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Chapter Text

The sound of pen scratching along paper fills the dorm room again, the only sound disturbing the silence as Wednesday occupies the desk.

Her hand pauses its motion across the page towards the bottom of it, flourishing signature halted halfway, when she hears the familiar skipping feet through their ajar door. Enid is chattering away about something to someone, and the closer they get the more clear the heavy, shuffling steps of Lurch become. A one-sided conversation then, she muses to herself, imagining Lurch’s awkward shyness, as she finishes up her task. Neatly and precisely, she sets her pen aside and folds the paper before her into thirds, fitting it into the custom-made envelope bearing a raven across the middle.

She’s in the process of melting black wax onto the flap when she hears the door swing open, Enid’s sickening smile evident in her voice, “howdy, roomie.” Wednesday’s eyes roll despite the grotesque smile fighting to form on her lips. She manages to suffocate the urge down to a faintly there smirk, hidden away with her back turned to Enid still.

“How utterly full circle of you,” she hums, examining the Addams family crest’s form for imperfections after pressing her seal into the wax.

“I thought your little author mind would like that,” Enid grins as she steps aside to let Lurch into their room, head tilted up at a break-neck angle to watch him practically fold himself in half to get past the threshold.

Wednesday turns to see Enid helpfully point out which trunks are Wednesday’s to Lurch, despite him not needing the gesture, and it fills Wednesday’s chest cavity with a burst of light as the very sun of Enid burrows further into her. Looking at the letter in her hand, thumb brushing over the seal, Wednesday thinks she’s the same as this wax; molded and formed in the image of Enid’s seal pressing a crushing weight into her chest.

“Don’t call me little,” she tells Enid in her usual biting tone, walking over once Lurch has departed with her luggage.

“Ah, but if you’re not little, then how can I do this?” Enid says with a grin that tells Wednesday to brace herself for utter humiliation, received in the form of a doting kiss pressed to the top of Wednesday’s head. It elicits a low growl from Wednesday’s throat, rivaling that of even this brightest of werewolves standing before her. Outrageously, it only elicits a soft giggle from Enid instead of fear, and Wednesday wants to scream bloody murder at such an insult.

(Her heart, traitorous and incompetent muscle that it is, lurches at the sound, her soul crying out for her to bottle it up to keep on her person for the upcoming weeks of separation. Wednesday wishes she’d paid closer attention when Grandmamma had been teaching her that particular potion-making skill.)

“I assume you didn’t manage to locate the mutts you were searching out?” Wednesday asks to divert from her ears turning pink in reaction to Enid’s eyes greedily drinking her in. Her comments are successful in disrupting Enid’s gaze when she sees her beast’s eyes roll.

“You’re going to have to be nicer to my brothers, Wednesday,” Enid hums.

“They are cowards who left you to fend for yourself, instead of wolfing out with you and helping. You could have died while they ran for the hills. I will not suffer cowards, certainly not those that could have cost me you,” Wednesday says firmly, voice and tone so full of acid she’s briefly surprised it isn’t splattering across the room. “So no, I will absolutely not be any semblance of nice to any of your family members.”

(Wednesday is steadfast about ignoring the voice in her mind that taunts her, ‘I won’t be nice as long as your name remains Sinclair instead of Addams.’)

“They were helping evacuate,” Enid starts, only to be silenced by Wednesday’s scorching glare.

“Do not make excuses for them, or justify their abuse. You are a pack, it should be in your very nature to protect one another first and foremost,” Wednesday seethes, fingers moving of their own accord to grip the edge of Enid’s jacket.

Wednesday’s jaw snaps shut against any further berating when Enid’s fingers close around her wrist and lift her hand, clutched in both of Enid’s against her chest where Wednesday then feels Enid’s soft whine.

“Okay, fine, you hate my brothers and we can, like, totally unpack all of that later, but can we not argue right now when I’m literally going to get on a bus in ten minutes to head to the airport? I won’t see you for weeks, Wednesday, I don’t want this to be how we leave things…”

“Of course,” Wednesday says through her teeth, cheeks warm for getting too caught up in her murderous thoughts about the Sinclair pack. “You’re right, I apologize.”

“Don’t, it’s okay. I get it,” Enid squeezes her fingers in her own. “I want to kick their asses pretty often too.”

Wednesday hums, nods, then brings their joint hands to her lips to lightly kiss Enid’s knuckles. The intimacy makes her skin crawl, like she’s having an allergic reaction, and the tingling sensation against her lips is so horrendous that she seeks it out again. It makes her wonder if this is why her father is constantly kissing a path up and down her mother’s arm.

When Lurch groans softly from the doorway, Wednesday is snapped out of the moment so jarringly that she stumbles a step back. She sees Lurch avert his gaze, the dreadful pink on his ears no doubt a match to her own. Great. Now her parents were sure to hear about this even before they make it back to the mansion, the big blabber mouth has never been able to hold his tongue, even though Wednesday and Pugsley have cut it out and reattached it twice for scientific purposes.

With a cleared throat and a stiffened posture, Wednesday invites him back into the room so he can collect her cello and crystal ball case, the last of her belongings remaining in the room. While he’s distracted, she turns to Enid and presents her with the envelope. Predictably, Enid beams as she takes it, already about to tear through the seal to get into its contents when Wednesday stays her hand with an eye roll.

“Must you always be in such a hurry?” Wednesday asks, annoyed.

“Must you always be so old-timey? A literal wax seal, Wednesday? Seriously?”

“Did you or did you not ask for handwritten letters?” Wednesday reminds, tone frustrated. If Enid has already changed her mind about this, Wednesday might genuinely bite her fingers off.

If the dilation of Enid’s pupils, the blue Wednesday is beginning to crave more and more shrinking, is any indication, then Wednesday is assured that no biting will be necessary for the time being. Until Enid is bored of the idea, at least.

“You already wrote me something?” Enid honest to hell squeals, claws extending without her complete control, and Wednesday sees her contemplate using them to slice the envelope apart.

“Yes; a step by step guide on how to write and mail a letter in accordance to the United States Postal Services, to ensure that any you may consider mailing to me actually reach their correct destination in a timely manner. Enclosed is also my home address, as well as a sketch illustrating how to format your envelope for mailing. Do not lose this template, Enid, otherwise we’d have to resort to carrier ravens, and I’d rather not risk any of my precious messengers get eaten by the mutts occupying your home as a snack.”

“You’re so dramatic, Wednesday, and for what?” Enid snorts, but clutches the envelope to her chest closely like it’s the single most precious thing she’s ever held between her fingers. Wednesday wonders if this is how she looks when she’s holding Enid’s hand in hers.

Wednesday ignores the jibe in favor of continuing her instructions, “according to the infernal spyware, Google, it will take anywhere between three to five business days for a letter to cross the country from either of our states, so adjust your mailing schedule accordingly.”

“Do you promise to always write back?” Enid asks softly, more seriously, and Wednesday’s blood boils to hear the insecurity underlying the words. She really should have nail gunned the gorgon’s heart for standing Enid up, even if it was a supposed “accident.” Perhaps there’s still time once Enid’s boarded the bus to the airport…

Connecting their gazes, Wednesday’s intense eyes never once soften as she squeezes Enid’s fingers that have somehow found their way back into her own, “I swear it to you.”

Enid’s mouth on hers continues to catch her off guard despite how many times she’s experienced this exact sensation in the past two days. She makes a brief note with what little of her mental faculties she still possesses to reinstate hide-and-deadly-go-seek the moment she’s stepped foot back onto Addams estate.

If the sensation of Enid’s skin under Wednesday’s lips felt like tingles, this is acid melting her lips; sizzling and scorching and searing, every disgustingly alliterative descriptor for fire. Wednesday feels like she’s tasting freshly fallen brimstone, her lips crumbling to ash. She can’t get enough. As her brain boils inside her skull, Wednesday’s body desperately wishes to be alight and left sundered under those lips.

“I’ll write you, Wednesday,” Enid whispers softly, amid breaths shared between their barely parted lips. And it occurs, then, to Wednesday that a viper had coiled itself in the middle of her chest, right behind her sternum and nipping at her lungs with its fangs, anxious about whether Enid would write her at all, let alone write back in response to anything Wednesday might have sent.

(She tries not to think about the contents of the envelope in Enid’s hand, the way Wednesday had taken a knife to her own skin and flayed herself open with each stroke of the pen on the paper, laid completely exposed and vulnerable to Enid’s whims, hoping and praying that her beast will nibble on her flesh and not turn away from her offering.)

(How sweet would the agony of such rejection feel against Wednesday’s cheeks? Would it feel like a sword through the heart or would it merely drive her over the edge of insanity, left to dangle there for eternity? Blast this cursed Addams blood; for once in her life, Wednesday hopes she doesn’t get to experience such torment.)

Enid’s pulled away from Wednesday then by her phone’s chime, the whimper slipping past the werewolf’s lips at the message playing a morbidly melancholic tune on Wednesday’s heartstrings.

“I need to go or I’ll miss the bus,” she whines.

“I’m failing to see the problem,” Wednesday hums, fingers curling in Enid’s jacket lapel.

“Don’t tempt me, Wednesday…” Enid pouts and it urges Wednesday to tighten her hold on the jacket and pull Enid down into another kiss. It’s brief, soft and chaste even, but it’s enough to stoke the coals in Wednesday’s lips into a flaring inferno. Wednesday’s always had a bit of an arsonist streak about her anyway.

Watching Enid slip away from her, watching her turn at the door to take one last look at Wednesday with an easy smile, Wednesday feels the cold settle into her bones. The prospect of being away from Enid for weeks on end is growing more and more daunting.

“I’ll see you later?” Enid calls back, full of hope. Vile emotion.

“You will,” Wednesday replies, a vow to banish away hope with its finality.

Wednesday feels like a stick of dynamite, its lit fuse cut just before the flame can reach its center to set off a magnificent explosion as she watches Enid disappear around the corner of their door.

A pyre, extinguished.

Enid keeps the envelope tucked into her jacket pocket the entire time, knowing better than to take it out around her obnoxious brothers but unwilling to put it into her bag so as to keep it within touching range the whole time. Besides, what if it gets crinkled or bent? Can’t have that.

She manages to hold out until they’ve passed airport security before she cracks and takes it out to read. There’s no way it’s really a mailing manual, right? She can’t wait to see what kind of, possibly horrifying, treat Wednesday has left her…

Making sure her brothers are distracted and she’s appropriately squirrelled away in a corner that won’t draw too much attention, Enid extends one claw and carefully cuts along the top of the envelope, careful not to disturb the gorgeous Addams family wax seal. Shaking out the contents, three neatly folded pieces of paper fall out into Enid’s hand.

Of course Wednesday would have customized stationary with her own letterhead, Enid smiles ruefully as she traces a finger along the letters at the top of the page that indicate this piece of correspondence is courtesy of one Wednesday F. Addams.

Her smile falls away slowly as her eyes drag down along the page, pouting sadly as she takes in the bullet point formatted instructions, exactly as Wednesday said. The second page holds the illustrative sketch Wednesday told her not to lose. Enid huffs a soft chuckle, shaking her head fondly at Wednesday’s antics, endeared despite her annoyance. She supposes that this is romance in a very Wednesday way, not so much the Addamses; her particular Addams is telling her she wants to stay connected with Enid in her own uniquely roundabout way, going out of her way to ensure it even. They’re going to have to work on their communication, and Wednesday’s going to have get a lot more comfortable with the concept of feelings and emotions, but all in due time. The howl echoing in her chest tells Enid she’s got an entire lifetime for them to figure it out together.

Curiously, she flips to the third piece of paper in the envelope, frowning in confusion because it’s completely blank.

Carefully tucking the other two pages back into the envelope and into her carry-on bag, a niggling feeling in the back of Enid’s head stops her from putting the blank page away or even just throwing it out. She would have chalked it up to being accidentally put in there, that perhaps the sender hadn’t noticed that there was another page stuck with those meant to be mailed, if – you know – the sender hadn’t been the most meticulous person she’d ever met in her life. Wednesday Addams didn’t make silly mistakes like this.

She turns the paper around to inspect it, faced with another blank slate. Turning it over in her hand once more, something in the bottom right corner catches her eye, and as she’s moving the paper up towards her face to inspect it, a raised groove on the back of the page catches against the pad of Enid’s fingers and, with a jolt, she realizes it’s an indent left in paper from a pen traveling across it; the page is full of it in neat, invisible lines.

That sneaky Wednesday Addams. How totally extra.

She’s written Enid a letter in invisible ink.

No doubt something Addams-made that will require, like, a black candle lit by a virgin and some Latin chant to make visible again- oh. There’s a doodle of a lighter at the bottom right corner? Duh. Of course, just a totally normal source of heat that Enid, as a non-smoker, would totally have on her person before she’s supposed to get on a plane.

Wednesday is the stupidest smart person she knows sometimes.

The howl in her chest drums against her ribcage like a demented xylophone urging her to get off her ass and go find a lighter at a gift shop or something. Before her foot can lift off the ground in its first step, the fates conspire against her and her flight is called to board, Enid whimpering at having to wait, likely until tonight after she’s finished settling back in at home while simultaneously fending off her mom. Even the imagined scenario has her mentally drained, shoulders slumping as she delicately fits the paper back into the envelope and follows her rowdy brothers towards the gate.

(Maybe she should have let Wednesday maim one of them, just a little, she thinks as she watches them race down the plane tunnel with thundering feet, threatening a stampede as they utterly embarrass her. Hooligans.)

It’s only been an hour of being home, and Enid’s already bone tired.

She’d barely stepped out from behind her brothers once they reached the arrivals gate in San Francisco before her mom had her chin between two of her fingers, turning Enid’s face this way and that as she studied the scars on her face. No matter how loudly her brothers gushed about them or enthusiastically hyped her up, it couldn’t drown out her mom’s displeased tutting sounds. She hadn’t said anything else either, just a sound effect, and still Enid had felt it like an anchor dropping into her stomach. A rusty anchor, with sharp and jagged shards sticking out all over it, cutting along her insides as it descends into the lowest parts of her belly.

(She misses Wednesday with each cut the anchor made inside her.)

(Her lips against the scars.)

(Her fingers on Enid’s chin.)

(Her whispered worships against her ear.)

(Wednesday Wednesday Wednesday…)

Her dad had squeezed her tightly, and it wasn’t Wednesday’s arms, it didn’t stop the weight sliding down her stomach, but it was good enough to at least slow down the descent of the anchor temporarily. The kiss he pressed to her head, the sheer pride in his eyes and joy at having her home, alive and in one – albeit damaged – piece managed to muffle her mom’s continuous complaints about, “what a terrible job that school’s nurse has done with the suturing,” and how, “you’d think they’d have someone more qualified on staff with how much tuition we pay.”

(Enid knows Wednesday’s rubbed off on her because her first instinct is to tell her mom that it wasn’t the nurse that stitched her up – that took care of her – after her fight but Wednesday’s very sure hands because she knows it’ll make Esther Sinclair blow a gasket.)

Now, finally behind the closed door of her childhood bedroom, Enid lets out a slow breath. Her mom hadn’t said anything about her finally wolfing out yet, but Enid knows better, knows that it’s coming; once her mom has wrapped her head around the scarring and made her own conclusions about how it went, there will be a barrage of passive aggressive comments to sit through, no doubt about how Enid hadn’t put up enough of a fight or wasn’t strong enough, or how much better it would have gone for her if she’d just gotten out and exercised more like her mom’s always telling her to…

Shaking the thoughts away, Enid squeezes her eyes closed and breathes in slowly. In two strides, she’s at her bed, dumping her carry-on onto it so she can slip Wednesday’s letter out, eyes scanning to see if her candles are still where she left them on the desk.

Ever so careful not to set anything, especially the letter itself, on fire, Enid lights one of her big candles, fingers shaking with nervous excitement and fumbling the matches twice, and holds the paper near the heat.

“Wednesday, you’re so absurd…” she breathes out in awe as the words slowly begin to appear along the page.

“Enid,

As I write this, you’ve just stepped out to find your useless pack and determine what your journey home’s plans are. I offered to hunt them for you, but you didn’t allow it. I suppose that’s for the best; I’m rapidly running out of clothes that are not bloodstained.

You’ve been gone from my space for mere moments now and already, your absence is felt. Deeply in my chest, there’s an echoing wail, a monster that can only be soothed by your voice. How exhilarating. The coming weeks without you promise to be utter, sweet torture. Parting is, indeed, a sweet sorrow. Though you must promise me to check for a pulse first before you press a dagger past your ribs and flesh.”

Enid chuckles at that part, inexplicably watery as her eyes slowly well.

“In these circumstances, under the protection of Uncle Fester’s special invisible ink, I find myself able to admit this to you, my courage, humiliatingly enough, lacking in person – I will miss you, terribly so and likely to within an inch of my life.

Many in my bloodline have fallen victim to this affliction, their minds snapped like a dry twig tossed onto a roaring bonfire. Their tormented screams can still be heard, haunting the Addams mansion halls. It has always been a wonderful accompaniment to my cello, the soothing lullaby that has put many a generation of Addams children to sleep.

I vowed to myself that I would never join their symphony.

And yet…

I find myself longing to howl with them.

Howl with you.

That is, quite possibly, the single most mortifying sentence to ever pour from my pen, and I haven’t got a shred of remorse about it. You, my beast, I can confess such things to, knowing that you will not expose me, trusting that when I expose my belly or jugular to you, you will not sink your teeth into them.”

Enid’s knee knocks against the desk’s leg as she drops heavily onto her chair, not even registering the pain. Her eyes are pouring, cheeks soaked in salt water; she always knew Wednesday Addams would bring her to tears someday.

“Although I have known your lips for near two days only, it is all I can think about; a diseased emotion eating away at my insides. My brain feels so full of you, Enid, rotting away. By the time I reach the mansion, there will likely be nothing left for Grandmamma to cure, no tincture or potion in her cabinet to stitch me back together.

I would not have it any other way.

Logically, I know this descent into my madness is all… far too rapid. I do not wish to frighten you away with my declarations, disgracing as they are. I expect nothing of the sort in answer, you will never experience pressure from me to return any of my affections so ardently. I only want what is freely given. If this letter brings you discomfort of any sort, be it as large as a mountain or as miniscule as an ant, I ask that you set it aflame and we shall never speak of it again.

But, shamefully enough, I ask that you show me mercy; do not turn me away, Enid, I couldn’t bare it. Leave me to rot in your shadow, even as a mere friend if that’s all you desire from me. I have always done exceptionally well in the cold dark, but the prospect of being denied your warmth is a horrifying eternity.

For I am weak, and what’s wrong with that?”

Wiping her tears away, Enid sniffles; Wednesday is truly the stupidest smart person she’s ever met; as if, after everything, she’d ever be able to content herself with only being Wednesday’s friend. The howl in her chest rumbles and shakes her very foundation, weeps for Wednesday’s presence.

