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1
Tyler knows it’s the moment of no return.
The evening had been messy but beautiful. Wednesday had accepted the strange-Thing-organized date to the Rave’N and despite Thornhill’s excited chatter and Xavier’s angst, they had fun. Tyler had managed to actually dance at a school dance without setting off the fire alarms or thinking about his asshole father working late and it was freeing.
Watching Wednesday dance… what bliss.
When the red paint started raining down, he is briefly horrified and feels the flashes of the last few weeks, waking up with blood all over him. The paint feels different, smells different but looks just like blood enough to pull him back into the memories of a monster he hasn’t quite identified with.
Wednesday, smiling as she looks up at the source, pulls him and the hyde out of that memory. His eyes are his but not when he catches her hand lifting towards her lips. Her puts her finger on her lips and then fully in her mouth. Her eyes close as she concentrates and by god he wanted to know what she tasted. As she pulls her digit out, her face contorts into an expression of displeasure.
“Pathetic”
It’s not directed at him but he feels it. He wants to tell her about all the times he had woken up this way and the waring feelings of pleasure and despair. Tyler wanted to be her favorite victim, her favorite monster, anything.
“They couldn’t even spring for real pigs’ blood. It’s just paint.”
He moves to touch her but just as he reaches her other hand, she seizes. Her eyes aren’t on him but she isn’t falling this time.
“Eugene is in the woods. He’s in danger.” and she is moving away from him. She doesn’t catch his horror. Thornhill has already left the dance to clean up the cave she had trained him in.
“I’ll text my dad” He texts his master. But Wednesday has already left and while slow for the hyde, she may just stumble upon Thornhill and this cannot happen. Not yet. Not while he doesn’t even know the plan.
He doesn't know yet why Thornhill needs Wednesday alive but the math is clear. Eugene cannot make it out of the woods unscathed.
2
Ever since the attack of Eugene, he feels the rope around his neck tightening.
Marilyn Thornhill is now Laurel Gates and he’s had to throw so many bones to Wednesday as the Hyde that he never thought it would come to. Quickly stripping in the middle of the night to chase Enid and Wednesday through the Gates manor was not how he had expected date night to go. Losing them in the dumbwaiter was a mistake on so many levels. Finding the finesse to partially transform enough and scratch himself was excruciating.
When Wednesday sat in his car for their date, he welcomed the escape from the madness that was becoming apparent with Laurel. When Enid then came it, he knew he had to organize the next date night if he wanted to spend a night at all without some ghost of guilt haunting him.
Planning it had appealed to him though. When he finally got her to Crackstone’s crypt and screened Legally Blond, he couldn’t stop watching her jumps and twitches at the antics of Elle Woods. He loved it in a pure way he didn’t recall having before. There was a simultaneously thrilling and warm feeling to know that he finally knew her well enough. Enough to share this moment with her. Enough to know where she would cringe. Enough to still be surprised when she didn’t or when she tilted her head in a pensive thought.
When he walked into Kinbott’s office, he had done so with a smile ready and a genuine desire to share how great the date had gone.
It wasn’t until he saw Kinbott biting her nails that he remembered Thing.
While he enjoyed a rare moment alone with Wednesday, Thing was getting murdered. Who had helped him go to the Rave'N with Wednesday, who had set up that first call that hurtled her into his life full force in her first full-fledged escape plan.
A wave of self-loathing crashed down on him as he lost the high of his outing with Wednesday.
Kinbott noticed his distressed, her surprise showing on her face. He excused himself to the ensuite bathroom to calm down.
It was just seconds before he heard another door open and Wednesday was suddenly there.
He hears her accusations. The idea that Kinbott being Laurel Gates and illustrates so perfectly the absurdity that is Jericho. Because it makes sense but is so wrong.
But then she thinks Xavier is him. His talons are out before he can finish silencing his snarl behind the bathroom door. He has been her obsession for so long but she can't see it and it hurts. She'll hate him when she does figure it out but the blood moon is coming.
Now that he knows Laurel's plan to use her blood and sacrifice to bring Crackstone back, he knows she'll hate him for the lies. Even worse because he's bringing back the man that burnt her ancestors alive.
He hears Kinbott trying to institutionalize Wednesday and while he can't stop Laurel, he can at least stop Kinbott from taking her away from him yet.
Transforming the moment Wednesday left was easy. If it meant keeping her in his life a little longer, it was worth it.
3
It's not until the end does he know it's over.
He is at the weathervane closing up and the day has been too long. After murdering Kinbott, he has to burn his shirt and hide in his jacket to get out of there unnoticed. He doesn't know whether to thank his father's bad parents for not bothering to remember that he had an appointment at the same time or his father's denial for not checking Kinbott's schedule book so closely.
So, one murder, a shower, two shifts, another of Wednesday's Therapists gone, a hard phonecall to Laurel, he is a little zoned out. Wednesday walking through the front door of ths weathervane, actually announcing her presence with the doorbell in the soft evening light, was a welcomed if nerve wracking surprise.
She comes to him and he doesn't know why until she's kissing him. He feels like the world is ending and beginning anew.
He pulls away just briefly and she is smiling. Honestly smiling softly up at him. He tilts his just lightly and slips his hand behind her neck, thumbing her cheek as their lips meet again.
Maybe for a moment, this could be real. Just a scary boy and spooky girl finding each other in a hellhole town in Vermont.
But then she is falling and he knows she is seeing something. The only times he's seen her have a vision has been because someone is dead or dying like that stupid boy who tried to take her away from him in the woods.
He remembers her vision at the meeting house and how still she lay reliving the burning of her ancestors and he is scared because which death does she see with him? There are so many now and who knows how many are to come.
+1
He stops Wednesday in the woods outside the crypt. Laurel said she was dead and he needed to take care of the body. He doesn't know what to think when he sees her walking through the trees carefully but for a second, there is a relief in seeing her slightly disheveled pigtails still there.
When he says, "Laurel said you were dead," she is quiet.
She stares at him and he continues, "You're like a cockroach," trying to find the banter they once shared.
A sad smile crosses her face.
"She was, wasn't she?"
His blood runs cold. He smells the decay emanating from her lower left belly where a knife pierced her before. He doesn't know when it happened but now Laurel's words to him make devastating sense.
Wednesday is gone, someone is wearing her face and he can do nothing.
As long as Laurel was alive, he couldn't lay a finger on her but he felt a burning need to end the madness that commanded him. This was too much. Wednesday gone was too much.
"I know you must feel her loss keenly. Hydes tend to get attached. I wish I could have brought Nathaniel to you before we had come to this but being bound to a crypt for 350 years tends to make one's sense of time and urgency a bit skewed"
Not-Wednesday approached him cautiously. He takes a step back and trips over the root of the tree he had emerged from.
Not-Wednes- She stopped in her approach.
"I can offer no condolences that I do not also deserve. Wednesday was the Raven in my bloodline and an Addams lost must be avenged." Her voice sounds so wrong but it's all he can focus on.
"You may not be able to touch Laurel Gates" She grabbed his chin.
"But you can break Joseph Crackstone with your claws while I silence your thrice damned master's tongue."