Predator (DWT x OC)

89

Within a matter of days I'm Dream's girlfriend, and no longer a citizen of L'manburg, all in the same. 

I sleep next to Dream the next night, and then the night after, and the night after that. Sometimes I put my head on his chest until my jaw aches, until his breathes even out and I can roll over onto my pillow, sometimes I line my spine up with his chest and let him rest his forearm over my waist, tuck his hand under my cheek.

In the morning he kisses me awake, and I pretend like I hadn't been up for an hour, and then I make him breakfast, or he makes it for me, and then I smile and drape my arms around his neck and kiss him until that door clatters closed, and spend the day cooking, and crying, and lying in the grass under the sun and the clouds and the rain.

I know that when the sun dips halfway below the eastern-most mountain peak to listen for the gravel crunching as he walk up the path, breathe in and out and plaster a smile, not too wide, not too excited, just a little more each time, greet him, kiss him, eat dinner.

Again, and again, and again, life's constant repetitions of the same awfulness repackaged every now and then. 

This is how they get you to agree to your own demise.

This is how they break you. 

I miss Punz, and Niki, and Tommy and Tubbo, and I loathe the guilt that wracks me every single time my lips meet Dream's, the fact that no matter what I do, someone gets hurt. It's not fair for me to rely on Punz being able to be better, to be good, but what other choice has been left for me?

It's about midday when I end up out the front of the house, sitting on the sunny lawn with my hands in a garden bed. I've spent a lot of time out here, on the grass, in the dirt, hands finding their familiar way back to soil and plants and my mother, the things I clung onto when I first learnt what pain really was. I avoid one spot, I hope the grass there dies. 

I hope she leaves her mark on this earth, and that it never forgets her. 

The dirt is cool on my fingers, damp down to the roots, as I push down seeds I ferreted from Dream's storeroom, I think they're supposed to be lilacs. The wind picks up, whistling through the valley so loudly I don't catch the footsteps on the gravel pathway until he almost reaches me. 

"Sapnap!" I shriek loudly, leaping up and flinging my mud-stained hands around his neck. I haven't seen him since he brought me to Pogtopia, right after Quackity died. 

"Rosie!" He laughs, hugging me back. "Dream sent me on assignment, I'm sorry I couldn't get back earl-"

"Don't apologise." I tell him, letting him go, accidentally leaving a smear of mud from his right ear across his cheek. "What'd he have you do?"

"Scouting for an expansion." He answers rather grimly. "Dream's eyeing a cluster of villages out near the east coast."

I internally grimace, more people to conquer, more lives for him to ruin. "Shit."

"I was supposed to be there for another two weeks at least, but he called me back-"

"For me." I finish flatly, because his face has sunken before he'd even reached that part. 

"Why the fuck would you do this?" He asks me, and his voice is so exasperated because he knows my answer already, knows how much he can't change this. 

"You know." My mouth is pressed into a line, and everything hurts. 

"There was other ways, Rosie. Anything other then being back here." 

"We didn't have time, this was the best way."

"You don't deserve this."

I give him a sad smile. "It was too late for me, it's okay."