He was sure that the tin suit would drive him insane one day soon, though he could hardly tell days from one another anymore. The black of night faded into the light of day in what seemed like an instant, and then back again. Once, a long time ago now, he had been counting the days. Night after night he would repeat the date in his head, if only to give himself a distraction. Now he was not sure if it had been weeks, months, or years since he was trapped inside that suit.
He was not hungry or thirsty, though he knew he should have died of dehydration or starvation long ago. He was not tired, though he had not slept in what seemed like years. There was no pain, and yet there was. A bone deep ache centered in his chest, like his heart was being beaten the same way his family was in the hologram playing ceaselessly outside.
It hurt to watch, and yet even after all the time of staring at the endless replay he could not drag his eyes away. His punishment was all that was left of his humanity, and he feared that if he looked away he would lose even that small grasp on it. To watch the hologram and feel pain let him know that he could still feel something, though it seemed to lessen by the day. His heart grew cold as steel while he was trapped in that tin suit.
How ironic, a tin man trapped in a tin suit with a heart of steel. He laughed the first time that occurred to him, because even that choked and insane sound was a nice change from the constant screaming of his first few days (or was it months) in the suit. The amusement quickly wore off though, as he watched his son dragged from the house and hit. If there were tears left, the laughter would have turned to weeping. But there were no tears left, just as there were no screams, and after that no laughter.
He lived in silence so complete that the tapping on the suit was deafening when he first heard it, but somewhere in the back of his jumbled and confused mind a part of him said tap back, this is your salvation. He almost regretting it the moment he did, because the light that followed was blinding.
The outside air was sweet and fresh. The ground so warm and solid beneath his fingers as he fell to hands and knees. Everything was overwhelming, his senses overrun in trying to process it all after so long deprived of those simple experiences.
He was free. That thought barely occurred to him, And the hologram has stopped. For the first time in years he opened his eyes and saw nothing but the forest. There was no beating happening before his eyes, no mouths open and pleading for help though he could not hear them or help them.
If the time spent in the tin suit did not drive Wyatt insane, perhaps the first moments outside of it did.