Chapter Text
Nevermore has opened it’s doors again.
Larissa Weems has somehow recovered from serious nightshade poisoning (researching shapeshifter’s supernatural abilities outside of the obvious had been sufficiently entertaining for the first two or three weeks of the break), and after some positively horrid months at the Addams’ household retelling the story of how she unraveled the terribly cruel mystery of the monster in the woods that was terrorizing Jericho and it's master; Wednesday Addams is back at the highest room in Ophelia Hall (the very same room that she shared with the one who saved her miserable life–who she also was forcibly made to share details on by her cruel mother).
The room she allowed Enid Sinclair to stay in alongside her. Like the generations upon generations of brown recluse spider colonies that resided all over the Addams Manor, according to Morticia, allowed to stay due to their decorative value. They had helped the Addams with bug infestations for generations, and although Wednesday appreciated them, she had found herself looking to capture a wolf spider (for reasons beyond her) to keep as her personal pet.
Wednesday Addams and Enid Sinclair’s dorm room feels noticeably cooler with only her own presence, and although the kaleidoscopic left side of the window still shines color onto the dark wooden flooring, it is admittedly not enough for Wednesday to feel fully comfortable in her–(their) room yet again.
It reminds her of when Enid had tried to leave her during her investigation. She does not appreciate the memory.
So the Addams’ heiress has no choice but to wait until the lycan is back home. (Home?)
As usual, she arrives early; too early, in fact, one of the steps she carefully planned before coming back to school as a “valiant hero”–her father’s words, not hers. Crossing paths with too many of her classmates before it was absolutely necessary was something she learned to avoid during the week following the Crackstone incident. Since almost everyone’s hostile/terrified/“freaked out” (as Enid had eloquently put it) reactions to her sour personality changed into admiration, whispers that no longer contained judgement but respect in them (this, she basked in). And she was now being sought out by others because apparently saving an ancient boarding school full of unique and irreplaceable specimens from a centuries old bigoted white supremacist did that to people.
“Ah, my corbeau mortel, they shall fear you even more now!” her Mother had exclaimed after she shared this information, puzzled. “You have made the entirety of Nevermore submit to your vicious presence, Wednesday.”
She secretly enjoyed this statement from her mother, but she wasn’t entirely sure that it was true. It certainly didn’t feel like people were more scared of her now. They were still scared, but not more than usual. If anything, the fear had diminished by a fraction.
“You will become the stuff of legends at the school, storm cloud, just like your mother and I back in our days.” her father had been quick to follow, making her scowl. Or at least, the Wednesday Addams version of a scowl, consisting in the corners of her lips falling a bit sharper than usual. “Mi amor, we will never shake the allegations that us Addams are a cryptid category of our own at this rate.” He moaned contently, pure pride filling his expression while kissing Morticia’s hand.
Wednesday prides herself in being cantankerous, which forces her to dedicate a good amount of thinking to decipher why exactly the school believing her to be admirable by her own merit, not only by her last name’s, makes her intestines rattle as if she were being shaken like a tortured half-dead rat in the clutches of a playful cat’s jaw.
Enjoyable, a new... feeling. Puzzling. But enjoyable.
Perhaps it also has to do with Enid’s blog (which she had taken the time to find once again using her new cellphone). Unsurprisingly, it was being updated quite often nowadays. After the first publication (or post, as Enid had called it) describing in gentler words what had transpired that night, Enid’s blog’s popularity had increased tenfold by all the curious little vermin at their school that wished to know how the battle had unfolded and why. Of course, many of them had developed an interest in Enid, the only one of the Furs that hadn’t been able to transform up until that blood moon, but Wednesday’s name was being brought up so many times that she had to stop reading and contemplate her speeding heartbeat and clammy, shaky hands. Even if she could barely understand what those uneducated barbarians were writing out.
dude, i rmbr wednesday was SO badass coming out of the gate
wednesday was fr shot with an arrow and just pulled it out like that? holy shit
how did a human survive all those injuries and just kept walking like nothing happened
r we sure wednesday addams is a human doe
I WISH I COULD'VE RECORDED IT BUT MY PHONE FELL INTO THE FOUNTAIN WHEN I WAS RUNNING AWAY FROM THE BIGOT NOOO
when wednesday n enid hugged by the gate... i know what u r
and they were roommates
OH MY GOD THEY WERE ROOMMATES
Enid hadn’t explained the last three comments when she brought them up in their text messages, which she reluctantly accepted from Enid and only Enid out of all the people who apparently had her phone code, phone number, whatever.
Anxiety.
