Chapter Text
Wednesday had already filed the paperwork, made the calls, and packed Enid’s things before anyone thought to tell her “no.” It wasn’t abduction; it was efficiency. Someone had to act while everyone else stood around wringing their useless mortal hands. If love was a battlefield, then she’d chosen her weapon early—and it happened to be a notarized letter of guardianship.
But she once read that when animals sensed death, they fled to hidden places to die. It struck her, as they drove north through the heat of June, that perhaps she was enacting some ancient instinct of her own—sending a dying thing somewhere no one could interrupt its suffering. Only Enid wasn’t dying yet, and the thought of “yet” set her jaw hard enough to crack.
Enid was currently curled in the passenger seat, head pressed against the window, breaths fogging a rhythm that Wednesday monitored since they left Jericho. The girl had fainted in the quad less than twenty-four hours earlier. Less than a day, and somehow Wednesday turned an act of teenage frailty into a complete legal migration. When the principal tried to speak, Wednesday had already presented the guardianship clause, the emergency medical waiver, and the signatures. When Enid’s parents objected—loudly, hysterically, predictably—Wednesday met them with citations from both lycanthropic health statutes and state-level emancipation law. They fell silent not out of agreement, but because no one could stand against someone so willing to weaponize bureaucracy in the name of devotion.
Now, as the trees thickened and the word turned green, exhaustion began to gnaw at Wednesday’s edges. She had slept a total of forty-seven minutes since the collapse, her mind running on the same voltage as live wire, and the energy began to turn inward, prickling her scalp.
Then Enid stirred beside her—a murmur that didn’t form words—and Wednesday’s hand twitched toward her, stopping just short of touch. She hated that hesitation. She hated that she didn’t know whether contact comforted or violated, whether touch soothed or scrutinized. So, she opted for silence. A particular, devastating silence. Once, it had been filled with the constant hum of Enid’s chatter—stories about playlists, nail polish, and the philosophical merits of glitter. Currently, it was the slow whine of tires and the faint rattle of the hearse’s back panel. Enid spoke only twice since regaining consciousness in the infirmary.
“I’m fine”—though she hadn’t been. “Stop hovering”—though she hadn’t looked anyone in the eye.
Wednesday risked a glance at her now, long enough to trace the outline of her profile against the window. The reflection ghosted her features—sunken cheeks, pale lips, lashes trembling with exhaustion. There was something spectral about her, as if she had already begun to slip into another realm of half-existence. Wednesday’s hand twitched again, the impulse to reach across—to touch, to verify life—barely suppressed. Instead, she made notes: pulse visible at the throat, breathing shallow but rhythmic, skin too cool but not clammy.
That was fine. She could handle cool. She could handle silence. She could handle this. What she could not handle, however, was how her own chest tightened whenever the blonde exhaled, as if each breath was a loan overdue.
The turnoff announced itself with nothing but a slash in the piney dark. Once off the county road, the hush became near-total: the insulated world of engine noise and radio static replaced by the living hush of moss and wet leaf.
Wednesday parked at the margin between gravel and mud, letting the engine tick. Slipping into the soup of fog and dew, she circled to the passenger side and tugged the door open. Enid startled with a fluttery recoil. For a moment, she looked small and uncertain—like the girl who fought a Hyde, like the girl who stood bloodied at Nevermore’s gates, like the girl moments before she first wrapped her arms around Wednesday.
“We’re here,” Wednesday murmured.
Enid pulled herself together, squinting at the house. “Where is ‘here’?”
“Blackwater Manse,” Wednesday replied. “It belonged to a cousin on Mother’s side. She drowned her husband in the lake in 1874, then opened a finishing school for the criminally overlooked.”
A weak, humorless laugh followed. “Let me guess—the husband haunts it.”
“Mostly beneath the floorboards. Occasionally in the plumbing.”
Enid rubbed her eyes, and swayed slightly as stood. Wednesday’s arm found her waist before she even realized, and the contact drew a startled sound from Enid—soft as an intake before a sob. But no protest came; she simply allowed herself to be guided toward the house.
Wednesday pressed her palm against the front door and shouldered it open, hinges screaming. The manse greeted them with a breath of mildew, sun-warmed lavender, and a deep, sweet rot. Persian runners lined the entry, its red oxidized to brown, and dust trembled from the chandelier with each step on the boards. A hallway carved the house in half—on one side, a dining room with a twenty-seat table, on the other, a parlor adorned with velvet fainting couches and glass domes filled with preserved beetles. The walls were a living record of Addams ancestry.
