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Tyrell clutches the bleeding wound on his stomach, like there’s any point anymore, like it will help, and feels the bullet, lodged somewhere back by his rib, dig in deeper as he staggers off the road and into the trees. The moon, nearly set now, ekes pale light through the glazed pines, making the snow all around him seem to almost glow. He climbs up over the ridge, his breath ragged and his legs heavy, one arm flailing in front of him to push aside the skeletal underbrush as he walks into the forest. He does not hear Elliot follow behind him. The only sound is his own failing lungs, his clumsy footsteps, and that hellish wail reverberating through the woods, like the dying cry of a wild animal.
He stumbles into a clearing and sees a flash of neon blue pulsing from something on the ground. Probably some kind of hunting trap, he thinks. With his vision so blurry from blood loss, it almost looks like a giant eye winking at him. He walks closer, and lets his body collapse in front of the blue light. The shade is so familiar—fatal system error, the dreaded blue screen of death. He reaches out to touch it, his hand white and shaking. The light washes over him, and he falls forward, shuddering out a final breath—
—and falls right back into his own body.
Tyrell blinks, confused. He is back on the road, Elliot trudging along beside him, gaze pointed down at his phone as he frowns, waiting for a bar of cell service to manifest on the screen.
“... What just happened?” He whispers, staring wide-eyed at Elliot beside him.
“Huh?” Elliot responds, not looking up from his phone.
“I was dead, and now I’m back here,” Tyrell says, “Why am I back here?”
“Man, what the hell are you talking about?” Elliot sighs, pocketing his phone. He meets Tyrell’s gaze, narrowing his eyes.
Tyrell looks down at his gloved hands, rubs the black leather together. He gingerly touches his stomach, and finds no blood. He shivers as a gust of cold wind hits him, and looks into the sky, sees the moon at its peak. He is very much alive, and has no idea why.
“Nevermind,” he says, shaking his head.
Elliot shrugs and pulls his phone out again. “Hey, its 12:01,” he mutters, with very little enthusiasm, “guess it’s officially Christmas.”
“Yeah,” Tyrell exhales shakily.
Perhaps it had all been in his imagination. There was no shooting, no wandering off into the woods, no blue light. But he remembers Elliot saying those same words just hours ago, remembers that just up the road is the abandoned van, the Dark Army soldier still inside. It’s like he’s having really strong deja vu, except he remembers it, knows it really did happen.
He stops in the middle of the road. Elliot turns to look at him, huddled in his hoodie, and his face is obscured in shadow.
“Elliot,” he says, “I think I—”
He hears the gun cock back, feels the bullet lodge into his side, and then another into his thigh, and gasps. Elliot watches, wide-eyed, as the man from the van steps out from the heavy thicket of bush straddling the roadside, his head covered in blood. Tyrell falls to the ground, his cheek squished against the icy pavement. His vision goes black as he hears the gun fire once more, sees Elliot stumble backward, clutching his chest—
—and then Tyrell opens his eyes again, the road stretching out before him, the painted yellow lines disappearing into the fog ahead.
He looks up at the moon. It’s right overhead.
Elliot is beside him, upright and alive. He worries his lip as he glances down at his phone.
“Hey, its 12:01,” he mutters, with very little enthusiasm, “guess it’s officially Christmas.”
Tyrell thinks back to that night in the arcade, when the gun jammed just as Elliot fired, like something blocked the shot. He thinks of the sky opening up to him that day in Coney Island, of Elliot saying you’re not seeing what’s above you . He thinks of Sisyphus pushing the rock back up the mountain, Prometheus awakening anew each day to birds pecking at his liver, he thinks of the two hobos from Waiting for Godot living the same day over and over, he thinks of the passages from the Bible he was forced to memorise as a child: “what has been will be again, what has been done will be done again.” If that night in the arcade was a sign from God, like he suspected, then maybe this was another one of His miracles, as well. Tyrell was being brought back, given another chance. His story wasn’t over like he’d thought.
“Yeah,” he replies breathily, “it’s Christmas.”
Tyrell can see it now. A Christmas miracle, that’s what this is.
