Chapter Text
Artwork by the incomparable psychic-refugee
Technology is the downfall of society. The incessant pinging at Wednesday's side table, distracting her from her writing, the same pinging that's been plaguing her for days, is proof enough of this. For the hundredth time, she contemplates why she hasn’t used the sleek black device for target practice since her return to the estate. Live targets are far more challenging, but there are exceptions to every rule. What she has done, against her better judgment, is keep the infernal apparatus charged and at hand, allowing for moments like these for some unfathomable reason. When pressed, she says it’s to monitor for any further communication from her new stalker.
There have been none. She finds this exceedingly disappointing. Her stalker is obviously an amateur.
Despite Xavier’s request for a text, she hasn’t used the phone for its intended purpose. He’s texted her multiple times, as has her lupine friend. The word friend still causes her to shiver uncomfortably, but she's growing accustomed to it now that she has several tentative friends, according to Enid.
For the first week, she simply leaves the messages unopened, refusing to acknowledge either Xavier or Enid in a vain hope that they will cease their futile attempt to ‘bring her into the 21st century’. Her hopes are for not, both Enid and Xavier prove to be admirably stubborn, and on the 8th day, she gives in.
It takes a moment to find the right app and another to scroll through Enid’s countless ramblings about her furthering relationship with Ajax via text and FaceTime. Wednesday is pleased to hear Enid’s family is over the full moon that she finally wolfed out, though not at the circumstances surrounding the momentous occasion.
The last text asks if she is still alive in all caps, with gratuitous punctuations, with emoji smiley faces, and hearts following. Expelling a heaving sigh, she carefully considers and responds with a yes. Her duties as a friend completed, she unwillingly opens Xavier’s thread.
The texts are shorter but far more annoying in content. Composed of a consistent morning and evening message, wishing her a ‘terrible morning’ and ‘gruesome nightmares’ or some variation on the theme, inter-spaced with photos of his latest artwork. Why he thinks she needs to see his artistic endeavors, she is unsure.
Mostly, he sends her sketches of the school and the surrounding grounds. There are familiar locations she knows well, some are of New York, also familiar but not through personal experience. He asks if she has ever been to the city when he sends her a charcoal drawing of an arched bridge she assumes is in Central Park. There is no need to answer; he guesses that she hasn’t to which she finds exceedingly bothersome. Mostly, that he should be able to guess anything about her correctly. She hates being predictable.
Xavier Thorpe: Can’t really see you in the city, not in the day. Maybe at night, lurking in the shadows, waiting to accost unsuspecting citizens with your laser stare for darkening your path.
Xavier Thorpe: Seriously, you should have that thing patented. It can do real damage when deployed on the innocent.
It’s obviously a slight at his time in lock up, one she refuses to feel remorse for. Most days, she refuses to think about that day entirely; there’s too much to unpack. Unfortunately, her dreams do most of the work for her. Haunting her most unpleasantly, by replaying her many interactions with Tyler, all of the missed signs and foolish liberties she allowed while he was being coerced to kill innocent people right under her nose.
There are other dreams, dreams where Eugene didn’t make it, where Enid was lost to Tyler, and then there are those where she wasn’t fast enough to alter the trajectory of an arrow with her own body, dreams she wakes from shaken and cold, her eyes burning. Visions of a boy with disappointment shining in his eyes, cutting deeper than any knife she has ever taken to her skin. She doesn’t entertain those dreams and their possible meaning during waking hours.
Amongst the steady images of landscapes are sketches of Enid and Ajax, heads bent together, smiling sickeningly sweet smiles at each other. One of her parents, her father trailing kisses up her mother’s arm. Thing helps her delete that one. She's forced to endure their disturbing displays of affection daily; she doesn’t need a photo reminder. There’s one of Thing as well, typing away at her typewriter in her dorm room, from when she doesn’t know. That one she deems appropriate to share with the living appendage. He enjoys being the subject of Xavier’s artistic efforts.
There are sketches of her as well. Portraits, always in black and white, color is reserved for Enid and their friends. One strikes Wednesday particularly hard, hard enough for the tender flesh at her shoulder to sting; it’s the only drawing with color. She’s set ablaze in the multimedia sketch, battling Crackstone like a fallen angel with blazing wings at her back, vengeful and fierce. Sleep comes that night, tracing the lines of her wings, imagining the impracticality of flaming feathers when attempting to gain altitude.
Blinking once, twice, she finds herself not in her bedroom but in a generic white walled space, dimly lit but comfortable with the glitter of city lights pouring in through floor-to-ceiling windows lining the far wall. Disoriented, she takes a moment to categorize her surroundings; it’s an art studio from the hastily pinned sketches in varying stages of completion covering the contractor's white. Off to the side, with the only light in the room illuminating the canvas, is Xavier. His lanky form hunched over the easel, smudged fingers moving fast over the page, pausing when he spots her dark form moving in the shadows.
