I don't want your crown (1/1)
Title: I Don't Want Your Crown
Recipient: misspopuri
Prompt: Tyler, Freewill
Author: lynzie914
Characters/Pairings: Tyler Lockwood, mentions of almost everyone else.
Word Count: 4195
Rating/Warnings: PG-13 (for language and mentions of abuse)
Spoilers: Spans season two up to the season three finale.
Summary: Freedom never comes without a price and sometimes chains don’t just come off. Instead they’re replaced with heavier, sturdier shackles that are that much harder to be rid of.
A/N: Written for the tvdfic_exchange. I’ve never written Tyler before, but something about this prompt wouldn’t let me do anything else, hopefully you like this and it’s what you were looking for. Big thanks to elenarain for being so incredibly nice and betaing for me last minute. I totally owe you one.
When Tyler’s father dies, his mother sends him to a shrink. She says he has to talk about his feelings, has to get it out. She says that she knows he doesn’t want to talk to her, but maybe this will help.
Tyler thinks he might have talked to her if she gave him the chance, but he doesn’t say it out loud. (He’s not sure if it’s the truth anyways. He knows it will make her cry.)
So he goes, because his mother wants him to and his mother hasn’t smiled since his father died and keeps pretending it’s just coffee in her cup and nothing else. He doesn’t want to upset her more.
The psychiatrist pesters him with questions, but doesn’t seem to like the one word responses he gives. Eventually, they stop asking him questions about his feelings and try to get him to talk on his own.
That doesn’t work either. Mostly they just stare at each other for a while and it costs his mom more money than it should.
But it makes her happy, so Tyler keeps going.
--
Sometimes Tyler gets angry, so angry everything else seemed to fade away.
Angry at his father for dying. Angry at his mother for missing him. Angry at the town for mourning a man they never really knew. Angry at himself for hating his father and missing him at the same time. Angry at Mason for not being there until now, for not even fully being there now that he was.
Sometimes it just felt easier to be angry. Most of the time it felt like he didn’t have a choice but to be angry.
--
The psychiatrist asks him how it feels without his father being around.
Tyler can’t tell him the truth. Can’t bring himself to say it out loud, to admit it. If his mother ever found out, she’d burst in to tears, he was sure.
It’s weird, he says instead, but I’m fine.
I feel like I can actually breathe, he doesn’t say but he can feel the weight of the words around him.
--
He had forced the answer out of Mason, made him tell him what it took to become a werewolf, to trigger the curse. He had thought it would be better to know. Thought it would help.
Tyler was wrong.
Instead the truth hung over him, in the air. It was always there, choking him. His future waiting for him.
His father had had his future mapped out for him since he was born. What college he would go to and the football scholarship that would get him there. (That and the large endowment Richard Lockwood would be sure to make.) Where and when he would marry and what families were acceptable to marry into. (The Donovans were not among them.) His career path, serving on the city council until eventually he replaced his father as the town mayor. (Mystic Falls always had a Lockwood in office; they didn’t know how to properly function without it.)
It was the same path his grandfather had set out for him, and his father before that.
His father never told him what being a Lockwood really meant. Never told him about the blood that would eventually be on his hands. Never told him how cautious he had to be, how much control was necessary.
That was the one thing he was grateful to his father for.
--
Sarah was dead and Mason is gone and Matt won’t talk to him, won’t even look at him.
Normally, that would be what Tyler would want. Because for once Matt had been the dick taunting him and Tyler had been the innocent party and he thinks Matt deserved to grovel a little bit, like he had to all those times before.
But Tyler wasn’t really all that innocent and while Matt had been unconscious on the floor, Tyler had been the one to push Sarah into a desk and crack her skull open. And now Matt won’t talk to him and his mother rambles on and on about things that don’t matter whenever she’s around him and Mason isn’t there.
Tyler doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do.
--
Tyler forces Caroline to tell him the truth and it’s easier than what it was with Mason. She slams him into the wall (like Mason did) and throws him to the floor, but eases it with a smile and an apology.
She talks to him, tells him the truth and opens up a whole new world to him. One full of monsters, just like him, and she hugs him and promises him it will be okay.
He doesn’t believe her of course, but the lie is nice to hear just the same.
--
His psychiatrist asks him about Sarah, asks him about how he feels about what happened. About how another death, so close to home and so soon after his father’s, has affected him.
Tyler remains silent. He ignores the part of him that wants to hurt him, to break the man in front of him like the animal inside of him wants too.
--
It gets a tiny bit easier after he finds out that Caroline is in on all of it. When she is there and telling him all of these things and promising him that it’ll get easier.
It’s easier for Tyler to put it all on her. She lets him, she’s a control freak and he thinks she likes it just a little, even if she doesn’t realize it. But she handles it all so well, figures it out and makes plans. She whispers encouraging words and tells him it’s all going to be okay.