He remembers Christmas from when he was child: pilgrimages from his family’s old farmhouse to the church in the dim twilight, his mother lighting the tall wax candles around their picture of the Virgin Mary, her hands outstretched and her meek gaze which seemed to follow Tyrell around the room framed with cheap gold lacquer. His mother would line the mantle with poinsettias in silver aluminium covers that always shrivelled up and died come the new year, Tyrell’s school pictures taken down for the month of December and replaced with a plastic nativity scene and stretched embroidery boards decorated with images of the Saints appearing out of the lines of thread. He would kneel in front of the meagre shrine with his eyes squeezed shut while his father recited passages from the Gospel, hands trembling in their supplication when his father’s voice commanded him to take over the prayer, testing his memorization of what he learned in Sunday School.
Sometimes, when his parents had gone to bed and the house was quiet, he would sneak out of his bed and into the living room, crawl on his hands and knees to the fireplace, prostrate himself before the little plastic idol of baby Jesus in his cradle. Tyrell would clasp his fingers together so tight his skin turned white, would rest his forehead on the floor, and pray over and over, please get me out of here, please let me start over somewhere else, please give me another chance, I hate my life, please, please . Once he was done pleading, usually teary-eyed and exhausted, he’d stare out the window into the night sky, waiting for some kind of answer from God. All that would ever reply, though, was the harsh wind blowing over the snow, whistling down through the chimney.
Perhaps, all these years later, he was now finally getting his answer.
Tyrell suddenly feels giddy, and he laughs and laughs, unable to contain himself.
Elliot turns and eyes him warily. “What?” he says, his tone sharp.
Tyrell shuts up immediately, sensing Elliot’s growing anger. He’d been pissed off and distant all night, even before Tyrell had fucked up killing the guy in the van. Maybe that was the key to all of this, somehow—absolve himself of Elliot’s wrath, and they could both be free.
“I’ve figured it out,” Tyrell says, smiling widely. “We just have to do everything right. This is a test. If we make it through the night, then we’ll be rewarded.”
“What the fuck are you even talking about?” Elliot scowls. “This isn’t a test . We’re stuck out here because you fucked up.”
“No, not that, this isn’t about the guy in the van,” Tyrell says, frustrated. “It’s bigger than that. You, of all people, should understand.”
“Yeah, well, sorry if I can’t understand your religious fucking schizo-babble, Tyrell.”
Tyrell feels his cheeks go red. “You don’t get it. How do you not get it? God’s giving us all these chances so that we do it properly. Maybe it’s not even about the hack, or about Whiterose. It’s about us ,” Tyrell nods, looking up at the sky. “Yeah, that’s what this is. We’re special. We’re meant to be together. So you need to get over whatever it is you’re so pissed off about, and then we can start our future together.”
Elliot throws his hands up in the air with a sigh, then runs his hands through his hair, pulling at the ends. He rounds on Tyrell, eyes flat and dark with anger. “You’re making no sense! We don’t have time for this. We need to find the van and fix your mistake, and then get the fuck out of here.”
Tyrell stomps his foot against the pavement, feeling embarrassingly like a powerless child again, “No! If we keep going that way, one of us will die again, and then the loop will restart!”
Elliot is looking at him like he’s crazy.
“Quit looking at me like that!” Tyrell yells. “You can’t tell me you don’t remember what happened last time. You got shot in the chest not even ten minutes ago.”
Elliot shakes his head, expression horrified. “I have no idea what you’re—”
Tyrell hears a twig snap somewhere to the left. He whips his head around, but it’s too late; the gunman is there, again, and Tyrell feels the bullet rip through his stomach, again.
Tyrell spends several loops trying to explain to Elliot what was happening to them, how they were doomed to die over and over unless Elliot stopped being mad at him. Without fail, the gunman appears each time just as Elliot begins to raise his voice in anger at Tyrell, and Tyrell would hear the gun go off before he awoke, once more, beside Elliot, the two of them walking down the road.
This time, he doesn’t bother trying to talk to Elliot. He’s beginning to wonder if this is not a miracle, and is instead a curse.
They approach the van parked on the side of the road, and Tyrell doesn’t bother trying to dodge the gunfire. He barely flinches when the bullet lodges deep into his stomach.
“Tyrell…?” Elliot asks. The blood blooms deep red over Tyrell’s shirt as he stares at Elliot silently, expectantly.
“We… we gotta get you to a hospital, man.”
Tyrell scowls. “Shut up.”
He turns and walks into the woods. Elliot doesn’t follow him.
