Chapter Text
The who’s who of who’s that is poised for the attack
But my bare hands paved their paths
Monster.
What made a monster a monster? The harming of innocent woodland creatures? Cruelty simply for the sake of cruelty? Or was it cold-blooded murder? None of that had been his choice yet he was named monster anyway.
He didn't feel like a monster. Although, what monster ever did?
Tyler didn't even know what that word meant anymore.
Though shackled to the floor and wearing a nice and cosy straitjacket in an armored police vehicle while driving to the place where his mom died, Tyler did know one thing.
Laurel Gates made a big mistake dying when she did.
As the drugs left his system, Tyler felt himself growing more alert, more in control of own body. He purposefully kept his head down and his body lax as he waited patiently for the cocktail of drugs to flush out of his system.
Tyler kept still, but tried his best to find out what exactly he was dealing with. He didn't draw the orderlies' attention to the fact that he was quickly regaining his faculties. His head was still kinda fuzzy but it didn't feel like his limbs were encased in nettle infused jello anymore. He could move again.
Tyler took a deep breath, subtly scenting the space.
Two men in the front seat and four orderlies in the back with him. Six in total, but they weren't going to be an issue for a Hyde in his prime. But their guns might be.
It'd have to be quick then.
The things they were holding didn't look like the weapons he was familiar with, but Tyler could smell the gunpowder and knew they would do a lot more than just stun him if they hit him. These men weren't just orderlies, though they were all dressed like one. But the rigid stances and the steely-eyed glare betrayed them.
They meant business.
Though the most damning evidence were the eyes of the orderly sitting closest to where Tyler was chained to the floor, sneering disdainfully at him before turning his attention back to his stoic fellows.
Hazel.
Green and brown, swirling together in an all too familiar mix of colors. Familiar orbs of hazel he’d seen every time Laurel looked at him. The unexpected sight of them made him stifle the low growl bubbling up in his chest.
He hated those eyes.
Taking a subtle sniff, Tyler hid his grimace. Definitely a blood relative, judging from the scent of fanatical devotion towards certain long-dead ancestors. A cousin, most likely since the brother had already been killed by Wednesday’s badass mom.
"Hey," Tyler murmured, acutely aware that this might get him killed. On the other hand, there was almost certainly a certain death waiting for him when they arrived at their destination.
Or something worse.
As one their attention snapped to him, and Tyler let his mouth curl up in a polite little smile. "You guys ever seen a Hyde?"
And then he let the monster living under his skin out.
Fear permeated the air as Tyler didn't waste any time transforming into a monster straight from their nightmares. They didn't get the chance to react, he didn't give them time to even aim their weapons.
Hyde roared his challenge as Tyler easily ripped through the straitjacket meant to constrain his movement, tearing the chains right out of the floor of the van. And then he was free.
Making use of the small space and the fact they'd nowhere to run, Tyler and Hyde worked in sync. Claws and fangs ripped and teared through flesh and sinew, warm, sticky blood splattering everywhere. The van swerved when he swiped through the opening and pierced through the two in the front with his claws.
In a last act of desperation, the driver frantically pulled on the wheel and drove them straight into a tree.
The sound of metal hitting the enormous oak tree was deafening, but Tyler didn't let it stop him. His freedom was around the corner, and he was going to take it. No master or father could stop him now.
Tyler never felt so alive.
You don’t get to tell me about sad
If you wanted me dead you should’ve just said
Nothing makes me feel more alive
When he was done, the van was littered with body parts and partly squished organs. It looked like a slaughterhouse had exploded inside the car and Tyler was pretty sure he looked absolutely deranged. They'd thought a straitjacket and the drugs were enough to contain him. Well, he’d proved them how wrong they were about that.
Very wrong.
Tyler found it cute how people still didn't really see him as a threat until he showed them their own organs by the way of his claws. The shock and horror, the utter fear on their faces as they realized they made the biggest mistake of their lives trying to leash him.
There was something thrilling about the looks on the faces of his prey as he slashed through their soft bellies, the surprise and pain. It did something to him every time.
But he didn't like to draw it out for too long.
He wasn't that much of a monster after all.
Evisceration was slow death, and while Hyde liked to play with his prey, enjoyed the feel of the still warm intestines between his claws, Tyler preferred to a quick slash through the carotid artery or simply tearing off the head after Hyde had his fun.
(Though he’d made an exception for the hazel eyed man, as he would have made an exception for his master. He suffered for those last few moments, just as he hoped Laurel had.)
Especially since the time he'd blacked out every time he shifted had long passed. He remembered every bit now, every step he took as Hyde, every slice, every rip.
And it felt good.
Covered in blood spatter and high on adrenaline, Tyler bit back the triumphant roar that wanted to escape his bloody maw. Hyde relished in the hunt, the primal side of taking a life, and the human side couldn't disagree.
It was quite titillating.
Luckily, he had remembered to leave the one closest in size to him mostly whole this time. He had stumbled home buck naked way too often to make that mistake again. Letting his human side take over, Tyler shrunk as the predator settled back under his skin, satisfied.