Another (new?) feeling. It makes her skin prickle and her breathing speed up. It births a cold shiver that runs up her spine like a venomous snake slithering it’s way up a tree. Being aware that she was being acknowledged by every single person at Nevermore–now positively, in harsh contrast to when she first arrived, which was negatively– settles uncomfortably in her lower gut, making her nauseous. She kind of likes it, fear is not something she is used to feeling. It is delightful torture.
Wednesday does not like to be put on the spotlight for reasons she doesn’t understand, like admiration that isn’t her family's, or bright eyes looking at her with excitement rather than terror and disgust. Unless those bright eyes are Enid’s. She quite enjoys her curious stares, the Wolf did that when she thought Wednesday wouldn’t notice, which in itself was adorable (that word was in her lexicon?). Is that what everyone else feels like when she is accused of holding eye contact for “longer than necessary”?... Perhaps not, Enid has a way to make everything very uniquely hers, that probably applies to staring, too.
The Raven has been pondering lately, what color are Enid’s eyes, truly? Sometimes they seem an icy, artic blue... (curious, considering how her gaze has started to ignite the most searing of flames within Wednesday, consuming her scorched organs from the inside out, until she is nothing but ashes on the werewolf’s multicoloured claws)... Other times, usually under sunlight, they shine a terrible, horrible sea green that walks the captivating line between barely colorful and completely grey, like the shallow waters close to the beach, the deep blue of the ocean acquiring a greenish tint due to the light bouncing off the sand.
Wednesday couldn’t help herself, craving (craving? Did Wednesday Addams... crave?) to drown in those shallow waters, oh how she longed to become a bloated corpse floating adrift in those calm shallow waters. To feel their embrace... Initially cold, slowly warming up, devouring her whole. Drowning her.
Without her consent, her dark eyebrows scrunch up. Why do her thoughts sound like her father?
She hadn’t done... best friends before. Perhaps this is how the best of friendship should feel like? These...– feelings (feelings! preposterous!) should be evoked by her tolerance towards Enid, surely...
However... Wednesday does not ponder Eugene’s eyes or describe them poetically. Deep down, she is aware that this is an exception, and her thoughts being dangerously resemblant of her father’s words to her mother confuse her even further. Uneasiness settles in her gut, alongside the anxiety at being acknowledged and known by so many people at once.
Is this torture joyful, like when at the tender age of eight she had pulled out a man’s fingernails one by one and then poured saltwater on his raw skin, or is it torture torture?
How she loathes to struggle at anything, even (especially) if it is at her own disgusting emotions.
Werewolf got your tongue?
Her dark eyes snap to her shoulder, where Thing has been perched unhelpfully while she unpacks. She frowns. His signing looks aloof, strangely, reminding her of the unaffected way Enid has adopted of responding to her formerly very threatening glares.
He had spent too much time texting Enid through Wednesday’s cellphone. Would this become another one of Thing Addams’ mysteries? How could he read. Seriously.
“Whatever has possessed you to comment such a thing, Thing”. she hisses out, a demand rather than an inquiry, not appreciating being pulled out of her reverie (... reverie? what of?)
You have the Enid Sinclair look in your eyes, bestie.
Her eyes bulge out for a second. Her nose scrunches up in disgust. Bestie? Bestie!? Alright, he definitely had picked up an unacceptable amount of Enid’s mannerisms. Wh-What did he mean by Enid Sinclair look? Again, how can he even tell? He has no eyes!
The shock is such that she gasps, loudly. “Do not ever call me that again, you wretched limb, I will find your body and stitch it up again only to tear it apart slowly”. The Raven narrows her eyes, she scoffs sharply. “In fact, remove that word along with many others you have learned from that deplorable ray of sunshine at once!” Before she can reach out to strangle? (he doesn’t have a neck) him, he jumps off her shoulder and scurries away to Enid’s side of the room. He jumps onto one of the Wolf’s squish-mellows (they have a name, ridiculous. and she memorized it. outlandish) and squeezes his way inside the pile of monstrosities until he stands proudly on the head of the biggest one–a giant teddy bear Tanaka had gotten Enid before the break as a reward for beating a Hyde (it had been too big for Enid to take back home). From his perch, he gestures smugly.
You didn’t deny the look though.
A deep inhale.
“Desgraciado pedazo de carne podrida, te voy a arrancar los dedos, ¡bastardo!”
Enid Sinclair is not one to sulk, usually, but looking at her now, it’d be impossible to deny that she is certainly... Gloomy.
She sits all by her lonesome at one of the tables by a corner of the quad. Her leg bounces. Her head bows down. Shoulders hunch up.