And sometimes he even believes her.
It’s easy to give her the power, to give her the control. Tyler doesn’t know what to do with it.
--
He thought that he was prepared for it, that he was ready for the pain and the horror.
He was wrong. So terribly terribly wrong.
--
Jules appears in town and the truth starts to come out.
(Caroline is not the only vampire in town. His uncle is not in Florida. He is surrounded by monsters and no one thought for a moment to tell him the truth.)
He backs Caroline up to her car, his hands grasping her coat, anger drowning everything else out. She looks at him the same way his mother used to look at his father whenever he got angry and that hurts just as much as all the lies did. Maybe more.
He thought going to her would make him feel better. He thought the truth would make him feel better. He thought that maybe, it was all just one big lie, that Jules had been wrong. He thought that all this anger, all this hate, maybe it could solve something. Maybe it would be useful. Maybe it would show her something, show her what she was dealing with.
Tyler was always wrong. He was so fucking tired of being wrong.
He let his hands slip away from her and stalks away.
--
Jules and her friends take Caroline. They take her and lock her in a cage and do god knows what, but the look on Stefan’s face tells him it isn’t good.
That isn’t what he wanted. Even with Mason dead and Stefan’s threats and all of the lies, that was never what he wanted. None of this was what he wanted.
But Caroline had lied to him. He had trusted her, trusted her more than anyone else. He had told her everything, depended on her, let her see him cry. And it was just a lie. And he wasn’t done being angry, was still confused. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do, what he was supposed to feel.
(Vampires and werewolves are enemies. Vampires lie. Vampires don’t care about anyone but themselves. These are the things Jules as told him. These are the things that got Mason killed.)
And for a moment, he just stops. He sees Jules with a gun to her back and Stefan and Damon lying on the floor and everything stops.
He has a decision to make but there is no one there to make it for him and he doesn’t know what to do.
--
Brady offers Tyler a bottle of whiskey and he takes it.
Brady presses a gun into his hands and Tyler takes that too.
Brady ends up with his heart in Stefan’s hand and the rest of the pack follows in his footsteps when they attack the Salvatore boarding house.
Tyler isn’t good at making decisions for himself. But he’s starting to think other people aren’t that good at making them for him either.
--
Caroline hates him and when he thinks about it too hard, sometimes he hates her too. (It’s easier to hate her then to remember her arms around him as he cried, to remember her risking her life to help him. Anger is easier than forgiveness. Hate is easier than everything else for him.) Matt hates him too, thinks he’s sleeping with Caroline and not telling him. Thinks he’s the terrible person that Tyler knows he is.
He’s sure his mother would hate him too if she knew everything. Thinks that she would hate and love him the same way she did his father. More than anything else, he didn’t want to be his father.
So when Jules offers an out, Tyler takes it.
She promises to teach him, to show him, to make him a better werewolf. Jules offers to take over the role Mason was supposed to have, that Caroline had last held, and he doesn’t even hesitate before he says yes.
He can’t stay in Mystic Falls, he can’t. But he doesn’t know how to do this on his own.
--
He gets a message on his phone from his mother, hours after he’s left. He thought it would take her longer before she found the letter in the foyer.
She begs him to come back and he hits delete.
Matt leaves a message too, tells him that his mom is worried sick, to come back home. He doesn’t talk about himself, doesn’t say he wants him there.
Tyler hits delete again.
His freaking psychologist leaves a message too. Tells him he’s missed his last two appointments and he’s ‘concerned’.
Tyler laughs at that one.
--
There’s another full moon and Tyler transform again. There aren’t any chains this time, no wolfsbane to make him weaker, and no one to tell him it will be okay.
Instead there are others like him, other people crying out in pain, screaming and begging for it to end. Jules told him to focus on her, but she’s crying out too, because this is a curse and there is no relief.
The pain continues and continues until Tyler can no longer scream. Then there is darkness and Tyler should be relieved but he isn’t.
When he wakes up again, he’s somewhere else. Still outside but far away from where he started, he knows that. He’s covered in dirt and when he touches his mouth his fingers come back red.
Blood.
It’s okay, Jules voice comes behind him, it’s okay.
But it’s not. It’s so far from being okay.
--
His mother keeps calling. Calling and calling like she thinks eventually he’ll relent and pick up.
(He wonders sometimes if it will work eventually.)
She always leaves a message and he listens to every one. It only makes him feel worse, makes him feel guiltier for leaving her behind in that large house all by herself.
But he knows it’s better for her, keeps repeating it to himself. She escaped his father, it took her years, but she finally escaped him. Now, maybe she could escape him too.
--
The next full moon is approaching and Tyler is trying to convince Jules that chains and wolfsbane are a good idea.