When he awakes back into his body again, he doesn’t bother with moving. He stands, stock still, and stares up at the moon in the night sky.
Elliot notices him falling behind, and glances back over his shoulder to level Tyrell with an annoyed look. “We have to keep going. Come on.”
Tyrell doesn’t budge. Down this road is only death, he knows that.
Elliot glares at him. "Come on, Tyrell. We're running out of time."
Tyrell can't think of anything he has in quite so much excess as he does time.
“There’s this old Swedish folktale, Årsgång . In English, I guess you’d call it ‘year walking,’” Tyrell starts. “People used to go out on long winter nights, usually Christmas Eve, and walk through the woods alone. There would be spirits, demons, who would try to hurt you or kill you, but apparently, if you made it through to the first morning light, you’d be able to see into the future. Time would flatten out into a circle, and the you of the present and the you of the future would become one,” Tyrell says. “Kind of a funny idea, huh?”
“I guess,” Elliot shrugs, clearly not caring at all.
“Trying to beat time itself. That’s Whiterose’s goal, isn’t it?” Tyrell continues, thinking back to those months he was kept locked up in that barn upstate, when Irving told him just what exactly the Dark Army was up to: alternate universes, bringing back the dead, building a machine to go to another timeline, without the mistakes of the past. We’re basically a time travel cult, heh, Irving had said, sardonic as ever.
“Whiterose is a delusional lunatic running a death cult,” Elliot snaps.
“Sure, but haven’t you ever thought about it? The kind of person you might be if you could change the past, or what you might do differently if you could see into the future?”
“I have enough me going on as it is without bringing potential past and future selves into the equation.”
Tyrell shivers, shoves his hands in his pockets. He’s wanted to ask for so long about Elliot’s disorder, wanted to know just who he was talking to and when, what each side of Elliot knew. Is the Elliot he’s talking to now the one who pushed him away when he tried to confess his love that night in the arcade? Does he remember pulling the trigger on Tyrell?
This version of Elliot never really looks people in the eye, least of all Tyrell, but his gaze now drifts to some indeterminable space beyond Tyrell’s shoulder. Tyrell tries to follow Elliot’s gaze, to see what he sees, but there's nothing there, save for a couple of skeletal trees and the lonesome paved road. “Is he there? The other Elliot? Do you see him?”
“Yeah. Usually.”
“Are you guys talking about me?”
“Hah, you wish,” Elliot responds with a sharp, barking laugh—no, not Elliot. The other one. Or are they both technically Elliot? Tyrell isn’t sure. Either way, he recognizes the smug tone, the harshness, and knows this is the Elliot who he’d spent all those late nights with in the basement of The Red Wheelbarrow, the one who puffed smoke in his eyes and called him an idiot and laughed at him when he started to tear up, too stressed and frustrated and lonely from months of being held prisoner to think properly.
“What, does that make you nervous? ” The other Elliot sneers, shaking his head with a haughty chuckle. He looks at some fixed point beside him and rolls his eyes, as if to say, can you believe this guy?
Then, suddenly, Elliot’s posture changes, his shoulders curl inwards, and he shakes his head. “Yeah, we talk about you,” he says, and this time, Tyrell knows it’s the first Elliot, the one he met at Allsafe.
Silence stretches out between them. Elliot doesn’t elaborate.
“Does he look like you?” Tyrell asks.
“What?”
“Whoever you keep looking at. The other Elliot. Does he look like you?”
Elliot startles, stares at Tyrell with wide eyes. “No.”
Tyrell waits, but Elliot doesn't continue. God, talking to him is like pulling teeth sometimes, especially when it comes to anything personal. Tyrell remembers with burning shame all the times he’s poured out his heart to Elliot (one of the two, anyway), all the things he’s admitted, and how Elliot never told him anything in turn. When Tyrell really thinks about it, he’s not sure he knows Elliot at all. He can stalk Elliot, hack into his employee files at Allsafe, break into his apartment, force his way into Elliot’s life, but that's all just surface-level. Even when Tyrell thinks they’re alone together, that he has all of Elliot’s attention, he knows it’s not true—there’s still all the things only Elliot can see and hear, and it seems like most of the time, Elliot chooses that over Tyrell. It’s like Tyrell is constantly third-wheeling a couple he can’t even see.