Tracing her pinky over Wednesday’s swooping signature in the bottom right of the page, eyes tripping over the “yours, forever,” that Wednesday has penned as her send off, Enid finds herself swallowing a harsh lump that only bobs right back up, lodging in her throat and cutting off her air.

God help her, help them both, because they are. So. Freaking. Screwed.

Chapter Text

She’s been back at the mansion for four days, and a fraction of her feels like an open wound that’s poisoned; oozing acrid, blackened blood at a snail’s pace.

She misses Enid.

She feels like she’s withering away, an utmost unpleasant sensation that’s nothing like the time Pugsley got the drop on her and successfully trapped her in the iron maiden for a week. Hell help her, how do her parents survive like this?

(She should tell them, she knows she should. But she can’t bring herself to expose herself like that just yet, knows that her mother will smile at her in that all-knowing way that’s as good as saying “I told you so.” The thought threatens to sicken Wednesday so severely she might vomit up her literal insides again.

And there’s a part of her, hidden away deeply in her chest cavity that’s deprived of any light, a maddened little creature tucked away among the blood and carnage that sparks joy in her soul, that’s happy to hoard this new development in her life, just a little longer.

She doesn’t want to share Enid. Not just yet.

But she needs to tell them, needs them to explain all the little details of this wretched plague she’s come down with, if only so she learns how to survive Enid’s absence long enough to see her again. Thing keeps threatening to tell them himself, but she’s managed to keep him silenced with more lotion than he knows what to do with.)

(She clenches her jaw at her own softness; damn Enid for adoring the wretched hand so much, Wednesday can’t even pull his nails with pliers anymore. How sickening that she has to resort to such pedestrian tactics as bribery. To quote her beloved beast, yuck.)

Wednesday is staring at the murky lake on the Addams estate, under a pleasantly gloomy sky that promises a drizzle when she hears her mother’s heels click along the wooden dock she’s standing on.

Unsurprising to Wednesday, Morticia stops a few feet behind her daughter, humming a horrid little tune that Wednesday recognizes from childhood, and observes the lake with Wednesday. Her mother has always been good about respecting Wednesday’s physical boundaries, at least.

Wednesday waits until the humming comes to its natural conclusion before she turns her head infinitesimally towards her mother, her jaw clenching in her profile and acting as a silent question. Fittingly, Wednesday has a sinking feeling about whatever comes next.

“We haven’t heard much of your morose cello since you’ve been back, darling,” Morticia starts, and Wednesday finds herself turning back to the lake. She had tried to play her cello a few times since being home, but after the second day of her fingers stiffening up on the neck and her bow fumbling along the strings, she had decided to put it back into its case to await her return to Nevermore.

(Enid loves to watch her play from time to time, from inside the room behind their spider web window. Wednesday pretended that she didn’t know about her audience, but on the nights she’d feel Enid’s eyes trained on her, Wednesday’s bow strokes along her strings were smoother, sounds crisper in their melancholy, and whatever piece she performed completed without a single misstep. Not having an audience now, not having Enid, was proving to be a challenge.

Like her muse had up and left her entirely.

Maybe it had.

Wednesday had yet to try sitting at her typewriter since being back, afraid of finding that her words had traveled across the country to San Francisco.)

(Thing’s right, loathe as she is to admit it; she needs to tell her parents so they can tell her how to get a better grip on herself. She and Enid cannot become so wholly codependent, it’d destroy them both.)

(The maddened creature in her chest, the one shrouded in the darkness and coated in the blood, the one that hoards Enid all to itself, wails in pain too; Wednesday had told Enid she could call her and Wednesday would play her any tune she wanted, and Wednesday’s insides are shriveling up the longer it goes without Enid taking her up on the offer…

She hasn’t been able to play the cello since.

Wednesday was so sure Enid wouldn’t be able to wait so long, that she would have called as early as the moment she stepped off the plane.

Had she assumed incorrectly?)

Careful not to let her darkening thoughts bleed into her words, Wednesday answers in her usual cold monotone, “it clashes horrendously with Pugsley’s nightly tambourine playing sessions.”

Morticia’s delighted smile rings through her words with ease, “yes, completely so. It made your father’s ears bleed the other night. He’s been looking forward to a repeat performance ever since.”

“Is that meant to come off as incentive? A dreadfully weak attempt, Mother; you know better than to ask me to involve myself in an activity that would please you or Father.”

“Not even when it involves bleeding?” Morticia says, teasing lightly.

Wednesday refuses to dignify that with an answer, eyes firmly back on the water’s surface. A ripple is arcing through it lazily.

Her mother’s heels click twice as she takes two steps closer, and Wednesday feels like she’s been tied up with chains in preparation to be dumped into the lake; her shoulders tense and she finds herself crossing her arms across her chest preemptively. Perhaps it’s her powers as a seer growing; Wednesday thinks she already knows what Morticia has actually sought her out to talk about today.

“Out with it, Mother,” Wednesday sighs, “what is it?”

They’re standing at the same level now, both sets of eyes firmly on the lake, when Morticia heaves a dramatic sigh that grates on Wednesday’s nerves like one of Enid’s more absurd songs.

(Ancestors above and below help her, she loves the girl but Enid’s music taste does irritate Wednesday to no end still.)

“I’m just left to wonder, draw my own conclusions, about what she’s like, seeing as you won’t tell your mother anything anymore.”

Nothing about Wednesday’s face or posture changes, the only sign of her wrath about being exposed like this being her increased heartrate. Thank Lucifer her mother is only a seer and doesn’t possess enhanced hearing.

“Who?” Wednesday responds, opting to travel down the obtuse path. For all she knows, as an alumna, her mother may be referring to any number of women from Nevermore in some banal desire to keep up with her alma mater.

“Darling, don’t play a fool. It’s beneath you,” Morticia smirks lightly. “Tell me about your paramour then.”

Wednesday snaps her jaws together hard enough for a faint clack to be heard, grinding her teeth. Of course her mother already knows. With how big of a gossip both Lurch and Thing are, it’s a wonder it’s taken this long before she’s been confronted.

“Which one of them told you, Lurch or Thing? Not that it matters, I will be breaking both of their fingers in any case.”

Impossibly, horrendously, Morticia’s smile grows as she promptly turns to face Wednesday head on. She sounds sickeningly delighted, “neither of them said or signed a word.”

“You had a vision then?” Wednesday asks, her chest feeling tight all of a sudden. While her mother’s visions would only promise positive things, no doubt something rose-colored and vomit-inducing in its sweetness, Wednesday was built different and could not yet allow herself to trust any sort of vision. There was so much room for error, for misunderstanding and misinterpretation, and to think of Enid being in any kind of Addams vision twisted her insides with worry. Enough for it to trickle into her voice, show in her eyes when she turns to face her mother too.

Morticia’s gleeful look softens at the concern she sees in Wednesday’s eyes, her smile losing some of its devious tint.

“No, my little tarantula, I did not have a vision, and the only person that told me was you, just now.”

Wednesday has fallen into the oldest trap in the book; misled into thinking someone knows something and simply confirming it for them. How abhorrently deceitful. She’s thoroughly impressed with her mother, despite her disgust with herself for falling for this. Even Pugsley would have seen this trick for what it was and yet…

(Her clawing worry for Enid was the cloud blocking out the sun. How marvelous. She loves playing in the dark.)

“Well played, Mother,” Wednesday hums as she turns back to the lake, posture back to its state of rigor mortis, tone just as cold as a corpse too.

“The best way to contend with you has always been to play on your own level,” Morticia acknowledges as she too turns back to the lake. A bubble pops along the surface a little ways out.

“While I relish in prolonged, painful torment as we’re experiencing right now,” Wednesday speaks up, eyes sliding to the side to glance at her mother briefly before staring straight ahead again, “I have not been in an appropriately dark mood to enjoy it as I usually would as of late; ask what you must so we can end this discomfort.”

Morticia takes a moment to compose her thoughts before speaking, “I assume it is the little personification of a rainbow you’ve been living with?”

“She is so much more than that, Mother,” Wednesday sighs, her shoulders sagging a little. She finds herself wanting to tell her mother about Enid. She hasn’t wanted to tell Morticia anything in many years now.

(Wednesday doesn’t want to share Enid with anyone, not yet, but she finds her desire to share her family with Enid growing; there is no doubt in her mind that her mother will utterly adore Enid, and Enid deserves this kind of adoration.)

(The darkest parts of her brain have been so busy thinking up the ways Esther Sinclair has not been the one to adore Enid as such that her brain has been festering in the anger the thoughts elicit.)

“She is the brightest of stars. The moon should bow to her instead of bending Enid’s knee. She is the very sun, Mother, and I am… cold without her.”

“Oh, my sweet Icarus…” Morticia whispers, hovering her hand over Wednesday’s shoulder in a ghostly squeeze, Wednesday’s favorite.

“What am I to do?” Wednesday asks, seeks her mother’s aid with downcast eyes.

Morticia frowns at the subdued nature of the question, of Wednesday herself. “What do you mean, darling?”

“I didn’t want this, Mother, you know this better than most,” Wednesday bites out. “This curse… I didn’t want this, not for me and certainly not for her. To be linked to me like this, forever… it shouldn’t be her burden, to love me or ruin me.”

“Oh, Wednesday… loving you is not a burden,” Morticia says, words sure and firm with no room for argument, despite the gentleness of her tone.

“If she doesn’t return my affection, it will drive me to insanity,” Wednesday argues anyway, glowering. “Being responsible for something like that, no matter how much I might enjoy the madness, would destroy her.”

“Is she not the werewolf that fought the Hyde? Saved your life?” Morticia asks, one brow raised, and the sudden topic pivot gives Wednesday enough pause that she manages to emote her confusion with her furrowed brows. Slowly she nods her confirmation and waits for her mother to explain herself.

“The werewolf that had not turned until that very moment, to save your life,” Morticia says like that answers anything at all. Despite it being a statement rather than a question, Wednesday nods again anyway.

“Then, my poison ivy, you do her a disservice by not giving her more credit; she is clearly stronger than you’re acknowledging, and just as madly in love as you are.”

“There’s no possible way for you to know that for sure,” Wednesday scowls.

Morticia rolls her eyes, exasperation clear across her face. “Truly, you are your father’s daughter; excessively dramatic for no apparent reason. That girl’s inner wolf lay dormant for years until the very moment you needed her most; you had a bigger pull on her than the very moon that fuels her very nature. And I know I don’t have to explain to you the extent of wolves’ affections.”

Wolves, after all, mate for life, Wednesday knows.

“I don’t want us to become like every other Addams,” Wednesday breathes out quietly after moments of silence. When Morticia doesn’t respond, Wednesday looks up to meet her expectant eyes, “I don’t want us to only know hardship and pain, whether or not we are together. That kind of addiction, the need, the codependence… it is crippling. Neither I nor Enid deserve to lose ourselves to this.”

“You have always been deathly competitive, Wednesday, but love is not a game to be won or lost. Your father and I have not lost ourselves. Despite what you might believe, we are perfectly capable of spending time apart. But love is about choices, my Icarus, and we always make the choice to be together; life, death, and the afterlife is infinitely better spent with the one that makes you better.”

Quieter than Morticia has ever heard her daughter speak whilst not plotting a crime, Wednesday confesses, “I don’t know what we are. I am… afraid to ask. What if she doesn’t return my feelings so keenly?”

“I suppose this is a good moment to tell you that the mail has arrived, and you’ve got a rather sparkling letter bearing your name,” Morticia tells her with her wicked smirk firmly back on her face. It grows the wider Wednesday’s eyes get at the news, watching the ire roar to life in her daughter’s eyes at being denied this information for so long. Without another word nor care for how her desperation may come of, Wednesday turns on her heels at once to march right back to the mansion in search of said letter.

“Wednesday,” Morticia calls out to halt her before Wednesday can get too far, Morticia still facing the lake.

“Yes, Mother?” comes the snippy reply once Wednesday’s footsteps have stopped sounding on the dock.

“Your brother.”

Wednesday grinds her teeth so hard they could potentially crack and break, stomping back to the end of the dock and taking up the fishing pole she had discarded earlier.

“He’s never going to learn if you keep babying him like this,” she calls out to her mother’s retreating form as she casts out her line to fish out her brother.

The envelope itself is a plain white, and upon getting within ten feet of it, Wednesday is relieved to note that it is not, in fact, scented like she warned Enid against. It is, however, penned in glittering alphabet, the sparkling lines making up Wednesday’s name and address searing her retinas, despite it being done in black ink. Wednesday picks it up with a peeved expression, her thumb coming away with some of the abhorrent specks stuck to it; her bloody wolf is incorrigible. What a pleasure.

Making her way up to her room with the rectangle in hand, Wednesday curiously licks her thumb, blanching at the taste of the supposedly joyous flecks sticking to her tongue; they sting and it reminds her of the time she was little and swallowed one of Uncle Fester’s firecrackers seconds before it exploded.

With careful, measured steps and actions, Wednesday reaches her writing desk, neatly setting the letter down once she’s sat down herself. She aligns it to parallel each edge of her desk, perfectly centered on her empty writing surface. Her typewriter should be in this exact same spot…

She understands why it took this long to receive an answer, knows it’s because of the nature of posting something. And yet, a part of her, petty and vindictive, wants to delay even opening the envelope, to make Enid wait just like she’d been made to wait.

She’s slicing through the top of it before the thoughts even finished forming, her letter opener made of pure silver. She hesitates to set it down once it has served its purpose, eyes roaming the intricate etching of her name into its hilt. How fitting that Enid’s weakness would be used like this when Enid herself could become the very weakness used to slice Wednesday open from tip to toe someday.

The paper is wrinkled in parts, not as neat as Wednesday’s; she recognizes it as one ripped from Enid’s school notebook. Her eyes can’t help themselves when they skim along the letters forming words, woven into sentences; she’s greedy and addicted, she craves Enid and this is a part of her sent to her, to satiate and leave Wednesday hollow all at once, desperate for more crumbs to feed herself.

She’s a black hole and all she wants is Enid’s light.

(Icarus indeed, she ruefully admits to herself.)

“Howdy, baby! ;)” it starts and Wednesday finds herself huffing a noise that’s almost a chuckle. Almost.

“I want it acknowledged that I compromised on the scented paper thing, even though that’s how Elle Woods would have- oh. That’s what you watched with- damn it! That’s one of my favorite movies and now it’s ruined!”

Of course Enid writes in the same way she speaks, Wednesday muses. Her chest, revoltingly, blooms with affection. There’s even a little scribble of what Wednesday assumes is meant to be an angry ‘emoji’.

“I should have killed him,” the next sentence reads and Wednesday’s whipped heart embarrasses her by skipping a beat; Enid’s finally getting the hang of this romance thing, it seems, the complete tease.

“Well, whatever. I’m over it now. I got the girl, and we’ll compromise with me using glitter gel pens and you not grumping about it. I’ll even use black instead of the pink. Grey when the black runs out. Cool? Cool.”

There’s a bigger space between the last paragraph and the one Wednesday finds herself dreading to read, and the author in her prickles at the terrible formatting.

“Speaking of getting the girl… I did get the girl, right? Like, I thought with all the smooching we did before we left for the break it was pretty obvi, but then your letter… you seem so hesitant. I’ve never known you to hesitate, and it’s kinda freaking me out, Wednesday, ngl. (that means not gonna lie, btw. Which means by the way… maybe I should write you a cheat sheet.)

Because I’m not. hesitant. Like, at all. I want the girl, I want you. Like, I’m totes not saying we should elope or anything like that! But, well… wolves mate for life omg that’s so lame forget I said that shitshitshit.”

The wings carrying Wednesday flap faster, harder, Icarus in flight and heading straight into the very center of the sun.

Melting wings be damned, Wednesday is euphoric.

A short-lived euphoria, heart hurting at Enid’s own hesitance and insecurity, “if the girl wants me back anyway…”

For once, Wednesday regrets not being beholden to a phone; she wants to hear Enid’s breath catch in her throat with her own ears, right now, when tells her how little she wants anything else.

“Okay, okay, okayokayokay, enough of the mushy stuff, I know how much you’re going to totally hate this. I mean, *huff* invisible ink, Wednesday? What if I had just, like, thrown it out without realizing?! (btw, how do I make sure it doesn’t fade? Because the internet says invisible ink could fade over time, and I will literally die if I can’t read your letter every night for the rest of my life.)

Anyway. Yes, I totally wanna date if you do too, and this is the last thing I’ll say about it for now. But if you keep being so charming and smooth, then I can’t be held responsible for all the gushing you’ll be exposed to. (please don’t stop being so romantic.) Ohmigod, can I tell Yoko??? She’s going to be thrilled to know my pining days are finally over. I think her and Divina had a bet going too. She promised to buy me nail polish if I helped her win it.”

The thought of her parents knowing made Wednesday’s belly roil with bile, but the thought of Enid wanting this, wanting her, enough to tell her people about them?

As far as Wednesday was concerned, in true Addams fashion, your people were those you chose. Blood rarely bore an influence for the Addams family; that’s why there were so many different kinds of them. Come as you are and all that. So the knowledge that Enid wanted to tell her people, her real chosen pack, it cemented the depth of her affection, anchored it in reality. It made Wednesday blush.

(It irritated her, too, knowing that she would now have to actually put in the effort to be nice to Yucko- Yoko. The fruit bat better be the only one Enid asks this of her for; she draws the line at befriending Ajax.)

“How’s it been, being back home? I’m almost afraid to ask, but have you done anything fun with your brother? I know better than to point out that you missed him, I know he missed you. Feel free to leave out any gory details. If I pass out here, there won’t be anyone that cares enough to wake me with smelling salts. If anything, my brothers will probably doodle a bunch of, um, weenies, on my face for shits and giggles.”

Wednesday feels her belly roil with something different now, bile forgotten in favor of sheer wrath. She’s beginning to regret her decision not to hunt them for sport while they were still at school when her eyes catch the next words.

“Though I think my mom would much prefer that to… how my face is now.”

Well. Wednesday’s always wanted a werewolf shag carpet, and Bruno could always use the company down in the entryway. Esther Sinclair’s screams as Wednesday scalps her alive will be heard through the Addams’ halls for generations once she’s done with her. She can even sharpen her beloved letter opener for the task.

“Put whatever weapon you just picked up down, abandon all your murder-y plans right now. She’s my mom, Wednesday, you can’t hurt her. She’s just… it’s just surprising, and… and nobody wants to see their loved ones hurt! right? That’s what she’s upset about, I’m sure of it. She wants the best for me, in her own roundabout way. It isn’t always easy, but for the most part she means well enough. Besides, I’m a proper wolf now! It’s going to get better now. You’ll see. Until then, though, I think I should probably wait to tell her about us… don’t be mad, okay?”

Hate is an emotion that Wednesday doesn’t usually spend any thought on, finds it pedestrian. Very rarely are things or people ever worth spending that kind of time and energy on, with a few notable exceptions from her very recent past.

