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Wednesday was standing in the woods, clothes bloody and ragged as she trembled in the cold, the dark quiet swallowing her nowhere near close to the pricking joy it usually brought her; not now that she knew what was out there.
She could hear him prowling, primal noises gurgling like salt water in the back of his jagged throat as his claws ripped up the soil in his stead, so similar to the chests of each and every one of his victims under Laurel’s command.
Her laugh echoed between the trees like a mockery, taunting Wednesday as she stumbled amongst the sticks and roots, Goody’s blessing only doing so much to keep her upright on unsteady feet.
So beautifully wicked, Wednesday had to admit.
Her black heart was hammering in her chest, threatening to give her away as she pressed her back into the rough bark of a gnarled oak, every beat slamming into her rib cage with the same ferocity as the plucking strings of her cello as the crescendo washes over her.
He could hear her.
She was running, feet slamming into the mud and sending splashes of grime up her calves, each bloody scratch and bruise aching under the new dirt layer.
She had never run so fast in her life, not from Pugsley’s explosives or a stray crossbow bolt. She was not fast enough.
Wednesday grunted, because she would never be found screaming in terror, as she was pressed back against the harsh bark of a tree only this time serveral feet off the ground. His claws pierced her sides, squeezing her as she hacked out a cough, lungs fighting against his inhuman strength to inflate once more.
Wednesday had always fawned over the idea of death, a morbid fascination drawing her to the fragility of mortality and all that lay beyond it. She had been raised with that macabre viewpoint, laughing at the prospect as she pushed herself and her peers close enough to the edge that a mere glance at the idea was exhilarating.
But as his bulging eyes met her own, as he squeezed her tighter, as Goody’s spirit was overpowered and drained from her through the rivulets of blood that ran down her aching sides, Wednesday found death to not be as amusing as she had always found it.
Her blood was warm and red, not cold and black as she had always pretended and death was closer than she had ever taunted it with before.
She screamed.
She wanted someone to save her.
She didn’t want to die.
Wednesday shot up in a cold sweat, bangs matted against her clammy forehead as she chokingly gasped, her throat closed over under the pressure of phantom claws.
She wasn’t in the woods, Laurel Gates was dead, Tyler was not trying to kill her.
It had been as such for a little over a fortnight; Wednesday’s life has been jauntingly returned to its twisted normalcy after the end of semester escapades that had befallen Nevermore and yet the ghosts she had buried still managed to haunt her.
She had always loved nightmares, pressing her Uncle Fester for the most horrific and gut-wrenching stories in her pre pubescent years to encourage a night of horrors and raised hairs but Nevermore had changed her in more ways than she would care to admit.
The phone Xavier had given her lay cold and dormant on her nightstand, nestled between a pile of bones, a selection of small daggers and the arrowhead she had first successfully punctured Lurch with. It showed her the tone, 2:47AM, when prompted but otherwise lay untouched.
The supposed stalker’s message still taunted her behind the screen.
She would not use it and yet she still had not thrown it away.
Her breathing had not returned to normal, that primal terror still running rampant within her as she fought with herself to level with the nightmare.
She knew what happened next, Enid had crashed into the woods like the firework she was and in her long awaited wolfed-out glory, fought off the Hyde.
So Wednesday let herself seethe that she still clambered for someone to come and help her because Wednesday Addams didn’t need friends. She didn’t need anyone.
Her lament was cut short by a thud, not an irregular occurrence at the Addam’s family home and yet her instinct screamed at her that this was something different. That this was something far from the exhilarating danger that lurked in every crevice of the old house, this was something to be worried about.
Her toes curled against the cold floor of her bedroom as she slipped out of her bed, smoothing down her sleep shirt as she shuffled towards her window, opening it with practiced ease as the creak of her floorboards sent a haunting melody through her room as her eyes easily scanned the dark grounds outside.
There, movement, towards a patch of mangled and dead trees.
She sniffled, a low hum of interest escaping her as she spun curtly towards her door to investigate, only managing to wrap her pale hand around her door handle before she was interrupted by yet another thud, this one louder and much more profound than the last. That one did not come from outside, it came from inside her bedroom.
