Chapter Text
Tyler's pov:
Tyler woke up in pieces.
Whilst this was not unusual to him anymore, it was still just as jarring every time.
The first thing to come back was his mind, obviously. It twitched back into motion like a recently dead bug, unsteady and purely out of reflex. The second thing to come back was his touch, as his brain desperately scrambled for memories of what he must have done, he became vividly aware that the skin of his arms, neck and face were tight with the pull of dried blood.
This was made more gruesome when the cloying stench of blood and viscera sank into his nose. It trickled down his throat like cough syrup, a suffocating reminder of what he had done. It didn't matter that he didn't remember most of it, or that he was being brainwashed to follow the whims of his master, he still committed atrocities that couldn't be undone.
Uncoordinated limbs flailed to push him up, shooting his face off of the forest floor to puke. He shivered as the heaves ripped undigested chunks of congealed blood from his throat, no debate there then, he had definitely killed something. sh*t.
The jittering in his arms only got worse as he tried to sit up properly. Tyler always felt weak after the transition, mentally and physically, but this time, this time was different. He didn't even know how he had changed, who had been controlling him, or how he had even gotten out of the asylum in the first place. Had his handler come back? God he hoped not.
His knees wobbled, but he tried to hoist himself upright against a tree nevertheless. Its rough bark scraped harsh lines up his bare back as he surveyed his gloomy surroundings. Just endless bouts of woodland, great. He needed to get out of here before... before what? And where would he even go? He was homeless. He couldn't go to work, he couldn't go back to his dad. All of his "friends" were narcissistic assholes who couldn't or wouldn't help him.
His only real friend, if you could call it that, was the one who had gotten him into the insane asylum in the first place. Wednesday. If she were any normal person, she wouldn't even think about taking him in. She would turn him away at the door, scared of what he could do to her. But then again, Wednesday wasn't just any normal person.
He needed shelter and she was, realistically, his only option. He started walking, there was a steadily growing trail of gore from where he had woken up and he decided to follow it. It had to lead somewhere right?
Wednesday's pov:
Her summer so far had been nothing short of a drag. Given her lively activities during the school year, her parents had taken it upon themselves to give her an uneventful break. The gap in the madness that was her life had given her time to think, and whilst she did enjoy the macabre content of her own thoughts, she was ready to get back into the action, whatever that may be.
Currently, she was filling her boredom with science by adding to her vast collection of preserved body parts. They sat in jars of fluid, adding to the unsettling vibe of her room with their eerie, unexplainable glow. Currently she was experimenting with the preservation of whole bodies by removing the organs, stuffing them and taking notes their level of decomposition each week. This week's candidate was an unfortunate mouse that she had found sniffing through her scalpel drawer.
Just as she was making the final stitch to close up her handiwork, the gratingly loud chords of their family phone rung throughout the house. This, whilst irritating, was also somewhat intriguing. Their landline was almost entirely controlled by the whims of the house who was known to be temperamental at best, so when the house did allow the phone to ring, it was usually of some importance.
What made it even more odd was that every family member they had, excluding Uncle Fester, used a crystal ball as their primary source of communication. Fester did call the line sometimes, but Wednesday knew for a fact that he was in hibernation this time of year so it couldn't be him.
The phone stopped ringing and she listened for a second, the house was quietly breathing in the midday heat, but did appear to be the only one doing so. Her family was on an outing, and Lurch was supposed to be watching her but he didn't breathe at all, so it was just her and the house, gently breathing.
Wednesday sighed and looked back down at her specimen, she just needed to snip that thread and- the phone rang again, spearing the silence obnoxiously. Why wasn't Lurch picking it up? He usually did..
Well, that was it, her curious nature had gotten the better of her, so she slid out of her room to follow the ringing.
When she reached the dusty old phone, still blaring out its ghastly tune, she picked up with no hesitation and took a second to just listen down the line before she spoke. Ragged breathing. Interesting, she thought.
"Addams residence, Wednesday speaking." Her tone was clipped, an abrupt attempt at forcing the person on the other end of the line to speak.
"Wedn- Wednesday?" Oh. She knew that voice, no matter how cracked and broken it was.
