Chapter Text
The cell was damp, and the stone walls were stained with mildew. Tyler sat on the narrow bed, shackles biting into his wrists, the iron chains clinking with every twitch of his hand. The air smelled of rust and rot, the scent of old blood and even older mistakes and mishaps.
Once, he had feared the Hyde. Its voice in the back of his head had been unbearable, gnawing at him, begging to be unleashed. Now, in the silence of his cage, he welcomed it with open arms, it had been only voice that never betrayed him, even as it filled his head with twisted lies. It’s all he had left.
Do you want to be free? the Hyde whispered, its voice curling like smoke around his thoughts, flooding his head until it was impossible to ignore.
Tyler’s jaw tightened. “I want revenge.”
The Hyde within him stirred, pleased, like a beast caged behind glass.
His mind was consumed by memories, his mother’s smile, her laughter echoing through the house that was once a home. Then the silence that followed. She had been the only one who made him feel human. The only one who could have saved him from what he was.
And she was gone.
His father never spoke of her death, but Tyler had distant memories of what she once was. Whispers of the Hyde within her, whispers of what it had done to her body and mind. Her blood was his inheritance. Her curse, his birthright.
Then came Wednesday Addams.
Her sickly pale face, her unblinking eyes, her voice that cut clean, cold as ice. She had looked at him, not with horror, but with dissection, as if he were an equation she’d already solved. She had exposed him, caged him, left him stripped bare.
Hating her was easier than admitting the truth: that part of him had sought her approval. Maybe even her affection.
She betrayed you, the Hyde snarled. She made you weak.
“No,” Tyler muttered, curling his hands into fists. “I’m not weak anymore. I control you now.”
He had learned to speak to it. Not just with anger, but with grief. With longing. He fed it pieces of himself, rage hardened into a weapon, sorrow pressed into obedience, until the Hyde’s growl softened, until its thrashing and desperation for release quieted into a low, loyal hum.
The chains rattled. The walls groaned. From beyond the bars, a guard screamed, a sound cut short.
The Hyde surged forward, but it did not break free. It waited, listened, obeyed.
Tyler stood, the shackles slipping from his wrists like dead weight. He stepped into the corridor, a heavy silence falling over fallen bodies. His shadow stretched long across the stone floor, monstrous and human all at once.
For the first time, he believed it, he was not the Hyde’s prisoner. He was its master.
And when he thought of Wednesday Addams, her name burned on his tongue like a curse and a prayer.
He would make her pay.
He would make her kneel at his feet.
But a small, traitorous whisper inside him, softer than the Hyde’s roar, asked what he would do if she didn’t break.