Archive of Our Own ^beta

He comes to visit her while she’s in the hospital. She senses his presence as soon as he enters the room, his silence and stealth could perhaps be admirable to anyone who wasn’t her. She’d contemplated ignoring him, but she knows it’s a petty and useless belief to think that she can will him away through sheer determination alone. When she feels the foot of her borrowed hospital cot dip beneath his weight is when she reluctantly pries her eyes open. It’s nothing more than a dream of course, her subconscious’ harsh reminder that it can conjure up even more haunting horrors to terrorize her with now that she has been unwillingly subjected to prolonged sleep and is essentially defenseless.

He looks ridiculous perched on the edge of her bed in a pair of presumably stolen scrubs, gazing down at her with red-rimmed eyes and a carefully blank expression on his face that doesn’t suit him.  His skin has taken on a sickly pallor, his once golden curls dirty and helplessly tangled, matted to his forehead, and he looks in considerably worse shape than the last time she had seen him at Willow Hill, something she hadn’t thought possible. She has never truly been scared of him– would sooner accept her premature demise at his hands than give him the satisfaction of flinching or quivering in his presence. But it’s the quiet and unsuspecting moments like this that frighten her the most; when she can’t recognize anything human in him at all– when she fails to tell where the normie boy ends and the murderous monster starts. 

His expression shifts when he realizes she’s awake, and he grins at her, but it isn’t real, another expression that doesn’t belong on his face, stretched too wide and dripping with scorn and ire. 

“Can’t say you’re a sight for sore eyes.” He whistles quietly, his eyes raking over her body pointedly, and she doesn’t know who he is performing for when it’s just the two of them trapped in this twisted hallucination induced by her comatose state. “Looks like someone did a number on you.” 

“Speak for yourself. Those generic looks of yours ended up fading even faster than I previously anticipated,” she remarks drily, pushing herself into a sitting position with somewhat difficulty. “You’re looking positively ghastly, and that isn’t a compliment.” 

“And you look downright cadaverous, so I guess you could say that makes us a match made in Hell.”

Wednesday bristles with indignation. She knows he means to get under her skin with his words, reminders that there was once something between them that had been allowed to fester against her better judgement; morbid curiosity, fatal intrigue, parasitic affection. And the insinuation that there could be something between them again if she so desired, something real, consecrated in blood and violence and the irrefutable truth of who they are and what they’ve done. She knows that to want him again is a death wish.

She chooses self-preservation and ignores his attempts at flirting or goading, whatever he insists upon calling it. “This is twice now you’ve failed in murdering me. I hope for your sake you’re not here to finish the job. I don’t know that your fragile psyche could withstand another thwarted homicide.”

His eyes snap to hers and the ghost of a smile, a genuine smile, tugs at his lips, and the mere sight of it feels like a blade pressed to her throat. “Well, you know what they say,” he drawls sarcastically, “third time’s the charm.” 

“Oh, please,” she murmurs. “That’s nothing more than the fallacy of maturity of chances.” 

“And in layman’s terms..?” 

He’s teasing her. His smile is full-blown now, and she hates it, because if she were to close her eyes, she imagines she would be able to lose herself in that smile, in another dream; one where she is not currently condemned to a hospital bed, and Tyler is not her would-be murderer who has sentenced her to this grueling fate. A world in which they are back in Jericho, where mystery and horror doesn’t loom over their heads at every turn, taunting them, a world of their own where they are tucked into the corner booth at the Weathervane, where he is nothing more than the eager to please barista with a bite to him that she’d fought against falling for. She can pretend that this conversation is happening there, in that fantasy realm, where they flirt in a way that is uniquely their own, through quick-witted quips and insults that bounce off harmlessly instead of burrowing and metastasizing. But Wednesday doesn’t daydream, she doesn’t even hope things could be different. She doesn’t fence against phantoms or grapple with ghosts or deal with anything that isn’t ground in reality, no matter how harrowing and bleak that reality may be. She won’t lose to him or herself in this damned nightmare.

Her gaze hardens and she frowns at him, any trace of feigned indifference at his presence vanishing in an instant. “What are you doing here, Tyler?” 

He senses the shift in her demeanor and the smile falls from his face, all the playfulness disappearing just as quickly as it had appeared. He rolls his eyes, and she decides in that moment she loathes this version of him the most; the walking corpse that combats her attitude with vile derision of his own, that gazes at her like she is nothing more than a particularly grating pest that he wants to crush beneath the heel of his boot. 

“I don’t know, Wednesday,” he shoots back. “What am I doing here?” 

She’s angry instead of irritated now, not liking his tone of voice and the implications it harbors, that there exists a possibility that she wants him here, taking up room in her head, occupying space in her private thoughts even if it's only in the depths of her subconscious.

“How should I know what drives a psychopath? I have no idea what ulterior motives you may have for being here, and I don’t care to. So if you’re not here to kill me, you should leave. Now. Because if you insist upon lingering, a bruised ego will be the least of your concerns.”

She thinks this should be enough to banish him from the room, from her mind. This is her dream after all, and if she doesn’t want him here, it should stand to reason that she’s able to do away with him with a curl of her lips and a dismissive flick of her wrist. He rises from the bed but moves no further than that.

“You came to visit me at Willow Hill. Is it so wrong that I wanted to return the favor?” He tilts his head to the side and blinks innocently at her.

“Don’t flatter yourself baselessly when I’ve already shattered your pathetic fantasy once before. I was there for information, and as usual, you proved yourself to be utterly useless.”

“Are you sure about that, Wednesday? Or were you there because you wanted to see me chained up and subdued? On my knees and at your mercy.” 

