Part 54 - Fall

Y/n

"Are you insane?"

The doubt in Pugsley's voice was very much justified, because I knew how crazy this plan sounded now that I was saying it out loud, but it's also kind of the only one I've got.

I shrug.

"Honestly at this point I wouldn't be surprised if I was. And I know that this isn't exactly the greatest idea I've ever had, but I didn't really have a lot of time to think about this, and it's the best I could come up with on such short notice. Do you have a better plan? Because if you do then I am all ears."

Pugsley leaned back in the chair, not saying anything for a few seconds and maintaining eye contact before he sighed.

"..No.."

Alright then, we're going with my plan.

"Okay, well it's really not that bad. All I have to do is annoy Isaac enough to make him leave the control panel, and then when he's distracted, that's when you use your power on him, easy peasy. If the way he reacted earlier when I laughed at him is any indication of how he feels about people doubting him, then I'd say I hit a sore spot. And I can use that against him, I can poke at it until he leaves the machine alone."

I admit it's a little rushed in terms of how well thought out it is, and I know I can do it, but Pugsley still doesn't seem that convinced.

He looked like he was angry, not at me, but at the thought of me doing this.

"Yeah and if you piss him off enough, he could come over here and he could kill you. There's nothing stopping him from doing so, because he doesn't need you alive for his plan to work."

I know that. It's the one thing that's scaring me right now, because I know if I go too far then I may end up putting my life on the line, but I would rather mine than Pugsley's.

"And if I don't, you'll be the one who might die, and I don't know about you but I'm not too fond of the idea of you getting killed."

I was trying to sound stern about it, knowing that he would have to cave to me sooner or later, but I couldn't hide the tiny amount of fear in my tone as I spoke, and I think Pugsley noticed it, because his angry expression softened when he heard it.

"Me either...and I'm sorry. But the chances of this working out the way you want it to are slim to none. This guy is crazy, neither of us know what he'll do if you push him to his breaking point. And you know how bad I am with my aim, what if I accidentally hit you?"

Okay if we don't move quicker with this, I won't have enough time to execute this plan and everything will go to shit, so I have to pull out all the stops to convince Pugsley to agree.

So I do my best to look at him in that way that I know he's weak to, and I give him those puppy dog eyes that always make him cave immediately.

"I won't go that far, I promise. You know I can do this, I am literally the best at being annoying, and I can use my talent to get us out of this place alive. And don't worry about your aim, I trust that you won't hurt me. Look I know the chances of this working may be slim, but they're not zero. I just need you to trust me.....please..?"

And that was it.

That tiny little please was clearly all it took to change his mind, and I could see it on his face that he knew what I was doing, and he scoffed at the smile I had on my face as I watched the gears in his brain turn at my words.

It took a moment of him staring at my eyes before he exhaled in defeat, and he nodded softly.

"Alright, fine. But if you die, I will never forgive you."

I smile.

"And if you die, I'll kill you."

His eyes opened a little more at that, and he almost looked proud of me for some reason, like that really kind glint in his eyes that made me feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside, but I didn't have time to think into it, I have a mad scientist to piss off.

I turned my gaze back over my shoulder to look at where Isaac still stood, and I twist my body around with my eyes to face him. Every second that I waited to annoy the fuck our of him was one second more that he had to get the machine working, so I need to get a move on.

"Hey assface!"

His hand movement stopped for a split second above the control panel, before he blatantly ignored my name calling.

But I got his attention, even if only for a moment. I guess I just have to kick it up a notch.

"Isuck! Or whatever your name is, I'm talking to you!"

That time his eyes turned up from what he was doing, and I could see his jaw clench slightly.

Dammit I kind of wish he wasn't decent looking, then I wouldn't feel a tiny bit bad about this, but I have to focus on the task at hand, which seems to be working so far.

He still didn't look over here, and he was obviously trying to pretend I wasn't here. Good luck with that.

"You sure you know what you're doing? This machine looks preeeetty complicated. Maybe you should get an instruction manual."

I could feel myself starting to grin at his annoyed look, and he finally looked up at me with a ticked off expression, and he gave me one of those smiles that wasn't sincere at all.

