Predator (DWT x OC)

106

They come for us. Eventually. 

Pull George out first, no fighting, no screaming. Just silence and the sound of his feet dragging on the floor. 

They leave me alone, staring at the wall. A day passes, maybe three. There's nothing outside of this cell and the images of every single person I love dying. Blood crusts on my neck, my jumper. Dried and brown, itching under the dressings. Something breaks eventually. It was always going to give. 

God, I was naive. Running around in a uniform with all these dreams in my head, armed with bandages and antiseptic. Let someone like Dream burrow inside my chest like he had any right to be there, let him dismantle everything I ever was until there's just pieces left. 

I let him make me think that shelter was the same as love, because he'd burnt down everything else around me. Some of it isn't his fault. Maybe they were the same once. 

It doesn't matter anymore, not now, not when I'm going to lose all of them anyway. 

The room is tense, the weight of what's to come impossible to ignore. 

"They've fortified the tunnels." Danny murmurs, pouring over the maps feverishly for the thousandth time. "We have to go over the top."

Dream leans back in his chair. "It's desperate. You only make that move if you think you have a chance of winning. He still can't just fucking let go."

"We knew he'd drag this out." Sam nods, arms folded over his chest. "He was always going to make this go to the end."

"We didn't know he'd have her with him." Dream's jaw is clenched. "You know-"

"We all know what Schlatt is likely to do." Danny interrupts. "And you won't save her by not doing anything."

"You letting the kids come?" Sam asks Dream, who rubs his forehead, exhausted. He looks human like this, tired, worn down. Bags under his eyes. 

"I can't- I promised her." He rakes his fingers through his short cropped hair, agitated. "They deserve to be there and I promised her I would keep them safe."

Danny finally puts the map down. "You're not going to be able to stop them." 

"Tie the little shits to the lamp post." Sam shrugs. "They don't need to be there, not until it's over."

Dream scoffs. "They'll hate us."

"They'll hate us alive."

It's Punz and Dream who end up doing it. Slip a cuff over each Tommy and Tubbo's wrists, click the other solidly around a ring concreted into a wall. There's a lot of screaming, swearing, threatening. But the cuffs hold and the door locks, and they're safe. Like she would have wanted. 

"That kid will rip your eye out one day." Punz slaps a hand on Dream's shoulder. There's a scratch running up his forearm, grazes on his knuckles. Tubbo was the easy one. 

Dream has a crescent of Tommy's teeth imprints pressed into his wrist. He's got claw marks on one side of his face, and he's pretty sure he might have cracked a rib. "That little shit has got to have rabies or something, scratched the hell out of me."

Punz grimaces at the damage. "Someone's got to cut that kid's nails."

Dream shakes his arm out, disgust curling his features.  "Send someone who doesn't mind getting bitten."

He laughs, shaking his head. "You think they'll ever forgive us?"

"They'll be alive, that's good enough." Dream wipes the spit off his neck. "They can forgive us when they're fifty and married and standing over our graves."