Disclaimer: What I wouldn't give to own the T7S characters. Unfortunately, I barely own the food in my refridgerator. All things T7S are property of FOX and Carsey-Werner. And they don't like to share. Punks.

A/N: Hyde's Lament is sort of a sequel to Without Her. It's a third person one-shot written about Hyde's suffering. Angst is fun to write, especially since I don't have much angst in my own life. And I know that I'm not joking around as much in the liner notes to this story as I have to all my others, but this really isn't that kind of story. I put myself in a bad mood just writing the damn thing.

Rated G because, to be honest, this is really tame.

Feedback: Again, all feedback is appreciated, and if you reply, I'm forever your whore. All people will be whores until proven otherwise by the court of me.

Distribution: If you want to use my story for your site, please ask my permission. Email me or leave a review, and we'll work something out.

And so it goes:

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Hyde's Lament

Her words shattered his heart. What once was a strong, carefree soul was now a broken, empty shell of a man.

The pain was more intense than anything he'd ever known. He felt as though a house had landed on his chest, pinning him to the ground, and try as he might, he could not escape. For days after they had spoken, he'd wake up sweating from blind panic, frightened by the sudden feeling that he was drowning. Those nights he often spent wringing his hands and toiling over his lost love.

He was used to the empty feeling. He knew that came from loneliness. With her, he promised himself he'd never feel that way again. With her, the feeling lasted for a period of time much longer than one night. The others only lasted the night. At most. The others meant nothing. Each one was meant to fill a void, to cease that intense feeling of emptiness that filled his soul with a blackness as stagnant as night and twice darker. They were shallow. He was hollow. Everything meant nothing; nothing meant anything.

But her. She meant something. She meant everything.

None of that mattered anymore. As much as she loved him, as much as the world began and ended with her, he dashed it all away. He trashed his entire life because he was scared to be hurt. And as much as he was offended by the way she so quickly recalled her feelings for another man - and "get off my boyfriend" did just that - he knew what he had done was a million times worse.

Another girl, to be lumped in with the rest of "the others," filled a new kind of void - the void that came from being irrationally jealous and overly paranoid. At the same time, the same woman created an all new pain. Lost love created a cold so frigid that hair stood on end and hearts froze to stone.

And stone-frozen hearts do little to heal. Instead, they lie dormant in a restless sleep of sorrow and suffering.

He spent most of his time in the basement. He'd request to be alone in his misery; his friends would comply, grinning in their masks of complacence. He knew they pitied them.

Already hushed conversation halted completely when he neared. Sympathetic glances accompanied sympathetic words and friends scattered to avoid conflict. Though he never would express it, more than anything he wanted them around to ease the loneliness. Every time they left him to dwell on his hurt and wanting, his heart broke that much more. He longed for company, for the ability to find solace in friendship. Instead, he felt like they saw him as the nothing he knew he was.

She came to the basement, where he sat throwing tennis balls against walls. He stood and cast his eyes downward to avoid her glare. Stonefaced and shaking, she locked an arm straight out from her body. In her hand was a relic from their past together. he lifted it from her hand, and she turned on one hell and walked out of his life.

Returning to his slumped position on the couch, he gripped the ratty old tee-shirt to his heart and sighed.

bEND/b

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© 2003 James Riley. Use without permission will result in forceful insertion of very sharp objects into undeniably uncomfortable orifices. You've been warned.