"Tyler, unless this is your one call from the asylum, which I advise you use to call anyone else, you had better have a very good excuse for contacting me."
Tyler wracked out a cough down the phone, but gathered himself enough to reply, "I'm sorry Wednesday, you were the only person I could call," she noted how his voice shook like he had been crying, "I don't know how but I think the monster broke out and- and I don't know where I am but- but I found a backpack on a hiker with a phone and I called and oh my god I think I killed him- " Tyler's voice rose in pitch at the end, falling into a raw sob that sounded almost painful.
Wednesday concluded that he must not be thinking straight, and so she would have to do some detective work to figure out where he was and what had happened.
"Tyler, slow down, what can you see right now?"
"I- there's trees.."
"Anything a little more noteworthy? You're calling me so you must be close to somewhere that has signal."
She heard him rustle around, presumably getting to his feet.
"There's uh, there's a trail," then slightly quieter, "oh my god there's so much blood."
Okay, a trail, she could work with that. The asylum was surrounded with a thick forest, presumably he hadn't made it any further than that. There was a village downhill from there, where he could find help. But then again.. his going rampant was certainly cause for concern, was Laurel back? Who was controlling Tyler if not her, the beast would be unpredictable if it had no master.. Wednesday made the split second decision that she would need to study him more, and for that, she needed to bring him to her lab -at least she would get some use out of the cage.
"Tyler, I want you to follow alongside the trail going downhill. If you see anyone, drop to the floor and hide. Understood?"
"Okay, okay I can do that. What should I do when I get down there?"
"Find the town, stay out of sight, and keep that phone on you, I will call you again when we are looking for you, okay?"
"You're coming to get me?" The disbelief was evident in his tone, clearly he hadn't actually been expecting any help.
"Yes we are, go to the town and stay out of sight, got it?"
"Yeah, thank you Wed-"
She hung up the phone.
"Lurch, we have an experiment to pick up."
Tyler's pov:
She had given him very clear instructions. Don't be seen, wait for her. He could do that, sure.
Tyler was still buck naked, having been unable to stomach taking the dead hikers clothes, and was now shivering uncontrollably. The blanket that he had taken covered very little and despite the fact that it was supposed to be summer, there was a thick fog rolling in. It licked up the back of his legs and pooled on the floor, freezing his ankles and feet, which made walking just that little bit more difficult.
The other thing that made it harder to walk was the sizeable gashes that zig-zagged his body. He hadn't mentioned these to Wednesday on the phone, but they were all fairly deep and he was pretty sure that they were self inflicted.
When he first started transforming and being controlled by.. her. He used to wake up, much like he did this time, face down on the forest floor, covered in blood. He had the theory that; at the beginning, the beast was so out of control that it ripped into itself as well as others, but as its master got more control over it, this stopped happening. It was a violent thing that needed a good master, and if it didn't have one, it went rabid.
Anyway, these gashes were freely oozing, cracking open as he moved and adding to the layers of filth and dried blood that were already plastered to his skin. Every step he took through the undergrowth caused pain to lance through them, not helped by the leafy understory the kept snagging on the blanket, his skin and his hair, pulling him apart like a loosely wraveled ball of wool.
Through the sheen of pain that had dark spots dancing across his vision, he could make out the utter emptiness of the path. It curved slightly away from him, leading further down the forested hill, and closer to society.
The next 20 minutes of agonised shuffling took him to the edge of a town, this must have been what she meant. She had told him to go to the town and hide right? He could do that.
It would probably also be helpful to find a road name or something that she could find him by. That was easy, he just had to stay undetected.
He used the cover of the backs of houses to make his way closer to the center of town, no one was really out at this time of day, considering how early it was. The phone he had stolen from the hiker that he killed said that it was currently 3am, which seemed correct considering the early light of day that was beginning to make a crack in the dark. He concluded that he would have to find somewhere to hunker down soon else he would absolutely be discovered.
Where could he go that no one would find him until Wednesday got there? Anywhere in town would be too obvious, by now the asylum would surely be looking for him and they would search all of the town and.. oh, of course. The graveyard. No one looks for the living in a place made for the dead, it could work.
He could see the spire of what he assumed was the town's Church, and so, began the arduous walk.