That’s what Mason used to do, he reminds her and she gets a look on her face he can’t interpret. But she doesn’t say yes.
He needs her to say yes. He needs to be locked up. He can’t wake up with blood on his face again, on his hands. He can’t wake up again not knowing what he had done.
He just can’t.
--
His mother calls again but it’s different this time.
She fell and hurt herself. She was left all alone, no one to help her, to keep her from drinking too much or to remind her the staff had waxed the floor and something bad had happened.
He had left her and he could have lost her.
He has to go back. Not for forever, but he has to go back.
--
Jules hadn’t wanted to go back to Mystic Falls, was against it from the very start.
He should have listened to her.
Tyler was never good at making his own choices. Always made the wrong ones. Always took the wrong path and someone got hurt.
A lot of people got hurt this time and some of them didn’t make it through. He won’t say it out loud but he wishes that Damon was one of them.
(He still spends nights thinking about Mason and what happened to him. Spends his nights back in his old room, waiting for Damon to do the same to him.)
--
He doesn’t remember much about dying, though Tyler feels like he should. He doesn’t remember Klaus’ hands on his neck or the taste of his blood in his mouth. He doesn’t remember the resonating crack of his neck as it snapped.
All he can remember is Sarah’s face, Sarah’s dead body on the ground in front of him, and wondering if this was what it was like for her.
--
In the beginning, it’s amazing. He doesn’t lie in the hallway when he tells Caroline he’s never felt better. He feels amazing, exhilarated, new.
He’s a hybrid now, not just a wolf. And it means he has control. It means he never has to turn again. It means he’s rid of this curse.
It means he’s free.
But the feeling doesn’t last as long as he’d like. Freedom never comes without a price and sometimes chains don’t just come off. Instead they’re replaced with heavier, sturdier shackles that are that much harder to be rid of.
--
Tyler has spent years, maybe his whole life, with rage and anger constantly battling their way to the surface. Always present, always just waiting to make an appearance.
That doesn’t go away, not really. Caroline says all of his traits are intensified now and that worries him sometimes. Now there’s bloodlust on top of it that as well.
It isn’t just the urge to pummel anyone who looks at him wrong. It isn’t just the thought of destroying the people who think they can hurt him. Instead, its wanting to tear into the throats of complete strangers, its wanting to sink his teeth into someone’s flesh and not let go until there’s no blood left.
Caroline tells him to ignore those urges, to breathe in and out until they go away.
Rebekah shows up at his door, bringing dinner with her in the shape of a girl he’s known since he was two.
It gets so much harder to listen when there are two people battling for control.
(Neither of them are him and he’s okay with that.)
--
Klaus had saved him. He had fixed him. Tyler didn’t understand why no one seemed to get that. Of course, Tyler was loyal to him. He owed him everything.
He didn’t owe the Salvatores anything. The only thing they had ever given him was a dead uncle. And Elena…It wasn’t like he had anything against her, like he wanted her to get hurt. But as far as he could tell, she had enough people looking out for he, more than he ever had. And it wasn’t like Klaus wanted to kill her. He just needed some of her blood. To make more hybrids. To save more people like him.
And everyone else didn’t matter to Klaus. He had told him that. Had promised it.
Tyler owed Klaus everything. He did.
--
Klaus warns him, warns him what will happen to the people he cares about if they try to kill him. But he warns Tyler too late.
(Tyler is never included in master plans. Tyler is never really included in any plans.)
But he can still save Caroline, can still keep Matt safe. He can get them both out of there. So he does.
He can’t change what it is going to happen, can’t stop it, but he can keep the people he cares about safe. He can do something. He can.
So he sticks a needle into Caroline’s neck, and orders Matt to take her somewhere safe. He doesn’t give either one of them a choice.
Choices get people killed. Choices hurt people. Choices can go so very very wrong.
--
(So, what if he asked you to rip your own heart out?)
He went to see the psychiatrist. This time it was his idea, not something forced on him by his mother.
Tyler needed someone to understand, to know he was making sense. He needed someone on his side and weren’t shrinks like paid to be on your side?
But once he was in the office, sitting across from him, looking at him; he found trouble finding the right words.
(Then I’d rip out my heart.)
--
He bit Caroline. He bit her and she almost died.
Tyler had almost killed her. And he had done it because Klaus had told him to. He hadn’t had a choice.
He never had a choice. He had just deluded himself into thinking he did.
--
Tyler goes to Bill Forbes because he's the only person he can think of to help him. He doesn't go to him because he likes him. When he stares at him too long, sometimes he begins to morph into his own father.
(Richard Lockwood used to smack Tyler around and then tell him it was for his own good. Tell him it would make him stronger, better. He doesn't see much difference between that and what Bill Forbes did.)
