Chapter Text
The chains weighed heavily.
The sedatives they constantly fed him dulled his senses, prevented him from thinking, and put him in a vegetative state, but the beast lived inside him — and still tried to take its reign, struggling in rage, unable to break free.
It was the most vivid emotion he felt. The feeling that dominated his entire caged life.
He doesn't know how much time has passed. The light gray room — almost empty, without a single crack in the ceiling — became his personal torture. Solid gray, gray, gray — a gray bed, gray clothes, a gray washbasin — and not a single bright spot to distract his thoughts.
Only his own skin...
When they release him from his chains, he sits on the bed for days, staring at his palms — for them it might seem that he is thinking, perhaps plotting an escape or, conversely, taking steps toward redemption. But no. In this gray hell, it is impossible to think about anything.
Only to exist.
I hate, hate, hate, I want fresh flesh, I want to tear their faces apart, I want to break out of here and gut everyone who put me here — even your father, especially your father...
He doesn't know how long he's been in solitary confinement when they finally start reducing his medication. When it dawns on him, he and Hyde are different personalities. Not the same... not anymore. Why?
No one gives him an answer. On the contrary, they remain silent, as if deliberately, but more likely, he realizes after a while, simply out of disgust and habit.
He is destined to die here: why bother with unnecessary pleasantries?
He has no calendar, no connection to anyone — not even Donovan — which, however, may be a good thing. His father doesn't need a son like that, and after what he's done, no one would even want to look in his direction. Certainly not the man who raised him, perpetually dissatisfied with any of his pursuits: from his desire to learn to play the drums to his attempts to earn a living so he could save up some money to escape.
It didn't work out. Both times, or rather, two and a half. Gloomy, quiet Jericho was quite the leech.
He is an outcast. Among strangers and among his own people, whom he never knew. A puppet. A tool that would be crushed to dust when it was no longer needed.
Whose thoughts were these? His? Or Hyde's? Do they have anything in common besides the body they share now?
At some point, Tyler becomes aware of his surroundings, catches himself as the fog in his head finally clears. It throws him off balance so much that he gets up and, rattling his loosened chains, begins to pace around the room, trying to calm his awakened mind, which has broken out of its anabiosis.
Even the sound of metal clanging, suddenly breaking through the vacuum in his head, is revealed to be pleasant.
He freezes when the realization of what has happened dawns on him. Full awareness — not the pitiful fragments of his own comforting explanations.
Thornhill-Gates — injecting him with some kind of drug, torturing him, controlling him — whom he obediently and willingly obeyed, completely forgetting how she awakened Hyde.
Hyde, his sinister half, awakening at his will and without any reason, killing, making him fear this power, making him... revel in it. Wanting more. Wanting to take what is his and show himself.
Fuck. What has he become?!
His father, the man he was so angry with, is surely lost and disappointed in him as never before — and now he finally has a fair reason. They didn't get along after his mother's death, but Tyler isn't ready, doesn't want to lose him too. If he hasn't already lost him...
"It's his fault," flashes through his mind, and he feels his muscles become heavy, his chest tighten, his hands clench into fists. "He turned his back on you, he didn't even visit you once, and he hid from you what happened to your mother, the one who gave us life"...
"Enough," he replies quietly, gritting his teeth and trying to steady his breathing. He is sick and tired of these subconscious games, these games of hide-and-seek with what remains of his humanity.
"He shot you," the monster spits out in response, and Tyler feels a flash of anger, followed by disappointment and shame.
"He should have stopped me," he mutters quietly to himself as he sits down on the bed. "He should have done it sooner."
So he wouldn't have hurt Wednesday.
No, no, no... He doesn't want to think about her and shamefully brushes away his own thoughts — but there is nothing to distract him, and his own disappointment, bitter, tearing at his chest — it forces him to slide off the bed onto the floor, right onto his knees, and he is ready to spread out there in his own powerlessness, just to feel something other than the heart-wrenching pain.
"You liked it..."
He feels Hyde's rise again and tries to fight it, to shut him down — but he doesn't argue, no, he feels more like echoes of emotions that Tyler himself intuitively perceives as some kind of message. The emotions he experiences, not willing to fully recognize...
Fuck.
He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.
The truth is, he really enjoyed feeling superior. Not physically — which had brought euphoria and then become tiresome — but intellectually. He had deceived her, made her open up, messed her perspective, and never aroused any suspicion... He made her interested in him, charmed even, and, naturally, she ended up being deceived with the ease of a gambler, who didn't even have to shuffle the cards for his benefit.
She could have been smarter, he thinks angrily. So much of her ego, so much feigned discernment, and her always presenting detachment — and for what? To die in a fucking crypt?
Tyler is angry at himself.
An excuse of a man. A filth.
He could have been indifferent to her — truly, from the very beginning. But no, he decided to help a casual acquaintance, and then he even stood up for her in front of those assholes from his school.
Stupid nobility, spurred on by Hyde's instincts. And what did it lead to?
He became a puppet, now perfectly aware that he had no right to his own feelings.
Hyde really wants to break free, but Tyler knows, feels that now is not the time, that if he loses it now, they will pump them full of sedative shit again and keep them strictly locked up again.
He persuades himself, argues with himself, and writhes in pain, holding back the transformation — and, to his surprise, Hyde reluctantly obeys.
A few days later, they gave him a black notebook and a pen — they say he can write down his thoughts if he is ready for visits and conversation with a psychologist.
So he writes. To his surprise, and not without a pang of his pride and doubt, but... loneliness has begun to wear on him. Even though he hasn't been truly alone for a long time.
If he has a chance to diversify his boring time somehow, he will take it. His hunch tells him that this is the right thing to do, that it will lead to something — except that he should keep his thoughts to himself for now...