Wednesday glanced back over her shoulder, wisps of dark hair dotting her vision as she focused on the imposing lump now lying on her floor, its grey skin taut as it heaved on the ground in what Wednesday assumed to be exhaustion.
But that was not the issue, the problem was that the grey creature in her bedroom was unmistakably the imposing silhouette of the Hyde.
Tyler Galpin.
She went rigid, inhaling sharply as her dark eyes blew wide open, fingers twitching at the end of her pinstraight arms by her side with the need for a weapon.
The beast had not yet made a move, instead continuing to pant on her floor, shoulders bony and haunched as its fingernails dug into the floorboards. Wednesday felt her pulse freeze as she realised how the Hyde seemed to be bowing to her.
She took a cautious step towards the monster and yet it did not make a move against her. Her hands curled into fists as she stared down at it, eyes as unblinking as usual as she held her head high, swallowing that foreign feeling of fear that shot through her like an arrow as she stared down the root of her nightmares.
“What are you doing here?” her voice was unwavering to her own credit, as blunt and stern as she always managed to keep it.
The monster did not reply to her query. She wondered if it was capable of speaking.
“I’m speaking to you, Tyler,” she all but spat, his name as sickly as sugar on her tongue. “I recommend you answer me.”
There was a shift in the room, the already cold temperatures seeming to plummet as those bony shoulders trembled, a low groan gurgling at the back of its throat as Wednesday watched it curl in on itself.
It would have been almost pitiful if Wednesday had been able to express such a thing.
In the matter of a second there was a series of cracks, skin tearing as bony limbs bubbled into naked, shivering human helplessness and Wednesday couldn’t help but watch in morbid fascination. She had seen the process before, all the while the other way around, but it was no less grotesque nor violent. She watched bones bend in ways that shouldn’t be possible, skin sagging where it had been stretched thin before shrivelling back to where it belonged and leaving a bruising rash that so similarly mirrored that that Pugsley fell victim to when Wednesday ground poison ivy into his shampoo.
Those screams of pain had been so fruitful, Wednesday didn’t know how to feel about Tyler’s silence.
Now she was left with Tyler on her floor, eyes watery and bloodshot and pointedly staring at the ground, glaringly naked and cold and vulnerable and nothing like the Tyler Wednesday had last interacted with, who had cornered her in the woods, taunted her and tried to kill her and had only stopped due to Enid’s interference. Not out of any goodness he might have in his blackened and bloody heart.
So why now was he so subservient? Why not finish the job where Wednesday was least alert?
Why show up at all?
“What are you doing here?” She repeated, nails digging harsh crescents into her palms, the closest thing she could get to comfort with her finger trap out of reach.
Tyler seemed to be struggling, cracked lips beading with droplets of blood as he let his tongue dart across it; if it was to catch a taste of the iron or to will some life back into his mouth, Wednesday did not know. She didn’t like not knowing when it came to Tyler Galpin.
“You called me,” he croaked. “I didn’t have a choice, I’ve been running for days.”
Wednesday stared. Something wasn’t right, not right in the offputting way, not the way that sent chills of excitement through her fingertips, flickering the ghost of a smile onto her thin lips.
“Why would you come to me regardless? After everything at Nevermore this seems entirely out of nowhere,” Wednesday said simply, head held high and glare skimming over the bride of her nose. Tyler still had no made an effort to move, trapped in that excuse of a bow on the floor with his raw skin and no more than his bent posture protecting his modesty.
“You killed Gates, the Hyde latched onto the next best thing,” Tyler grumbled, almost ashamed of the truth of it all, that he was leashed to Wednesday and her will.
She could feel her voice caught in her throat, every word she could now say now being too weighted for her to let them loose, not now with the implications.
Having someone bending to your every whim always sounded appealing in theory, the reality of Tyler’s servitude made her feel positively sick to her stomach.
“I’m your master?” Wednesday reiterated, the mere syllables like punches to her gut. “I must say this is quite the plot but I will not fall for whatever convoluted setup you think you’re walking me into. Any fondness I might have had has been eradicated entirely.”