Esther Sinclair has managed to elicit hate from her now, sitting on the very throne of it smack in the middle of Wednesday’s chest, despite only seeing the woman from a distance across the school’s pentagonal quad; a flickering coal that’s instantly lit with a stick of dynamite, a roaring forest fire blazing across her veins. What a miserable wretch. She silently promises herself to punch her right in the throat at the first opportunity she gets. Rereading the last line of Enid’s paragraph, the soft request tacked onto its end has her contemplating flying out to California to do so now.

“What are you going to do during this break? Writing, no doubt, which, hey, when do I get to read your novel? Am I in it? pleeeease put me in it!”

Another doodle that Wednesday assumes is meant to be a pouty, pleading, puppy face. It tries to pull on the corner of her lips, twitching faintly in a smile that’s quickly suffocated by Wednesday’s still soured mood over Enid’s familial status.

(Revoltingly, Wednesday finds herself plotting ways to make Enid an Addams sooner rather than later instead of just plotting the annihilation of the Sinclair pack.)

“Oh! I saved your house number in my phone and was so gonna call, like, the moment I was back in my own room but it was a weird time, and then I chickened out. it’s bizarro to call someone without texting them a warning that you’re gonna first. What if your mom answered!? So please write me back and after you’re done spilling all your ooey gooey morbidly sweet words in your dramatic invisible ink *eye roll* tell me a time and date so I can call. I miss the cello. And your monotone voice saying my name all full of irritation and stuff. I miss hearing Thing scampering around, how is he! I bet his nails are a mess already. Are you being nice to Thing? Does he even still have nails?? Wednesday. You better bring him back in one piece, not a single new stitch on him anywhere, I mean it. practice your suturing skills on a stuffed animal or something.”

Enid Sinclair, the brightest of the stars, the fiercest of suns. She is the entire cosmos to Wednesday, she knows when she feels her underworked cheek muscles twinge as she smiles at the printed words before her.

“Okay, I gotta go post this or whatever you call it; my parents are having the pack over tonight. They’re actually celebrating my wolfing out, can you believe it? there’s a whole cake and everything. I gotta get ready, do my hair and stuff.”

To hide the scars no doubt, Wednesday hums to herself, thumb toying with the letter opener until she’s sliced it open on the purposefully sharpened side. She sets it aside when a drop of blood falls on the letter in her hand, smearing near Enid’s signed name in the bottom.

“I can’t wait for your next letter, baby.

                                                                                 Your beast,

                                                                                          Enid”                                                                

Wednesday pulls out her stationary within moments, pen bleeding her words across the page.

Chapter Text

The sound of a claw ripping through paper echoes in the silent room.

Fingers gently squeeze the envelope, thumb rubbing back and forth along it; there’s a bit of heft to it, thicker than the last one. An eager wrist twists the envelope onto its opened head, shaking out the contents at the same time as fingers dive in to grip the awaited letter, the results an uncoordinated motion that slightly wrinkles the crisp papers inside. There’s just enough clarity of mind, through the haze of excitement, to sheath the claw lest it force its way right through the words. The lit candle awaiting use proves to be unnecessary as the paper unfurls to reveal words already made visible through – hopefully – normal, blood red ink.

“Hello, Enid,

I will start by stating that your letter arrived into my hands four days after you sent it, and I assume this letter will be in your possession in a similar timeline. I only point this out because the delay, while understandable and reasonable, was disappointing and difficult to wait out. Irrationally, I considered the possibility that you may have opted against writing me back. I hope you do not feel the same way now, as you read this. Please know, I will always write you back.

Your compromise has been acknowledged. There are still specks of glitter clinging to my writing desk and, horrifyingly enough, my typewriter. It is truly hindering my progress on Viper’s next novel as it continues to blind me every chance it gets. Might we compromise on something less… disgustingly shiny?

Speaking of Viper; her last case was based on the events that occurred at Nevermore, therefore – naturally – you are in the novel. You played a rather pivotal part toward the ending of the tale, after all. And due to recent developments between you and me, it is most likely that the character based on you will make a reappearance in the next novel. However, I will likely not be allowing you to read it.

Which brings me to my next point; you and me.

I am deeply pleased to know my affections are returned. Yes, indeed, you ‘got the girl’, if you insist on wording it so childishly. It was not my intention to make you doubt that in any way. As I’m sure you’ve noted by now, I am not entirely adept at navigating such social customs; I prefer a direct approach to avoid communication breakdowns.

Now that there aren’t any more doubts on either of our parts, I want you to know that I, should you be willing, wish to properly and fully court you, in true Addams fashion. Granted, I will need to make certain adjustments to accommodate your more… delicate… sensibilities, but that is a challenge I will be able to undertake. I imagine it can’t be that difficult to keep the bloodshed to a minimum.

If you will permit it, I would like to initiate an act of courtship right now.

Although it is not part of Addams traditions, my research indicates that those going through courtship, or ‘dating’ as the ridiculous masses opt to refer to it nowadays, exchange photographs. As such, you’ll find enclosed with this letter a series of photographs that Thing assisted me in producing. They are labeled and arranged in the order of their descriptions that are to follow now. Please look at them as you continue to read this.”

Trembling fingers reach right back into the envelope in search of the promised treasure, thumb sticking to the glossy front of a stack of rectangles that measure a mere four by six inches. Bright blue eyes wash over the, naturally, black and white images like they are memorizing them as if to be tested on them later on. Once they’ve drunk their fill of the first image, the blues track back to the letter.

“

1. Photograph A: This is the lake that rests on my family’s property. I was standing at this dock when Mother informed me of your letter’s arrival. If you look to the back of the lake, you will note a tentacle; that is my pet squid, Socrates. The weather was particularly spectacular when this photograph was captured, as if the storming clouds were showing off their beauty just for you.
2. Photograph B: This is the family dungeon. I have spent many hours in this room with my Uncle Fester as he explained how many of these devices worked, often allowing me to try them out on him. I assembled my first guillotine, parts completely sourced from scratch, in this chamber. My first victim would have been Pugsley had Mother not insisted I wait until he was at least old enough to try and escape it. Instead, I had to settle for testing it out on watermelons that summer. We consumed an obscene amount of wretchedly sweet juice that week.
3. Photograph C: This is Thing.
4. Photograph D: Finally, this is the Addams family portrait room. A portrait of note in this photograph is that of the blonde woman on the upper right side; that is Uncle Fester’s wife, Debbie Jellinsky-Addams, who turned out to be a serial killer that targeted wealthy bachelors and killed them after a period of marital bliss to inherit their assets. She nearly murdered us all for the Addams fortune, but alas she failed. What was left of her was buried in our family’s cemetery. Personally, I think she did far too much when there were simpler ways to accomplish her task, with far less evidence left behind.

As you can note, there is a glinting blur obscuring part of the portrait wall; that is my father, Gomez Addams, charging me with a blade as he challenges me to a duel. He does that often. I, of course, defeated him though he put up a brilliant fight – unsurprising seeing as he was the one to teach me everything I know of the art of swordplay. Behind him, you can see our most recent family portrait. Aside from Mother, Father, Pugsley, Thing, Lurch, and myself, it features Uncle Fester – who I should confess, has hidden away among your disgustingly colorful hoard of stuffed animals, thoroughly impressed with them as a hiding spot – and Grandmamma. She is a very skilled witch; I’ve learned all my potion brewing skills from her, as well as the best way to break down an entire moose carcass. The secret is to get inside the moose first, something I excel at due to my smaller stature according to her. This should come in handy should your beast nature find itself dragging one in someday.

I hope that, someday, should you be willing, there will be a portrait of us on the wall too.”

Despite there only being four bullet points in the letter, colorfully painted fingernails – except for black painted thumbs – find themselves clutching a fifth photo.

Taken in secret, and likely slipped into the pile without the letter author’s knowledge – an act that will be met with bloody retribution should said author find out, no doubt – depicts a young woman sat in a cemetery across from a tombstone bearing the resemblance of a scorpion. The photo has immortalized her lifted hand as it slips a single black dahlia into the stone scorpion’s pincer. The hurried scribble on the back of the photo, scraggly and jagged with the letters going up and down unevenly instead of following each other in a straight line, as if the writer had to both pen the words and keep the paper steady with the same hand – much like a detached appendage would need to – label it simply as ‘Wednesday and Nero’.

The photograph gets tucked into the corner of the vanity’s mirror momentarily while deft fingers find a suitable frame, yank out the existing picture within it before delicately placing the black and white portrait within. The frame is then gently sat atop the bedside table.

“While I would normally find the practice of exchanging photographs rather frivolous, I must admit, this exercise was not as much of a waste of time as I initially thought it will be when Thing conceived the idea. I even find myself curious about things you may find interesting enough from your surroundings to share with me, if you feel so inclined. A verbal description will do just fine as well, as I have an exquisite imagination and I know you may not even understand how to operate a camera that isn’t mounted into your infernal cellphone. Much as I may come to regret it, I ask you to send me a photograph of your favorite… anything.

I shall end this letter here. I hope this letter was satisfactory, and that the photographs pleased you. I hope you know that I look forward to your response.

I do miss you, Enid, terribly so.

                                                               Yours,

                                                               Wednesday F. Addams

Post Script; though it is a special, long-lasting Addams concoction, it does – much like us Addamses – dislike the sun. I recommend you keep the invisible ink in the shade to avoid its destruction.”

A shaking sigh fills the silence of the room, the sound of paper crinkling following as the letter is pressed into a fuzzy pink sweater-covered chest, so close that an outside observer would think it is being pushed straight through flesh to hide past a protective cage of bone.

Just as lightly glossed lips purse to blow out the candles, already fitting the refolded letter back into the envelope, another blank sheet of paper, bearing the same distinct customized letterhead, nestled behind where the photos were catch the tear-stained blues. Pursing lips stretch into a happy smile, punctuated with a happy rumbling echoing from the reader’s chest, the soundtrack for the new reading material. When fingers hold the second letter over the flames, they are completely still.

“My beast, my beloved beast,

This is madness, utter torture.

I always thought myself to be patient; anyone wishing to become infamous must be able to plot and plan and play the long con. Above all, they must be patient.

You have taken all my patience and set it aflame.

I cannot fathom, at this time, why I ever agreed to this asinine format of communication instead of simply purchasing a loathsome phone. Waiting to hear from you like this has rendered me an empty shell, a muse-less husk; I haven’t been able to play my cello, nor write a single syllable of Viper’s next tale. I find myself unable to torture Pugsley in a way that would yield any blood anymore.

I spend all my minutes composing endless letters to you, only to refrain from sending them as a form of masochistic self-restraint.

I find myself becoming more and more like my parents every day, and the thought not only vexes me but… it scares me.

My affections for you…

I owe you the knowledge that – to paraphrase your own words – Addamses mate for life as well.

The result of such cursed existence is that many in my bloodline have lost their minds to their beloveds, a fate I would utterly relish. To go mad at the hands of such a magnificent beast as yourself? Divine.

However… I fear for us losing ourselves to these affections, to each other, so thoroughly that we cease to be individuals. I do not wish for you to change, to become more like me; that is not what I have fallen for. I do not wish for us to become so codependent as those in my lineage have become, as my parents are, despite how addicted I am to you already. If I were to give into my whims, I would have myself be eternally bound to you this very night. I believe you called it ‘eloping’. Had my parents not done the same thing, I would have had a much more difficult time restraining myself, but blissfully, they did ‘elope’ and you know me. I refuse to follow in their footsteps if I can help it.

No love should erase what makes us who we are, the two beings that shouldn’t work but somehow do.

My mind feels like it is fracturing under the pressure of this distance, my body physically aching to be near you again, and therein lies the entire problem; I cannot allow us to become each other’s downfall.

So I persist in staying exactly where I am instead of climbing up a tree to your room. Knowing you, there will be a tree, to serve a fantasy about recreating some nauseating romantic comedy or other, such as Romeo and Juliette.

I wish to call you Enid Addams someday, but I need you to remain Enid first and foremost.

I am not making much sense anymore, my words are failing me. I can only think of how much I miss your voice, your incessant chatter about silly things I often didn’t care about, and the atrocious way you’d start every morning humming a tune from one of your ear-bleeding-inducing songs. I miss your voice, my darling.

My mother, despite my best efforts, knows about you, us. My fondness for you. It is likely that she has already discussed it with Father as well, him no doubt shedding tears about it. She insists that her and Father are not slaves to each other, haven’t fused together so completely that you couldn’t tell where one ends and the other begins. That love is about choice, and they choose to exist as they do. Given the choice myself, I don’t know what I’d do; become so bound to you that I would be unrecognizable without you, or choose to keep our borders drawn enough that we are clearly two beings existing beside each other. A thrillingly fearful decision to make. What would you choose, my beast?

Surprisingly enough, she did not find out through Thing. Evidently, I revealed it to her myself as I did not hide the depth of feelings for you half as well as I thought.

She called me Icarus.

Fitting, I think. Wouldn’t you agree? You are, after all, the entire sun to me.

My parents wish to meet you, but I have successfully threatened them to keep their distance for now. At least until we are reunited at the beginning of the new semester. Regrettably, I will not be able to slit their throats if they choose to approach you then, not on Nevermore grounds; they’re among the school’s biggest benefactors and I’m certain I will be stopped before I can manage to brandish my knife.

Selfishly, because I am deeply selfish, I wish to keep you all to myself as long as I can.

Their knowledge of us, however, has no bearing or influence on what you should do or say to your own family. Do not feel pressured to tell them anything at all if it will compromise your wellbeing in any way.

Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn if your family ever finds out about me. As I said already, I don’t plan on you remaining a Sinclair for very long.

Knowing your mother has already wounded you fills me with biblical fury.

You are the single most beautiful being I have ever laid my miserable eyes on. The bravest, most powerful wolf, no matter if the moon never swayed your inner beast to emerge. You have always been a proper wolf, Enid. Say the word and I will very thoroughly explain that to your mother.

If she is the cause of you shedding a single tear, I will be the cause of shedding every single drop of blood in her body. That is an oath.

You deserve the world, my love, and your wretched family deserve no part of it. If you so much as think it, I will give it to you.

This world and the next.

I am suddenly overcome with exhaustion; I haven’t slept in days. Perhaps now that I have your words in my hands, my body will permit me some unpleasant respite.

Know that your name will be the last thing on my lips as I drift into oblivion, and the first prayer past my lips when I wake again.

                                                               All of my devotion, all of myself,

                                                                                                       Icarus.”

Chapter Text

She’s writing again, at last.

Pathetically, Enid’s letter, the confirmation of her returned affections, was all Wednesday’s muse needed to return to her, perching on Wednesday’s left shoulder and dictating. She’s already written seven chapters of Viper’s latest novel.

She’s breezing through the eighth chapter when she hears the sound of Thing dragging something into her room, the scratch of paper along her hardwood floors. Smirking to herself, Wednesday keeps her eyes pinned to the typewriter as she continues detailing the gruesome murder scene Viper’s just stumbled upon, her muse whispering to her to write ‘WWMEF; What Would Make Enid Faint?’

(Admittedly, that could be any number of things, the options far too many, but Wednesday’s always thinking about Enid now, one way or another. Her real muse nowadays.)

It takes very little self-control for Wednesday to remain in her seat and finish the task at hand, she’s pleased to note to herself, even as she spots Thing climb up her desk with the envelope she’s been expecting for days now. Perhaps, there’s hope for her yet. Perhaps, she hasn’t completely lost herself to these… feelings. She even manages to slow down her frantic typing now that the envelope is in sight.

(A weight lifts from her chest and Wednesday inhales deeply, like it’s the first lungful of putrid decay after an exhumation; the release of having another piece of Enid within reach, the calm it brings her.)

Careful not to smudge the fresh ink, Wednesday releases her final page from the typewriter and lays it with the other pages filled with scenes of blood and gore, takes care to reposition her typewriter to its usual place before she finally, finally, holds out her hand to Thing for the envelope.

(Even Thing is vibrating with excitement, eager to hear from Enid again, and it makes Wednesday feel less angry at the shameful way her own fingers tremble.)

There’s a slight weight to it, a little fatter than it normally is, and Wednesday finds herself, disgustingly enough, hopeful. Perhaps there’s a photograph in here, one of Enid herself.

(She’s so lovesick, Wednesday thinks to herself with utter and complete revulsion. Why couldn’t she have just caught the plague like everyone else and been done with it? Woe is her.)

The gloss of photograph paper catches her thumb almost instantly when she reaches into the envelope, her stomach tightening into pleasant knots in anticipation. She’s eager to spill the contents into her palms, bypassing the letter in there in favor of feasting her eyes on the photographs, no matter what they may be of. She’s always been greedy like that.

The shiny burst of colors is searing on her retinas. It makes her miss Enid like someone ripped her liver out of her. Such delicious anguish.

The first image in the stack is one of those absurd photographs of one’s food or beverage she knows her peers are so fond of capturing, to share onto the hellscape of social media. How vapid, to think people wish to see what you’re consuming. Enid’s photograph is of her, undoubtedly sickeningly sweet, beverage. A ladybug, horridly and blindingly red, has landed on the rim. Wednesday wonders if Enid would be so pleased to let the insect sit on her cup if she knew they have cannibalistic tendencies and eat their young. Is that why she chose this particular insect to showcase, in an attempt to woo Wednesday? What a delightful prospect.

(Enid’s favorite bubblegum lip gloss stains the rim, and Wednesday has never been so jealous of an inanimate object in her life.)

Flipping to the next image, Wednesday is relieved to see the gloomy grayscale of fog and rainclouds hanging over what she assumes to be Fisherman’s Wharf, buzzing pleasantly at the sight of Alcatraz in the far background. She hadn’t told Enid about her plans to sneak into what’s left of the prison someday to spend the night, perhaps conduct a séance or two. How morbidly fated that her chosen would live in the same city as one of her bucket list destinations.

The next photograph gives her as close to whiplash as the unshakeable Wednesday Addams can get, nail tapping against the image of Enid, mostly obscured by exercise equipment in what Wednesday assumes must be a gym. She’s snapped the photograph in a mirror, a ridiculous concept known as a ‘selfie’, posing from behind a few heavy machines and weights.

(Her smile is, for a lack of a better term, beaming. Blindingly radiant. Wednesday wants to feel it set fire to her skin in person again.)

Bringing the photograph closer to her face to scrutinize, Wednesday notes Enid’s slightly damp skin glowing. It’s really only her upper body, her arms the most that’s visible due to the angle of the shot taken, but it’s enough for Wednesday to see the changes Enid’s body has begun going through due to finally wolfing out. Her biceps are more defined, toned, and Wednesday’s critical eyes catch on a drop of sweat rolling along the taut skin. Abruptly, the flex of them makes Wednesday feel like there’s a pack of vicious wolves clawing their way out of her stomach. A hungry pack of wolves, in need.

Wednesday feels like she’s witnessing something indecent.

(She sets that photograph down, separate from the others and faced down on the desk. She’s going to need some time to sort out these new feelings – cursed feelings – before she can revisit it.)

She hasn’t turned her attention back to the photographs in her hand yet but based on the lightness between her fingers, she knows it’s the last one.

It makes her breath catch in her throat.