But he has control, he is has this willpower that Tyler's never seen before. He looked Damon dead in the eye with no vervain in his system and was able to beat him, to still be in control.
That's all Tyler has ever wanted.
All he has to do is mention Caroline's name and Bill says yes. He takes him down to the cellar, tells him the only way to break the sire bond is to break every bone in his body. To transform even though he doesn't have too. Klaus had given him the option and he was grateful for that. Now, they had to take that away.
Tyler doesn't want to do it, tries to, but it hurts too damn much and he knows he can stop. Knows that it’s an option, that he finally has a choice. Klaus had given him that choice. He doesn't have to feel this pain, doesn't have to go through this.
But Bill Forbes has other ideas. He takes an axe and hits him, threatens to kill him, takes his choice away and lets the animal out.
The beast inside of him tries to kill Bill Forbes, almost succeeds and he wonders how much of that was really the wolf.
--
For all of his faults and how screwed up the situation was, Tyler transforms and he thinks it’s over.
Bill Forbes says it’s not and deep down he knows it’s true.
He still feels grateful to Klaus. Still feels that pull to do what he says. Still feels out of control. And he knows that's not going to go away. Not unless he makes it.
--
He leaves again.
This time he doesn’t leave a note for his mother, knows how easily Klaus will use her to get to him. He doesn’t try to talk to Caroline or Matt or anybody else, because he can’t be talked out of it, he can’t let them try to because his resolve might crumble.
So he packs a bag, one full of chains and wolfsbane that he had hoped to never see again, and leaves.
Tyler wasn’t good at making choices, he knew that. The world kept throwing the fact back in his face. But he had to stop letting everyone else make them for him, had to stop the cycle that had started with his father.
It was time to start pushing back.
--
He goes to the mountains, follows the same path that Jules had lead him through before.
But this time it’s different, he makes it different.
--
There’s a voice in his head, loud and persistent that never seems to leave. It tells him how easy it would be to make the pain stop, tells him that the only one causing it is him. It tells him how he’s a hybrid now and that makes him above this. It makes him above everything.
He can’t quite tell if that voice belongs to him or to Klaus.
--
This time Tyler doesn’t just listen to messages, instead he leaves them as well. One for his mother every day and one for Caroline every other.
He does his best to call when he knows they can’t answer.
He tells them he’s fine, tells them he’s okay even when it’s a lie and he just wants to curl into the fetal position from all the pain. He never tells them where he is.
This is his plan, his. And he will be the only one to suffer from the consequences.
--
That voice slowly starts to recede, starts to sound more like him and less like someone else.
Tyler thinks that means its working.
--
He comes back and things are worse than he imagined. Because an Original had died and he took his entire blood line with him.
Because he was turned with Klaus’ blood and was now connected to him forever. Sire bond or not, that connection would always be there.
Tyler laughs a little, bitterly and to himself, because he thinks all those months alone, killing himself daily might not have meant anything at all.
--
He has a plan of course, he’ll stare Klaus in the eye and do as he says but it will be because he wants too, not because of Klaus.
He needs the element of surprise, needs to wait until Klaus is unsuspecting to finally get rid of him.
(They’ll tear out his heart and Tyler will die too, but he’ll die knowing Klaus is dead, defeated by him, one of his own, by the boy who he didn’t give a choice but fought back anyways.)
But Klaus looks him in the eye and he steps back, does as he’s told and he can’t help but wonder if he’s just pretending. Tyler worries there’s more to that.
He can barely remember what it feels like to have a choice.
--
He’s at Klaus’ mansion, following orders, when he finds Elena strapped to a chair dying. He can smell the blood in the air and he steps back because part of him wants to drink it.
(He was turned on Elena’s blood, it did this to him. He never knows if he’s thankful for that or not. Now he has forever to find out.)
Klaus tells him to leave, orders him to like the good little soldier he is. But he doesn’t feel the pull he once did, doesn’t feel anything but hate for the monster in front of him.
He holds Klaus down, holds him in place, breaking him and taking his choice away. There is a strange satisfaction in it, one he hopes to never feel again.
Klaus’ body ends up on the mansion floor.
The room still smells like blood.
--
Klaus is dead, for all intents and purposes, he’s dead and gone. And he will never bother them again.
Tyler is free.
No more chains, no one there to tell him what to do, he will no longer be forced to bend to the will of the full moon. No father to beat him, no curse to control him, no Original to threaten him.
All that’s left is him.
Finally he was the one in control, no future mapped out for him, and that terrified him. But he had fought too hard to let it happen for him to let it slip away so soon.
He knows it will disappear eventually, someone or something else will take it away like it has always happened before. This is the lesson life has taught him. But he will live every moment to its fullest until that happens again.
--
Bonnie calls him, her voice commanding and regretful at the same time.
He thought that it would last longer.
