Chapter Text
‘Mother?’
Wednesday finds her in the greenhouse, as she often does, cutting almost-blooming rose buds from their stems before they even get a chance to wither and rot.
Morticia likes things young and fresh, has always preferred potential over development. As a daughter she knows her so well, even against her will or desire. Wednesday knows she finds the ever green of the thorns somewhat soft, consolatory; that she enjoys her clothes and makeup to be so seductive and always the same even as she gets older, that she likes Wednesday to stay in her coquettish long braids, to still dress like a macarbe little schoolgirl even as she grows. She’d cut her tongue before admitting that a small, needy part of her stays the same just for her benefit, plays the part of the rebellious child so well, just to keep her mother balanced.
She supposes that's one of the reasons Morticia has never let the honeymoon phase end with her husband, why it matters so much that her daughter attended the same school that she went to, and why she’s always obsessively cutting at the rose buds.
‘My darling storm cloud, what is it?’
She doesn’t bother lifting her head, but a loving smile graces her crimson lips. For a moment, Wednesday feels tempted to give away her secret, to tell her of the moths that infest her body and drive her mad at the mere thought of a boy. A boy, how shameful, how horrifying. She feels his name bubbling up in her throat like bile, oh so acid and oh so strange, bringing the taste of regret and naive mistakes with it.
But her mother turns to her then, and she is rendered tongue-tied.
Morticia doesn’t like change, and this would be a hell of a big one.
She looks at her feet instead, suddenly horrified, sporting an expression that is the image of maternal worry and care. ‘Oh my, Wednesday, you’re bleeding all over the floor’
Ah, if that doesn’t bring back memories. But she’s not currently standing on Ivory tiles, just on the muddy ground of the greenhouse, feet all scratched and bruised from walking barefoot on the sharp stones around the garden.
‘It's fine, I was just playing-’
‘Don’t be silly, you’re gonna have to -ow!'
Morticia yelps helplessly, hissing between gritted teeth. There’s a small scratch on the back of her hand, a single, long drop of scarlet blood oozing from it. She inhales a deep breath, her expression twisting like she’s trying to tame her rage before her cold, fanthom eyes land straight on her.
‘Look what you’ve done now’
Wednesday stays very still. She feels far, far away; removed from her body. There’s a cold drift on her neck, either real or imagined, and a vague image of her child-self fracturing and shattering all over again.
‘I didn’t push your hand among the thorns, mother’
Her scoff is hard and cold. In Wednesday’s mind, it vaguely resembles the sound of a door being shut.
‘Nothing is ever your fault, is it?’
At dinner, her mother sits at the head of the table, her hand resting gracefully and uselessly at her side. It has been lovingly, if not overly, bandaged by her ever-doting husband. Wednesday finds it all very dramatic, considering it was just a scratch, but keeps her mouth shut just the same.
The ointment Morticia gave her for her bruises is homemade; she did it herself the same way she makes all the other medicines in the house, under the watchful, crazed eye of Grandma Eudora. It burns and makes her feet swell. Wednesday is perfectly aware that it is meant much more for punishment than it is for healing.
Pugsley is chattering mindlessly and loudly with their father. He’s so good at it, taking up space, filling the gaps, strangling the silence that fills the space wherever she goes. When he runs out of things to say, she twists the skin on his thigh between her fingers, her grip hard and mean, just to hear him squeal in that shrill, piggish way of his. The poor boy is on the cusp of adolescence, and Wednesday is already dreading the day his voice will crack and become that of a man, the day he’ll stop allowing her to play with him, hunt him down, and torture him in all the ways she’s always done. She dreads him changing, growing up.
She’s supposes she’s like her mother that way.
***
He arrives on an useasonly cool morning.
Xavier half-lies reclined in the plush seats of his father’s car, long legs stretched ahead of him as far as the front seat allows them to go. His forehead is glued to the darkened window, his tired eyes carefully observing the outside.
He hadn’t expected the mighty Wednesday Addams to live in a place like this. It's a small town, anonymous in a way that feels almost staged, with children on the swing sets, young girls roller-skating along the sidewalks, and well-dressed women coming in and out of stores with carefully filled carts, Stepford-wives style.
He wonders how someone like her can even grow and survive in such a place, or how a place like this can survive a girl like her. They feel mutually exclusive, somehow.