“He looks like my dad,” Elliot mumbles. Tyrell cocks his head, surprised. His dad? Well, that’s unexpected. Tyrell thinks back to a couple hours earlier, when he’d been rummaging through Elliot’s apartment, waiting for him to return. Elliot keeps very few personal mementos, but there was one family picture buried deep in his desk drawer—a beach, a young Elliot squinting under the bright sun, his little sister beside him, a woman with a big sunhat and a man with greying hair and his hand firm on Elliot’s shoulder. Tyrell can’t remember their faces, but he remembers that Elliot was the only one not smiling.
“...Huh,” Tyrell nods. Then, after a pause, says, “I don’t think he likes me. The other you. Your dad.”
That earns a chuckle from Elliot. “Yeah, well, he doesn’t like anybody.”
Tyrell laughs. He thinks maybe he’s starting to understand what he’s supposed to do, how he’s supposed to fix this and make it until dawn.
Elliot looks down at his phone, like he has in every timeline so far. “Hey, its 12:05. Guess it’s officially Christmas.”
Tyrell feels the smile fall off of his face, and his insides feel hollowed out. “Right,” he replies.
The two of them stand there for a moment, Elliot looking at his phone, Tyrell looking at Elliot.
“Well, I guess we’d better get going,” Elliot says, shoving the phone back into his pocket.
“No.”
“What?”
“No. We can’t go. The man in the van is still alive, he’ll kill us. We can’t keep going forward, we have to do something else. Trust me.”
“We’re lost. If we stay here, we’ll freeze, or the guy in the van will find us and finish us off. We have no choice but to keep walking. We have to find cell service, at least.”
Tyrell looks around frantically, thinking. “Let’s go a different way, then.” He turns and trudges off in the opposite direction. “We’ll go back to the gas station and then up the road we drove in here on. We’ll find some cell service, and then you can call your sister, and we’ll get the hell out of here.”
Elliot sighs. “Fine.”
Tyrell can’t believe it: he’s almost free. This is it, this is what he was supposed to do all along. Finally, they were going to make it out alive. He smiles.
The van comes racing around the corner towards them. Tyrell’s heart sinks. Headlights flash and the fluorescent high beams flood his vision as the van hits him head-on. The force sends him flying through the air and he lands hard on the pavement. He barely has time to lift his head before the wheels go over his sprawled legs with a loud crunch , femurs buckling under the weight of the mechanical brute.
Elliot rushes to his side, but Tyrell knows it’s too late. But why? Why, when he’d thought he was doing everything right? It isn't fair.
Everything goes black.
He wakes up, again. He tries to talk to Elliot, again. He gets shot in the stomach, again. The bullet shreds through him like he’s made of wet paper.
“... Tyrell?” Elliot asks, as he always does, as Tyrell staggers out from behind the van, clutching at his side. Lurching forward, he grabs Elliot by the shoulder and pulls him close.
“Elliot,” he gasps, “I love you.”
Elliot recoils, looking halfway between shocked and disgusted. Oh, well. Tyrell had said it now, had finally been able to say it, without interruption or mockery. He tries to tell himself it doesn’t matter if Elliot hates him for it, since none of this was going to matter at all in a few minutes, anyway, but he still feels his cheeks go hot and his eyes start to well up with tears. Rejection always stung, but coming from Elliot, it somehow feels worse. How many times has he died for Elliot, now? And still, Elliot doesn’t love him back. He doesn't even remember any of what Tyrell's been through. Tyrell has never been so completely alone, even with someone always beside him.
“You’re—you’re losing a lot of blood,” Elliot says, nodding to himself like that justifies Tyrell’s confession. His hand shakes as he presses his cold palm to Tyrell’s stomach, trying to staunch the bleeding. “We gotta get you to a hospital, man.”
“No. It’s true. I love you,” Tyrell insists. The wound hurts, like it always does, but he doesn’t care, he wants Elliot to know, before he has to do all of this shit over again. “Ask—” he swoons, a wave of blood gushing out of him along with his rapid pulse. He thinks the bullet got him somewhere higher in his chest, this time around. Elliot catches him as he stumbles, his fingers digging harshly into Tyrell’s elbow as he struggles to hold him up. Tyrell suddenly becomes hyper-aware of how much taller he is than Elliot; he stoops over him, his ragged breath coming out in icy clouds over Elliot’s cheeks. “Ask the other you,” Tyrell bites out, “he knows. He's heard me say it before.”