(Tyler was wrong. He was always wrong.)
Recipient: misspopuri
Prompt: Tyler, Freewill
Author: lynzie914
Characters/Pairings: Tyler Lockwood, mentions of almost everyone else.
Word Count: 4195
Rating/Warnings: PG-13 (for language and mentions of abuse)
Spoilers: Spans season two up to the season three finale.
Summary: Freedom never comes without a price and sometimes chains don’t just come off. Instead they’re replaced with heavier, sturdier shackles that are that much harder to be rid of.
A/N: Written for the tvdfic_exchange. I’ve never written Tyler before, but something about this prompt wouldn’t let me do anything else, hopefully you like this and it’s what you were looking for. Big thanks to elenarain for being so incredibly nice and betaing for me last minute. I totally owe you one.
When Tyler’s father dies, his mother sends him to a shrink. She says he has to talk about his feelings, has to get it out. She says that she knows he doesn’t want to talk to her, but maybe this will help.
Tyler thinks he might have talked to her if she gave him the chance, but he doesn’t say it out loud. (He’s not sure if it’s the truth anyways. He knows it will make her cry.)
So he goes, because his mother wants him to and his mother hasn’t smiled since his father died and keeps pretending it’s just coffee in her cup and nothing else. He doesn’t want to upset her more.
The psychiatrist pesters him with questions, but doesn’t seem to like the one word responses he gives. Eventually, they stop asking him questions about his feelings and try to get him to talk on his own.
That doesn’t work either. Mostly they just stare at each other for a while and it costs his mom more money than it should.
But it makes her happy, so Tyler keeps going.
--
Sometimes Tyler gets angry, so angry everything else seemed to fade away.
Angry at his father for dying. Angry at his mother for missing him. Angry at the town for mourning a man they never really knew. Angry at himself for hating his father and missing him at the same time. Angry at Mason for not being there until now, for not even fully being there now that he was.
Sometimes it just felt easier to be angry. Most of the time it felt like he didn’t have a choice but to be angry.
--
The psychiatrist asks him how it feels without his father being around.
Tyler can’t tell him the truth. Can’t bring himself to say it out loud, to admit it. If his mother ever found out, she’d burst in to tears, he was sure.
It’s weird, he says instead, but I’m fine.
I feel like I can actually breathe, he doesn’t say but he can feel the weight of the words around him.
--
He had forced the answer out of Mason, made him tell him what it took to become a werewolf, to trigger the curse. He had thought it would be better to know. Thought it would help.
Tyler was wrong.
Instead the truth hung over him, in the air. It was always there, choking him. His future waiting for him.
His father had had his future mapped out for him since he was born. What college he would go to and the football scholarship that would get him there. (That and the large endowment Richard Lockwood would be sure to make.) Where and when he would marry and what families were acceptable to marry into. (The Donovans were not among them.) His career path, serving on the city council until eventually he replaced his father as the town mayor. (Mystic Falls always had a Lockwood in office; they didn’t know how to properly function without it.)
It was the same path his grandfather had set out for him, and his father before that.
His father never told him what being a Lockwood really meant. Never told him about the blood that would eventually be on his hands. Never told him how cautious he had to be, how much control was necessary.
That was the one thing he was grateful to his father for.
--
Sarah was dead and Mason is gone and Matt won’t talk to him, won’t even look at him.
Normally, that would be what Tyler would want. Because for once Matt had been the dick taunting him and Tyler had been the innocent party and he thinks Matt deserved to grovel a little bit, like he had to all those times before.
But Tyler wasn’t really all that innocent and while Matt had been unconscious on the floor, Tyler had been the one to push Sarah into a desk and crack her skull open. And now Matt won’t talk to him and his mother rambles on and on about things that don’t matter whenever she’s around him and Mason isn’t there.
Tyler doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do.
--
Tyler forces Caroline to tell him the truth and it’s easier than what it was with Mason. She slams him into the wall (like Mason did) and throws him to the floor, but eases it with a smile and an apology.
She talks to him, tells him the truth and opens up a whole new world to him. One full of monsters, just like him, and she hugs him and promises him it will be okay.
He doesn’t believe her of course, but the lie is nice to hear just the same.
--
His psychiatrist asks him about Sarah, asks him about how he feels about what happened. About how another death, so close to home and so soon after his father’s, has affected him.
Tyler remains silent. He ignores the part of him that wants to hurt him, to break the man in front of him like the animal inside of him wants too.
--
It gets a tiny bit easier after he finds out that Caroline is in on all of it. When she is there and telling him all of these things and promising him that it’ll get easier.
It’s easier for Tyler to put it all on her. She lets him, she’s a control freak and he thinks she likes it just a little, even if she doesn’t realize it. But she handles it all so well, figures it out and makes plans. She whispers encouraging words and tells him it’s all going to be okay.