You see, she is well-versed in the art of distractions. Distracting Yoko from how she stole her black kitty plushie, because it was too cute and it looked just like Wednesday, by giving her two bags of O+ (her favorite); distracting her mom from her breakup with Ajax following a startling realization about her sexuality–and the consequential must-you-always-find-new-ways-to-not-be-normal talk-by offering to chop down the withering trees in their backyard in her Wolf form; distracting her brothers from her new hyperfixation with ravens by buying them all new chew toys; even distracting herself! From the overwhelming sense of bliss at Wednesday’s (sometimes Thing’s) over-the-top formal text replies by telling herself she was just giddy at being lucky enough to be the one person the goth didn’t coldly ignore. (Apparently Eugene got ignored too whenever he pushed his luck too far. Weds didn’t enjoy his bee puns after one too many of them).
Some would call it manipulation (which it is NOT...) but she calls it diversions. Like sleight of hand tricks, right? She just taps people’s metaphorical shoulders and draws their gaze somewhere else while her other metaphorical hand swiftly snatches their wallet or their watch.
Ok, that isn’t more of a morally acceptable metaphor than just calling it manipulation, but bare with her. She is having a crisis!
Hmmm... The table has a few nicks and scratches. Some deeper than others. Did she unconsciously drag herself to sit on one of the Furs’ tables?
Her claws tap rhythmically. Tap tap tap tap. Her leg bounces in unison.
For all her mastery at distracting and diverting attention, she cannot, for the life of her, force herself to ignore one simple, yet abysmally devastating, fact.
She hates solitude.
Now, she already knows this. Has known. For a long time. She doesn’t know where it comes from, exactly. Her human extroverted-ness? Possibly. It had felt more like a desperate need for attention and approval at the start, since she gained consciousness at five years old and realized her mom didn’t look at her with the same softness as she did her brothers.
What a shitty realization to have at five. Your mother doesn’t love you equally, go figure why!
The claws dig, sink, drag. The table creaks.
But, for better or worse, she still had a pack. Her mom lead, her dad supported (?) her, and her brothers... caused a mess. Enid had never been too sure what her role was. But she had company, and every now and then she had approval. What an addictive, sickly sweet thing to get a taste of.
But she is many things, exceptions, anomalies. You name it. She just sticks out.
Enid Sinclair... The only girl of her litter, the runt, the most distinctively dressed, the one who likes cats instead of dogs, the one who took sixteen years to wolf out, and then did it for not-pack.
Approval is a rare treat. Company is a double edged sword. Solitude is a constant.
What was her train of thought, again?
Oh, right. Solitude. Her oldest enemy. But coincidentally, her only company for most of her life. As soon as her brothers started wolfing out one by one, they were taken for the family wolf-outs every full moon. Enid remembers excitedly watching their transformations, whispering to herself it's okay, Enid, you’ll be next! you'll go run with them! you'll be included! It got old after the first four years. She stopped the night her last brother wolfed out, and Esther had looked back at her with a terrible sadness in her eyes, just for a second, and turned around. Enid had endured every single full moon on her own since that day. She understood then, that the need for company and hatred for solitude didn't come from her human extroverted-ness alone. It was her Wolf.
The Wolf longed for her pack, for family, for unity. Their strength in numbers, the sight of her wolf-mother grooming her brothers after catching game, or her wolf-father starting to howl and have his pack follow suit. The Wolf knew of the terrible fate of lone wolves. Their miserable lives, their pitiful deaths.
Little Enid could extend her claws. And... that was it.
She did not pair well with others, as much as she tried to. Described as too much, too loud, too overwhelming, too clingy, too sensitive, easily excitable. She and her brothers had attended normie middle school in San Francisco, and there, she never managed to make a single friend. Her Wolf wailed, what is wrong with us? And her human extroverted-ness replied, they're just humans, they just too weak to handle us! desperately trying not to acknowledge the fact that she had no friends within her werewolf pack, either.
So, yeah, solitude was a constant. Devastatingly so. Even when she got into Nevermore, Enid had been immediately put into a single. Even though it was literally the biggest room in the whole school.
“Other werewolves will be territorial. Usually, we match up werewolves by pack, but you are the only girl in yours, so you have to stay here.” Weems had told her, with an unnervingly bright smile that didn’t match the concern in her eyes. “The other female wolves in Ophelia already have established roommates, and we cannot... We do not wish to pair you with any other creature. It may hinder your wolfing out progress.”
Which was Weems-talk for you’re too volatile to pair with any other strong creature that might snap at you for being intolerable, and you are also not strong enough to defend yourself in the case that it happens. Enid wasn’t dumb.
She took it all in stride though, as she did all of the other bullshit she had gone through all her life, and used it to her advantage. She had the freedom to decorate her room however she wanted, she could talk to herself like a maniac without being judged, she could listen to music as loud as she could stand (luckily her hearing wasn’t as sensitive as that of other wolves) and she could cry herself to sleep every night without anyone noticing! It was a win more than a loss, really.