“What?” Elliot says, glancing beside him. Tyrell can’t read the expression on his face. His vision is starting to blur at the edges.
Tyrell crumples into Elliot’s arms.
He goes through the loop another couple of times before he completely loses all hope.
“You hate me, don’t you?” Tyrell asks after he's jerked out of his corpse and back into his body once more. “Not just him. Both of you. I thought there was something I could do, some way I could get you to stop being so angry at me, but there’s no point, is there? From the moment we first met, you’ve just never liked me, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Elliot looks at him, confused.
“Just admit it. You don’t care about me. You never cared about me,” he feels his voice begin to shake. “You used me. I let you use me. And now here I am, in fucking hell because of you!” Tyrell yells.
“Tyrell, what—”
“Oh, save it! I know you don’t give a shit. I gave up everything for you. I lost my job, my wife, my son! I sat in a fucking abandoned barn, in a basement for months working on our project, doing what you wanted me to, and I never complained. But that’s not enough for you, is it? Nothing would ever be enough,” Tyrell strides forward, pointing his finger in Elliot’s face. He’s so worked up his hair is falling into his eyes, and that only makes him angrier. “I would have done anything for you, you know that? I worshipped you, I thought you were a god, I did whatever you wanted; you never even said thanks, never even said sorry.”
Elliot is staring back at him with fire in his eyes. Tyrell just keeps ranting, saying, “It’s not just me though, is it? You’re—you don’t care about anybody. You’re ruthless. You’d do anything to get what you want. I liked that about you, once. Maybe because I wanted to think that I could be different, that maybe, if I worked hard enough, you’d start to think of me as a partner, not just some thing you can put to work whenever you need a code monkey or a fall guy. I tried to make myself important to you. I should have known better. People don’t matter to you, you only care about the bottom line. You think you’re any better than the guys on Wall Street you hate so much? You’re even worse. Look around you, the world’s gone to shit since 5/9. All you’ve accomplished is killing a bunch of people who either got in your way or got too close to you.”
Something in Elliot’s eyes changes, and his posture loosens. Then, he gives Tyrell’s shoulders a hard shove, making him stumble backwards across the pavement. “Watch it, buddy,” Elliot snarls, and Tyrell can tell it’s the other Elliot he’s dealing with now.
“You don’t need anybody, do you?” Tyrell rages. He doesn’t even know why he’s gotten so aggressive, since it’s not like it’ll change anything. Maybe part of him was hoping to piss Elliot off enough that something new might happen. Maybe if they just had one big fight, if Elliot just let out everything that was holding him back from feeling the same way Tyrell felt, they’d be able to move past all of this. It had been violence that opened Tyrell’s eyes to the depth of their connection that night in the arcade when Elliot had tried to shoot him, so maybe violence was needed to open Elliot’s eyes, too. Yeah, maybe that was it.
Tyrell rushes forward once more, right in Elliot’s face, so close they’re almost touching. He continues, hoping both Elliots can hear him, “Yeah, that’s why you don’t care. You don’t need anyone, because you have each other, right? Well, good. You know, you’re lucky you’re fucking crazy, because the only person who’d ever want to put up with you, is another you!”
That seems to strike a nerve. The other Elliot glares at him, then gives Tyrell one big shove backwards. Tyrell flails, losing his balance, his foot catching over the high bank of a snowdrift that had been shovelled off the road. He feels himself fall backward, and hears a deafening crunch as his head connects with the curb. Everything goes dark, like someone’s glued his eyes shut, and his ears are ringing.
“...Tyrell?” Elliot says. It’s the first Elliot, his Elliot, and he sounds scared. “Oh, fuck. Tyrell?” Elliot’s breathing descends into rapid panic, and Tyrell hears his shoes squeak against the icy pavement as he turns to look at something beside him. “What the fuck did you do?” He yells, and Tyrell knows it’s not at him.
Tyrell tries to say something, but only a loose gurgle comes out, and then he loses the ability to even think of anything to say at all.
He’s not sure he can do this again.
He’s not sure it’s worth it.
He just wants to give up.
Elliot gives Tyrell a long, sidelong glance. He looks so tired, and he’s uncharacteristically silent as he kicks a pebble down the road in front of him. He wouldn’t shut up just a few minutes ago, when they’d left the gas station, and now all Elliot can hear from him are sighs.