And sometimes he even believes her.
It’s easy to give her the power, to give her the control. Tyler doesn’t know what to do with it.
--
He thought that he was prepared for it, that he was ready for the pain and the horror.
He was wrong. So terribly terribly wrong.
--
Jules appears in town and the truth starts to come out.
(Caroline is not the only vampire in town. His uncle is not in Florida. He is surrounded by monsters and no one thought for a moment to tell him the truth.)
He backs Caroline up to her car, his hands grasping her coat, anger drowning everything else out. She looks at him the same way his mother used to look at his father whenever he got angry and that hurts just as much as all the lies did. Maybe more.
He thought going to her would make him feel better. He thought the truth would make him feel better. He thought that maybe, it was all just one big lie, that Jules had been wrong. He thought that all this anger, all this hate, maybe it could solve something. Maybe it would be useful. Maybe it would show her something, show her what she was dealing with.
Tyler was always wrong. He was so fucking tired of being wrong.
He let his hands slip away from her and stalks away.
--
Jules and her friends take Caroline. They take her and lock her in a cage and do god knows what, but the look on Stefan’s face tells him it isn’t good.
That isn’t what he wanted. Even with Mason dead and Stefan’s threats and all of the lies, that was never what he wanted. None of this was what he wanted.
But Caroline had lied to him. He had trusted her, trusted her more than anyone else. He had told her everything, depended on her, let her see him cry. And it was just a lie. And he wasn’t done being angry, was still confused. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do, what he was supposed to feel.
(Vampires and werewolves are enemies. Vampires lie. Vampires don’t care about anyone but themselves. These are the things Jules as told him. These are the things that got Mason killed.)
And for a moment, he just stops. He sees Jules with a gun to her back and Stefan and Damon lying on the floor and everything stops.
He has a decision to make but there is no one there to make it for him and he doesn’t know what to do.
--
Brady offers Tyler a bottle of whiskey and he takes it.
Brady presses a gun into his hands and Tyler takes that too.
Brady ends up with his heart in Stefan’s hand and the rest of the pack follows in his footsteps when they attack the Salvatore boarding house.
Tyler isn’t good at making decisions for himself. But he’s starting to think other people aren’t that good at making them for him either.
--
Caroline hates him and when he thinks about it too hard, sometimes he hates her too. (It’s easier to hate her then to remember her arms around him as he cried, to remember her risking her life to help him. Anger is easier than forgiveness. Hate is easier than everything else for him.) Matt hates him too, thinks he’s sleeping with Caroline and not telling him. Thinks he’s the terrible person that Tyler knows he is.
He’s sure his mother would hate him too if she knew everything. Thinks that she would hate and love him the same way she did his father. More than anything else, he didn’t want to be his father.
So when Jules offers an out, Tyler takes it.
She promises to teach him, to show him, to make him a better werewolf. Jules offers to take over the role Mason was supposed to have, that Caroline had last held, and he doesn’t even hesitate before he says yes.
He can’t stay in Mystic Falls, he can’t. But he doesn’t know how to do this on his own.
--
He gets a message on his phone from his mother, hours after he’s left. He thought it would take her longer before she found the letter in the foyer.
She begs him to come back and he hits delete.
Matt leaves a message too, tells him that his mom is worried sick, to come back home. He doesn’t talk about himself, doesn’t say he wants him there.
Tyler hits delete again.
His freaking psychologist leaves a message too. Tells him he’s missed his last two appointments and he’s ‘concerned’.
Tyler laughs at that one.
--
There’s another full moon and Tyler transform again. There aren’t any chains this time, no wolfsbane to make him weaker, and no one to tell him it will be okay.
Instead there are others like him, other people crying out in pain, screaming and begging for it to end. Jules told him to focus on her, but she’s crying out too, because this is a curse and there is no relief.
The pain continues and continues until Tyler can no longer scream. Then there is darkness and Tyler should be relieved but he isn’t.
When he wakes up again, he’s somewhere else. Still outside but far away from where he started, he knows that. He’s covered in dirt and when he touches his mouth his fingers come back red.
Blood.
It’s okay, Jules voice comes behind him, it’s okay.
But it’s not. It’s so far from being okay.
--
His mother keeps calling. Calling and calling like she thinks eventually he’ll relent and pick up.
(He wonders sometimes if it will work eventually.)
She always leaves a message and he listens to every one. It only makes him feel worse, makes him feel guiltier for leaving her behind in that large house all by herself.
But he knows it’s better for her, keeps repeating it to himself. She escaped his father, it took her years, but she finally escaped him. Now, maybe she could escape him too.
--
The next full moon is approaching and Tyler is trying to convince Jules that chains and wolfsbane are a good idea.
