while."

"He loved Tommy."

"He had no one else but Tommy, I think it was more of Tommy being his only option."

Tubbo doesn't say anything, but tears roll of his cheeks.

"I don't think he ever loved me, you know." I can't even look at him as I say it, staring off in the distance in front of me. "Not like you guys. He really did love you two, at one point."

"The more I- I think about him and the more I do, the more he looks like Dream, you know? There was something wrong with him then."

I almost bite clean through my lip, as I sink my teeth in to try and hold it together. I think about those days, I think about the hurt, the way I was a pawn, just as much to him as I was to Dream, I think about the indifference too, the way he didn't even blink, the moment he'd thought I'd possibly done something to undo his creation.

He didn't just throw me away, he punished me in the worst way he knew how. He did it to hurt me as much as he did it in a misguided attempt to protect L'manburg.

God, there's always been something wrong, hasn't there? Not just misguided, or paranoid, or trigger-happy, something evil, something sadistic, something cruel, just like Dream, just like Schlatt.