Startled, he drops his charcoal, which she finds odd. In fact, everything about this dream is odd. There’s nothing hazy or disjointed about her perception. Her feet are solidly planted on the ground, and her quarry seems as aware of her as she is of him.
The lines in his brow deepen as he continues to stare at her, overtly surprised. “Wednesday? What are you doing in my studio?”
It’s a stupid question, she decides. “What are you doing in my dream?” A more relevant counter.
“Your dream? I thought this was my dream. Wait, are we dreaming?” Confusion evident, he looks around his surroundings to confirm its authenticity. “This is my studio. And as many times as I’ve pictured you here, I know you’re at home. Ignoring my texts.”
Wednesday ignores his allegation and the bitter undertone to investigate her new surroundings. Navigating toward him in a roundabout approach, she concentrates on the feel of her bare feet contacting the wood floors; they're warm, not chilled as they should be, proving she is very much awake but also very much asleep.
“We are dreaming, but this doesn’t feel like one of my visions. Do your prophetic dreams normally feel this substantial?” She asks, fingering a pastel sketch of a woman standing in a park, dress blowing and hair wild, what strikes her are the missing features, hastily smudged away, as if in anger.
“No, not at all. I’m usually a spectator in my dreams. Like watching a preview or a movie trailer. Scattered bits and pieces that I have to put together later. I mean, I can actually feel the charcoal on my fingers.” He murmurs, absently rubbing at his stained fingertips in wonder. Eyes rolling, she continues her advance, fearing any fast movement might break the connection and wake her prematurely.
Hands sufficiently inspected, Xavier raises his eyes to her, regarding her more closely than he would dare in the waking. This close, she can see the green in his eyes and the freckles dotting his nose, and her fingers twitch at her side for some unknown reason.
“You’re real, aren’t you?” The question is careful, low in the quiet of the room as her question was. His hand, still stained, reaches out to where she stands, a step away, far enough that she can avoid the touch, close enough to reach back. Wednesday tells herself it’s purely scientific curiosity that has her meeting him halfway.
Their fingers connect. Warmth flooded her nerve endings like passing her fingers over a flame. “It would seem we both are.”
Xavier's smile is genuine, wide, and dimpled. One she recognizes from those rare moments in his shed before she cut him down, and their last meeting before break. Not smug, but still slightly cautious around the edge of his generous mouth. Distracted by his dimples, his fingers envelope her hand completely. He uses it to draw her forward till her thighs are bracketed between his spread knees. Their eyes locked and unblinking.
Obviously, there are some elements of dream principle at play. There is no other feasible explanation as to why she is allowing this level of contact.
Similarly, there is a sense of falling the longer she looks into his eyes. Like the snap of a bow string, she plucks her gaze away to focus on the image he was so studiously working on when she arrived. It’s them, as they are now. She was standing in her night attire between his knees, her hand in his, their gazes held.
It strikes her as eerie and somehow beautiful.
The beat of her heart against her rib cage is like a battering ram attempting to crush her sternum from the inside out. Noticing her diverted attention, he follows her eyes, letting out an audible gasp once he sees his work.
“Did you not know what you were drawing?” She asks, head tilting in interest.
He's quiet, thinking. She uses his distraction to extract her hand from his grip, her fingers flexing at her side. Suddenly cold, uncomfortably so.
“No, I didn’t. I just felt like I needed to finish it. Then I saw you.”
“Perhaps this is one of your dreams then.” A logical conclusion, though it doesn’t explain her presence.
Green eyes flecked with gold slid back to her with a keenness that makes her want to wriggle under their weight.
Muscles locked, she remains corpse still. “Or, and just hear me out, this is a shared dream.”
“Why would we be sharing a dream?”
He stands abruptly, towering over her at this proximity, and she finds she doesn’t mind his looming advantage as much as she thinks she should. A peculiar observation, one she will examine further at a later time.
“Because we have a connection.” Xavier suggests cautiously, as if he were addressing a wild animal readying to flee.
“Impossible.” She denies, stepping away from him, breaking whatever hold this shared delusion has over her.
Distantly, she recognizes that her actions are exactly why he addressed her so. What she will not recognize is that his anticipation of her recreation speaks of an understanding of her character that she’s not entirely comfortable with.
Like a lacerated balloon, he deflates, falling back into his stool with rounded shoulders that will detract from his height over time. “Then how else do you explain it?”
That’s a good question and one she is determined to discover. Wednesday opens her mouth to reply when a loud beeping sound shatters the silence cocooning them.
From one blink to the next, she’s back in her room, a sliver of grey light peeking through her obsidian curtains heralding morning's arrival.