That’s what Mason used to do, he reminds her and she gets a look on her face he can’t interpret. But she doesn’t say yes.
He needs her to say yes. He needs to be locked up. He can’t wake up with blood on his face again, on his hands. He can’t wake up again not knowing what he had done.
He just can’t.
--
His mother calls again but it’s different this time.
She fell and hurt herself. She was left all alone, no one to help her, to keep her from drinking too much or to remind her the staff had waxed the floor and something bad had happened.
He had left her and he could have lost her.
He has to go back. Not for forever, but he has to go back.
--
Jules hadn’t wanted to go back to Mystic Falls, was against it from the very start.
He should have listened to her.
Tyler was never good at making his own choices. Always made the wrong ones. Always took the wrong path and someone got hurt.
A lot of people got hurt this time and some of them didn’t make it through. He won’t say it out loud but he wishes that Damon was one of them.
(He still spends nights thinking about Mason and what happened to him. Spends his nights back in his old room, waiting for Damon to do the same to him.)
--
He doesn’t remember much about dying, though Tyler feels like he should. He doesn’t remember Klaus’ hands on his neck or the taste of his blood in his mouth. He doesn’t remember the resonating crack of his neck as it snapped.
All he can remember is Sarah’s face, Sarah’s dead body on the ground in front of him, and wondering if this was what it was like for her.
--
In the beginning, it’s amazing. He doesn’t lie in the hallway when he tells Caroline he’s never felt better. He feels amazing, exhilarated, new.
He’s a hybrid now, not just a wolf. And it means he has control. It means he never has to turn again. It means he’s rid of this curse.
It means he’s free.
But the feeling doesn’t last as long as he’d like. Freedom never comes without a price and sometimes chains don’t just come off. Instead they’re replaced with heavier, sturdier shackles that are that much harder to be rid of.
--
Tyler has spent years, maybe his whole life, with rage and anger constantly battling their way to the surface. Always present, always just waiting to make an appearance.
That doesn’t go away, not really. Caroline says all of his traits are intensified now and that worries him sometimes. Now there’s bloodlust on top of it that as well.
It isn’t just the urge to pummel anyone who looks at him wrong. It isn’t just the thought of destroying the people who think they can hurt him. Instead, its wanting to tear into the throats of complete strangers, its wanting to sink his teeth into someone’s flesh and not let go until there’s no blood left.
Caroline tells him to ignore those urges, to breathe in and out until they go away.
Rebekah shows up at his door, bringing dinner with her in the shape of a girl he’s known since he was two.
It gets so much harder to listen when there are two people battling for control.
(Neither of them are him and he’s okay with that.)
--
Klaus had saved him. He had fixed him. Tyler didn’t understand why no one seemed to get that. Of course, Tyler was loyal to him. He owed him everything.
He didn’t owe the Salvatores anything. The only thing they had ever given him was a dead uncle. And Elena…It wasn’t like he had anything against her, like he wanted her to get hurt. But as far as he could tell, she had enough people looking out for he, more than he ever had. And it wasn’t like Klaus wanted to kill her. He just needed some of her blood. To make more hybrids. To save more people like him.
And everyone else didn’t matter to Klaus. He had told him that. Had promised it.
Tyler owed Klaus everything. He did.
--
Klaus warns him, warns him what will happen to the people he cares about if they try to kill him. But he warns Tyler too late.
(Tyler is never included in master plans. Tyler is never really included in any plans.)
But he can still save Caroline, can still keep Matt safe. He can get them both out of there. So he does.
He can’t change what it is going to happen, can’t stop it, but he can keep the people he cares about safe. He can do something. He can.
So he sticks a needle into Caroline’s neck, and orders Matt to take her somewhere safe. He doesn’t give either one of them a choice.
Choices get people killed. Choices hurt people. Choices can go so very very wrong.
--
(So, what if he asked you to rip your own heart out?)
He went to see the psychiatrist. This time it was his idea, not something forced on him by his mother.
Tyler needed someone to understand, to know he was making sense. He needed someone on his side and weren’t shrinks like paid to be on your side?
But once he was in the office, sitting across from him, looking at him; he found trouble finding the right words.
(Then I’d rip out my heart.)
--
He bit Caroline. He bit her and she almost died.
Tyler had almost killed her. And he had done it because Klaus had told him to. He hadn’t had a choice.
He never had a choice. He had just deluded himself into thinking he did.
--
Tyler goes to Bill Forbes because he's the only person he can think of to help him. He doesn't go to him because he likes him. When he stares at him too long, sometimes he begins to morph into his own father.
(Richard Lockwood used to smack Tyler around and then tell him it was for his own good. Tell him it would make him stronger, better. He doesn't see much difference between that and what Bill Forbes did.)
But he has control, he is has this willpower that Tyler's never seen before. He looked Damon dead in the eye with no vervain in his system and was able to beat him, to still be in control.