It almost makes him laugh, the thought of her, she who stood out even amongst her fellow outcasts, in the hallway of a normie school, surrounded by sceptic, horrified human children, getting her books from her locker while they skurry away or whisper or-
A shout breaks through the morning air. Xavier straightens up in his seat just in time to see a group of boys overthrow a couple of bright colored trashcans from the sidewalk, the filthy contents toppling over and spilling all over the street right in front of the car. He can hear his driver lower the window just to spit out an annoyed ‘Go to hell’ that he couldn’t agree more with.
He suddenly remembers the stories that circulated among his classmates when Wednesday was about to arrive at Nevermore and, for a wild moment, he wonders if one of those boys is hiding a rather intimate injury behind all that bravado. It’s no wonder his strange girl had to use extreme means to deal with people like this. Spurned children will burn villages and all of that.
‘Stop the car, stop the car, Stop the car!’ Xavier shouts so loud and so suddenly he’s afraid he might have caused the poor driver a heart attack.
He throws himself outside of the vehicle before the man can even hit the brakes properly. It doesn’t matter, He sees Wednesday about to exit from a bookstore, her hand still on the glass door’s handle, and he runs through the traffic like he’s being paid to, raising an apologetic hand every now and then when he hears people angrily honking their horns at him.
The light over the crosswalk is red and it doesn’t matter, someone is hurling insults at him and it doesn’t matter. He suddenly finds himself face to face with her, and that, that is the only thing that matters.
‘…Xavier’
Her eyes are wider than usual. How nice that for all her brilliance he can still surprise her, from time to time. He doesn’t understand her stillness, he never has, but he envies it so. He can feel himself humming with excitement and emotion, practically vibrating with it, with his breath still heavy from running and his chest heaving.
He desperately wishes he could embrace her, as embarrassing and absurd as it would be.
‘Hi, Wednesday’
He must have caught her in a particularly merciful mood, because she seems to take pity on him. She raises a lace-gloved hand to enclose his index finger in her own. Then she squeezes, just once, hard, gripping tight enough to feel his delicate bones start to shift slightly.
She expects a retreat, for him to squeal in that pathetic, melodious way her brother does. Instead, Xavier does something far more alarming. He looks at her, soft in the way he so often is, and smiles slow and pretty, like this is just a joke he’s finally in on.
The moths, the moths will eat her alive from the inside out. They’ll claw their way out of her rotten mouth and fly in circles around him like love-struck parasites, and she’ll roll over in her grave for the sheer embarrassment of it all.
She doesn’t let go of his fingers, it feels good to hold him in place like this. She tells herself she’s just keeping him close in case she decides to strike him, it's a lie so tempting that she almost believes it.
‘You didn’t tell me you were coming today’
Asking is beneath her, and so she never does. It’s always twists and riddles with this girl, and Xavier wishes he could bring himself to mind.
She looks beautiful, tragically, undeniably so. He’s used to seeing her immersed in the gloomy, heavy air that surrounds Nevermore, crowned in a halo of dark clouds and half stained glass, clothed in the rigid, sharp lines of her pristine uniform. Little queen of the stone hallways and the most secret, hidden corners of the institute.
But in this painfully mundane summer morning, Wednesday looks soft and girlish in a way he’s never seen. Her braids are pinned up milkmaid style to leave her neck free from their weight in the summer heat. She’s wearing a black sleeveless sundress with a dropped waist that looks loose and comfortable, the length of the skirt barely reaching her mid-thigh, and a dozen tiny buttons in the front that he’s far too ashamed to admit to find tempting.
The morning sky doesn’t stand a chance against her moonlight-pale skin, unreached and unreachable under the umbrella she’s holding.
‘I thought it better not to remind you of my visit, lest you find some last-minute, lame excuse to avoid me’
He dares to brush his knuckles against the back of her hand, the one currently trying to amputate his index finger in the middle of a busy sidewalk.
Xavier can already feel her rearing up for a fight. She sucks a breath through her teeth the way she always does when she's about to say something they’re both gonna regret.
‘Don’t start with me, I just wanted to see you’ He says pulling her closer by the finger she’s still holding on to. ‘Though I must admit, this is a lot more of you than I'm used to seeing.’
It’s impossible for him to duck down quickly enough to avoid her blow this time. But this too is just part of the things that don’t really matter. He just laughs and laughs.
He’s with her again, and that is the only thing that matters.