Enid must not know the photograph is being taken, sat on what seems to be a tree stump and head turned away in profile. There is a roaring fire a little ways behind her, casting a hellish glow and haunting shadows in equal measure across her face. Wednesday wants to stoke the flames with her own flesh.

There must be a breeze too, Wednesday notes as her eyes hungrily drift across, what she personally knows is, soft blond locks. Wednesday swears she can smell the disgusting baked goods scent Enid practically bathes herself in, wafting along the wind stroking her hair. It gives Wednesday a sweet tooth, a craving for a cookie she’s sure would poison her.

As the blue tips blow back to reveal more of Enid’s throat, Wednesday’s memory conjuring such vivid memories of what the skin felt like she feels the phantom of it across her tingling lips, a dark shadow at the base of Enid’s throat catches her eyes; a lock of hair dyed black, resting under all the blond and tucked away close to Enid’s jugular.

(Wednesday knows that’s where a traditional werewolf mating bite would go.)

(Her canines, nubs in comparison to what Enid hides in her mouth, itch. Desperate to sink into flesh and muscle and pierce until she can taste Enid.)

Her pinky strokes the image of Enid’s jaw, continuing down with her eyes as she spots Enid wearing the black leather jacket she gave her, and Wednesday wonders if the jacket smells like herself or if it has taken on Enid’s scent yet.

Enid’s smile in the photograph is soft but genuine, big enough to crease the scars across her cheek and temple. They are healing well, Wednesday is pleased to note, and all she wants to do is feel their raised texture against her lips. Even in profile, Wednesday can see the bright shine to Enid’s eyes, the one that Wednesday has to turn away from on a regular basis lest she lose her vision to it.

That’s when she sees it, the object of Enid’s attention.

A boy, around their age if not a little older. He’s built like a Fur; broad-chested and standing with the self-confidence of one who deems themselves an apex predator at the top of the food chain. The crooked smile aimed at her Enid is likely meant to be charming, the hand holding out a cup of some sort of beverage showing prominent veins. Wednesday doesn’t even attempt to stop herself from fantasizing about bleeding him dry.

Suddenly, this photograph makes her feel genuine misery that she can’t bring herself to relish in.

Thumb twitching beyond her control, Wednesday drops the last photograph to the desk as her mouth fills with the chalky taste of ash and pushes away from her desk forcefully. The raging bonfire in her belly scorches away the wolf pack that lived there, rivals the one Enid’s posed in front of. Wednesday swears she can feel her blood boil and bubble as it races along her veins, and that must be why her thumb continues to tremble despite her empty hands. Clenching her fists, Wednesday sweeps out of her room like a hurricane decimating everything in its path.

Wednesday has an unquenchable craving for bloodshed.

If you were to ask Wednesday, she’d describe her father as soft-hearted, a complete weakling diseased with feelings and emotions, chained to his whims and fancies, and a prisoner to his affections for her mother, utterly captive under her thrall. An embarrassing display of Addams je ne sais quoi.

He often makes Wednesday sick to her stomach.

But there is no denying that her – acquitted – lady-killer of a father certainly has a few redeeming qualities, least of all the fact that, when in need, she can always rely on him to spill some blood with her. After all, the man taught her everything she knows about the art of swinging a blade.

She finds him in the drawing room by the vile scent of his cigar, a comforting scent she’s known from the womb, seated in his favorite winged back chair and absorbed in a book. Utterly unaware of his surroundings, like a complete novice.

(Wednesday will claim insanity later on when pressed on what book Gomez was reading, refusing to acknowledge that she even saw the title with the word ‘werewolves’ in it.)

(She absolutely did not feel a red-hot fire poker nudge her shriveled heart in any sort of vulgar emotion such as affection for her father, and she’ll sooner hang anyone that claims so by the toes than let them spread such lies.)

Her fingers slip around the hilt of the dagger she’s taken to keeping in her boot again, pleased to have the small comfort she was denied within the halls of Nevermore. Like no time has passed at all, Wednesday flicks her wrist with practiced ease and lets the dagger fly at him, lodging it into the wing of the chair, the knife vibrating from side to side from the force of her throw.

“Impressive, little poison dart, you even managed to get the tip of my mustache. Your mother will be most unhappy,” Gomez croons at her in a proud tone of voice that makes Wednesday taste her earlier lunch in her mouth; she has no need nor desire for his pride right now.

Turning her head to the side, she observes the vast array of weaponry hanging along their drawing room’s walls, all sharpened and ready for use. With an empty stare, she slams her closed fist against the gleamingly sharp point of a rapier and watches it arc off its hook and into her awaiting hand. With an easy turn on her heel, her arm a perfect straight line in his direction with the rapier, a menacing extension of herself.

“Father, I crave violence, and you shall give it to me. En garde.”

Irritatingly, beyond reason, Gomez laughs as he happily jumps up from his seat, book carelessly tossed behind him somewhere.

(Wednesday clenches her jaw at the abuse to the book, making a mental note to fetch it later and restore it properly. Nothing to do with its possible content on werewolves at all.)

In her distraction, Wednesday fails to see her joyful father leap across the room and acquire a rapier of his own. When he successfully knocks hers out of her hand with little resistance, he lets out a full-bellied laugh, “you’re out of practice, belladonna!”

Curse Enid and her letter and those wretched photographs, Wednesday growls as she quickly ducks to retake the rapier in hand, already swinging upwards again as she straightens; she feels like she’s swallowed rusted nails and they’re tearing her apart from the inside as they travel through her body. Her entire body aches with anger and a sinister emotional cocktail that rivals the poisons Morticia used to mix into her formula. She should have never opened the blasted letter, never asked for this.

“Or is this distraction due to the arrival of the mail today?” he dares to tease, loud and boisterous, his grin splitting his face.

In the face of such blatant disregard for his own life, Wednesday decides, right then and there, that this is all his fault, him and his wretched Addams blood. And Addams blood she will spill today.

She pushes, their blades clashing harshly enough for sparks to fly off them. As she gets on the offensive, her father is forced to dance around the numerous pieces of furniture scattered about their drawing room, blindly climbing up the table and jumping from it to the sofa even as Wednesday follows him.

“I do believe I witnessed Thing scuttling along with something towards your room; is that the reason for this delightful bout of bloodshed? Your paramour has overcome you with passion, like a true Addams, my little hemlock berry!”

Gomez is somehow hanging from the curtains when she draws first blood, swiping her rapier sideways and slashing through his dress shirt. Blood instantly begins staining the white fabric, and it gives Gomez pause; despite the fact that a threat of patricide was Wednesday’s first full sentence as a toddler, she’s never shown any inclination to act on it, until this moment.

Despite his bleeding, the Addams sign for the end of a duel, Wednesday does not stop her relentless attack.

Where Gomez was playfully indulging his daughter’s latest homicidal needs while getting his half hour of exercise in for the day, he finds himself needing to actively defend himself now, maybe even fight back more seriously. The joyful smile falters briefly on his face, his grip on his rapier’s hilt tightening as he pushes back with each parry and lunge. Despite his mild concern about Wednesday’s abnormally aggressive display of swordsmanship, Gomez is not about to make it easy for her; she’d actually slit his throat for such an insult.

When Wednesday finds herself taking the first step back since she crossed swords with Gomez ten minutes ago, she lets out a menacing growl that sharpens Gomez’ curiosity and loosens his tongue.

“This reminds me of my Nevermore days, mijita, when I first met your mother.”

Wednesday swings wildly, the button on his sleeve flying off in the face of her sharpened rapier, to show him that was the wrong thing to say.

So of course Gomez continues to poke the enraged, homicidal bear.

“Oh, the passion I felt, it made my blood pour out of my eyes every time I laid them on her, made my feet want to dance right into an empty grave with her as my only dance partner! It was euphoria, a complete terror upon all of my sense.”

Wednesday finds herself, despite her best efforts, intrigued by that statement, her next strike against her father’s sword failing to produce sparks like the three before it as her force lessens, an action that Gomez doesn’t fail to notice.

“It’s true; for the first time in my life, when I engaged in fantasy bank robbery with Fester, I could imagine a partner in crime. I could not stop thinking about your mother, couldn’t stop screaming her name in my sleep.”

Wednesday manages an eye roll, silently chastising herself for thinking that her father would have something useful to say that would help her quell the rage in her heart. No, he’s merely full of the same nauseatingly saccharine nonsense he’s been bombarding her with all her life. Falling into toxic waste would cause less harm than this.

Wednesday begins considering that this may be a fruitless exercise, wonders if she can lure Pugsley into the guillotine with a trail of spider-chip cookies when her father continues talking; it’s her own fault for not slashing out his tongue, of course, she knows that once he gets going about Morticia there’s no stopping him.

“It was the first day of fencing class, and my god, that woman was so full of grace! Nobody could look away as she waltzed across the room, undefeated no matter which student challenged her! She laid me out flat on my back within ten seconds and jumped right into her next duel. What a woman…”

The wistful tone to his voice grinds on Wednesday’s nerves.

“But I’m not surprised; she has always been the most talented woman in any room, a majestic nightshade in a garden of horrendous roses,” he winks at her, no doubt thinking himself so clever for that comparison. She’s boiling with disgust; even her father is not immune against puns and father jokes it seems. Wednesday momentarily contemplates turning the rapier on herself in an act of crude lobotomy.

“An unmatched beauty!” he continues to crow, “and her kindness! The way she cares, even for the most miserable of souls! When she successfully exorcised a poltergeist from your uncle Fester, I knew there would never be another woman for me. Tish!” he calls, then, as her mother steps into the room with a thrilled smile on her face, undoubtedly about to comment about how long it’s been since Wednesday and Gomez have done this together. As if it’s Wednesday’s fault that they exiled her to a boarding school in another state that prevents her from attempting patricide. Her mother’s entrance proves to be briefly distracting, enough for Gomez to land a slice across the back of Wednesday’s rapier-wielding hand, the line of red acting like a red flag waved in front of a bull as Wednesday growls and charges him. Of course the madman merely laughs and jumps out of her way, already enamored with her mother’s presence in his space again.

“Cara mia,” he says, somehow still keeping up with Wednesday even when his eyes remain mostly on Morticia while she sets a vase of freshly deflowered stems on the table, “do you remember our first date, when I snuck into Ophelia Hall and kidnapped you? I thought I would have to wrestle my way past Larissa!”

Wednesday’s sword swings slow suddenly, ducking down before her father’s next strike can take her head off, when a realization overcomes all other thoughts; while her father is more than capable, willing even, of extraordinary violence in the name of his family, bloodshed is not often his driving force. He is a creature of his passions, loud and obnoxiously boisterous, and unfathomably in love with her mother. Such is the nature of his blood, of his Addams state of being. He’s only got eyes for Morticia, and as a result, none for those around them when she’s in his presence. Her father has no understanding of these feelings she’s been wrestling with, this abhorrent jealousy, because he has none of his own.

Despite now being backed into a corner with a sword tip pressed into her throat just hard enough to nick the skin, Wednesday can’t bring herself to care all that much about her embarrassing loss, her eyes on her mother peering at her over Gomez’ shoulder with a questioning look.

Her father, ever oblivious to her turmoil despite how sentimental and – gag her with a spoonful of cyanide – romantic he is, eagerly tears his eyes off Morticia long enough to ask Wednesday, “mi amor, the exhilaration of such love, a deliciously searing poison that taints your blood forever, changes your very malformed soul- there is nothing that will ever satisfy you like this again. Is that what she is like?”

(Absently, she muses to herself that Enid would love her father’s grand sentiments, the two likely to bond over such dramatics.)

(After all, she seems to thoroughly enjoy them when Wednesday herself displays such revolting behavior.)

Wednesday swallows slowly against the blade tip, widening the flesh wound purposefully as she eyes them with her dark eyes. Her face remains blank, though she knows that her eyes betray her inner thoughts of… concern, her confusion. She knows he’s right, and that worries her.

(Frightens her in a way that makes her chafe uncomfortably.)

Despite her most malicious efforts over the years, Wednesday sees Morticia read her as easily as a beloved magic grimoire. It vexes her to no end, but in this moment, watching her mother gently caress Gomez across the shoulder – him instantly dropping the sword from her neck at the touch – and whisper to him about Pugsley getting tangled in the vines again, Wednesday is begrudgingly grateful. While it is highly likely that her imbecile brother has managed to taunt the greenhouse tendrils too far, yet again, Wednesday can tell that it is merely a ruse to send her father away. Blasted ‘girl talk’ is about to ensue, a fact she is decidedly less grateful about.

“Whatever that darling sunbeam has mailed you must have been quite jarring if you let yourself lose like that to your father, especially in his rusty state,” Morticia starts, a fond smile gracing her lips.

Wednesday pushes past her mother, out of the corner, to find a cloth and clean up the two swords before replacing them back on their hooks on the wall.

“Father has no concept of jealousy,” Wednesday begins, back to Morticia, “does he?” she punctuates her question with turning her head to the side briefly to look over her shoulder at her mother.

Before Morticia’s grin can grow any grotesquely wider, Wednesday pushes on, “but you do, don’t you, Mother.”

“Well, naturally, Icarus; your father is incredibly charming. Resourceful, gentle, delightful in the-”

“If you continue that sentence, I will have no choice but to set this whole house on fire, Mother,” Wednesday warns gravely, the promised inferno reflected in her eyes. Morticia merely smiles, not a hint of remorse in the upturn of her lips.

“Regardless, your father is the perfect man, and I’ve had my fair share of fighting women off. Do you remember great aunt Arsenic’s daughter, Nancy?”

“No.”

“Exactly.”

“You know very well that I do not refer to your jealousy over him,” Wednesday hums, arms crossing across her chest as she eyes Morticia with a thoughtful gaze.

It’s enough for Morticia’s playful mood to fall away, her lips slowly straightening into a pursed lips pout, “Wednesday…” she lightly warns.

“Was it a violent jealousy, Weems’?” Wednesday bulldozes through the warning regardless, her tone simply inquisitive. “When he came to kidnap you for your date, did she try to fight him as he makes it seem?”

Wednesday’s gaze rivals that of a predator locked onto its prey as it travels along Morticia’s body, her mother’s shoulders sagging a little as she slowly walks to the sofa. Wednesday turns her body more fully towards Morticia and observes the slow and meticulous way she rights a fallen cushion that’s been slashed, delicately pushing some of its down feather stuffing back into the hole before setting it behind her back to lean against.

“No,” Morticia eventually tells her daughter. There’s sadness in her voice, Wednesday thinks to herself, studying the faintly distant look in her mother’s eyes. She hadn’t displayed any overtly gloomy emotions upon finding out about the principal’s untimely demise, but Wednesday could have sworn she saw something break in her mother’s gaze, a quiet devastation. It softens Wednesday too, pulling back on her dogged desire for answers and watching her mother. For once, she thinks through what she wants to say to Morticia, no desire to upset her.

“Your father… he was the one that made my bones ache with longing.”

For once, Wednesday would admit to understanding what her mother meant, fingers squeezing her arms as she holds herself tighter. A subpar replica of Enid’s touch.

“Jealousy never suited her,” Morticia looks up at Wednesday as she utters the words, and Wednesday can read her mother’s lack of desire to elaborate further.

So with a resigned sigh, Wednesday nods her silent permission for her mother to ask her questions.

“Is that what’s troubling you, Icarus?” Morticia jumps at the opening and asks, shifting on the sofa in a silent invitation for Wednesday to sit too. “Are there clouds crowding around the sun?”

Wednesday rolls her eyes even as she accepts the invitation to sit from her mother; she shouldn’t be surprised that her father’s theatrical language has rubbed off on her mother after all these years.

(The casual use of her new moniker should bother her more than it does. It doesn’t.)

Still. She finds herself spilling, “accompanied with her letter, she has mailed me photographs. Insipid things from her daily activities, a response to my doing the same thing in my previous letter. One such photograph is a portrait of herself, captured at what appears to be a social gathering of wolves.”

Morticia nods like that’s all she needs to hear, like she fully understands the sheer rage swirling up a sinister tornado in Wednesday’s chest.

“I find myself wanting to become intimately familiar with the inner anatomy of werewolves as I remember the photograph. To slice into his sternum and cut out his still beating heart, present it to her as his blood soaks into my skin,” Wednesday reveals after a period of silence in which Morticia merely stares at her in waiting. “My brain has been conjuring vivid imagery of my silver blades slicing through his belly like a heated knife wading through a block of butter on a continuous loop since I laid eyes on the photograph.”

“Driving to California shouldn’t be a problem, darling,” Morticia hums, gently prodding Wednesday to continue talking.

“I do not wish to act on my desires, Mother,” Wednesday responds, her frustration with herself for not wanting to gouge the boy’s eyes out with rusted nails palpable in the air around them. “I just… I want to rip him apart for daring to look at her, but I do not want to become- that. If I am fortunate enough to go stark raving mad, I want it to be because of my devotion to her, not because I am possessive of her. She is not property.”

Morticia’s finger hover over Wednesday’s clenched fists in her lap, pulling back after miming a squeeze of them. “No, she is not,” Morticia agrees softly, “but experiencing jealousy is not a sign of going mad, sweet cyanide. You are someone so used to excellence, Wednesday, accustomed to perfecting everything you set your mind to, a master of yourself as well as your surroundings. For the first time in your life, you’re faced with something you’re unfamiliar with, something that will take time to understand, let alone enslave to your whims. It is not easy to be in love and experience all of this so suddenly, especially at your young age.”

Wednesday bristles on principle.

(This is, if her observation of her peers has yielded accurate deductions, what Yoko would refer to as being ‘read to filth’. Wednesday is deeply offended.)

“I am not in love, as you so claim,” she announces, steadfast about ignoring her mother’s incredulous look.

“Wednesday, you attempted to murder your father after being overcome with jealousy over the thought of your beloved in the arms of another.”

That was not, in fact, the thought that had sparked Wednesday’s bloodlust at first, but it is certainly firmly wedged into her mind now. When Wednesday turns her scorching glare on her mother, she hopes to one day become a psychic so powerful she could murder people with her eyes alone.

Morticia has the audacity to wave Wednesday’s fury away, “what did she have to say about the photograph?”

The question is like a bucket of cold water thrown over Wednesday’s internal inferno, blinking once.

“Wednesday,” Morticia starts, voice slow and careful to enunciate every last letter and syllable in her daughter’s name with barely there patience, “did you read the letter before you stormed out in search of blades and victims?”

Wednesday leaves her mother on the sofa to massage her temples as she mutters to herself in French about teenagers, steps swift but silent as she heads back to her room.

Before she can make it far, however, Morticia’s melancholic voice halts her.

“Do you think Larissa was happy? Towards the end.”

Wednesday contemplates the question, knows logically what answer would sooth her mother most, just as she knows that her mother wouldn’t believe it.

“I think that… my presence there conjured too many ghosts.”

Wednesday finds herself standing over her writing desk, arms crossed and staring down at the photographs and envelope she abandoned earlier. She’s pensive, perhaps a little restless too, and it causes her to begin pacing behind her desk chair.