Enid slowed as she passed the first painting, a woman in widow’s black with a diadem of poisoned hemlock. The eyes seemed to follow her, and Enid muttered a curse under her breath. “They’re staring at me,” she whispered.
“They stare at everyone,” Wednesday said. “It’s their primary form of communication.”
“That’s… reassuring.”
“It wasn’t intended to be.”
They navigated the long corridor, Wednesday taking the lead and Enid a half-step behind. Each door was labeled in crisp, gothic script: “Conservatory,” “Billiard Room,” “Solarium,” “Mourning Chamber.” The solarium, on the east wing, was empty of plants but filled with light. Wednesday paused there, letting Enid stand in the pool of gold, and watched how her skin tried to absorb it. Enid’s hand drifted to a hanging terrarium, its contents long dead, but she touched the moss inside as if it might still be alive.
“It’s beautiful.”
“It’s tolerable,” Wednesday allowed.
They continued, the tour as much a distraction as an orientation. Enid inspected everything: the threadbare runner, the cracked newel post, the taxidermied peacock on the landing. Each new sight gave her a little more energy, a little less collapse. Wednesday noted them, tallied them, weighed them in the balance of what the house could provide.
Thing had been in the sitting room earlier, dusting and mending the couch that now waited by the window. Wednesday gestured toward it, and Enid perched at the edge for a beat, then—almost involuntarily—curled her legs up and tucked her chin into her knees. The effort of sitting seemed to drain her. Shoulders hunched, wrists folded tight, she looked like a drawing in the margin of an old anatomy textbook; a study in how the body drains when it can no longer fight.
Wednesday lingered at the threshold, attention fixed on the couch. Her eyes traced every micro-movement of Enid’s form: the rise of a ribcage pressed against a cotton tee, the restless flex of knuckles where hands gripped her knees, the subtle quiver of eyelids betraying sleepless nights. If Wednesday could peel open Enid’s skull to examine the suffering, she would. Instead, she cataloged, she analyzed, and she worried in silence.
After a while, she took a seat in the armchair beside the couch, and cleared her throat hesitantly. “You need to rest,” she said. “Thing has prepared the east bedroom. It receives adequate ventilation and is in close proximity to the bathroom.”
Enid turned toward her, eyes rimmed in pale irritation. “You’ve thought of everything, huh?”
“I find improvisation vulgar.”
“Yeah. You always do,” Enid murmured, producing a smile that was too tired to be sarcastic and too wounded to be coy.
Wednesday rose and crossed to the sideboard, where Thing laid out a covered tray. The dome lifted with a metallic sigh, revealing a shallow bowl of soup—artisanal, if tepid, with curls of steam. Rosemary and garlic perfumed the air in a way that stirred dread in Wednesday’s gut rather than hunger. Balancing it on a silver tray, she extended it toward Enid—who flinched and wrinkled her nose before dropping her gaze.
“I’m not hungry,” she mumbled.
Wednesday forced the tray closer. “That’s irrelevant.”
Enid’s eyes darted up. “Is it?”
“Yes. You need nourishment.”
The blonde shook her head, hard enough for her hair to curtain. “I said I’m not—”
“Need and want are separate concepts, Enid,” Wednesday snapped.
Enid recoiled, eyes flicking to the door as if she might run, but the urge fizzled out. She simply sat, back pressed against the arm of the couch, awaiting the next blow.
Something molten burned in Wednesday’s chest—a primitive, unbearable urge to close the distance, to hold, to beg for forgiveness because of a tone she could not temper. Instead, she blinked and set the bowl on the coffee table. “You may eat when you’re ready. It will remain warm for some time.”
Enid stared at the food, exhaled, then slumped further against the couch. “You really brought me here,” she murmured. “Like, actually kidnapped me.”
Wednesday straightened, offended by the suggestion but unsure how to articulate why. “I filed the appropriate paperwork.”
“That’s not any better,” Enid countered. “It still feels—” She broke off, shaking her head. “Never mind.”
“It’s legal.”
“So is taxidermy.”
Wednesday frowned, finally thrown. “I would never—”
“I know,” Enid interrupted. “You’d never hurt me.”
