Chapter Text
All the years he'd lived here, he had never seen birds act like this. They appeared to be following him in a coordinated manner. Corvids were smart and organized, no doubt about it, but this was like stalking. They moved like a special forces unit. It was why he had asked Wednesday for help - because this was outcast, for sure.
Grim, macabre satisfaction that he had been right was his last conscious thought as red-eyed crow pecked his eyes from their sockets.
He came to awareness more slowly than he'd have liked. He remained motionless for a moment, listening carefully. Slowly he pressed his hand against the floor but felt no vibrations. He came to a stand, falling into a defensive position as he looked around. He turned a full circle but it appeared to be naught but any empty room on all sides.
"Sheriff." Said a voice he recognized. He spun to face her.
"Addams."
"Yes," she said blonde pig tails gleaming. (Blonde?) "Not that one. I have an offer for you."
"Pass," he responded, moving to the walls in an attempt to find an exit. "Interacting with your kind has, so far, gotten me fired, killed and mutilated peri-mortem by a murder of crows."
"It's the least boring thing that's ever happened to you." She drawled, "and the son I'm offering an opportunity to save is 'my kind', let me remind you."
"What do you mean I could save Tyler?"
"Why are all of my charges obsessed with that boy?" she muttered under her breath and Donovan for his own sanity, ignored this.
"Addams. What do you mean?"
"Timelines are less lines and more matrices. One of my gifts is the ability to help people move within the time line," she tipped her head thoughtfully, "or to remain within it. But there can only be one you in the time line. I can move this you into that time but that you disappears. You can prevent Laurel from unlocking the Hyde in your son, or at least from mastering it."
"What do I need to do?" It seemed to incredible to be believed but if there was any possibility, even the slightest chance then-
"You need only believe it can be done. And yet, a word of caution. At the moment you go back, you will know all that is to come because for you it is the past. As you begin to make alterations, what comes next will be altered, your knowledge imperfect and then you are doing little more than making an educated guess. If things unfold in a different way, nor different enough, the whole world will end." Alright, he thinks, if the whole world ends then I'm dead, too, so it's not really my problem. Her cheeks curve into a small smile as though she knows what he is thinking.
"I'm in."
At once, the light goes out of the room and then with a spinning sensation he goes out of it, too.
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"Because," Tyler was saying, still in the suit he'd worn to court, as Donovan landed in the time line, "he's a spoiled little rich shit with no concept of adversity and no awareness of his privilege."
Donovan has landed seconds before he sent Tyler to boot camp after his assault arrest and stint in juvie. He remembers what he said last time, how he had invalidated Tyler's feelings, how he had piled on more punishment to the time in juvie, the court ordered therapy and the probation. Knows he has to go the exact opposite direction, even as the words feel foreign coming out of his mouth. "It must've been painful to feel so angry. And I understand being angry that somebody otherwise so much like you could just have everything and not know it."
"That freak is nothing like me." This is a mere month before 'Marilyn Thornhill' first makes contact with Tyler, according to her notes, and he cannot fuck this up.
"There's something I need to tell you about your Mom," he says, "about the angry outbursts she used to have as well, and the real reason I've kept you away from the outcasts." He puts a hand on Tyler's shoulder, a gesture which feels unfamiliar and God he really had been a shit dad, hadn't he? "And then I need to apologize." Tyler's jaw dropped, and God he really had been a shitty person, too, it seemed. "Let's go home."
He has no idea what he's changed with this move, if anything, but Tyler doesn't shrug his hand off the whole way to the car, and it feels like a step in the right direction.