He ignores it. He doesn’t have time for Tyrell’s dramatics. They have to find cell service, have to get a hold of Darlene, and they’re running out of time. The Dark Army is closing in, and it’s only a couple of days before Whiterose will make her move. Elliot knows that if all goes according to her plan, he probably won’t live to see the new year.
Tyrell suddenly stops. Elliot rolls his eyes and turns to look back at him, “Man, come on—”
The pale moonlight washes over Tyrell’s face. In the white glow, he appears pale, like a drained corpse. His head tilts up, and he stares into the sky miserably; his lower lip trembles, as though he might cry.
“Uh… are you okay?” Elliot asks.
“Elliot,” Tyrell says, hoarsely. Tyrell says his name like he’s pleading. “Do you believe in God?”
“No.”
Tyrell sighs again, a long, heavy sound.
“There’s no time for this. We gotta keep moving,” Elliot snaps.
“Why don’t you get it? There’s no point,” Tyrell shakes his head. Tears are streaming down his cheeks now, and his voice is strained. “All of this time I keep trying to tell you, and you still can’t see the truth: we're doomed no matter what.”
Elliot is starting to get annoyed. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You. Me. This place,” Tyrell chokes out. “We’re never gonna make it out of here. It’ll be like this, over and over, forever.” Tyrell puts his face in his hands. “What I just don’t understand is why. I thought it was a test. But why make a test without an answer? I’ve tried everything.”
Tyrell drops to his knees and curls in on himself. “This really is hell, isn’t it?” He cries. “I can’t fix anything because there’s nothing to fix. It’s done. My body is probably up ahead in those woods being picked apart by wild animals and there’s nothing I can do about it now but relive the same fucking moment until I just go insane.”
Tyrell twists his neck a little so he can look up at the moon. Elliot has no idea if Tyrell is even talking to him anymore, or if his questions are directed at some mysterious figure Elliot can’t see. Maybe he’s talking to God.
Yeesh. Makes me wonder if this is how people see us, Mr. Robot muses, digging into his coat pocket for his smokes. He fumbles with the lighter, his fingers too frozen to turn the flint wheel fast enough, and he curses before giving up. Elliot ignores him.
Tyrell abruptly breaks into a fit of sobs.
Oh, Jesus Christ. Seriously? Mr. Robot says with a scowl.
Elliot similarly lets out an exasperated noise, but nonetheless walks up to stand beside Tyrell. Tyrell’s kneeling in the middle of the road now, his forehead pressed to the cold cement, hands clasped together so tightly they’ve gone white. He looks like he might be praying. Through his suit jacket, Elliot can see his back rise and fall with every laboured, shaky breath he takes as he weeps pathetically into the ground. As he watches Tyrell spiral further into a full on meltdown at his feet, Elliot feels his frustration slowly dissipate.
Tyrell sniffles, lifting his head ever so slightly to stare at Elliot’s shoes. His head tilts up and his red-rimmed, teary eyes meet Elliot’s.
Yeah, I’ve seen enough. You can deal with this by yourself, Mr. Robot says, throwing his arms up in defeat. He stalks away into the fog, disappearing from Elliot’s sight.
“Uh…” Elliot murmurs, looking around awkwardly, at anything but the devastated look on Tyrell’s face. Tyrell is nuts, maybe even more so than Elliot, and it’s impossible to tell what the hell he even wants from Elliot half the time, even when he isn’t throwing a tantrum. Elliot cautiously says, “Tyrell, look. I know it’s cold. You’re tired. We’re both tired.”
Tyrell rubs his snotty nose against the sleeve of his suit, his pitiful sobs stopping as he listens to Elliot speak.
“But,” Elliot continues, “I need you to not lose it on me, here. Okay? You gotta pull it together.”
"It's awful. Nothing changes, nothing gets better. It's awful. I can't keep doing this."
"We've only been out here a couple of hours. It's not that bad."
“You don’t get it,” Tyrell whines. “It’s nothing to you. You have no idea what this is like for me, what I've been going through. I’m the one who suffers.”
Elliot feels anger spark in his chest. “You suffer? Do you have any idea the shit you’ve done over the past couple of months? How many people you’ve hurt? You should feel happy it's only this bad, because you should be in fucking jail.”
“But every bad thing I did was for you.”