(Again.)

Her eyes land on that last photograph upon each turn of the heel as she walks, quickly looking away. Her mind, idiotically, races to come up with possible explanations.

(‘Part of the pack, possibly a waiter, blood relative.’)

The turmoil makes her skin itch, makes her nails ache to claw her own face off.

With an agonizing screech, she drags her chair back across the floor and promptly sits down, hard enough for a jolt of pain to spike up her tailbone; a sobering sensation that focuses her mind.

Glaring at the current bane of her existence, Wednesday’s fingers seek out the envelope and probe its insides to find the pieces of Enid tucked in there.

“Hey there, babycakes ;) (lol you’re so gonna hate that)”  

It’s almost instant, the relief that washes over Wednesday at the first transfer of glitter from Enid’s letters onto her fingers; like a bowl of Grandmamma’s warm eyeball soup on a frigid winter solstice.

(Almost because it is still glitter and it is the most absurd pet name she’s ever heard, which is saying a lot when you contemplate who her parents are.)

(Dear Lucifer, she misses Enid.)

“Every time I think you can’t possibly surprise me, you somehow outdo yourself, Wednesday. It’s totally the worst; you’re, like, way smoother than anyone would ever guess, and I can’t keep up.

Your photos were amazing, Wednesday, even if I was super hesitant about what they might be of when I read that you sent me pictures. I’m hella impressed there wasn’t much blood or gore, though I hope your dad’s okay. (and btw, since you sent me black and white pictures and none of yourself, I’m going to keep using my super shiny glitter pens. Deal with it.)”

Wednesday scoffs, shaking her head at the splotch of shiny ink that she assumes is meant to be a person with their tongue out childishly.

“Gosh, how weird are Addams courting rituals going to get? Like, the moose thing was… Something™. I might decide to become a vegan werewolf after that visual. So, like, gimme a hint so I can at least prepare myself, maybe build up a tolerance for the gore. I don’t want you to change things up on my account because I’m a coward pansy weakling chicken,” Wednesday frowns at the scratched out words, knowing exactly where they’re stemming from. At least this is shifting her anger away from unsuspecting bystanders. Wednesday remembers her mother’s offer to drive to California, and mentally begins packing a weapons bag with all her necessities for a successful werewolf matron hunt.

“I want the whole Addams courting experience, lemme have it,” Enid urges, the doodle beside this sentence that of a flexed arm with a comically large, bulging bicep. What an utter loser, Wednesday smiles to herself faintly.

“It was great to see Thing! Less so seeing all his chipped nails, but I’m not surprised; you two been digging graves? I can’t believe you have a whole ass lake on your property. And is your whole house like that, all old timey looking? Can I see your room next time you send me pictures? And that portrait room? Damn. That was a lot of family, how do you keep track of them all? I have five brothers and barely remember their names some days. (btw, you Addamses seem to have a type, huh? Your uncle’s wife looks a lot like someone…)”

Enid’s ramblings give Wednesday pause, contemplating what she means about Debbie. With a detached fascination it occurs to her that, yes, Enid and the Addams’ own black widow bride share certain physical characteristics. If Wednesday’s lucky, Enid will come into her own ruthless streak someday.

(She’ll worship the ground she walks on even if Enid never does.)

“geez, I’m just jumping from one thing to another. Okay, nevermind all that. I did as you asked, which honestly you probably already saw because you’re way too curious (nosy) sometimes. I sent you pictures too! They’re not really ordered like yours, there’s not much significance to any of them, just random shit. there’s Alcatraz which duh it’s so you. Maybe if you decide to come see me we can go sometime. I heard ladybugs are lucky, and since that one happened right before I got home to find your letter, I’m going to believe it. a gym selfie is pretty self-explanatory, but yeah, I started going again since wolfing out. my mom keeps insisting that I need to get stronger, work out more. I had stopped going a while before nevermore, since you know, the wolfing out wasn’t happening anyway, but I guess she’s right. Nobody likes a weak wolf in their pack. Gotta be able to keep up with the pack and all that come the next full moon.”

Wednesday finds herself running out of ideas on how to destroy Esther Sinclair; the woman is the worst thing to happen to existence, a stain upon the world, a waste of oxygen. Wednesday is starting to think she isn’t even worth staining her weapons when she can – and will – whisk Enid away.

“there’s been a bunch of new werewolf stuff happening now,” Enid’s next words read, and it causes Wednesday’s insides to clench, ready for a fight. “the packs here have a tradition of hosting parties for their young members, like a singles mixer and stuff. Because god forbid a wolf remains single for a while, right? Okay, I know that’s hypocritical coming from me cuz I was wigging out about being a lone wolf, but really? We’re only teenagers, what’s the rush in finding mates, you know? (still super hypocritical since I’ve managed to find mine, but you know what I mean. Bet you’d even agree with me, maybe even try to eff the whole thing up somehow. Laxatives in the punch?) anyway. Yeah. They throw these bonfire parties in the winter break (and a big picnic in the spring, and a pool party in the summer etc it’s all very seasonal, which is super fun, if it weren’t, you know, everyone basically pimping out their kids. Okay that’s way gross when I think about it now.)Everyone goes to the parties to just hang out though, it’s super chill, and if you manage to find your person great. Otherwise it’s just a night of drinking and hanging around.”

A picture begins to form in Wednesday’s mind the more she reads about this party, and the clearer it gets the more she wishes her imagination wasn’t so vivid. She glances back at the discarded photograph that’s causing her immense anguish before she focuses back on Enid’s words again.

“or so I was always told anyway. I never got to go until this year. My mom insisted I attend, actually. She used to say something about my being too young for something like that before. (my brothers were barely considered teenagers when they got to go).”

Wednesday wants to sink her own teeth into Esther’s throat and bite down until she snaps her neck.

“it was pretty cool, I made some friends which was nice. Different. I didn’t really get to spend much time with pack kids til that day. And news of my wolfing out travels faster than nevermore gossip because it was all anyone wanted to talk to me about. A bunch of them challenged me to arm wrestling contest, ugh. As if we haven’t evolved past the need for such blatant displays of strength,” Wednesday rolls her eyes; despite always being fascinated by werewolves, meeting some of the ones she went to Nevermore with had quickly dispelled some of the charm of them for her. Never meet your idols and all that. No, engaging with actual furs cemented in Wednesday’s mind that the only wolf she’d ever be enamored with will always be Enid.

“I won, obvi,” Enid finishes her sentence and it brings a smug smile to Wednesday’s lips, chest filling with pride.

“besides, they ended up backing off pretty soon because apparently I smell different. Like ink and blood and a strong antiseptic.

Smell mated.

Nobody really tried anything after they realized that. Wearing your clothes helps too, but I think their scent is starting to fade. I wish I’d grabbed more sweaters lol”

Wednesday’s relief floods her like a tsunami, decimating any temples she’d erected in the name of wrath and jealousy, washing away every last person in any of these photographs. This is why her father had no concept of the green-eyed monster in his heart; Wednesday knew she belonged completely to Enid, and Enid had claimed all of her for herself for all to see.

“I’m surprised my mother hasn’t said anything yet. I keep waiting for her to- say something, you know?” and Wednesday can somehow feel the stress Enid’s under radiate from her words. It bewilders her that Esther could ever be angry at Enid for doing all the wolf things she’s always wanted for her daughter; wolfing out, finding a mate, being happy… is it because Wednesday isn’t a wolf too?

“nevermind her. so yeah. One of the girls managed to snap that picture and I thought I looked super cute, so I thought you’d like to see it. I hope you liked seeing it. lie to me if you didn’t :P”

Blasted emojis.

“Thank you for the pictures, baby, if I haven’t already said that. They really made my day when I got them.”

Wednesday wishes she could rip those two sentences off the page and shove them deep into her heart so it can block a major artery and kill her. If only she’d be so lucky to die by Enid’s hands and nobody else’s.

Flipping to the next page, Wednesday feels the greedy creature in the pits of her belly squeal and dance when it realizes there’s more than one page this time.

“Okay, I don’t have any fancy invisible ink (and I’m also not scared of being vulnerable like you are, but that’s okay, we’ll work on that. There’s no rush or pressure) so I’m gonna write the mushy part of this letter in a separate paper. Fingers crossed you don’t chuck this out on sight.”

As if Wednesday could ever part with a single syllable gifted to her by Enid.

“I hate the Icarus thing,” Enid writes and Wednesday’s heart beats a fraction faster, enough for Wednesday to feel it in her neck.

“That’s not mushy, I know, it’s the total opposite of mush, but I hate it!! Icarus dies, Wednesday! And, yeah, okay cool, that’s totally your thing or whatever, but that’s not effing allowed, especially because the sun kills him. The sun! in this analogy of yours, that’s mee! I don’t want to be the reason you’re ever hurt, Wednesday, I can’t be. So no. you can’t be Icarus, because I have no desire to be your sun.

Be my Hades instead.

Be my equal, the sanctuary that I can run to. My safe space, my partner. Be my steadfast, dark storm that I choose. Every time, without fail.

I don’t care that some versions of the story show him kidnapping her, abusing her, being a total douche all around. In this story, this version, I’ll be the Persephone that can’t bear to be parted from you.

Not in this realm, nor in the next.

Be my Hades, Wednesday, please.

Kisses, my darling,

Enid xx

Enid’s in bed and spiraling down through a video rabbit hole of people that make outrageously intricate tie dye patterns – seriously, this guy’s t-shirt took him a year to work on?! And it’s only a prototype?? Outrageous - when she hears tapping against her window.

She barely manages to suppress the yelp dying to claw its way past her lips at the sight of the biggest raven she’s ever seen in her life, perched atop a black box and staring intensely at her. Its claws are gripping the twine tying the box shut to prevent its contents from spilling. If she didn’t know any better, she’d bet the bird was actually Wednesday.

(Actually, she didn’t know any better; the Addams family were notorious for being weird and having odd powers. It very likely might be her petite murder machine.)

With eager steps that turn clumsy, Enid stumbles out of the bed to open the window slowly. The raven’s eyes never leave her even as it hops off the box and onto her windowsill. There’s immense intelligence in its eyes, and Enid finds herself hypnotized enough to follow its gaze when it briefly flickers to the twine. Her fingers move of their own accord as she pulls it away to open the box, jaw dropping slightly at the contents.

Wednesday’s favorite black and white oversized sweater, drenched in her comforting scent like she’s freshly shrugged it off her shoulders.

Enid’s so taken by the sweater, finger lightly tracing the arc of the top button, that she doesn’t notice the neat rectangle of Wednesday’s personalized cardstock until the raven is presenting it to her in its beak.

“To keep you warm at your next party.

- Hades”

Chapter Text

The fog outside her window is particularly thick today, even the trees in their backyard are barely visible.

Enid considers how well the weather suits her current mood, and it brings a faint smile to her lips; Wednesday would absolutely adore San Francisco today.

Shaking her melancholy off as best as she can, Enid steps away from her window in favor of the vinyls stacked messily beside her record player. Her collection is an organizational nightmare; records in different sleeves or stacked haphazardly on the vanity they rest on, some resting there naked and precariously on the edge. Slipping one free from the rest even results in another keeling over the side with a wince-inducing thunk against the floor.

A loud thud somewhere down the hall momentarily draws her attention away and towards her closed bedroom door; living in a house with eight werewolves has never been a quiet nor a peaceful affair. Going on any semblance of a road trip – whether it was a few blocks down the road to her grandparents’ home, a thirty-minute drive to a restaurant, or the over three-hour drive it took to get to Yosemite National Park – always somehow managed to bring out the worst in them.

(Her brothers never wake up on time, and when they finally roll out of bed they never have their shit together; fighting over the bathroom, yanking clothes literally off each others’ backs, constantly whining for food and snacks. It makes their mom – already on edge about being on time and how far their destination is and the traffic conditions and are they all dressed appropriately enough for the occasion, the list is endless – unbearable, picking fights and being snippy and turning an already stressful activity into a nightmare where they all just pick at each other until the atmosphere is charged with rancid tension as they travel in complete silence, only for all of them to be forced into faking pleasantries once they’ve arrived, lest anyone realize how little they can stand each other in that moment.)

(The hardest part is always her father’s silence, his complacency in all the turmoil.)

Enid grew up associating getting into a car with literal headaches. Even despite not going on this year’s excursion to Sacramento for the holidays, Enid’s brain vibrates in her skull with her forming headache.

She returns her eyes, a little dull lately and lacking their usual sparkle, back to her records, trying to match an artist to what she’s feeling while her mom continues to shout out items at random, a chaotic checklist for her brothers that will no doubt have a necessity missing once they’re too far away from the house to return for it.

Bypassing her numerous K-Pop and other assorted, more upbeat pop albums, Enid’s pulling out her Wasteland, Baby! album from its – thankfully correct – sleeve when her door swings ajar after two swift raps against its wood, her father’s kind but already exhausted eyes sweeping the room in search of her. She matches the slight upturn of his lips, hidden by his unkempt bushy mustache, both their smiles small but genuine.

(As something crashes downstairs, her brothers’ rowdy sounds of blaming each other for the shattering, Enid knows her eyes and smile show a hint of relief too; they’ll be gone for the weekend and she gets to have peace. She does not, in fact, pity her father in the slightest in that moment, especially not when her mother’s shrill reprimand threatens to wake the dead.)

“You sure you haven’t changed your mind about coming with us, kiddo? I know your aunts would like to see you.”

“I’ll skype them,” Enid shrugs a little, busying herself with switching out the vinyl in the record player for Hozier. Eyes catching on the gloomy weather outside her window again, Enid nods to herself that she picked the right artist to match this morning.   

(He reminds her of Wednesday too, lyrics heavy in the same way Wednesday writes to her. She should make it a habit to play more of his music when they’re back at school; Wednesday would like it.)

“It’s Christmas, Enid…” Murray tries, leaning against her doorframe. Despite his large stature, Enid can’t help but think of him as small. Decades of blending into the background, of cowering, she supposes.

“You’ll only be gone a couple of days,” Enid answers with a light shrug.

“You should be with your family.”

(She should be with Wednesday, Enid thinks.)

Enid’s sigh is sad, “yeah, well, you could have chosen not to go, Dad. Besides, there’s not enough money in the world that’ll convince me to spend near two hours in that car. I can’t sit there while she snarks at me passive aggressively about my clothes and my grades and my wolfing out and- everything.”

“She just wants what’s best for you, you know that,” her dad gently speaks, hushed like he’s doing something wrong. It’s all the usual excuses, the same tone and face he’s made all her life. The most miserable part of it all is that, deep down, Enid knows he’s right; in her warped, most damaging way, her mother does truly love her, does truly want what’s best for her, and all the things Esther never had for herself.

(She remembers when her grandmother, her mom’s mom, would come to visit, remembers the way Grandma Ruth would blatantly favor her uncles while simultaneously being far too harsh on Enid’s mom. Enid remembers feeling the tiniest bit vindicated after those visits, when nothing Esther did was ever deemed good enough, before the guilt settled in; her mother was, after all, just a daughter carrying her own endless bags of unresolved trauma.

All of them trapped in the same cycle of abuse.

Enid always found herself choosing the path of empathy.

Perhaps, someday, her mother will find her on it.)

Enid meets Murray’s eyes, her shoulders a little tense when she moves to sit at the foot of her bed.

“I deserve more than the entire drive being spent with the windows rolled down because she’s in denial about what my changed scent means. You love your family, you have to, but that doesn’t mean you always like them, Dad; we put up with a lot from each other in this family, but I’m sorry, I won’t do that. Not about this, not about- her.”

It’s the first time her changed relationship with Wednesday is being addressed head-on in her house since Enid’s been home from Nevermore, and it feels like she’s finally being released from shackles; her arms drop beside her, heavy and numb from being restrained above her head, and her whole body tingles as blood rushes right under her skin.

She imagines this feeling of freedom can only be rivaled by the first time she’ll get to wolf out and run with her pack.

(In her heart of hearts, she knows nothing will ever compare to Wednesday, let alone rival or beat. A loss she’s most pleased to undertake.)

When her dad only offers a quiet hum and a nod in which he doesn’t meet her eyes, Enid can’t even bring herself to be upset at him for caving so easily; wolf pack dynamics often depend on not rocking the boat much. At least he hasn’t thrown her out on her ass for being in love with a… human.

Before he can slip out, Enid unable to tune out her mom yelling for him to finish packing up the car, he pauses just enough to smile at her genuinely, “I hope we can meet her soon, kiddo.”

Enid offers him a faint smile paired with a half head-bob meant to be a nod. If only he knew.

The fog is thickening, hanging lower in the air, as Hozier begins to fill her room, Enid wandering to where her contraband picture of Wednesday sits framed on her bedside while the opening to Movement wraps around her like a comforting blanket. She’s pleasantly distracted enough that she almost misses the way her mom shouts to her dad, “that damned crow is back again, Murray, and I think it just stole our mail!”

It makes Enid laugh, somber mood lifting just a smidge as she wanders to her window. With practiced ease, she’s unlatched and shoved it open just as the black raven lands on her windowsill, a familiar and eagerly-anticipated envelope held in its beak.

“Hi, Russell,” Enid greets with a soft utterance of the name she’s taken to calling the bird by.

(Because, you know. Russell Crowe. She can see it so clearly in her mind’s eye; Wednesday twitching and glaring at her for ever daring to name her dark and formidable minion or some such adorable nonsense, let alone naming him something pun-y. Not to mention that the bird isn’t even a crow, but a raven and they are decidedly not the same.

Gosh, she can’t wait to tell Wednesday about it anyway.)

Easing the envelope from him and gently petting his feathers, Enid looks around for something to reward Russell with first, always taking the time to positively reinforce the raven whenever he’s shown up on her sill after that first night of package delivery, even when he pops by for a visit empty handed. As a result, she’s taken to keeping all her shiniest loose change in a little cup on her desk, snatching one out for Russell right then as she ushers him into the warmth of her room.

“Did you steal this from the mailman, buddy?” she coos at the raven fondly, rummaging for a suitable snack for him, “I bet you gave him quite the scare, huh? Who’s a big and scary raven doing such a good job not getting snacked on by werewolves?”

(Wednesday is going to slit her throat when she finds out Enid’s been using a silly voice with Russell, but Enid can’t help it; he’s as menacing as Wednesday herself – which is about the same as a tootsie roll as far as Enid’s concerned. She thinks it’ll be hilarious to see Wednesday go on a rant about Enid ruining a perfectly good winged creature of the night.)

“I can’t believe she’s had something like you, and we’ve been using snail mail to communicate this whole time,” Enid grumbles to the bird playfully while Russell only tilts his head and follows her with his beady eyes, like he knows exactly what she’s talking about. “This is so much more romantic.”

(Enid will swear that Russell nods at her emphatically.)

Despite waiting what feels like entire eons for this letter to arrive, Enid forces herself to wait just a little longer until she hears her family’s last shouted goodbyes drift up to her room, the slam of the front door on the heel of their words.