The words struck with a force disproportionate to their volume. Wednesday stood rooted, locked between the impulse to reach out and the terror of what touch might transmit. She wanted to ask what Enid meant by “hurt.” She wanted to ask a thousand things: if Enid still loved her, if the walls between them would ever come down, if the summer would end with either of them intact. But all she managed was:
“You should sleep soon.”
Enid’s eyes closed. “Yeah.”
A minute passed of silence, of watching Enid’s chest rise and fall, of counting breaths. When it was clear there was no more to say, Wednesday retreated.
The upstairs hallway was lined with more sepia portraits of long-lost Addamses and Frumps. It was a gallery of eccentricity: madwomen in corsets, men with eyes like beetles, children posed with the family’s exotic pets. Wednesday paused at one, a girl in a pinafore holding roadkill. She looked like herself at the same age, and Wednesday briefly wondered if that girl also believed she could save dying things—or if she simply learned the futility of it. At the end of the hall, the east bedroom waited. It was less grand than the others—by design—but still stately, with crimson drapes and a bass bedstead against the wall.
Wednesday entered and wasted no time surveying. She drew back the sheets, laid a blanket smooth, and measured the pillow’s angle. Then she opened the window enough to let the scent of lakewater and pine in, before stocking the bedside with tissues, a glass of water, and a quiet clock. Next, she unpacked Enid’s suitcase. Sweaters went in the armoire, socks in the top drawer, toiletries lined up along the vanity. Last came the phone—dead, by Wednesday’s doing—which she placed on the nightstand. She considered leaving a note, too, but words failed her, so she left only silence.
Upon returning downstairs, she hovered in the foyer, attempting to catch the echo of Enid’s misery. She heard nothing, and unsure whether that classified as a blessing, she moved on to practicalities. In the kitchen, she checked the larder: shelves packed with food, organized by calorie density and nutritional value. The refrigerator was loaded with fresh produce, measured portions of protein, and condiments that anticipated every conceivable craving. Weeks worth of research sat in a folder on the counter, meal plans cross-referenced with dozens of studies. It was a flawless system, at least on paper.
A sharp tap drew her attention to Thing, who wedged nearly between the folder and glass mortar. He drummed an impatient rhythm before signing: The soup is untouched. You need to make her eat.
“I am aware of the soup’s status,” Wednesday replied, her voice frosting over as she folded her arms. “And you know as well as I do, I cannot ‘make’ her do anything. That approach has proven ineffective.”
Thing scuttled across the counter, nearly toppling a stack of notecards. His palm splayed, then snapped shut in an emphatic gesture. So, what’s your plan? You brought her here. Now what?
“The plan,” Wednesday said, dragging the syllables out, “is to provide an environment free of external stressors while monitoring her condition and encouraging gradual improvement. The plan is to restore what has been lost.” She bit down hard on the last part, hating how sentimental it sounded, hating the tremor that threatened to break her words. She could be describing an experiment for all Thing knew. But that was a lie and Thing always knew.
He responded with a complex flurry of signs that began with a question and ended with a rebuke. That’s not a plan. That’s blind hope.
Wednesday’s jaw set; she could feel the muscles bunching under the skin. “Then what would you suggest? Shall I simply force-feed her? Restrain her and pour soup down her throat until she chokes on my good intentions? Shall I monitor her every movement, document her every calorie, treat her like a specimen requiring constant observation? Because I attempted such feats, and it resulted in a week-long, unbearable silence.”
Thing stilled for a moment, his next sign slower. You’re afraid.
Wednesday nearly snapped back, the retort loaded on her tongue: Addamses did not fear, Addamses confronted. But even she saw the uselessness in lying—Thing had been with her since the cradle, since her first autopsy kit and her first black dress. He’d watched her grow from child tyrant to adolescent queen of ice, and he’d seen every crack in her armor. There was nothing to gain from pretense, so she turned her back, bracing her hands against the sink, and stared out at the lake as if its uncaring surface held answers.
“Fine,” she said, and the softness of the admission surprised her. “Yes. I am afraid. Particularly when I think about finding—”
She gritted her teeth against the sentence. She couldn’t give voice to the image that haunted her since the quad: Enid’s body at an impossible angle, her golden hair matted to the stone, the horror of immobility.
Some fears were too raw for language.