Heat rises to her cheeks and beneath her skin her blood boils. “Of course not–.”

“You know what the difference is between you and me? I know what I am, I know what I’ve done, and I don’t waste time making excuses for it. You act like you’re attracted to the darkness, but you’re not. You’re nothing but a liar. Because when you’re confronted with real darkness, mine or your own, you recoil. You’d rather shove it down deep inside and bury it instead of confronting it. I embrace it.”

She rolls her eyes, she can’t help it. She knows he just wants to rile her up, make her snap. She refuses to play into his hands, refuses to relinquish any sort of control to him. “Yes, you’ve caught me. My entire upbringing is falsified, my whole personality is fabricated.”

“Careful, it sounds like you’re deflecting.”

“Is that what you think?”

“What I think is that you’ve barely scratched the surface of your own depravity because you’re scared it makes you no better than me.”

She scoffs. “You’re utterly ridiculous and far too self-obsessed.” Her eyes flick to the clock on the opposite wall. “Are you not humiliated to stay so long somewhere you’re obviously not wanted?”

Tyler raises his hands in front of his chest, a concession, and takes one step back, then two. “You really want me to leave?” 

“Yes. I really do.” Because he’s right. She cannot even be honest with herself in the confines of her own mind. He had disassembled her all those months ago when their paths had first crossed; when their fates had become intertwined. He’d sliced her open with zero finesse and carved out a place for himself in the cavity of her chest. He had come to learn of all the ruin that lurked in her calamitous heart and he had smiled unafraid in the face of it. He’d gazed at her so sweetly, cradled her face so gently, kissed her so tenderly, and still had betrayed her like it meant nothing, like she meant nothing. But she’d been no better. She’d tortured him with the hideous truth of his nature in the dark and ran away like a coward when it was all brought to the light. How does something like this happen? How does one fall in love with a stranger, a monster, and become one themself? 

“Alright.” He shrugs and shoves his hands into his pockets. “Don’t regret it.”

She says nothing, keeps her lips pressed into a thin line as he stages his retreat and makes his way toward the door, and she finds herself wondering for the first time what it must have been like for him; the moment that she turned her back on him with such finality, leaving him with nothing but her cruel parting words to keep him company in that abysmal cell in Willow Hill. Had it felt like a knife twisting in his side, a purposefully slow and agonizing death? Had the poison of her presence and her ridicule left a bitter taste on his tongue as he overdosed on it? Had he felt even a fraction of what she is feeling now as she watches him leave? 

If this is what he has reduced her to, what level of Hell had she dragged him to and abandoned him in? 

She doesn’t dream of him again, which does little to relieve her, because the guilt continues to eat her alive. She wakes from her coma two days later and is discharged from the hospital in record time through the help of some particularly creative verbal threats directed at her bumbling doctor. She feels almost bad seeing the old woman trip over herself in her haste to get out of Wednesday’s way, but she really shouldn’t have insisted on trying to extend her stay. 

Enid, as expected, is the first person to greet her when she returns to Nevermore, throwing her arms around Wednesday as she sobs into her shoulder. Wednesday squirms in her embrace and awkwardly pats her back in an attempt to console her distraught friend. 

“Oh, Wednesday! I was so scared when I saw you come crashing out of that window, and there was so much blood, and you weren’t moving, and I thought you were dead–!” Enid pulls away just enough to glare at her. “Don’t ever do that to me again!” 

Wednesday suppresses a smile. “No need for all the theatrics. You could never rid yourself of me so easily.”

“It isn’t funny, Wednesday! It was really terrifying. Not to mention when they caught Tyler sneaking out of your room in the hospital, we all thought he’d come back to smother you in your sleep or something, thank God he didn’t, but isn’t it just so creepy–.”

Wednesday’s heart plummets into her stomach as she listens to Enid’s rambling, and she wrestles herself out of the girl’s grasp as she tries to maintain control of her breathing. “Enid.” Her blood roars in her ears and she can barely hear her own voice, hoping her best friend can’t detect the tremble in it. “What are you talking about?”

Enid’s brows draw together in concern. “Nobody told you?”

“Told me what?”

“About Tyler. How he somehow managed to get into your hospital room sometime after visiting hours were over and no one even noticed until he was already leaving.”  

“I don’t understand.” Her vision starts to blur and she has to blink rapidly to regain focus. “When did this happen?”

“A couple days before you woke up.. Wednesday? What’s wrong? Are you still not feeling well?” 

Wednesday staggers backwards, and Enid rushes to support her, but Wednesday waves her off even as she feels her composure slipping, the cracks in her façade growing wider, deeper.

“I’m fine, Enid. Your concern is nauseating, but nevertheless appreciated. I just need a moment to compose myself, I’m a little..unsettled.” 

“If you’re sure..” Enid trails off and gazes at her uncertainly. 

“I’m sure,” Wednesday nods firmly, but her mind is reeling. How is she meant to decipher what is fake, when she is confronted now with the fact that some of it must have been true? How much of what he’d said to her were his actual thoughts and feelings, his brutal honesty spilling out only when he knew she couldn’t respond? How much of it was wishful thinking on her part, a figment of her dreadful dreaming? She can never be certain. It’s a disconcerting feeling, one she is unaccustomed to.

“If you say so!” Enid chirps and loops her arm through Wednesday’s. “It’s just so good to have you back and in one piece! Not to be morbid, but I’m soooo curious, what was it like–being in a coma? Can you remember anything?”

“No,” Wednesday says slowly. “Not really.”

“I bet you regret it now,” Enid teases. “Not listening to me when you had the chance.”

“Don’t be absurd, Enid. There is nothing in this world that I regret.” 

Tyler had been right. She is nothing more than a liar.