"Do you ever shut up."

I narrow my eyes in a mock thoughtful way for a second before my grin grew even wider, and I shake my head.

"Ohhh...yeah no. You'll have to get used to it, or you know we could always do this some other day. Nobody blames you for being kind of an idiot."

And with that I finally got him to snap, and his hands bashed down onto the panel in front of him, which sent a jolt of fear through me, causing a slight jump at the sudden change in his level of anger, but I was finally getting somewhere.

He stomped out from behind the metal box, and his footsteps were fast enough that they matched how quickly my heart was thudding in my chest with the amount of adrenaline I was feeling coursing in my veins. I could practically feel the pulse in my brain as he came to an abrupt stop in front of me, and he crouched down with anger radiating off of him.

And I definitely think one of his eyes was twitching. This guy is way too easy to piss off.

"Say one more thing about my intelligence. I dare you."

I was obviously close to the point of no return, and I know I should just shut up now and let Pugsley do his part of the plan now that Isaac was close enough, but I couldn't resist the urge to push further, it was just too much fun.

Even when my eyes glanced over to Pugsley, who was staring right at me while he shook his head, telling me to stop before I went too far.

But one more quip can't hurt.

I look back at Isaac, getting right up in his face and I looked him up and down as I smiled.

"I would, but it's pointless to have a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent."

Oh I really should have kept my mouth shut.

The rope that was tied around my hands suddenly got untied, fast enough that it left extreme burns on my wrists as it fell off the metal bridge I was sitting on, and before I could even have time to react to the pain of it, there was a crushing feeling around my neck.

But the only thing around it was air.

That same feeling of being lifted up off the ground that I felt back in the forest came back around, only this time I knew what was causing it, and it was slowly making my ability to inhale any oxygen become harder with each breath I tried to take.

I did the exact thing I promised I wouldn't, and I pushed him further than I meant to.

And Isaac's temper clearly didn't put up with annoying teenage girls, because he used his telekinesis to grip the area around my neck, and before long, the view beneath me was no longer a distance that I think I could survive falling from.

This is what I get for being a bitch.

The rapidly decreasing amount of air in my lungs was making my mind go foggy, but I heard Pugsley's voice, that now held more fear in it than before.

"Put her down!"

Please don't, I won't make it if I'm dropped from this height.

And Isaac proved that very point by letting go of my body for a split second and making me fall a couple of feet before he grabbed back on around my throat, and my hands came up to claw at the invisible force that was crushing my esophagus.

"You sure you want that? Because I can drop her right now! No? Then shut it or your little girlfriend falls!"

If I wasn't so preoccupied with not letting myself pass out from the lack of oxygen, I would have been freaking out over the fact that he just referred to me as Pugsley's girlfriend. But alas that wasn't exactly my top priority right now.

And obviously I wasn't on the top of the list of important things with Isaac either, because his attention was very easily divided between me and that woman from earlier when she shouted at him.

"Do it now! You promised!"

Isaac hesitated for a second, before his free hand shot out towards Tyler, who was standing on the other side of the bridge, and his body was soon lifted from where he was, and he dropped down onto the weird looking table in the center of the room, before he was locked into place by his wrists and ankles.

No.

I need more time.

This wasn't supposed to happen. I can't just do nothing while I watch them kill my best friend. If the machine starts up, it'll use Pugsley's power up faster than his body can handle, and I won't be able to do anything to stop it.

I use the little amount of strength that I had left in my muscles to look back over at my boy, and when I saw the expression on his face, something inside of me just broke.

He was scared.

I could see it in his eyes, which were locked onto me like a hawk, waiting for something to happen. But it's not like he could do anything right now with the fact that he was stuck in that fuckass chair, so even if I did fall, it would take a miracle for him to catch me.

You know, I've always thought dying was this big scary thing that I was supposed to spend my entire life being afraid of, to live my existence with constant paranoia that anything could happen at any moment, to fear the end.

I figured I would die some day long in the future, old age, or maybe I would get into some freak accident, heck the idea of facing death because of being murdered even crossed my mind a couple of times.