Thing crept along the counter and up her sleeve. He patted her neck gently, the closest thing to a hug he could manage, and Wednesday briefly considered the possibility of tears. Instead, she closed her eyes and allowed a single moment of weakness.
“I’m constitutionally incapable of moderation,” she confessed. “I’m unsure how to display vulnerability in measured doses.”
Thing patted her again and signed something against her collarbone: You love her. Start there.
“Love is insufficient,” Wednesday countered, opening her eyes to a slit. “Love doesn’t cure illness. Love doesn’t restore weight, or repair damaged organs, or convince someone of their worth. Love is—” She stopped, reaching for the right word and finding nothing that didn’t sound like defeat. “Love is a chemical reaction in the brain. It’s not a treatment.”
Thing tapped one last time, a definitive gesture that conveyed everything he couldn’t say—but it’s all you have—before skittering down arm and out the kitchen. A vacuum opened in his wake, sucking warmth from the room.
Wednesday focused on the lake, on the way the water had darkened to obsidian as the sun slipped behind the trees. She envied it, this ancient reservoir that could absorb a hundred tragedies and still keeps its surface smooth and untroubled. But Wednesday wasn’t a lake, was she? She was a girl, and girls like her were made to feel—which proved to be the fundamental problem: she cared. She cared with a devotion that burned, with a loyalty that bordered on violence. She cared enough to rewrite laws, to bribe hospital administrators, to drive five hours with Enid’s weakened form. And none of that devotion—none of that desperate, all-consuming love—seemed to be enough for the only task that mattered:
Making Enid want to live.
She stood at the sink until the last light drained from the sky and her fingers ached from gripping the edges. Finally, when she could no longer stand the staleness of her own company, she left the kitchen and closed the door on the folder, the evidence, the failure.
The sitting room, upon Wednesday’s return, displayed no improvement; in fact, everything gave the impression of irreversible decline. A skin of congealed oil floated atop the soup’s surface, puckering around wilted ribbons of rosemary as the aroma staled to futility. Wednesday stared at it, at the way the lamplight refracted on the rim, at the curve of the spoon still resting against beside it like proof of failed contact. She remembered the process of making it: the exact measurements, the calibration of heat, the cross-referenced nutritional requirements for lycanthropic metabolism with flavor profiles Enid once claimed as her favorites. She had even considered the temperate threshold at which enzymes would begin to denature, just in case Enid’s stomach was sensitive.
But none of it mattered now—the soup was a tomb of effort, and Wednesday felt her own fossilizing alongside it.
Wednesday knelt beside the couch, hand hovering over Enid’s cheek. Urges roared—to touch, to verify, to press her palm against her feverish pallor and confirm Enid was still here, still solid, still hers. But her fingers stopped short of contact; she drew them back and curled them into her palms, studying evidence instead. Enid’s collarbones were so pronounced they threatened to slit the fabric of her sweater. The skin along her jawline acquired a translucent, bruised quality that Wednesday had only seen on cadavers and late-stage patients. Even Enid’s hair, once sunbeam-thick and riotous, hung limp and insubstantial over her brow. And her faint odor carried the sweetness of metabolic decay, a smell that would cling to Wednesday’s memory long after she left the room.
It was, she realized, a smell she could never forget: the scent of someone rotting from inside out.
The thought almost knocked Wednesday out of herself. She closed her eyes, forcing her mind to a cold vantage point, refusing to let her throat close or her breathing accelerate. This was not the time for emotional collapse. She was the Adadms in this situation—flinty, invulnerable, the baseline of sanity. Still, her stomach twisted hard enough that she half-expected to taste bile.
Enid rolled slightly toward her, an arm flopping off the edge of the couch. Wednesday’s eyes snapped open and she leaned in before she could stop herself, whispering, “Enid.”
There was no answer. For a moment, she thought Enid hadn’t heard—that she might’ve slipped somewhere deeper and more dangerous than sleep.
Then the girl stirred and her eyelids fluttered.
“M’fine,” Enid muttered, curling in tighter to shrink from the possibility of waking up, of being forced to confront reality.
Wednesday inhaled and tried again, softer. “Enid, come upstairs. The bed is prepared. I took the liberty of unpacking your suitcase.”
Eventually, Enid blinked at Wednesday. “Too tired,” she mumbled. “Can’t you jus’—”
“I’ll help you,” Wednesday interrupted, extending her hand.
