Chapter Text
Tyler Galpin had been in Willow Hill Psychiatric Hospital for 2 months, 3 weeks, and 5 days.
Almost three months of the same room, with its stone bed, bricks walls and fluorescent lighting.
Three months of daily psychiatry visits, of poking, and prodding, and faces of poorly masked terror.
Three months of slop food, security, electric shocks, shackles on his wrists, a collar around his neck like someone’s badly behaved pet.
And in all that time, he only thought of one thing.
And that one thing was Wednesday Addams.
To be fair, he imagined that most people who met Wednesday Addams had a difficult time getting her out of their heads afterwards, but likely for entirely different feelings than he had. Distrust, perhaps, or unease. Maybe interest, maybe intrigue, maybe fascination, or shock, or maybe even fear. But not hate. After almost three months of stewing, of thinking, of pain and shock and disgust and anger, Tyler Galpin was sure. No one had ever had anyone the same way that, or as much as he hated Wednesday Addams.
And it was that. Hate. He’d thought he knew what it was like to hate someone, but the way he felt about Wednesday Addams was something he’d never even imagined before, let alone experienced. A way, a part of him knew, that he would never feel again.
It was a different hate than even Tyler had experienced before, he felt it. Different to how he’d hated the outcasts, before he became one of them. Different to how he’d hated his father. Different, even, to how he hated Laurel Gates.
He’d thought of his master less and less with every day he spent at Willow Hill, which was the only positive outcome he’d been able to discern around his containment. The first few days, she’d haunted him. He heard her voice in his head constantly, when awake, when asleep, when thinking about everything, anything else. He heard her commands, her compliments, heard her voice, so soft, so kind, and always so nurturing in the way she spoke to him, even when controlling his every action. She called him a good boy and told him she was proud of him, that everything would be okay, that he wasn’t alone anymore.
He didn’t know why he’d believed her, especially that last bit. Tyler Galpin was nothing if not alone. He had always been alone, and he would always be alone. Solitary. A lone creature. A solitary monster.
But at least out there, he’d had power. A semblance of control. The Hyde had given him that, and he wouldn’t take that back for anything. No part of him wanted to go back to the old Tyler, the weak one who had simply accepted that he’d never be anything.
Now, here, in the bright lights, the black collar burning against his neck and the shackles making bloodied dents into his skin, he almost felt like him again. Now, here, with the Hyde out of reach and all by himself. Alone. Solitary. Again. The cage confirmed that more than anything.
And she had put him here. Brilliant Wednesday Addams.
He closed his eyes, blocking out the room, and imagined her standing in front of him. Imagined himself, without the collars, without the shackles or the chains. Imagined transforming, the Hyde looming over her.
It had become a comforting habit over the past three months, to imagine the moment right before he killed her. He’d imagined it happening at Nevermore, right there on the school grounds, at the Weathervane, in its dull orange lighting, in the woods, or the cave, or even the crypt where he’d brought her for their first and only date. He imagined what she would look like, how she would stand, how she would look him in the eyes as she always did, like she could see through him, right down to his very heart and soul, or whatever was left of it.
But as many times as he’d imagined it, savoured it, felt the feelings that he imagined would come along with killing her, he could never imagine her scared while it happened. Her face haunted him in a different way to Laurel’s. In all the scenarios he’d made up in his dark, twisted mind, she always looked the same. Lips closed, unmoving. Eyes slightly narrowed, staring unflinchingly. Straight, black braids that curled up at the end. Feet planted to the ground. Arms stuck to her sides.
He supposed, even if you hated someone the way he did Wednesday, you could still have respect for them, and he at least respected her enough to not imagine her fearful, running, screaming. It was so very un-Wednesday that if he could’ve imagined her that way, it wouldn’t be worth it, because it wouldn’t be her.
He would imagine all the chances he’d had to kill her, before. The way she’d never known the danger she was in, though he doubted she would have cared even if she did.
And if his imagination brought him back to the quieter moments, the ones where he and Wednesday had been alone. When he remembered how she’d felt in his arms when he caught her after a vision, the way her eyes had softened if only for second when she’d seen the crypt lit up with the candles he’d set up, the way he could almost hear his heart speed up and beat so loudly he thought it might pound right through his chest with every one of the three steps she took toward him at the Weathervane before she’d kissed him for the first time – well, if those memories came up of their own accord, they only served as a reminder of why he hated her now.
There was no other word big enough to describe how Tyler Galpin thought about Wednesday Addams.