Patting her shoulder, Russell hops up onto it with ease, and Enid ventures out to the kitchen at last after spending the morning in her room to avoid the chaos. She rolls her eyes at the bomb that seems to have gone off in the living room, her brothers’ games and chew toys spread all across the floor, intermingled with gross laundry their mom must have forced them to change out of. She’s going to have to tidy up a little, if only for her own sanity.

In the kitchen, she spots some cash on the counter with a note penned by her dad, “don’t forget to eat, kiddo. Love you,” that she pockets for later.

A quick peek into the fridge produces a pot of yogurt and some berries, Enid’s stomach too tight with the anticipation of reading Wednesday’s letter to entertain eating anything else. While she busies herself with making a mixed berries smoothie, tossing a blueberry up into the air that Russell snatches up as if he’s been trained to do so all his life, Enid hums to herself, continuing to hold a one-sided conversation with the raven perched on her shoulder.

“You know, this is very Goth pirate of us, Russ. Maybe that should be my next Halloween costume. At least Wednesday and I would match then.”

She’s only met with a bird head gently rubbing against the underside of her jaw, no small amount of affection in the gesture. She’s really begun to grow on the raven, she’s happy to note.

“Any idea what kind of devastatingly romantic notion or other I should expect?” Enid asks as she offers Russell more berries. “Are Mr. and Mrs. Addams like this too, all the time? That must be so exhausting for Wednesday, no wonder she’s always so grouchy.”

(Russell seems more content with snatching up the offered food, but Enid squints at him because she swears he shrugged his wings at her in a, ‘yeah, pretty much’ gesture.)

Sipping on her smoothie slowly to avoid the dreaded brain freeze, Enid wanders back to her room in search of her precious letter, ready to indulge in it without interruptions.

(Last time, her brothers. Just. Would. Not. Go. Away. They caught her crying about her letter and didn’t stop teasing her about it until she shut them up by taking the squeaky part out of all of their chew toys and hiding them.

In addition to their groveling, she squeezed three days’ worth of doing her chores for her out of them. Wednesday would be so proud.)

Enid’s humming along to herself about shrikes and glorious thorns while she gently unseals the envelope, so careful about lifting the beautiful and immaculate wax seal without breaking it, idly chatting with the bird munching on his own bowl of berries she set out for him on her desk, “any new gossip to share, Russell? Has she laid out any fun traps for Pugsley lately? Oh! You should totally bring Thing with you next time! I’m dying for one of his neck massages, and I bet he’s in desperate need of a mani.”

While it’s true that she’s an Outcast, and that often means having supernatural abilities, and she’s fully aware of the natural relationship between ravens and wolves, Enid is under no illusions that she can actually speak to birds. Contrary to some opinions – Wednesday’s mostly, every time the topic of Enid running into the woods with only claws for protection comes up – she isn’t actually nuts.

But, she reminds herself, this isn’t just any bird. This is an Addams bird; they’ve got a severed hand running around in their family, teaching a highly intelligent bird species Morse code is hardly a difficult feat. As she slips her fingers out of the envelope with her prize firmly clutched between her thumb and index finger, she glances back at him as Russell begins to tap something out with his beak on her desk.

(Great, she rolls her eyes after noting how roughly he’s pecking at the wooden surface, that’s going to leave a mark.)

“Hold on, hold on, you know I’m not fluent yet, I gotta write this down,” Enid urges, setting the letter back down in search of loose paper on her messy desk and a pen. She manages a triangular piece ripped from a notebook and an orange crayon. Wiping her hand over the paper to smooth out some wrinkles, Enid looks back at Russell with a determined look, “okay, I’m ready. Start from the beginning. But go slow! One letter at a time.”

(Russell holds eye contact for a prolonged moment and Enid swears he must think her illiterate.)

Deliberately slowly, Russell brings his head back down to the desk and starts pecking out set patterns, Enid scribbling letters down as she deciphers them, muttering the pattern to herself the whole time.

“Dot, dash, dash- that’s W,” she mutters, smiling to herself as she writes down Wednesday’s name; they’ve taken to referring to Wednesday with just the first letter of her name, much simpler for the raven to tap out than spelling out the entirety of Wednesday’s name.

More tapping and muttering produces the words ‘make’ and ‘music’, Enid smiling as she confirms, “she’s been playing the cello more often? That’s wonderful, I know she said she was struggling with it last time. I love when she plays.”

Russell caws lightly, a bird of few sounds normally, making sure Enid pays attention because he’s not done. With a confused frown, Enid picks the crayon back up and waits, slowly tracking the cypher Russell pecks out for her.

Dot, dot, dash, dot – F.

Dash, dash, dash – O.

Dot, dash, dot – R.

Dash, dot, dash, dash – Y.

Dash, dash, dash – O.

Dot, dot, dash – U.

Enid stares at the choppy sentence Russell’s conveyed with a curious frown.

‘Wednesday make music for you.’

“She’s… playing the cello for me? No, that can’t be it, I’m not even there. Unless she’s been recording it somehow to send?” Enid asks the raven for confirmation, only met with a decisive headshake.

Her cheeks grow hot, as if struck by a thousand bolts of lightning at the same time, looking up from studying the words, “is she… writing music? For me? Something brand new?”

Russell’s happy caw is a loud confirmation that’s barely audible over Enid’s squeal, her face hidden in her crossed arms over the desk soon after to muffle the rest.

Her head snaps up then, laughing and blushing and utterly breathless, “she’s going to be the death of me, Russ, the romance is so sweet my teeth are going to fall out! Gosh, I need to start upping my game here, figure out what I can do to retaliate; she’s starting to make me look bad and that just won’t do. Now you have to bring Thing with you next time you come so the three of us can brainstorm.”

(‘A werewolf, a sentient dismembered hand, and a raven walk into a bar…’ Enid muses to herself.)

Before Enid can finally get to her long-awaited letter, Russell has one last bit of sass to throw her way, tapping away at the desk again.

“Of course, I’m competitive,” Enid answers him with a huff, “what do you mean that’s not romantic, have you met Wednesday?”

(Russell looks ready to protest, beak parted before he snaps it shut, his face adorned with the bird equivalent of ‘touché’.)

With a little hop closer, Russell taps a talon to the neatly folded letter Enid unsheathed from her envelope moments ago, black eyes peering into her blue ones in equal measures of anticipation and irritated impatience. Once Enid’s gently nudged him back so she can take the papers in hand, Russell is happy to strut back to his berries bowl for more snacks. Before Enid can lose herself in her letter, though, he makes sure to tap out one last word at her, ‘loud’.

“I am not reading my love letter out loud for you, it might not be PG.”

(Enid smirks at Russell’s little stomp, amused by his avian tantrum.)

“My Enid,” it begins, a promising start that leaves Enid positively giggling with her giddiness.

“Your letters continue to be abhorrently glittering, obnoxiously colorful, and a migraine-inducing eyesore. I cherish their torture immensely, thank you. However, if you ever refer to me as ‘babycakes’ again, I will have no choice but to rip your tongue out of your mouth with my teeth.”

The threat has an effect that Wednesday likely did not intend nor even think possible when she wrote it; it makes Enid blush. Her mind flashes with thoughts of Wednesday’s teeth sinking into various parts of her skin and… yeah. It’s a good thing she’s not reading this out loud to Russell, despite his persistent head nudges from his spot back on her shoulder.

Enid’s eyes track down along the page in search of the next words, frowning at the substantial gap between the opening paragraph and the next, an odd pattern that occurs throughout the entire letter, she realizes after letting her eyes skim further down. The gaps seem to vary in sizes sometimes, but there nonetheless between blocks of text; Wednesday would never format her letter in such an unorganized manner. A thought slowly forms in her mind, and Enid finds herself flicking through the pages in hand for her much-awaited blank page that would be filled with invisible ink, only to come up short. Has Wednesday not sent her any words of adoration this time? Unless…

Looking back at the letter in hand, taking a closer peek at the seemingly blank spaces, Enid realizes Wednesday’s gone ahead and merged her two letters this time. With a fond eye roll, she shrugs the shoulder Russell is perched on, “go fetch the matches, you know where they are by now, you little pyromaniac; do you know my brother’s eyebrow still hasn’t grown back? And we can’t get that awful burnt fur smell out of the house… Wednesday’s going to be so impressed when I tell her.”

With a smug sounding caw, Russell flies out of Enid’s room towards the kitchen, back with the matches just in time for Enid to have finished arranging her candles for lighting.

True enough, once the pages are held above the lightly flickering flame, neat lines of text in Wednesday’s swirling, swooping cursive appear. Enid’s heart flutters in her chest happily, chuckling to herself as she imagines it like a little wolf pup wagging its tail with joy.

“The photographs you forwarded with your last letter were as chilling as a New Jersey winter; the mere sight of you in them made my lungs seize as the breath caught in my throat. Every inch of my skin felt like it was being pierced with icicles, and each one of my extremities ached with delicious frostbite that will only be cured with the press of your skin against mine. Your loathsome joy washed over me like a frigid tide, and I wished for nothing more than to be submerged in that icy lake. I cannot begin to describe how much I adore New Jersey’s winter.

I cannot begin to describe how much I adore you, my beast.”

Enid chuckles softly, lightly scratching Russell under the beak, “can you believe her? After all of this, and she still hasn’t even begun to describe it? I’m so screwed, buddy, but I can’t wait to see her again, Russ, you have no idea…”

“In gratitude, I hope you will accept my photograph in return. Thing aided me in capturing it. I hope it is to your liking, my love.”

Enid’s eyes widen, mentally berating herself for not noticing earlier as she goes back into the envelope to dig out this supposed photograph, breath catching at the Polaroid rectangle she finds. Still in black and white, and she’ll need to figure out how to get her own camera to do that because it’s so aesthetically pleasing, she’s greeted with Wednesday’s patented blank expression. It makes Enid’s insides feel warm, makes her bite down on her bottom lip to muffle her squeal, to see Wednesday’s full lips in their naturally pouting state, face framed by those perfect bangs and braids. Braids that seems looser, more relaxed, and they draw Enid’s attention to what’s visible of Wednesday’s torso; relaxed shoulders and posture, sat comfortably on the edge of her bed. But it’s those dark eyes that make Enid pause. They stare up at her with a softness around their edges that betray Wednesday’s affections for the recipient of this photograph; despite her best efforts, Wednesday has not been able to conceal her longing for Enid, and despite such vulnerability being so clear, Wednesday still chose to send it instead of taking another picture.

(Just as the notes for Sunlight filter into her room, Enid momentarily thinks that she understands why Wednesday would think of herself as Icarus; incapable of doing anything but give into the sun.

A thought so terrifying Enid wants to collect all the clouds in the world around herself to protect Wednesday against such devastation.)

Enid brings the picture into herself, holding it against her chest and wishing she could open up her ribcage so she can tuck Wednesday behind its protection.

(She’s getting up to tuck the picture into her vanity’s mirror when she notices a detail on Wednesday’s bed; a rather large, dark wood four-poster bed, Enid giggles when she spots the picture of herself that she sent to Wednesday held against one of the posts, sans frame, with what’s likely a silver dagger stabbed right through the Fur handing her a drink in the picture. ‘To keep me warm at my next party, my ass,’ Enid chuckles to herself as she finds the sweater Wednesday sent her probably immediately after receiving her pictures. The wolf in her preens at the territorial claim Wednesday has laid on her, but the teenaged asshole in her makes a mental note to tease her about it in her next letter.)

“With regards to Addams courting rituals, rest assured, darling, that you will not be subjected to anything you do not wish to partake in; breaking down animal carcasses is just a hobby of mine. We may be, according to others, a peculiar bunch – which is admittedly factual when it comes to certain branches of the clan – but all courting rituals are personal to the pair going through it; my parents’ rituals included a lot, and I do mean a lot, of ballroom dancing. To this day, Father will sulk around the house if they’ve gone more than five hours without waltzing. It is unbearably revolting.”

Enid giggles, imagining Wednesday’s parents swaying and twirling around her. Russell hops down from her shoulder to tap on the table after she reads him that part, ‘W kill eye’, which Enid can only interpret as Wednesday attempting to gouge out her own eyes in an effort to not be subjected to the dancing anymore.

“What do you think my Addams courting rituals with Wednesday could be?” Enid asks Russell in genuine curiosity, thinking about what she wants to do with Wednesday. On the one hand, this is a perfect chance to make sure her relationship with Wednesday goes smoothly, normally, like any other teen romance full of clichés. On the other hand… she’s morbidly curious about what the weird limit is and how far they could push it.

To her horror, Russell takes it upon himself to answer her mostly rhetorical question by grabbing a pen in his claws and miming a stabbing motion.

“We are not going to commit murder, Russell!” Enid says, appalled.

(She swears the bird rolls his eyes at her in disappointment.)

“My biggest disappointment from the events at the end of the last term is that I missed your first transformation. While the thought of any kind of pain afflicting you fills me with despair, I know the sounds of your bones rearranging into your canine form would be a hauntingly beautiful symphony that I could only dream of replicating with my cello.

Selfishly, my beast, I hope we can share in your future monthly transformations; to bear witness to your magnificence firsthand, to be the first person your wolf lays eyes on every full moon and take that risk of being eviscerated in a moment of confusion? My very skeleton shivers in presumptuous anticipation. To be the last being your wolf lays eyes, snout bloodied from your hunt and teeth glistening in the darkest of forests under brightest of moons, before your brilliance is given back to me would be more precious to me than all the riches in the world. I crave to be the hands that wipe away the blood from your face. If you permit it, I could be your hunting partner, howling together.”

Enid can’t help it when she starts to squeal with joy again, the sound morphing into a little puppy-like howl that she muffles into her hands, the letter crinkling lightly in her tight grip. She can picture it so clearly now; Wednesday taking care of her after a full moon, maybe drawing her a bath to help her aching bones recover while she happily cleans and portions whatever prey Enid’s managed to hunt for them. Gosh, their home is going to be full of little animal bones, isn’t it?

Home. Their home.

(Somewhere with a forest or woods nearby for the two of them to roam around in on full moons. Somewhere near a graveyard or cemetery for Wednesday to take her on dates, the freaking lunatic. Big enough for their friends to come visit them; it’s sure to be dark and dank enough for Yoko, probably with a pool for their sirens. Ajax’s room will have not a single reflective surface, though she’s sure she might have to fight Wednesday on that. Wednesday would make sure Eugene had the best hives and bee-care technology money can buy – or sentient dismembered hands can steal. A little doggy door for Thing, and a giant aviary just for Russell.

The imaginary home makes Enid feel warm all over, chasing away the chill of being alone at home during the holidays.)

“I am pleased to know you are seamlessly integrating into werewolf society. It is your rightful place, always has been, and I would skin your mother alive for you for ever making you feel less than, but alas, you would pout about it. Nevertheless, I imagine it is better late than never, and it is of no shock that they have welcomed you with open arms. Some more than others, it seems. Are you happy, my love?”

Enid smiles faintly, body thrumming pleasantly at the idea of Wednesday being a little jealous over her. Nobody has ever cared enough, or thought she had anything worth being jealous over. She knows it isn’t healthy if it keeps up or grows, nor will she encourage or provoke it out of Wednesday – especially considering Wednesday’s more… homicidal tendencies – but Enid can’t help but feel a little flattered. Lord knows she had wanted to clamp her teeth on Tyler’s jugular from the moment she saw him even talk to Wednesday at the fair without even understanding why. And don’t even get her started on Xavier…

(She’s had dreams where she sets his art shed on fire accidentally. With him still in it. Accidentally!!)

Shaking the violent thoughts away, her eyes fall to the rest of the paper in hand; Wednesday has seemingly abandoned writing her more ‘normal’ letter by this point, the rest of the page filled with Enid’s favorite kind of ink – invisible and spewing sappy shit.

“I must admit, beast, that the sight of that… boy… so clearly fawning over you drove me to the point of almost murdering my father in my search for violence. He is fine, of course, only lightly maimed, but the jealousy was addictively potent. I swear to you that I will not drive your affections away with such vile emotions, that I trust you completely with my entire black soul and shriveled up heart, but this current distance between us is making it difficult to tame such urges. Disgustingly enough, I am beginning to understand the pure madness that plagues my parents when they are apart from one another for long. Father is constantly climbing on top of tables. Utterly sickening, absurdly inconvenient.

I just miss you so dearly, Enid, I fear I will never be whole again.

What a terrifying thought.”

Despite the overwhelming affection that swims through Enid’s veins with every word she reads in these letters, a tidal wave of sadness washes over her when she reads the last paragraph, her heart sinking down into the deepest depths of her belly, anchored by the sheer unhappiness flowing from the words in front of her.

Even through ink on paper, her Wednesday sounds so… blue.

It makes salty water pool in her eyes, a blink releasing twin rivers across her cheeks so she can clear them enough to see her calendar properly. With a sniffle, her bottom lip juts out in a pout that she bites down on; they’re only halfway through their break, with another two weeks of separation between them. She can’t even begin to imagine how their longer future school breaks are going to feel like.

(It’s already felt like a lifetime.)

Glancing to the side, Enid’s eyes catch on a framed family picture on her desk. She notes the perfect poses, the controlled smiles that have been faked to perfection over the years, not a single blinking eye anywhere to be seen. The symmetry of the posed parties, the way the space around them is exactly equal on all sides. Her mother has always been meticulous about everything she’s ever set out to do, and photography is no exception.

(To Esther, pictures are meant to be memories of special occasions and days, of the way people looked and presented. A silly face, or a candid shot simply won’t do.

Like it isn’t about the joys and joyfulness, the spontaneity.

A picture that tells you nothing about the core of the person in it.)

Enid wonders if she’ll ever have one of these family photos with Wednesday standing beside her, the perfect ray of jet black. Wonders how she’ll ever bring it up if all she can think about right now is running away to be with Wednesday, and never come back to this house.

(She thinks about how her own portrait with Wednesday will look; do they paint those or are they taken with one of those old timey cameras with the exploding powder flash? Will the Addamses have a new one done with her in it? All she wants is to run across state lines and find out for herself from the comfort of Wednesday’s arms.)

“I have always had a liking for Greek myths; so ripe with exquisite tragedies, so full of fools.

So many of them revolving around love.

The most inevitable tragedy of them all.”

Is that what they were, Enid wonders. Is that the appeal for Wednesday? Is that what they were destined for?

(Gosh, the gloomy weather and the holidays were ripping her sanity apart. Whoever said absence makes the heart grow fonder was a complete moron, Enid thinks. Her heart’s only growing more rabid.)

“Your detested Icarus? A victim of hubris, certainly, but of love too. His father loved him to the point of treason, and Icarus loved his freedom to the point of annihilation. I do not wish to upset you, my love, but I still believe it to be a fitting comparison; I’ve always thought I could have done it better; built better wings, flown closer to the sun without falling to my demise, bested my father by proving him wrong so effortlessly. Surely, even you, distracted by your affections for me as you may be, can acknowledge that my hubris last term had me all but flying directly into the sun?

It may not have cost me my life, but it could have cost me you, and to me… that is the same thing.  