After a few weeks, he developed a precise routine.
Morning: breakfast, toilet and shower, quick exercises. He mentions in his notebook that he likes some physical extortion; a couple of days later, he is chained to the corner of the room for a while, and a horizontal bar is installed on the wall.
He also does not disdain books — among those offered to him are both the frankly graphomaniacal The Devil in Me, the Devil in You, about how to control the inner beast by occasionally feeding it, and time-tested works of fiction. Agatha Christie, Crime and Punishment — they're clearly mocking him, aren't they?
Tyler reads. He enjoys every line, developing a new routine, grounding himself, trying to make the best of his excuse of a life with what he has now.
And yet he is angry. Several times, he allows Hyde to break free, while surprisingly, he does not merge with Tyler himself. Was that the point of their medicine?
The guards, however, do not punish him for this in any way — on the contrary, it seems they were prepared for such a turn of events, because the last time they even threw a motionless deer into his cell.
Not a human being, did not put up a decent fight and did not even scream — but Hyde thoroughly enjoyed the doomed horror emanating from what turned out to be a very much alive — just sedated — animal.
Tyler feels disgusted.
Waking up a few days later, he sees a mirror above the sink and looks into it for the first time in god knows how long it's been and doesn't recognize himself.
His hair and stubble have grown, his face is gaunt, and his eyes are bloodshot, but his body, thanks to his new routine, seems to be regaining its former shape.
A couple of days later, he gets a pair of scissors and a razor.
Surprisingly, no one seems to care that he could slit his wrists. However, it is unlikely that this would kill him — the Hyde flash regenerates surprisingly fast.
To hell with it. He trims his overgrown hair and shaves with trembling fingers; while he has no one to impress, it feels surprisingly pleasant to freshen up a bit.
As if he has any influence over his own life.
He is allowed to write a letter to his dad next. After scribbling a bunch of pages, Tyler finally finds the right words for apology and acceptance. Short, dry, perhaps insufficient to change anything... but he should have given it a shot. Even while a part of him is still angry and craves confrontation with the coward who had only come here a few times, not allowed to really talk with him.
Thinking it over and ignoring the sarcastic voice in his head, he decides that if his mother was a Hyde and went through the same thing, it really wasn't a topic his father was ready to talk about. And he's ready to accept that, at least try to — after all, his Hyde has already manifested itself and nothing can be changed at this point. He has no one but his father now, and Tyler wants to reach out to him, to try again, even if he refuses. Trying is all he has left.
And yet Tyler hopes that someday his dad will be ready — someday, in six months, a year, or even a decade — and they will be able to talk about his mother. To remember her, not ignore the ghost of the past; to honor her and... finally let her go.
It feels bitter, but right. Perhaps if staying in silence and within four walls has given him anything, it is a strange case of composure and clarity of thought. As far as the thoughts of a creature like him can be coherent at all. He tries not to think about the fact that his mother was also a Hyde, and therefore her death could have been accompanied by something terrible.
Days drag on, the gray routine ceases to be as gray, and the isolation ward gradually becomes filled with new small pieces, becoming his, Tyler's, refuge.
A collection of Edgar Allan Poe stories on the shelf, a lined sheet of A4 paper on which he has sketched his silhouette and the huge shadow of a Hyde looming behind, a leather notebook on a wooden table — it's not much, but it's cozy in its own way and a clear indication that he has finally settled in here.
He even feels sorry when he finally meets his dad and some important bigwig from the new authorities; not to talk about his improvements, not to feel some parental warmth, or to hear what is happening to him and what awaits him. No. Instead, they make him an offer that scares the shit out of him — and one he can't refuse.
Hyde is quite pleased with himself.
He takes time to think. He would like his father to discuss it with him before presenting him with a fact.
It's clear as day: they've already decided everything for him.
Somewhere in the distance, a raven caws.
***
Xavier wants to tear his skin off.
Every time he interacts with his father, he feels like he's talking to a wall — a living pedestal of indifference and disappointment in his own son, who hasn't had time to grow up but has already dared not to reach the expected heights.
He checks his phone and reminds himself that there are only a few days left before he returns to Nevermore.
Thank God. Finally, he will be able to engage in artwork without feeling tense every time he hears short, rare, but invariably contemptuous sighs behind his back — and, of course, life at the academy is much more spirited than at home, where his days have turned into an endless routine.
There are no special entertainments at home except for drawing, archery, and attempts to bring his creations to life... except for the game console, which he prudently plays only when his father is out, and the phone — all vacation he lazily exchanged messages with Ajax and Kent, and wrote to Wednesday a couple of times.
Not that she was particularly eager to communicate.
However, he didn't insist. To some extent, this even surprised him: he had craved her attention so much last semester, and now he was unexpectedly understanding of her personal boundaries. Had the fact that she had shielded him from the arrow become his closure? Was it because she had made it clear that she didn't believe him at all when she had him imprisoned? Or maybe it's about being understanding of her wishes and knowing there's no point in bothering her?
Xavier listens to his own feelings and finds no answer — he only knows that last year's obsession is gone. It even makes him feel a slight surge of pride. Perhaps he has simply grown up.
The next morning greets him with an empty house and a curt note from his father — yet another expression of contempt for his own flesh and blood. They don't even live like cat and dog — they live like neighbors who disdain each other and are forced to share the same territory.
If it weren't for his genes, capable of bringing paintings to life, Xavier would seriously wonder if Vincent was really his father.
He really wants to move out. Guess what? His father won't let him. He keeps him on a leash like a mutt, throwing him into Nevermore, only to pull on the leash again for reasons he kept to himself.
"Well," Xavier muses, carrying his suitcases down the stairs and glancing at the taxi that has already arrived, "at least these holidays are finally over."
His father is a fucking asshole.