"Let's see what we have here." He whistled cheerfully, uncaring of his own nakedness or that he was taking to no one in particular. "Fuck, I'm soaked."
Blood was all over him, drenching the few scraps of fabric still on his body. He grinned, wishing Wednesday was here to see him now. After her disappointment with the fake blood at the dance, he was pretty sure she - kooky girl that she was - would have loved it.
(Loved him.)
Approaching the sole corpse with a crushed neck, Tyler quickly stooped down to start removing the outer layer of the uniform the corpse was wearing. Only to stop when he noticed a bag laying under the bench, hidden behind the fallen body. Carefully opening the zipper, Tyler smiled when he saw the clean and neatly folded jeans and flannel laying there.
Not quite his size, but it would do.
"Thank you… Bob." Tyler murmured quietly in the silence left behind. A silence that often appeared after death. "I'll take good care of your clothes, I promise."
He supposed it was a good thing he wouldn't have to go out in the uniform of an orderly. That would have drawn too much attention, if his face alone wasn't enough already.
After shrugging on the clothes and wiping off the worst of the blood, Tyler stood up and peeked out of the doors. They'd flung open the moment the van hit the tree, coincidentally allowing him an easy escape.
So I leap from the gallows and I levitate down your street,
Crash the party like a record scratch as I scream
Standing in the door opening, Tyler took a moment.
"It’s time for a change, mom." He spoke quietly into the thin air, breathing in deeply. Tyler felt saner than he'd in a long time. "Time to show them the monsters they created."
There was no longer a disconnect between him and the Hyde now that Laurel was dead. There wasn't an angry voice in his head anymore, telling him, urging him to do whatever his master wanted. He felt settled in his own skin for the first time in his life and he wasn't sure how to feel about that. If he could trust it.
He thought maybe he could.
Hyde was content in the back of his mind after the kills of earlier, content and sleepy. Tyler blinked, frowning.
“Hyde?”
Hyde huffed, grumpy. And Tyler got the peculiar impression that the bloodthirsty creature wanted to be left to his nap.
“Okay, then.” Tyler chuckled out loud, before jumping out of the ruined van. “We'll talk later, okay?”
Hyde let out a sleepy purr, and Tyler felt his lips twitch. Bloodthirsty monster? Where?
Certainly not here.
It was infuriating, really. Most people didn’t even believe Hydes could be perfectly sane and reasonable anymore. Thanks to Faulkner’s ‘research’ they all believed in the frankly ridiculous myth that his species always needed a master of all things to survive.
As if a species could ever survive with such an obvious flaw.
Yet it was an undeniable fact that a Hyde could be mastered. They could be used and abused to unimaginable heights. Yet were the masters punished for that? Of course not. Hydes were the ones banned from polite society, not the perfectly normal people making them do all that stuff.
The world wasn't fair, Tyler learned that long ago. But the stupidity in it all made him want to snarl and rage.
It had made him (and his mom) easy prey for Laurel and her frankly ridiculous schemes. He should have known better, but he'd been an angry kid. An angry kid who had no one in his corner, not truly.
The ban on Hydes had left him with no support network, no safety net to fall back on. Just like his mom had no one to have her back with her Hyde. There was no family left to teach them about their own kind, and thus his mom had to make do with her Normie husband and her own son while she struggled with her mental health and with the control of her own Hyde.
Another thing Laurel had taken advantage of.
But that was all over now, Tyler instinctively knew that much.
A Hyde could only be unlocked once, he felt that deep in his bones. And so they could only be forcibly mastered once.
“At least I'd fucking hope so.” Tyler muttered under his breath.
There was so little known about Hydes.
He hadn't known any better before being unlocked (thanks dad) and while being forcibly bonded gave him very little space to actually think about the logistics of it all, he could now. Tyler had a nice few days where he could do nothing but think about his life. Days in which he had nothing to do but actually communicate with the more feral side of him.
And the conclusion he reached was simple.
It was all a lie.
The bond that Laurel forced on him had never been anything more than a chokehold, he knew that now. It hadn't saved him, as she liked to tell him. The bond certainly hadn't helped him.
She had kept him under her thumb, hurt and enslaved him and probably planned to have him killed at some point in the near future. Or have Crackstone transfer his bond to one of her henchmen, so he could help rid other parts of the world of those they wanted gone.
He'd heard her on the phone, bragging to various cousins. And then the man in the van with him…
Tyler knows it isn't over yet, Laurel hadn't been alone in her hate for Nevermore and the Outcasts.
Fanatics never were.
His cockroach had taken care of one of the threats against her, against them, but there were more. More people who knew he was a Hyde, more people determined to rid the world of all Outcasts. Tyler thought he might make it his new hobby to take care of those people, because surely his dear master needed some company in whatever hell she was residing in.
Tyler is free now, free from his master and free to do whatever he wants.
And what he wanted is to get the hell out of Jericho.
Who’s afraid of little old me?
You should be