The Wolf still felt lonely. But Enid told her that it was okay. They wouldn’t need anybody as long as they had each other.
But then came Yoko. And with Yoko came the friendly beef she had with Bianca, and Bianca had the Scales and the Scales had beef with the Fangs and the Fangs hated the Stoners and the Faceless just chilled (she liked the Faceless). Enid made a blog to put all the things she learned from her friends (she made a little happy squeak whenever she reminded herself that after so long, she finally made friends) and she became somewhat popular in the following year.
The room never stopped feeling too big, no matter what she told herself or the Wolf.
Solitude never quite stopped looming over her shoulder. Yoko was her best friend, she loved Yoko, but Yoko was a young vampire who usually skipped class and did whatever the hell she wanted, and she was a heartbreaker which meant that she could only come hangout in Enid’s room once a week (boy was Yoko booked).
None of this made full moons bearable. The room was still half empty, moonlight filtered through the giant window, and the Wolf lamented the solitude, the failure. So many full moons in solitude and failure. Solitude. Solitude. Solitude.
Wednesday Addams.
Wednesday Addams... New roommate.
Solitude no more?
The Wolf made Enid savour the words coming out of her mouth under her breath. Over and over again.
Wednesday Addams. Wednesday Addams. Wednesday Addams. Roommate. Roommate. Roommate. Solitude no more.
Principal Weems had told her one random afternoon after class, in the middle of the semester. “I have assigned you a roommate, Enid. Her name is Wednesday Addams.”
Enid had been too absorbed by excitement that she failed to notice the first tell of trouble: Weems hadn’t been smiling as she said it.
Enid Sinclair startles herself out of her flashbacks with a chuckle. Her leg stops bouncing. She realizes with a grimace that her claws have sunken deep into the table. Deeper than any of the other nicks and scratches on it. As usual, she seemed to have fallen deep into a daydream/flashback/panic attack at the start (?). She can’t remember why she was sulking.
After too much silence in her brain, again, she remembers.
She’s returned to Nevermore too early. Even after wolfing out, standing her family-her mom-hasn’t really been much easier than before, so she requested to be dropped off earlier than her brothers. She had gotten to the school so early that the sky was still dark when they arrived. After being greeted by Weems (with a hug! a hug that made her nearly squeal with happiness) Enid had been unconsciously heading towards their room when she stopped herself in her tracks.
The room would be devoid of one Wednesday Addams. And something inside of her despised the very thought. She knew Wednesday would be coming much much later that day, but the Wolf demanded her to be here now. And since she was upset because Wednesday wouldn't be there now, when it was demanded, Enid’s mind had gotten disastrously derailed. So she had decided to stay by the quad and gently sit herself down at a random table and wait until either Yoko or Wednesday arrived.
Ooooh, so that’s how she had ended up sitting by herself growling under her breath at memories from the past.
The growling and snapping teeth and baring fangs had started after Crackstone; at herself, at other wolves, at Yoko (she had been profusely offended), at Ajax (he had been confused as fuck, and one thing led to another and oh–Enid is a lesbian), and everyone else at some point in time. No one escaped her newfound feral instincts. Not even Wednesday. Her sense of hearing, smell, touch, damn, her everything was much more receptive to stimulus. It made her snap at the tiniest of things, and of course her-her-the Raven had taken it as her personal challenge the week after Crackstone to find out what made her growl and bare her teeth.
Of course Wednesday had been unsurprisingly into it. The Raven looked at her with such a strange glint in her pretty chocolate eyes every time she showed her edge, The Wolf preened, it bared her teeth for more, in a smile that had that same edge to it, a smile that was more a threat–a promise–than just a mask she wore for others. Wednesday called it alluring and fascinating and smiled at her, with only her eyes, and the most imperceptible tug at the corners of her pouty lips, and she is dangerous and unhinged and she is trouble and the Wolf hungers for Wednesday. Wednesday. Wednesday.
The growl deep in her throat is so guttural, so deep and savage that you’d think she’s warning off another wolf that has stepped into her territory, or touched what is hers, or threatened to hurt her.
Why is she growling? The Wolf demands her things. Demands their room, her bed, her squishy biteable plushies and her-her-
She inhales because she’s slipping into something else entirely different to the near panic attack she had earlier. For some reason, her natural reactions to things are all dialed to the max, obviously due to the Wolf, but what is setting her off right now?
Once her big inhale is over, she gets a mouthful of an inexplicably tasteful (tasty...?) and enticing smell, its not merely a smell but a delicious fragrance, and it calls to her. Like it was tailored for them, for Enid and her Wolf, specifically. It’s comfort and safety and warmth but it is also ice and danger and– fresh dirt, fallen leaves, acontium flowers–
She springs up from the bench faster than she can process the rest of the scent.
Wednesday’s here.