But I never thought that when the day finally came, when I knew that the chances of me escaping that scary fate were close to nothing, that I would feel oddly...at peace with it.

Because I knew that my life up until this point, hadn't been all that bad in the end.

Yeah I mean it hasn't been exactly what you'd call perfect for a lot of it, but these last few months have probably the best ones I've ever had. Sure my family back home wasn't the most perfect thing on earth, but it also wasn't the worst thing. They were where most of my regret laid, the phone calls I never received, birthday cards that I threw in the trash because mom couldn't be bothered to write more than 'best wishes'. Maybe I should have been nicer to her...

I just hope that when she gets that call late at night that wakes her up from her slumber in the arms of a man whom I hate, that she won't hate me for not trying to reach out more. Would I get a little satisfaction in knowing that she'll finally get a taste of her own medicine when the only thing she can feel for months is guilt? Maybe.

But the feeling of dislike was pretty mutual between the two of us. There was probably something I could have done to heal the rift that grew between us, and I think that may be the regret that I feel most.

And I would miss my brother. Not a feeling that I'm unused to, but I think the thought of not seeing him again stings a little extra this time.

They weren't the family that I loved though. Not the kind of love that I had for the second family I had made at Nevermore, which I know sounds cliche, but I can't help it if my friends have done more for me than my real family ever has.

I heard somewhere that when you die, your brain replays seven minutes of the best memories in your life, whether you knew they were hidden in the back of your mind or not, and I can say with full certainty, that my friends would be every second of that.

One boy in particular that would take up more time than most.

I think I'm going to miss him more than anything. The laughter, the warm feeling in my chest I get when he looks at me, that deep rooted love I finally got to tell him about that I won't forget about, even in death.

I'll miss that comforting hold he has around my heart most of all. I'm just glad that I got the chance to say I love you before it was too late.

I was okay with dying if it meant that he got to live. How very Bella Swan of me.

Guess he'll just have to take me on that date some other time.

Even though my senses were starting to fade, I was still able to hear as the machine buzzed to life, and I couldn't look away as the lights in the chair where Pugsley sat, began to glow brighter, until my ears were tortured with the sounds of his pain.

I wanted to take it away, he shouldn't have to suffer like this while I do nothing to stop it. I would if I had the strength to, but even the idea of trying to reach for him made that dizzy feeling increase more.

And every time I attempted to speak, no sound would come out. Even when I tried to use my song, thinking that maybe that would work, it always left my lips more like a choked whisper, silenced by a force that was slowly starting to lose it's grip on me, and I knew that Isaac's power was draining him. If he held me up here for much longer, it would use up all of his energy.

I was going to fall sooner or later, I just wished that the last thing I saw wasn't the sight of my best friend being pushed to the brink of death.

But there was a movement of a figure in the corner of my eye that brought a hint of hope to me, and I watched as the dark haired girl finally came into view.

How she escaped the giant hole in the ground that she had been buried alive in was a mystery to me, but not one worth dwelling over, not when her sudden presence caused Isaac's focus to split even further, and the crushing grip loosened around my neck, only a little bit, but enough that I was finally able to take my first real inhale of breath in minutes.

Thank fuck.

That numb feeling in the tips of my fingers dissipated, and it was replaced by very faint pins and needles. While it did kind of hurt, it was a step closer to staying alive than I was before, so I am not fucking complaining.

And the fogginess in my brain subsided since I had now gotten some blood flow back, and I could see as Wednesday stalked her way across the metal path over to Tyler, who was laying under the effects of the machine, which looked anything but painless right now.

I don't know how or why, but she had an axe in hand, and when she came to a stop in front of him, it was raised into the air above his body. For a moment I thought that she planned to rid this world of him for good, but there was something about the way she hesitated that shut down that theory pretty quickly.

When the weapon was swung down to him, instead of cutting his throat like I had originally thought it would, the blade crashed down right where one of his wrists was strapped down, and it cut through the lock that held his arm in place.

The sudden movement of the body underneath the machine caused the sparks that once connected through his chest to come to an abrupt stop, and the distant sound of Pugsley's pained screams silenced right along with it.

