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Tyler had done a lot of terrible things, he wasn’t so far gone that even he couldn’t recognise that, but this was by far the worst. It was a strange thing, to find the sound of a heart monitor to be both a source of comfort and a terrible, awful, gut-wrenching source of guilt, too, because Wednesday Addams wouldn’t even need a heart monitor to be hooked up to her person if it wasn’t for him. He could have claimed that it was an accident, (Which it was), he could have consoled himself with the fact that he hadn’t meant to throw her from that damn window, (It was true), but they were excuses, in the end.
Wasn’t that turning out to be the story of his life? Excuses for bad behaviour, for bringing pain and misery to others around him? The excuse of having a shitty, inattentive father who cared more about the bottle and his small-town job then his own son? The excuse of being an angry, stereotypical townie kid with chip on his shoulder and the unfortunate choice of making friends with the same sort of other angry, bitter, townie kids? The excuse of losing his mom?
In the end, that’s all they were, though: Excuses.
He'd never been a saint, couldn’t even claim that he wanted to be one, truth be told, and perhaps he’d never really been meant to be a good person, whatever that even meant, but he never imagined he’d turn out to be the guy who’d throw the girl he loved out of a window. And he did love Wednesday, he’d loved her almost the second he’d laid eyes on her through the steam of that monster of a coffee machine, seemingly an entire lifetime ago now. He’d loved how unapologetically herself she was, her total and complete lack of fear or even regard for literally anything remotely normal, remotely Normie, loved how dark and twisted she was. She was everything he’d been desperately looking, craving, in another human being, and she just had to be the one girl that his vile Master had been seeking.
That truth had been like a punch to the gut, an awful, terrible, sickening realisation that he hadn’t been able to escape or outrun, no matter how much he’d wanted to just come clean. Tell her. Confess, on his hands and God damn knees, if that’s what it took, and he would have done it in a heartbeat if it had meant that he could have kept the one precious thing he had in his life untainted from what he was. From what Thornhill had done to him. From what he’d allowed to happen to him, because he’d allowed himself to fall for her soft, concerned, almost motherly act, in the start. Let her get close, trusted her. He’d even managed to convince himself that it wouldn’t matter, in the end, that if anyone would understand and forgive him, it would be Wednesday…only she hadn’t.
She only came to him because she needed information. Not because of him. Not because she wanted to see him, or cared, but because she needed something. Again, it was basically the back cover of his fucking life that he’d only ever be used and needed when someone had a need for him. He just never imagined Wednesday would have been another person to fall into that category.
He ought to have known. She’d warned him she’d stomp on his heart. She wasn’t mistaken.
And yet, even still, he never would have imagined throwing her out of an upper story window. Not as himself. Not as Tyler. Hyde, however, was emotion, pure and simple, anger and fury, and bitterness, and resentment, all bundled up into a large, leathery, furious beast of a monster and there was no controlling that, not now. Perhaps never again. And maybe that was for the best, because he wasn’t even sure what the hell he was supposed to do now, how to move forward.
Instead, he found himself lingering, haunting the halls of Jerchio General Hospital like a living ghost, waiting for the rare moments when Wednesday was left alone in her hospital bed, just for the brief moment to see her. Hear her heartbeat gently, evenly, beep softly in the background from the machines connected to her, watch her chest rise softly with each intake of breath that reassured his tormented soul that she was still alive. Still breathing. It was like his own personal form of anointment for what he had done, each and every day, he would come, lurking from afar, listening and waiting until Wednesday’s parents would come and go, until Enid would slip in and out for her daily visit at the end of school, until the new, red headed one would slink away, too, and then he would approach.
He never stayed long, never did anything but simply look. He longed to just touch her hand, but even the idea of touching her right now after what he’d done, left a sour taste on his tongue, made him feel almost as bad as Thornhill. And he just knew it would be his luck that Wednesday would jerk back to the land of the consciousness the second he dared to touch her, and probably throttle him before he could even blink. Not that he’d blame her for it, truth be told, but he wasn’t testing his luck, because God knew that fate had a sick sense of humour when it came to him, and he was sick to death of being the running joke of it.
“We’ve gotta stop meeting like this…” he murmured to her still form, standing on his usual spot at the end of her bed. Always the end, never to close, even if he longed to sit right beside her, but he wouldn’t come any closer than this.
It was another part of the punishment, he supposed, but he also knew that she would have been infuriated enough by him even being here, seeing her this weak and vulnerable, especially after everything. Especially after he’d rather impulsively thrown out that bit about hunting down Enid. Oh, he wouldn’t deny that he’d love a go at the baby wolf, a fair, proper fight, this time without his father’s damn pistol ending it abruptly, but he didn’t really care that much about Enid Sinclair, to be honest. It had been a desperate plea to keep Wednesday’s attention; one he’d thrown at her back because it was the only thing he could think of at the time, because Enid was the only soft spot that he knew for a fact that Wednesday had, outside of himself. It had worked, better than he had anticipated, and while he wasn’t complaining, it wasn’t exactly the sort of attention he was necessarily after. Still, he’d take it.
You learnt to take what attention you can get, good or bad, when you have the homelife he had.
“Seriously,” he sighed, then, gaze slipping over her stoic features. She looked dead, but for the soft beat of her heart off the machine and the light lift of her chest beneath her crossed arms, she might as well have been. Still, she was just as doll-like and beautiful as ever, in his eyes, the staples peeking through her dark strands on the crown on her head, and the small, healing cuts on her face did little to mere that beauty, merely enhancing it, really, in an entirely creepy way, in a way she would probably approve off, to be honest. It still caused a small stab of guilt in his chest, “Isn’t it time you try and come after me, eh? Come on…” his lips curved into a slow, crooked smirk, “I’m right here, Wednesday. Come and get me”.
Nothing. Not even a blip on the heart monitor. Not even a flicker of an eyelash. He felt his farce of a smirk slip and fade, felt disappointment and something almost like fear wash over him, but Wednesday Addams was to strong and vicious to allow a coma to take her out. Or his Hyde, for that matter. Still, it had been weeks now, and with little change to her condition, he can’t help feeling the anxiety beginning to creep in, the doubt, the fear. She was all he had left, pathetic as that might be because he didn’t even have her, never really did, truth be told, but she’s the last thread to his humanity that he’s got, and it’s all that he’s clinging to now. The only thing, he thinks, that’s keeping him vaguely human these days. Still Tyler, or whatever this version of Tyler was now.
He swallows, hard, throat dry, and he feels his Hyde stirring right there, inching ever and ever closer to the edge of his control, what little he even had of that supposed control now, and he feels a brief flicker of panic welling up deep within his chest. His time is almost up, not just because he knows that it’s almost time for Morticia Addams to return to her daughter’s bedside to continue her nightly vigil, but because he can feel what frantic, desperate bit of control he’s managed to scrap together starting to slip again. It’s time for him to slink away, so he can unravel and then pull himself back together, just so he can come back and do this dance all over again. Like every single day since Wednesday’s accident.
It didn’t matter if Wednesday hated him or wanted him dead, or that he likely meant nothing to her outside of being merely a threat to her friend, now, he would return, and again, and again, until she was awake and scowling that dark, stony glare at him, spitting malicious, biting insults his way. None of that mattered. He’d keep on coming back, checking in, until she was awake, and then…then it would be whatever the hell it would be between them, be that them trying to kill one another or, ideally, whatever the hell it almost was before the truth had come out. Regardless, there was no way Wednesday Addams was letting a coma stop her, especially not when she still had to deal with him. That thought, oddly enough, actually comforted him, strangely enough.
He was just as sick and twisted as she was.