“For me?” Elliot says, incredulously. “You murdered Sharon Knowles before we had anything to do with each other. Don’t make this about me.”
“I killed Sharon Knowles because you made me crazy. Since the day I met you, not an hour has passed where I haven’t thought about you, what I could do to please you, to figure you out. Nothing works. You make no sense, and it makes me crazy. Do you have any idea what you’ve done to me?”
“You chose this. The worst things you’ve done, you did independent of me. I never fucking asked you to become a terrorist! To bomb all those buildings!”
“How else was I supposed to make you want me?!” Tyrell wails.
Elliot nearly chokes on his own disgust. “What? ”
“I knew we were meant to be together, but you didn’t want me. I tried to make myself valuable to you, to show you how devoted I was to you. I wanted to show you I was willing to go all the way—I’d die for you, and I’d kill for you. What else was I supposed to do?”
“How do you not see how fucked up that is? You killed people!”
“For you! Doesn't that make a difference?” Tyrell wails. He springs forward, falling against Elliot’s legs. His fingers cling to the stiff fabric of Elliot’s jeans as he cries, pressing his face into Elliot’s thigh.
“You’re a fucking psycho,” Elliot breathes. Tyrell nods, his nose moving up and down over Elliot’s knees. Elliot sighs. What can he even say to all that? “You know, I think you’re the only person I know who might actually be crazier than me.”
Tyrell laughs, and then devolves into more wet, pitiful sobs.
“Tyrell,” Elliot mumbles. Tyrell lifts his head to look at Elliot, his hair dishevelled, his eyes red and teary, his cheeks flushed. It made Elliot feel bad, kind of.
“Elliot,” Tyrell says, quietly, “Do you think I’m a bad person?”
Elliot stares at him for a moment, sure that Tyrell can’t possibly be serious, but Tyrell looks as genuine as could be. Elliot raises his eyebrows in disbelief, and responds, “Uh, yeah.”
“Do you hate me?”
Elliot considers that. Tyrell is a terrorist, a murderer, an insane religious fanatic who thinks Elliot is a god and is dangerously obsessed with him. Tyrell has threatened him, stalked him, broken into his apartment, unloaded a bullet into him, killed for him, and become the FBI’s Most Wanted Man for him. Intentions notwithstanding, Tyrell is undoubtedly a deeply disturbed, horrible person. Nonetheless, there is something about him that just seems so helplessly raw and earnest and desperate for approval, and it makes Elliot pity him.
There’s also the fact that Tyrell is probably the only person alive who actually likes him anymore.
Elliot exhales. “I don’t really know.”
Tyrell nods, and looks off into the distance thoughtfully, like Elliot’s response is something he can work with.
“What you did to those people—it was fucking evil, Tyrell. I’ll never forgive you,” Elliot says, voice sharp once more.
“But I still have a chance,” Tyrell insists, dazedly. He looks up at Elliot, then gives a twisted, eerily pleased smile. The tears in his eyes haven’t even dried, yet he looks manic, his pupils dilated and his chest trembling. “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,” he said, closing his eyes and nodding again to himself.
Elliot is beginning to think there’s a method to Tyrell’s madness, and he’s also pretty sure Tyrell just started reciting the Bible at him. “I’m not God, Tyrell,” he sighs.
Tyrell doesn’t even seem to hear him. He’s pressed his face into Elliot’s thighs, his lips moving against his Elliot’s jeans as he mumbles to himself, “Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.”
Elliot stands there awkwardly. Tyrell’s recitations fade into inaudibility, his eyes still screwed shut and his hair falling into his face. Elliot reaches down and brushes back one of the stray locks of hair falling into Tyrell’s forehead, and Tyrell’s eyes fly open with a start as he goes completely still.
Elliot looks down at this pathetic, wretched man, and feels sorry for him. Without thinking, he places his hand atop Tyrell’s head, patting him like he might pat a stupid dog who didn’t know any better than to come crawling back to its owner after it's been kicked. Tyrell throws his arms around Elliot and slumps forward, his whole weight collapsing against Elliot’s legs.
After a few moments, Tyrell shakily stands, and pulls Elliot into a hug. Elliot stands there limply, his arms stiff at his sides.
“Thank you, Elliot,” Tyrell says. Elliot has no idea what for.
Tyrell pulls away from the hug and beams down at Elliot, like Elliot’s finally answered a question he didn’t know Tyrell was asking. Elliot smiles weakly back.
