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The Tower was a cruel, constant companion. It was stable and secure, but suffocating. It had no remorse, and it showed no kindness. It was a prison.
For years, its only inhabitant sat in grief and turmoil, thinking about everything that went wrong and pondering just. One. Thing. Why did she drop me?
Mono’s heart had been broken since that day, and it never healed. It festered and poisoned him and shook him with stabs of constant pain for his entire life. He grew, and suffered, and grew, and suffered.
By the Signal Tower’s influence, his body was as warped as his twisted mind. His thoughts all focused on her, and the utter betrayal he felt at her decision to drop him. Even still, he still couldn’t hate her. His heart, although insanely damaged, was still soft with a kindness he’d possessed as a child.
For years, he’d been anguished, sobbing over everything he did wrong. The one person he thought he could trust hated him just as much as the rest of the world. He couldn’t breathe on those days, and they kept with him for a decade.
Then, he was furious. After everything he’d done for her, saving her from the porcelain dolls with empty skulls and bringing her back to normal after the Signal Tower twisted her, she’d dropped him into this pulsing, damp, disgusting hell.
After another decade, his emotions wore thin. He felt more tired than anything else. And when the Tower decided to mock him by letting one singular object through, he finally understood. Glancing at the fedora in his hands, he finally understood everything.
He looked at her position, and saw through her eyes, and then, forgiveness.
He had just burst into her life. No matter what his intentions were, Six saw him as the person who put her into danger and didn’t bother to get her out of it.
Although he was physically unable to do anything when the bullies mobbed her, she took it as a sign of unwillingness to help her.
Although he needed to stay hidden in order to rescue her from the Thin Man, she took it as a sign of him not caring about her and trying to save himself.
And oh, her music box. Her comfort item, her prized possession. He had taken an axe to it without a second thought on five separate occasions.
Sure, he rescued her each time, and he destroyed the box in order to return her to a calmed state, but did he really save her, in her eyes? The way he saw it, if she had stayed in that house much longer, the Hunter would have killed her. It’s not as if she was able to defend herself, she was just sitting there cranking her music box. But Six didn’t think that way. She saw him as a monster who took her and dragged her into danger.
Plus, as Mono continued to stare at the Fedora in his hand inquisitively, he realized that the ledge was the first place Six saw his true face. Before, it was always covered by some item, and when the item fell away, she knew that he was, as he was now beginning to realize, the Thin Man.
Six dropped him for a reason so simple, he was ashamed he hadn’t even considered it before. She, like any normal child, was afraid. She was afraid, and angry, and like the child she was, she let her emotions get the better of her. Sure, the way she let it out was horrible, but how could he blame her?
He couldn’t bring himself to hate her at all, especially now that he understood better her point of view. She had been through some type of hell before their first meeting, just like him, and here he comes, putting her through another horrible experience.
So, when his time finally came to encounter his younger self, it was with no malice that he gently captured Six and slowly shambled towards his mini-Mono. There was no hatred whatsoever as he separated her soul from her body, and there was no anger as he crept towards his younger self through the train. And when his final battle occurred, he couldn’t help but smile a little. That was so typical of him, wasn’t it? Risking it all for his best friend.
As his energy drained, the Thin Man only hoped that next time, his younger self would come to that conclusion a little faster. And, as per usual between every loop, he hoped that Six would realize that he only wanted to help her.
It would be a shame for him to know the truth. Six would never make that connection, and she would never realize that she was the cause of what she was trying to prevent.
After all, no one is aware of a dream as it’s happening.