The night she missed

Prologue

Wednesday always has a reason for her actions. She is rational. Or at least she thought she was.

She had never allowed emotions to dictate her choices. Not until him. Tyler Galpin.

"You sensed the monster in me. You fell in love with it"

That's what he told her during her visit to Willow Hill. She hated him. Not for being a hyde or a murderer —that only made him more intriguing for Wednesday—but for deceiving her.

Her past feelings for him clouded her judgement. They made her reckless. And that, for Wednesday Addams, is unacceptable.

"You have feelings for him", Weems had said when Wednesday considered becoming Tyler's master. She told herself it was for Enid, to control him and stop his murderous plan. The truth: she didn't want him dead. A hyde without a master doesn't last long.

It didn't matter. She never became his master. He fled with his mother. Allied with Slurp, his uncle. He became a threat to her family. He kidnapped her brother. He stood by Isaac as he buried her alive.

Yet his eyes betrayed him. Not cruelty, but emptiness. Fear. Weariness. Tyler pretended to enjoy her pain. He didn't. She knew he didn't.

She pitied him. Groomed, manipulated, imprisoned for months. His father dead. His life dismantled. She didn't excuse his actions. She understood them.

Tyler thought his mother would give him peace...she was insane. So was his uncle.

So when Wednesday found him tied up, after his mother ordered Isaac to erase his hyde, she intervened.

"Kill me", Tyler said as she approached with an axe. He had already surrendered to death. Perhaps she should have fulfill his petition.

She didn't.

She freed him.

He looked at her with the same confused expression he always reserved for her. Wednesday remember it too well.

"Why?"

She still has no answer to that question.

"I missed"

That was her only reply.

He then shifted into his hyde form. That was the last time she saw him. Rumors said he left with Capri, the teacher. She never asked. She didn't care.

But she had spared him. She had the chance to end him, and failed.

She keeps telling herself she missed with the axe. And there's only one flaw in that excuse: Wednesday Addams has never missed.