“Let’s go,” Tyrell says.
Elliot pauses. “I don’t know. Maybe we should just stay here a while. Honestly, Tyrell, I don’t know if you’re fit to keep going.”
Tyrell’s mouth falls open, his eyes wide, and he struggles to form words. “You want to stay here?”
“I really don’t think we’re gonna find anything out here. Even if we find the van, burn everything inside, all it’ll do is buy us a couple more days before Whiterose inevitably executes. Whatever her plan is, I’m sure she won’t let me live to see the end of it. I think… I think I was just wandering around, too frustrated to give up, because I didn’t want it to end like this.”
“To end?” Tyrell echoes.
“Yeah,” Elliot sighs. “I’ve known since we stepped outside of the gas station and the van was gone that we were gonna die out here. Maybe there's no point in trying to escape it. Darlene's smart, she'll realize I'm dead soon enough and run. Maybe the best thing to do in our situation is nothing at all.”
Tyrell stares at him for a few moments, then nods, as if that makes sense. “Okay,” he says. “Let’s just sit here, then.”
They move to the side of the road and lean up against the freezing steel guard rail. Elliot takes his phone out of his pocket, checks the time. “Hey,” he says, not noticing Tyrell’s wince, “it’s 12:23. Guess it’s officially Christmas.”
“I never liked Christmas very much,” Tyrell replies.
“Yeah, me neither.”
They sit there in silence, both too exhausted to speak. Out of the corner of his eye, Elliot watches Tyrell stare up at the moon. His lips move, but no sound comes out.
Tyrell startles as headlights gleam out from the fog down the road. “Not again,” he says, squeezing his eyes shut, “please, not again.”
The car squeals to a stop in front of them, a tiny grey Chevrolet sedan with mud caked up over the hubcaps. Tyrell throws his head into his hands, repeating over and over, “no, no, no, no, no—”
The driver’s side window rolls down and awful Christmas pop music blasts out from the speakers. “Hey!” a familiar voice yells. “What the fuck, Elliot?”
It’s Darlene, her eyes bugged out and angry, streaky mascara smudged into her dark circles. Elliot stumbles to his feet. Tyrell looks up in shock.
Darlene’s gaze flits back and forth between the two of them, her lip curling in distaste when she spots the tear tracks adorning Tyrell’s cheeks, his rumpled hair. She rolls her eyes and scowls in a way that reminds Elliot of Mr. Robot. “Ugh,” she says, “nevermind, I don’t even want to know. Just get in.”
Elliot moves toward the car, but Tyrell stays still. He looks at Elliot like he can’t believe what’s happening. He eyes Elliot’s hand on the car door questioningly. Elliot sighs and grabs Tyrell by the lapels of his coat, shoving him into the backseat, “Man, come on.”
They shuffle in beside each other and Elliot shivers as Darlene cranks up the heat. Tyrell puts his head on Elliot’s shoulder. Darlene and Elliot lock eyes in the rearview mirror, and she raises her eyebrows at the sight of Tyrell nestling into him, but doesn’t comment.
“You would not believe the night I’ve had. Feels like it’s never gonna end,” she says, easing her foot off the brakes and driving them all down the road into the night. Tyrell lets out a tiny, bitter laugh, the sound tired and muffled, almost like he might start crying again. Elliot pats Tyrell’s head like he did before, smoothing down his hair where it’s been jostled out of place both by the wind and Tyrell’s sporadic fits.
Eventually, Tyrell grows loose and heavy against him, his eyes slip closed, and his breathing evens out into the slow, steady pattern of sleep. The clock on the dash ticks onward and the hours pass in silence: 1AM, 2AM, 3AM, 4.
The car rolls to a stop just outside NYC. Tyrell opens his eyes. The sky outside the window glows the bright neon blue of early morning. Darlene has pulled into a gas station to fill up the tank, and she’s walking back from the little Shell convenience store with her hands full of chip bags, canned iced coffee and a giant blue Slurpee.
“Elliot,” Tyrell mumbles into the fabric of Elliot’s hoodie, too tired to lift his head off Elliot’s shoulder.
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
Elliot is silent, forgetting for a moment how to even breathe.
In answer, he puts his hand over Tyrell’s. Tyrell threads their fingers together, clasping so tight that his skin turns white.