Eros and Psyche, too, were tragic; she loved him but couldn’t trust him. He loved her but kept himself from her. I can’t do anything but crack myself open before you, trusting that you will deftly stitch me back together once you’ve had your fill.

How do we talk about Greek tragedies and not mention the most devastating of them all? Every Addams child grows up hearing about the wretched tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, our first glimpse into true horror. He loved her to the point of challenge, to the point of defiance even in the face of the ultimate inevitability. Thanatos himself was not going to keep him from her. Orpheus loved her to the point of impatience. I loathe to admit it, but I would have turned around too, eyes parched and desperate to drink you in again.

In my family, the tragedy of love is as inevitable as death. Those of us lucky enough to fall in love are those that fall into a shared grave with their beloved, only to then spend whatever comes after death together, never parted. Indeed, there is much beauty in so called tragedy.”

Enid’s eyes trip over each other as she reads and rereads the lines, heart racing because she knows Wednesday enough by now to know something totally devastating is coming. Russell hops back up onto her shoulder to nuzzle against her jaw, his raspy caw soothing.

“I suppose if we must reenact a Greek myth, I am grateful it is one of my favorites; kidnapping, disgruntled mothers, harsh and unforgiving winters. What’s not to love about Hades and Persephone?

Despite our deviation from the tale – because such a cold winter should mean the warmth of Persephone’s spring across Hades’ cold throne, and the absence of you in all my spaces is the truest form of cruelty – loving you… it has opened my eyes to other aspects of such a dark story.

Even the brightest spring flowers need to be shaded sometimes. Even the darkest shadow is worthy of connection and love. Neither are weak, neither incomplete without the other but rather… complimentary. Yes, I quite like that.

You will never be without a sanctuary as long as blood flows in my veins and races in and out of my heart, you will always be my equal and my partner with every breath in my body that carries your name.

I beg this to be the last winter we exist apart.

- Yours in every realm, every story, every reincarnation

Wednesday”

Enid can’t breathe, can’t see through her tears; it’s the first time Wednesday’s outright declared love, claimed Enid so and speared the ground at her feet with that word, in any variation. It makes Enid feel beside herself with longing and grief.

Delicately, after composing herself and properly storing Wednesday’s letter, Enid finds her writing tools to begin composing her response.

“My beautiful Wednesday,

Like Orpheus, I would have turned too…”

Chapter Text

It’s a dark and stormy night.

Her family was supposed to come home today, only to get stuck in Sacramento because of an atrocious storm that made driving home a life-threatening challenge.

They were going to miss Christmas morning with her unless the storm eased up overnight, driving back hopefully later in the morning.

(Looking out the window throughout the day, Enid knew it wouldn’t.)

Even Esther had sounded upset by that when they called to check on her. And no matter what kind of convoluted, complicated relationship you have with your family, there is always a little bit of a sting when they’re not around, especially for something that’s meant to be as family-oriented as Christmas. 

(A big part of Enid was sure this one, this Christmas where she’d wolfed out now, would be different. Not because she’d get better presents or get any more attention than normal, but because this one… she wouldn’t want to hide anymore. That when the rest of their pack came to visit throughout the day, Enid would step out of the shadowy corner and be the one to put herself out there and actually engage with them. She was kind of looking forward to that. The belonging.)

She thinks it’s rather fitting that the storm only continued to get worse and worse after her parents broke the news.

So Enid had swallowed down the lump that lodged itself into her throat with great difficulty, croaked out her disappointment about having to delay their morning traditions but put on a brave face as she told her dad that she understood why this course of action was necessary; better safe than sorry, after all. She spent the rest of the day curled up under a blanket and vegging out on the couch with as much ice cream as she could stomach before it threatened to make her sick. 

(At which point she switched to salty snacks until those, too, almost made her sick. A vicious cycle of salty and sweet began to war together, then, only broken up by her snapping out of it long enough to realize she needs to eat actual food for dinner. 

She ordered one massive meat lovers’ pizza for herself and treated herself to cheesy garlic bread.)

(Despite her werewolf metabolism usually having her back, her body still revolted against the obscenely random assortment of food she put through it; Enid didn’t leave the bathroom for at least an hour before bed, forty-five of the sixty minutes spent pacing like a caged tiger while the remaining fifteen spent turning her stomach inside out into the toilet bowl she cradled.)

Needless to say, Enid was, as they say, straight up not having a good day or night. 

As the storm continued to whip through San Francisco, lightning growing brighter as the hour got later and the thunder rattling the windows in their frames, Enid found the first downside to her wolfing out; an enhanced sense of hearing that was wreaking havoc on her nervous system. She could swear she felt her blood vibrating with each crack of thunder, her skin felt like it was literally crawling so thoroughly that she wanted to claw it off. She’d always been agitated during storms, but she was never afraid. Now her body was slowly slipping into a dangerous state of fight or flight, and Enid was worried what would happen when the scale tipped in either direction. Every flash of light seemed to enhance some kind of shadow, her wolf’s instincts to crouch down and prepare for a fight against enemies and threats that weren’t there. Even the sounds that existed between bouts of booming thunder were turned up to twelve as they reached her ears, body overstimulated and hyper aware of every last sensation that assaulted it. 

It left Enid exhausted. Bone tired, weary. Aching for a hug, and the comfort of some silence. 

(Wednesday likely adores this kind of weather, and Enid thinks that had her beloved little weirdo been here with her, Enid would have learned to find the beauty in it too. Instead, she’s just left with the ache that comes with being so wired even blinking seems to take a physical toll on the body.)

Too on edge for sleep, Enid has resorted to assaulting her brain with mindless TikToks in the hope of distracting herself long enough to quiet her mind and get some actual sleep – nobody needs to do Christmas with bags under their eyes, no matter how alone they were going to be – when a frantic tapping on her window startles her so badly her tightened grip on her phone cracks her screen, sheer instinct getting her to drop the phone entirely before her claws pierce through the device completely. 

There’s a menacing growl emanating quietly from her chest, rumbling, and she finds herself teetering on the edge of the fight portion of the spectrum. She peers at the source of the sound, not turning on the light to keep her advantage of darkness and cover of shadows as she relies on her heightened eyesight to find the threat. Enid’s so tightly wound that she forgets that she’s occupying her room in the attic of their house, or that the tapping sounds distinctly like… fingers.

Russell is soaked and reeking of the ozone that fills the charged air. He looks so deeply angry, Enid holds in a gasp at how much he reminds her of Wednesday that one morning when the cafeteria had to break it to her that they’d run out of blood sausages for breakfast. 

(Enid had to get between her and Yoko who was cowering under the table, guilty of taking the last seven pieces.) 

(The way Wednesday had instantly calmed from ‘murder with every intention of following through’ down to ‘muttered death threats under her breath’ when Enid had forcibly made her sit down and offered to share her own – normal, thank you – sausages should have been the last push Enid needed to ask Wednesday out on a date. Alas, she was too much of a chicken shit.) 

His hissed out caw snaps Enid back to the forefront of her own mind, the wolf skulking away once it sniffs and recognizes Russell as ‘pack’ to let Enid handle whatever this is. She hurriedly guides the bird into her room and rushes to her bathroom to grab her towel, fully intending on making a raven burrito when she stops halfway, the full scene registering in her mind. 

Thing is here. 

He’s scratched up and bleeding a little, presumably from where Russell’s claws sank into him to maintain a good grip on him while they flew across the literal country to get here, finding her windowsill in a storm. Enid watches Thing shake off the rain like a dog from his spot on her desk. 

She doesn’t know what to think, what to expect. Russell has been visiting her regularly, but never at this hour, and certainly not in these conditions. He seems to abhor being wet; it reminds Enid to get a move on and get him a towel. Enid had told him to bring Thing next time, she reminds herself as she walks back with the towel firmly in hand, but their arrival in such a dramatic manner can only mean trouble, right? 

Was Wednesday in trouble? Enid’s heart felt like it was clutched in Russell’s claws then, the sharp points of the talons tearing into the muscle and staining her ribs with blood, filling up her lungs until she felt like she could no longer take in breath. 

Maybe she could force herself to transform; she could run to New Jersey, how hard could it actually be? 

Thing takes it upon himself to rip her out of frantic, jumbled nonsensical plans about packing a bag of beef jerky and hitching a ride across states until she was throwing herself at whatever was trying to hurt Wednesday. Thing takes up a pen and rapidly taps it on the table, snapping Enid’s eyes into focus that has her trying to bundle up Russell first, only for the stubborn raven to try and bite her. 

(Truly, Wednesday’s child.)

So Enid leaves him to figure it out, briefly amused by Russell rolling around in the towel to dry his feathers, while Enid focuses on Thing. She takes a deep breath, reminding herself that this is Thing, she loves him and she’s missed him and she’s specifically asked for his company, despite the less than ideal conditions. Maybe Russell told him about Enid’s request and Thing jumped at the chance to come right then and there, and besides, it’s not like either of them could have known about the storm. 

Yeah, Enid tells herself, trying to pry the talons of concern from her heart and flesh. That’s gotta be it, she insists in an attempt to believe her own words. Wednesday is okay, there’s probably no trouble. Hell, Wednesday often is the trouble. If anything, Enid should be worried about the state of New Jersey. 

So Enid puts on a smile that’s not entirely easy to muster but definitely genuine, hooks her pinky with his in greeting, and sits at her desk to look over the scratches littering Thing’s skin, gently wiping away some smatterings of blood.

“You two sure know how to make a dramatic entrance.” Enid says with an amused huff, “but I’m so glad to see you, Thing. I’ve missed you, buddy, and I so need your help wooing an Addams. What the hell is this about waltzing? Give me an elaborate choreography that’s got like seven layers of concepts bundled up with flailing arms and kicking feet, I’ll hit that shit out of the park every single time, but I draw the line at waltzing.” She hopes she sounds as humorous as her words were intended to be, that the gnawing, rancid worry in her gut doesn’t stain her breath carrying her words. 

Enid’s not sure how she didn’t notice it earlier, but the mention of the Addamses makes Thing scuttle back from where he was lying down on top of Enid’s hand so he can nudge over a rectangular piece of paper, neatly folded multiple times, corners crinkled a little.

It isn’t Wednesday’s signature custom made letterhead, and Enid finds herself staring at what must be official Addams family stationary, their family seal embossed at the top. Wednesday’s handwriting is as neat as ever, but Enid can still tell this wasn’t a thoroughly thought out note in the way it’s formatted; one large block of words that would otherwise be split into smaller, individual sentences that best convey Wednesday’s precise thought process. 

“Enid, I apologize for sending such correspondence before I have had a chance to receive yours. I know it is not yet my turn to contact you again but… Grandmama has fallen ill. Beyond anything she’s ever experienced before; an ambulance took her away - kicking and screaming, of course, albeit weakly - an hour ago. Father is so beside himself that he is making himself sick as well. Mother… My mother is one of the most collected beings I have ever had the misery of knowing; I have always known her to face hardships with a despicable serenity and an even more grotesque smile. More than once, she has calmly strolled right into being a hostage and faced certain death in the name of bringing my father and his brother back together, not an ounce of fear gracing her ghastly skin. Tonight, as the paramedics secured Grandmama and Father wailed on his knees by the door, I saw distress upon Mother’s face, for the first time in my life. She had shed tears of her own. Of all the horrific things I have instigated and borne witness to, I fear the sight of hurriedly and messily scrubbed away tears on my Mother’s cheeks will be the image that haunts me most for the rest of my days.

I am unbearably ashamed of this, Enid, but I am… afraid. Helpless and afraid. Forgive me, my love, for asking you to bear witness to such weakness, but I find myself aching for your comfort.

- Wednesday”

Enid’s hand is wrapped around her phone, fingers swiftly swiping along despite the spider webbed cracks across her screen, before she’s finished reading the last syllable. Her throat burns with tears at the thought of Wednesday being in so much pain, likely unbearable and excruciating, that she’d reach out like this, of her own accord. That she would spill all of these vulnerabilities for all to see, using plain blue ink. The burn spreads through her blood like acid at the knowledge that she can’t be there to hold Wednesday’s hand through this.

‘Pick up, pick up. PickupPickupPickup, Wednesday…’

A familiar groan replaces the dial tone in Enid’s ear, and Enid finds herself wanting to sob; she had somehow convinced herself that it’d be Wednesday that would answer, and whatever Enid had to say to her would magically fix all of her aches and woes instantly.

“Hi, Lurch. It’s me. Enid. Enid Sinclair. I know it’s late, and there’s a lot going on over there and just- where’s Wednesday, Lurch? Please, can you put her on?”

He groans, the sound ebbing away as he seems to be pulling the device away from himself, and Enid desperately hopes he isn’t moving the headset back onto the cradle.

“Enid?”

Enid’s breath skips a beat, and her heart catches in her throat, and her body goes haywire at the sound of the voice she adores so thoroughly, sounding so utterly… small.

“Hey, baby…” Enid croons softly, and she’s embarrassed to hear how wet her own voice sounds, as if she has any right to be so distressed over the health concerns of a woman she’s never even met. As if she has any business making this about herself somehow. 

“Do not. Dare,” Wednesday’s voice hardens and tries to lash Enid into cowering, “insult me with your pity.”

“I would never even dream of such a crime,” Enid huffs, momentarily annoyed enough to forget the circumstances of this phone call. Softening her harsh tone, Enid adds, “it’s called empathy and compassion because I’m your girlfriend and you’re my mate. You’re hurting right now and I want to alleviate your pain. Is it really that awful for you to let me be there for you in a moment of need, Wednesday?” 

There’s silence on the line, long enough for Enid to pull her phone back and check if the line has died, the bright flash of lightning assaulting her eyes reminding her that that may very well be a possibility if the storm gets any worse. 

“It doesn’t make you weak to be afraid, or to want comfort when you’re scared,” Enid murmurs quietly, sincerely. “Not to me.” 

Wednesday’s exhale over the line is shaky, like it’s buckling under a massive weight it is forced to balance. Enid wonders if Wednesday felt like she needed permission to be vulnerable. It saddens her to think so. 

“Hey,” Enid says, voice gentle and lowered, “we don’t have to talk about it right now, I know you’d rather not taint yourself with mushy feelings or whatever, and that’s okay too. We can talk about it when you’re ready, if ever. I just want to know that you know I’m here for it, for you. Okay?”

“I did not intend for Thing to disturb you at this hour,” comes Wednesday’s reply after some silence. Enid decides to take that as Wednesday admitting to wanting to talk about it with Enid, but perhaps not so soon, that maybe Wednesday thought she’d have more time to process what’s happening on her own first. It makes Enid smile faintly, to think that she can sort of decipher Wednesday’s roundabout way of communicating. “Please send them back so that I may pluck the bird’s feathers and chip away at Thing’s nail polish.”

“Wednesday Friday Addams-!”

“Lord above and Satan below, you will make me regret telling you what the F stands for.”

“- you will do no such thing!!” Enid exclaims, genuinely horrified at the thought as she pulls Russell close against her chest protectively. 

(Thing visibly huffs in jealousy, poking Russell until the bird moves enough to make room for him in the hug too, Enid happy to readjust and include him.)

“Enid-” Wednesday tries to interrupt. 

“I’m so serious right now, Wednesday, I’ll be so upset if you’re mean to Thing or Russell. They’ve done nothing wrong, don’t punish them for doing what you asked.”

“Enid-”

“In fact, I’m invoking my Persephone rights!”

“Beast!” Wednesday calls out to stop Enid’s ranting, hearing the audible snap of the werewolf’s jaw as Enid is halted by the outburst. 

There’s a breath blown out over the line, measured and slow and surprisingly long. Enid can see Wednesday’s controlled blank expression in her mind’s eye with picture perfect clarity.

“What, in Lucifer’s name, are Persephone rights?”

Enid can’t help the blush she feels coating her cheeks, her smile awkward even as it stretches across her face and makes her rosy cheeks ache. She thinks she physically hears her blush in her words, “you know, because it’s well known he was whipped for her and did anything she wanted.”

“I see,” comes Wednesday’s monotone reply. “And this is a well-known fact, you say?”

Enid will swear for the rest of her life, without any kind of proof and like a raving lunatic, that she hears Wednesday smile with those words, hears the underlying mocking despite the factual tone Wednesday affects. Well, she’s come this far, Enid is not about to back down now.

“Yes, absolutely everyone knows this. Trust me, I’m Greek.”

“Then I suppose I have no choice but to live up to my new namesake and grant you whatever your heart desires, yes?”

“Yup.”

“Lest you fall into utter despair and spiral into sadness, hm?” 

Enid’s grin is wide and indulgent, endeared by the teasing tone she strains her ears to pick up on, “totally. Wouldn’t that be the worst thing ever?” 

“Entirely so. Whatever shall I do?” Wednesday poses the rhetorical question with an exaggerated drawl, pulling a charmed laugh from Enid’s lips.

“I can’t believe we’re bantering right now. You, Wednesday Addams, are flirting with me! Your abominably colorful girlfriend.”

“I would never.”

Enid only laughs softly more, endeared.

“However,” Wednesday says over the sound of Enid’s laughter, “your attempt at underhanded, emotional manipulation through the usage of my affections for you was very admirable, though unnecessary; I am already completely enamored by you, there’s no need to continue trying to seduce me.”

Enid huffs a soft giggle, shaking her head at the turn this phone call has already taken, “you’re such a jerk, Wednesday.”

“True, but I am your jerk. Wholly so, eternally. Irrevocably,” Wednesday says.

Enid feels her breath stop in her throat, her lungs beginning to burn from all the oxygen trapped in them when she fails to push any out past her lips. 

“How do you just, do that? So easily.” Enid questions softly, her tone losing all lightness as an anchor falls over her words and pulls them down until she can only whisper them out with quiet awe.

Wednesday’s confusion rings over the line, “do what easily?”

“Say stuff like that,” Enid murmurs, genuine curiosity dripping from her tongue, “just… make such promises, commitments. It’s like you don’t even need to consider it, it just spills out, and you keep binding yourself to me. How…”

“Binding myself to you is as easy as arson to me,” Wednesday says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Enid mulls the words over, knows that Wednesday wouldn’t joke about arson, and knows that for Wednesday, it really is that obvious. 

Still, Enid finds herself wrinkling her nose in displeasure. 

“Don’t say it like that, Wednesday, please,” Enid murmurs softly. “I know how much you love arson but I don’t want this, us, to be compared to a crime. Like we’re doing something wrong because of what we feel for each other…”      

The silence feels heavy and Enid starts to think that perhaps she’s finally pushed Wednesday away with this show of vulnerability on top of her denying Wednesday one of her favorite hobbies when she hears Wednesday hum. “Both the Addams and the author in me is displeased by this but I will try to use more… acceptable clichés.” 

“I’ll make it up to you,” Enid says with a small laugh, “I’ll keep deathly quiet during your writing time for the whole semester when we’re back at Nevermore.”

Enid hears Wednesday let out an honest to God snort, the disbelief in it ringing clear as day, and Enid finds herself outraged instantly. 