When my head turned back to look at him, his eyes were no longer set on me, but instead shut with a subtle tremble that wracked his body. And as faint as it was, I could see the slight rise and fall of his chest that showed me that he was still alive.

He's going to be okay. That's all I care about.

Me on the other hand I'm not so sure about. Because while technically my senses had returned to me, they're not much use when I'm still being dangled 30 feet in the air over a pile of junk that will cut my limbs into several different pieces if I get dropped onto them.

I'd be lucky enough to survive this fall, let alone be okay after it.

Wednesday moved herself away from Tyler, and instead focused her attention onto Pugsley, who now at least had a much higher chance of leaving this place alive, and she made pretty quick work of removing the connection that he had to the machine, and the slight shake of Pugsley's body came to a stop now that the pain was over.

And if I really wanted to survive this, I was going to have to think fast. Which normally is not something I'm capable of doing under this much pressure, but it quite literally is life or death right now.

And it became even more so, when the sight of Tyler's human form on the table started to change, and I felt that pit of fear in my stomach as I saw the one monster that I hated the most.

Hyde, plus me as a very easy and open target, meant very very bad things if I didn't figure out how to get out of this.

Isaac's form whipped around once Tyler had fully changed from human to Hyde, and his beady monster eyes held an anger in them that you could not mistake for anything else besides what it was. The desire to kill.

As uncomfortable as it was, Isaac's grip around my neck was the only thing keeping me from falling to my death right now, so it's really not the best time for the Hyde to be having homicidal thoughts about him.

Great.

If there's any time to panic about how I'm going to save myself, now would be it.

But obviously Tyler didn't really give a shit about the consequences of his actions, specifically the ones that affected me, because Isaac shouted at him in fear of what he knew was about to happen, which was pointless right now.

"Tyler no!"

Dude that's like telling a Husky not to scream like a fire alarm when they want attention. It doesn't work, and it didn't in this case either. If anything it just pissed off Tyler even more, and his monstrous claws reached out for Isaac and yanked him from where he stood, making the tight hold around my neck completely vanish.

And I started to fall.

Okay please work please please please.

I wasn't sure if I would be close enough to grab a hold on the very edge of the metal flooring, but when my hands stretched out as far as they could to grab onto it, one of them managed to get a very painful hold onto the sharp material beneath my fingers.

It cut into my skin, and I couldn't hold in the sound of pain that left my mouth as I just held on as tight as I could. Even though I had been able to catch myself, I couldn't relax just yet. I didn't have the strength to hold on forever, and I sure as hell didn't have the muscles to pull myself up any further.

Fucking hell I really should have worked out more.

I hated this feeling of having to wait for somebody else to come and save me, like I was helpless until there was a hand to pull me from where I hung, but there wasn't anything else I could do.

My eyes closed in my state of pure pain, and the muscles in my arms were starting to get tired, a lot sooner than I had hope. I couldn't afford to think about anything except not letting go of this fucking metal, and it took every remaining bit of strength that I had left in these weak arms to hold on.

I could feel the slow trickles of blood running down from my hand and streaming down my forearm, and I didn't even want to know what my poor fingers looked like right now. The last thing I needed was to pass out from seeing the amount of blood that I've lost from doing this.

The sound of footsteps reached my ears, and it was the only thing that my brain could recognize in the dozens of noises going on in this tower, because there's only one person who I have ever heard walk with that much purpose.

Of course Wednesday hadn't been the only one to come here and save Pugsley. And I was glad that their mother was here for her son, because then at least I know that he'll be safe.

My pulse could be felt in the tips of my fingers, and they were slowly starting to lose their grip that I was trying so desperately to keep, but I guess it really would take a miracle for me to get out of this. A miracle that I couldn't make happen in my current position.

And I think that blood loss was messing with my head again, the more seconds that ticked by just caused my sense of consciousness to fade little by little, until I had just been holding on longer than my body could take.

I didn't even feel myself let go.

And I sure as hell didn't feel him grab me until I felt something electric in my bones.