That's all Tyler has ever wanted.
All he has to do is mention Caroline's name and Bill says yes. He takes him down to the cellar, tells him the only way to break the sire bond is to break every bone in his body. To transform even though he doesn't have too. Klaus had given him the option and he was grateful for that. Now, they had to take that away.
Tyler doesn't want to do it, tries to, but it hurts too damn much and he knows he can stop. Knows that it’s an option, that he finally has a choice. Klaus had given him that choice. He doesn't have to feel this pain, doesn't have to go through this.
But Bill Forbes has other ideas. He takes an axe and hits him, threatens to kill him, takes his choice away and lets the animal out.
The beast inside of him tries to kill Bill Forbes, almost succeeds and he wonders how much of that was really the wolf.
--
For all of his faults and how screwed up the situation was, Tyler transforms and he thinks it’s over.
Bill Forbes says it’s not and deep down he knows it’s true.
He still feels grateful to Klaus. Still feels that pull to do what he says. Still feels out of control. And he knows that's not going to go away. Not unless he makes it.
--
He leaves again.
This time he doesn’t leave a note for his mother, knows how easily Klaus will use her to get to him. He doesn’t try to talk to Caroline or Matt or anybody else, because he can’t be talked out of it, he can’t let them try to because his resolve might crumble.
So he packs a bag, one full of chains and wolfsbane that he had hoped to never see again, and leaves.
Tyler wasn’t good at making choices, he knew that. The world kept throwing the fact back in his face. But he had to stop letting everyone else make them for him, had to stop the cycle that had started with his father.
It was time to start pushing back.
--
He goes to the mountains, follows the same path that Jules had lead him through before.
But this time it’s different, he makes it different.
--
There’s a voice in his head, loud and persistent that never seems to leave. It tells him how easy it would be to make the pain stop, tells him that the only one causing it is him. It tells him how he’s a hybrid now and that makes him above this. It makes him above everything.
He can’t quite tell if that voice belongs to him or to Klaus.
--
This time Tyler doesn’t just listen to messages, instead he leaves them as well. One for his mother every day and one for Caroline every other.
He does his best to call when he knows they can’t answer.
He tells them he’s fine, tells them he’s okay even when it’s a lie and he just wants to curl into the fetal position from all the pain. He never tells them where he is.
This is his plan, his. And he will be the only one to suffer from the consequences.
--
That voice slowly starts to recede, starts to sound more like him and less like someone else.
Tyler thinks that means its working.
--
He comes back and things are worse than he imagined. Because an Original had died and he took his entire blood line with him.
Because he was turned with Klaus’ blood and was now connected to him forever. Sire bond or not, that connection would always be there.
Tyler laughs a little, bitterly and to himself, because he thinks all those months alone, killing himself daily might not have meant anything at all.
--
He has a plan of course, he’ll stare Klaus in the eye and do as he says but it will be because he wants too, not because of Klaus.
He needs the element of surprise, needs to wait until Klaus is unsuspecting to finally get rid of him.
(They’ll tear out his heart and Tyler will die too, but he’ll die knowing Klaus is dead, defeated by him, one of his own, by the boy who he didn’t give a choice but fought back anyways.)
But Klaus looks him in the eye and he steps back, does as he’s told and he can’t help but wonder if he’s just pretending. Tyler worries there’s more to that.
He can barely remember what it feels like to have a choice.
--
He’s at Klaus’ mansion, following orders, when he finds Elena strapped to a chair dying. He can smell the blood in the air and he steps back because part of him wants to drink it.
(He was turned on Elena’s blood, it did this to him. He never knows if he’s thankful for that or not. Now he has forever to find out.)
Klaus tells him to leave, orders him to like the good little soldier he is. But he doesn’t feel the pull he once did, doesn’t feel anything but hate for the monster in front of him.
He holds Klaus down, holds him in place, breaking him and taking his choice away. There is a strange satisfaction in it, one he hopes to never feel again.
Klaus’ body ends up on the mansion floor.
The room still smells like blood.
--
Klaus is dead, for all intents and purposes, he’s dead and gone. And he will never bother them again.
Tyler is free.
No more chains, no one there to tell him what to do, he will no longer be forced to bend to the will of the full moon. No father to beat him, no curse to control him, no Original to threaten him.
All that’s left is him.
Finally he was the one in control, no future mapped out for him, and that terrified him. But he had fought too hard to let it happen for him to let it slip away so soon.
He knows it will disappear eventually, someone or something else will take it away like it has always happened before. This is the lesson life has taught him. But he will live every moment to its fullest until that happens again.
--
Bonnie calls him, her voice commanding and regretful at the same time.
He thought that it would last longer.
(Tyler was wrong. He was always wrong.)