For a long moment, Enid simply stared at it before eventually nodding. Wednesday grasped her hand, careful not to apply any more pressure than necessary, and braced herself for the lift. It was shockingly easy—there was less resistance than ideal, which made Wednesday want to inexplicably scream.
They made their way to the stairs. Wednesday maneuvered herself to the lower step, letting Enid cling to her for support. By the time they reached the landing, Wednesday was sweating, not from exertion but from the strain of not showing how much it terrified her.
Wednesday inhaled sharply as she opened the bedroom door. Their room was exactly as Wednesday had left it: drapes closed on the far window, pillow angled to exact measurements, blanket folded back to create a soft, inviting slope. When Enid crossed the threshold, something sagged in her. She let go of Wednesday, stumbled forward a few steps, then collapsed onto the mattress without grace or care. Her first instinct was to curl up again, fetal and facing away from the doorway, not even bothering to adjust the blanket or reach for the pillow.
Wednesday’s hands twitched with the desire to make some gesture, to offer comfort—should she tuck the blanket around Enid’s shoulders? Smooth her hair? Say something absurd but heartfelt, like “I’m proud of you” or “You are safe here”? But love, to Enid, had become synonymous with surveillance. Every gentle act was another reminder of being watched.
So Wednesday remained still, and silence took residence between them.
After a time, she crossed the room and settled into the high-backed chair stationed in the farthest corner—a relic upholstered in dark green velvet that smelled faintly of cedar and decay. From here, she could see the full length of the bed, could monitor the rise and fall of Enid’s breathing without standing over her. It was, she reasoned, a reasonable compromise. She would watch, yes, but not intrude. She would stay vigilant. But as the house quieted—the tick of cooling pipes, the murmur of lake wind through warped glass—Wednesday’s thoughts began to twist. Her eyes strained against the dark; her hearing amplified every rustle of sheets, every uneven inhale. But none of it was enough. Her body demanded certainty, not inference. So when her ordinary senses failed to satisfy, she turned inward—to the psychic current that lay beneath her consciousness like a dark, bottomless river.
The moment she opened herself to it, everything tilted.
It was not a usual vision, not sound, no event anything that could be named; it was immersion. A flood. Enid’s essence rushed toward her in a thousand simultaneous sensations. The first was cold—an all-encompassing frost that sank into Wednesday’s bones, as if she were lying naked on winter stone. Beneath that came hunger—a vast echoing emptiness that swallowed every other feeling. But it wasn’t simply the absence of food, it was the absence of being. Wednesday could feel it pulling at her, as if the hollow in Enid’s stomach had become a gravitational force determined to consume them both. The next wave arrived harder: fatigue so deep it bordered on death, an exhaustion that made breathing feel optional. It seeped into her muscles, dragging her posture down until she slumped forward in the chair. Every cell in her body seemed to whisper too tired, too tired, too tired.
Finally: the ache. It was everywhere—joints, ribs, marrow. Not pain so much as the memory of it, a dull throb of deprivation. Her skin prickled like it no longer fit properly over her bones. Beneath it all was the faint static of emotions: guilt, defiance, despair, affection—all scrambled together in white noise that pulsed behind Wednesday’s eyes. She gasped softly, clutching the arm of the chair as a sharp bolt of pain cut through her skull. The prickling that had haunted her for days now flared into a full migraine, blooming behind her eyes.
This was unsustainable. This was destructive. This was the first step toward her own collapse.
Wednesday knew all of this with perfect clarity even as she remained motionless in the chair, her psychic senses locked onto Enid like a drowning person clutching a rope, her pain building toward genuinely dangerous levels, her body trembling with exhaustion and sensory overload and the terrible reality of loving someone she couldn’t save.
But she would sit here all night. She would endure every spike of pain, every wave of nausea, every moment of Enid’s suffering transmitted directly into her consciousness. She would maintain this vigil until her psychic abilities burned out completely or her body forced unconsciousness or morning came—whichever happened first. Because the alternative—walking away, trusting that Enid would survive the night without monitoring, accepting her own powerlessness—remained more terrifying than any amount of personal suffering.
So when the sun finally crested the lake and sent pale gold streaming through the window to paint Enid’s sleeping face in shades of amber and pearl, Wednesday permitted herself one last thought—terrible in its simplicity, devastating in its honesty:
If loving you is what kills me, then I will spend this summer learning all the ways a heart can break while still beating.