“It’s not a plot, Wednesday,” Tyler spoke to the floor despite the direct address, hair ragged and curls knotted and dirty over his eyes. “I was never some big mastermind, I did what Gates wanted me to do.”
“You enjoyed it,” Wednesday said simply, head tilting ever so slightly as she studied the boy beneath her. “You told me that much.”
Tyler didn’t respond to her, face pinched with something indistinguishable.
“Perhaps in Jericho you all agreed that outcasts were not good conversationalists but I can assure you we all, including you, are capable of answering what was clearly a question,” Wednesday chastised, stepping forward so that she was staring directly down at the boy who had kissed her, the boy who had taken everything she stood for and forced her to change it, the boy who above all had tried to kill her and her friends.
She could see he was struggling, physically restraining himself from replying, from obeying.
A nice person would see that and stop.
Wednesday was not a nice person.
“Answer me, Tyler.”
“It had to feel good,” he choked. His face was burning red from what Wednesday could see of it, sniffles breaking up his sentences as he held back a flood of a meltdown. This was not the monster Wednesday had confronted in the woods, nor the one who let her hang in chains with death breathing down her neck.
This was the boy with the broken coffee machine…
“If it didn’t feel good I wouldn’t have done it and then she would have been mad at me, she would have made it hurt,” he whimpered, shrinking impossibly smaller into his curled up ball. “You don’t trust me but you called for help and now I’m here, let me do what you need me to do.”
Wednesday inhaled sharply. “I don’t need your help with anything.”
She watched him flinch, watched him shrivel and hold back a broken sob, watched him struggle to hold together any semblance of pride he might have left.
Perhaps she should get him something to cover up with.
“You’re being stalked, right?” He sounded desperate, borderline pleading for there to be something he could involve himself with. “You wanted to know who it was and that triggered my change, I broke out of that police truck when you drove past, let me find them.”
“No,” Wednesday said surely, no room for discussion. “I don’t want you here, I don’t want your help and I must certainly want nothing to do with you.”
She could see the moment he broke.
“Please,” he was openly crying, face pressed to the cold ground as he reached desperately for Wednesday’s feet, stuttering sobs wracking through his chest as his resolve crumbled.
While part of Wednesday preened at the misery, a more prominent part of her fell apart at the sight, shreds of humanity and nostalgia dragging her to her knees with an uneasy hand reaching for bare skin. Her cold fingers met his burning spine and she could feel him tense underneath her before melting into the brief contact.
What had Laurel done to him?
She had a vague idea, she had been able to deduce the woman’s course of action of course but this was somehow worse than she had ever imagined.
Wednesday had saw the chains, saw the notes on how to unlock a beast such as the Hyde, saw how Laurel had caressed Principal Weem’s face while under the impression she was Tyler and yet somehow only now, seeing Tyler so broken and desperate, did Wednesday realise the extent of what that wretch of a woman had done.
This wasn’t the fun kind of torture Wednesday had convinced herself it had been.
“I’m going to get you clothes,” she told him simply, “You’re going to cover yourself and then you’re going to sleep.”
For the first time since he entered her room, Tyler looked up at her, his pretty face bloated and red and all things miserable and Wednesday felt her stomach flip. He didn’t speak to her, simply let himself revel in the light touches Wednesday was providing to his bare skin. Oh, if only Enid could see her now, she’d be throwing a party at the amount of physical contact progress she had made.
She stood up, already angled towards her door to raid the spare room’s closet but as she moved, Tyler whimpered. She watched from the corner of her eye as he crumpled again, as if her brushes against his back had been all that was keeping him upright.
Just what was she getting herself into?
“I need you to wait here for me, I do not think mother or father would be happy to see you here,” she instructed, ego swelling ever so slightly as she watched him deflate with ease and knowing she had chosen her words correctly. “I’ll be back soon, I swear on my death.”
Once the door closed behind her she let herself breathe.
As bad as her nightmares had been, this was significantly worse, such a cruel torture she almost wanted to give Laurel credit for the sadism.
But Laurel was dead, by Wednesday’s hand- or foot- no less.
And now Wednesday had to pick up the pieces she had left behind.