“What was that?” she asks haughtily, “you don’t think I could do it?”

“I am certain you cannot and will not last even a full day,” Wednesday tells her, tone smug and sure. It summons the competitive spirit in Enid easier than if she’d used a Ouija board. 

“Oh, you’re so on, Wednesday Addams, I’ll show you quiet! So quiet you’ll be begging me to talk again,” Enid promises, mind made up and already thinking up ways to make this work. 

“I don’t beg, Enid, not even for you,” Wednesday says, deadpan. 

This time Enid is the one to snort her disbelief, glad they’re on the phone so Wednesday can’t see her blush brought on by the sudden thoughts and images assaulting her brain. 

It’s enough to rile up Wednesday too, “shall we put a wager on it then?”

Right. Enid had forgotten about Wednesday’s own – vengeful – competitive spirit, probably actually summoned with a Ouija board. It brings a big, toothy grin to Enid’s lips, “what are you proposing?”

“A week. A whole week of silent writing time,” Wednesday challenges. 

“Pfft. Easy. What do I get when I win?”

“In the unlikely event of your success,” Wednesday hums, “I will agree to attend one - one – girls’ night a month.”

“Once a week,” Enid tries to negotiate instantly.

“Per month, Enid, take it or leave it.” 

“Fine, once a month with Yoko and the girls, but you let me do your nails in our own room once a week,” Enid fires back with a tone of voice that leaves no place for arguing. 

Wednesday tries to put her foot down about this, “… very well.”

(Emphasis on tries. Poorly. As in, offers no resistance to speak of. Enid finds herself overcome with the desire to bite something.)

“What will you give me when I win?” Wednesday says to refocus them.

“I…” Enid pauses to think, “will leave the room during your writing hour to give you peace. For the whole semester.”

“Enid, I was under the assumption that this was meant to be a reward, not a cruel punishment,” Wednesday grumbles, but Enid thinks she hears a playful, barely there, smile in there too.

Enid laughs, “good thing you won’t win then, right?”

“Back to our previous discussion, because you must understand this,” Wednesday says, in all of her monotone seriousness, “it is easier to commit myself to you, my beast, than it is to breathe.”

(Ironically, those words make Enid’s breath catch in her throat.)

“To be honest,” Wednesday says after a moment of quiet in which Enid felt like she’d burst if something wasn’t said soon, “I don’t know how to explain it, my utter devotion to you, beyond the fact that I merely am. I don’t know if there is a need to. I am not the most capable of discussing my feelings or emotions, but… they are there, for better or worse.”

“Worse?” Enid questions her, timid.

“I would tear the cosmos apart for you. If anything were to happen to you, I don’t know if anything could ever stop my rage. That makes both of us vulnerable.”

“I dunno, babe, you’re handling vulnerability pretty well right now,” Enid says with a light tone, blushing fiercely. 

“That is because I’m speaking to you. Easier than my very breath, my love.”

“That sounds so… scary.”

Enid can practically hear the cogs turning in Wednesday’s brain as she thinks over her next words. For once, Enid waits out the uncomfortable silence instead of filling it herself.

“Sometimes it is,” Wednesday admits slowly, “absolutely terrifying, how quickly I’ve become enamored with you, how little fight I’ve put up when it comes to giving myself over to you entirely.

Like a man on the end of a noose; spending the days leading up to the gallows in despair before the serene calm takes over, a relief that comes with the chair being kicked out from under him, a swift snapped neck and endless darkness.

I spent months in agonizing denial before I felt your arms around me in that forest, smelled the blood on you and- the chair was kicked out from under me.”

“Wednesday,” Enid whines softly, drawing a tired chuckle from Wednesday across the line. 

“Of course you loathe that comparison. Let me try again.

When I was very nearly dead in the crypt-”

“You were what.”

“- Before Goody’s interference,” Wednesday continues as if Enid hadn’t spoken, like she hadn’t just revealed something devastating that she’d failed to tell Enid before the break began, “I found myself unable, unwilling, to deny myself any longer; I let my last coherent thoughts be of you. And just before the long dark took me for its own permanently, when Goody succeeded in her last act of spite meant to rid the world of Crackstone by reviving me, the first breath that entered my lungs carried the sound of your voice forming my name in annoyance, the first gasp past my lips was heavy with my love for you. Every beat of my heart since has only ever wept your name.”

Enid sniffles, overcome with the knowledge that her first wolf out was still somehow too late, that she would have stumbled on the sight of a corpse that would have broken her forever had it not been for Wednesday’s ancestor’s ghostly aid. More fuel for her awful nightmares. 

(Overcome with the words Wednesday just spoke, and how little she knows words to reciprocate.)

(“It is easier to commit myself to you, my beast, than it is to breathe.”)

She hears Wednesday laugh sheepishly, a sound so jarring Enid can’t do much else besides swallow thickly, “I suppose I do need to amend the noose metaphor; before the chair fell away from under my feet, you cut me down from the gallows.”

“Terrifying,” Enid whispers, voice too choked up for anything louder. 

“Indeed.”

“Promise me that you’ll be in one piece when I see you again,” Enid pleads in lieu of reciprocating Wednesday's grand declarations. 

“Where is the fun in that?” Wednesday says, tone practically bored, unbothered by Enid’s lack of returned words of love. 

“Hades,” Enid murmurs, a plea that leaves Wednesday with no choice but to fold.

“One piece,” Wednesday agrees without any fuss. 

There is silence then that Enid uses to compose herself, wipe away her tears with the tissue Russell brings her, broken by Wednesday again.

“I should go and let you get back to sleep. I don’t know what possessed me to send you that note at this hour, I should have known better.”

“No, it’s okay. You’re okay, don’t go. I can’t sleep anyway, I was awake when Russell got here with Thing,” Enid hurries to reassure, tone a little whiny, “please don’t hang up?”

“Why can’t you sleep?” Wednesday asks, “are you having nightmares?”

Enid chuckles, the sounds devoid of any kind of humor, “aren’t you?”

“I usually enjoy mine. I regret not being able to soothe yours in the flesh.”

Enid hums, “we’re going to have a lot to talk about when we’re back at school, all the trauma we’ve been avoiding by writing sappy love letters to each other. But no, it wasn’t a nightmare tonight; there’s a big thunderstorm keeping me up because apparently that’s a thing now, my ears being too sensitive for thunder. My body has been in fight or flight mode literally all day, until now.”

“Sounds like a glorious night,” Wednesday replies, actually sounding like she’s lamenting missing out on the storm. 

“You definitely would love it, you’d probably run around outside with a lightning rod or something to electrocute yourself with,” Enid says, every word dripping with her eye roll. 

“I would not be running, Enid.”

“At least I wouldn’t be here alone,” Enid says with a fond, if sad, smile.

“Where is your wretched pack,” Enid hears over the line, Wednesday's tone drenched in malicious intent as she poses the non-question question. 

“They went to visit my aunts in Sacramento a couple of days ago, now they’re stuck waiting out the storm. Mom said they’ll be back by morning, noon at the latest.”

“It is Christmas morning tomorrow, Enid.”

“Yeah, babe, I know.”

“Do you not celebrate that holiday?”

“We do,” Enid hums, keeping her answers nice and short because Wednesday is about to rage against her parents again and somebody needs to keep their cool. 

“They abandoned you for Christmas.”

If there is a way to telepathically slaughter a pack of werewolves, Enid knows Wednesday is going to find it, Enid thinks with a small chuckle. 

“This is hardly amusing, Enid.”

“No, it’s not but you’re so cute when you’re full of righteous fury on my behalf,” Enid coos, barreling on before Wednesday can get sidetracked with a rant against being called cute, “they didn’t abandon me, I chose not to go with them on the trip. They just got stuck because of the storm. They’ve already called, Mom even sounded genuinely upset about missing Christmas morning with all of us together. Imagine that.”

Wednesday only offers a hum, not entirely convinced.

Then, in a quiet voice, Wednesday offers, “had you made me aware of this sooner, I would have… joined you. Or arranged for you to join me here. Mother and Father would have been wholly agonized over it.”

“That’s Addams speak for thrilled, right?” Enid teases lightly. 

“Naturally.”

“I wish I had said something too,” Enid says after a moment. “It’s already bad enough that you’re not here for the next full moon.”

“I could be,” Wednesday tells her, confident and sure. “For the moon. I could be there, I could bring you here. Say the word, Persephone, and we will not be apart.”

“Don’t tempt me, baby, you know we can’t,” Enid whines. 

“I do not, in fact, know that. Give me one valid reason why we can’t.”

Stubborn as ever, Enid muses to herself. 

“For one, my mom is not warming up to the idea of me having a mate that isn’t… a wolf. Like, she’s frozen solid, not even beginning to thaw out, not warming up. And no, you can’t use gasoline to speed up the process.”

“You fail to remember that I could not care any less about others or their opinions even if I tried. Which I will not do either. We are bound together, Enid, by every force in the universe including your own werewolf traditions. Whether she likes it or not, you are mine every bit as I am yours. What will she do, keep you from your mate because I can’t transform into a beast once a month? Believe me, that is not due to any lack of trying on my part.”

“You’d be a scary werewolf,” Enid smiles at the mental image distracting her.

“Don’t rub it in.”

“I know you don’t care, and that you’re right. But I care. I’m sorry that I do, that I shouldn’t, but I do; they’re my pack and I want them to adore you like I do. Or at least for you all to get along.”

“These people would have disowned you and left you, a pack animal, to fend for yourself. I will never understand your need to remain with them, let alone your politeness,” Wednesday growls lowly, and Enid finds it difficult to remember that Wednesday really isn’t a wolf, “but… I suppose I don’t need to understand it. I will not take the first shot. Though I will not hesitate to take the last one.”

Enid supposes that’s as good as it’s going to get for a while, at least until they all get to know each other better, “thank you.”

“That is still a poor reason to bar me from joining you in the coming days.”

Enid takes a deep breath, holding it in her lungs until they burn before letting it out with her words, hoping Wednesday won’t feel hurt.

“I don’t want you here,” she starts, rushing to continue when a chill comes over the silent line. “It’ll be my first time transforming outside of a dangerous situation, I don’t know how it’ll be or what to expect. I could hurt you.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I could,” Enid says with emphasis. “And I know you’ve probably got werewolves in your family, but this is different. Even though I know you can protect yourself, I don’t know if you would if I were suddenly the threat to you.”

“Will you be this difficult every full moon for the rest of our lives?” Wednesday asks, annoyance evident even as she clearly submits to Enid’s reasons. 

Enid chuckles, fondness warming her from the inside out, “by the next one, I will know you better than I know Nevermore gossip. I won’t be confused.”

“You are cruel to deny me this, I hope you know that.”

“You love cruelty. Think of it as courting.”

“Detestable beast.”

“Yeah, yeah. You’ll be fine.”

An organ begins sounding somewhere in the background on Wednesday's side of the call, Enid frowning softly at the tiny growl she hears from her girlfriend.

“Lurch, please,” Wednesday is heard saying, “at least play something more cheery.”

Enid’s eyes would have fallen out of their sockets if they widened any more at the words, until she hears the music grow louder and change into one of the most terrifying organ solos she’s ever heard, loud and so heavy she can feel the bass thrum under her own skin across the country. Unsurprisingly, she hears Wednesday release a sigh of relief. 

“He gets emotional easily, Lurch. Most Addams men do. Father wails in despair, Uncle Fester short circuits, Pugsley blows things up. Lurch takes it out on the organ; it’s been one Beethoven piece after the other since they took Grandmama away.”

Enid sobers up, gently asking so Wednesday doesn’t close up again, “any news?”

“Nothing,” Wednesday says, voice valiantly trying to remain steady, barely succeeding. 

“Well, no news is good news too,” Enid begins in a poor attempt to comfort Wednesday, only for her to be interrupted.

“Tell me more about your full moon plans,” Wednesday says in a halfhearted demand that sounds an awful lot like pleading. 

And, well, if this is what Wednesday needs then who is Enid to deny her. 

“I’m scared,” Enid murmurs. 

“That is natural, Enid.”

“No, Wednesday, not, like, cold feet or jitters or whatever. Like, actually totally freaked. It’s going to be really bad,” Enid explains in a mildly frantic burst, a lump growing in her throat again, like she’s going to barf any second. 

“It can’t be worse than the first one, Enid,” Wednesday, in all her ‘sucks at cheering people up’ ways, still tries and Enid’s heart sings over the mere effort. 

“Apparently, it can. Sort of,” Enid murmurs with a sigh. “When my parents realized that I wolfed out on a blood moon, my dad’s eyes got so big and teary, he gave me the longest hug. Even my mom looked upset. And considering how long she waited for me to wolf out, you can imagine my freak out at her reaction.”

“The color of the moon is cause for concern, I take it,” Wednesday states her question, her frown evident in her voice. 

Enid’s nodding even though Wednesday can’t see as she responds, “yeah. My dad explained that while transformations are generally painful, the majority of wolves are fine because most experience their first wolf out on regular moons. That’s the one they’re bound to, it’s the one that influences their change. They get to feel a relief that comes with snapping the wolf on much more frequently so it makes the pain worth it.”

“I don’t follow, Enid,” Wednesday admits, probably the first time Enid’s heard her not know something about a common outcast species like werewolves. 

“It means that, unless it’s a blood moon, I’m going to be in agony every time I transform,” Enid mumbles through the lump lodged in her throat. “It’ll take my body longer to rearrange into the wolf and back to human at the end of the night, every snapped bone forming and reforming will be, like, ten times worse, the fatigue after I change back is going to feel like I’ve been run over by twenty trucks carrying houses. I’ll be the most vulnerable wolf in the pack every time because I’ll be dazed and scared from the pain in the beginning which’ll make me dangerous and unpredictable too, as well as the sheer exhaustion that’ll come right after I’m back to being myself that’ll leave me open for attacks. That’s what Dad said. Mom added in the super helpful tidbit that most wolves that are bound to special moons tend to go mad from the pain of their regular moon transformations, so yeah. I swear, you’re better at comfort than she is. So totally terrified now.” 

“Blood moons aren’t very rare,” Wednesday thinks aloud, only to be met with Enid’s words.

“They’re not, like, something that happens every hundred years or whatever, yeah, which I guess makes me luckier than others, but they only happen about twice a year. That’s ten whole months of pain that could literally make me go nuts. Of being…” Enid mumbles, voice sounding defeated and wet like it’s soaked in tears. 

“Being what?” Wednesday prods though she suspects she knows what Enid’s feeling. 

“They’d have to protect me more closely than other pack members,” Enid says quietly, “I’d be the weak link in the pack.” Enid’s next words take on a bitter tone that Wednesday is not entirely unfamiliar with, but they disturb her nonetheless, “even now that I’m finally wolf enough to join them, I’m still somehow letting them down, being a liability, a disappointment. We even talked about separating me from the pack for my transformation. Dad said he’d stay with me to help me through it then take me to join the rest of them after I had my shit together.”

“My love,” Wednesday starts, tone nearly desperate under all the monotony, opting to forego spewing venom about Enid’s pack yet again in favor of, “let me be there for your next moon. Please.”

Enid wants to crack so much, wants to cave and break and cry for Wednesday to come do exactly that. But Wednesday has a lot on her plate already and, selfishly – much like Wednesday herself would feel – Enid doesn’t want Wednesday to see her so fragile, so pathetically weak that she can’t even do the one thing she was born to do right. At least not just yet. That’s totally, like, fifth date stuff. 

“I thought you didn’t beg, not even for me,” Enid whispers instead, hoping to lighten the mood.

“I am a liar and a scoundrel, now ask me to come.”

“No, baby, I’m sorry. I want to, but I will not risk you like that. Next one though, okay?”

Wednesday’s sigh over the line could move mountains; it's so heavy, “you are being difficult for not a single valid reason. It is downright insulting that you think you could hurt me, that I couldn’t protect myself.”

“Indulge me anyway. Next moon, Wednesday, I promise.”

“And all the ones after that, I promise. And while possessiveness is more inherently a wolf trait, in the same breath I promise you that I will not let us be separated like this again, even if I have to kidnap you for every break we are afforded from Nevermore.”

Enid’s heart flutters in her chest, feeling warm all over as every cliché in the book comes to mind, chuckling happily, “baby, that sounds pretty effin’ great, 10/10 would totally recommend. I can’t wait.”

Wednesday hums again, and Enid wonders if she’s ever heard so much content humming from Wednesday before, the pleasant sound twisting Enid’s own belly like a balloon animal at a kids’ party.

In the lull of silence that follows, Enid listens for Lurch’s organ playing, strains to hear Wednesday humming to bits of it at random intervals, and thinks to herself about how easily she could get used to this, how little she wants to hang up. Even in silence like this, Enid doesn’t want to be away from Wednesday. 

Still, Enid would much rather hear Wednesday's voice. 

“What have you been doing?” Enid asks quietly, moving back to her bed to get comfortable, nodding for Thing to help himself to her moisturizer while Russell follows to perch by Enid’s pillow, “other than writing and the cello. And hunting your brother for sport of course.”

Wednesday's answer comes in the form of a deep groan that makes Enid think it’s Lurch at first, amused at her mate's antics, “is it that bad being home?”

“Enid,” Wednesday begins emphatically, “in my forced absence from the mansion, my parents could not exercise any form of restraint it seems; my mother is with child.”

Enid blinks for a moment before squealing softly, “a baby! Wednesday, that’s wonderful, congratulations! Tell your parents I said hi and congratulations!!”

“I will do no such thing, beast.”

“Don’t pretend like you’re not happy about this; I know how much you love your family, you’re excited about this too. Granted, probably super secretly and very, very deep down, but still stoked.”

“I take it you like children then,” Wednesday says with a flat tone.

“I’m a werewolf, Wednesday, there’s always a new baby around here somewhere. You get used to having them around, I guess. I like them just fine, as long as I can give them back to whoever they belong to at the end of the day.”

“Then I assume you will assist me with the parasite,” Wednesday tells her, “consider it me invoking my own Hades rights.”

Enid laughs despite the blushing, “I will be happy to help you babysit, just don’t call them a parasite, as affectionate as it may be.”

“It’s what my father is using to refer to it too,” Wednesday grumbles, cranky about being scolded albeit playfully.

Enid laughs and it sounds a little hoarse, a little sleepy, the sounds of bed sheets rustling filling the line, Wednesday quiet and taking in every last decibel. 

“I should let you rest,” Wednesday murmurs over the line, “thank you, my beast, for tolerating me tonight…”

“Wait, baby, don’t go,” Enid insists, “I’m here, as long as you need. At least until you hear back about your grandma.”

“You’re practically an Addams, Enid, you should refer to her as Grandmama. She’d hate anything else,” Wednesday says. “It may take hours for us to get news, and you are tired. You should attempt to sleep.”

Enid’s whole body feels like someone used it for fireworks, those words a lit match that make her insides explode. An Addams, her. 

Enid Addams sounds so… perfect that she doesn’t even question how quickly she dropped her own last name. It makes her shiver with anticipation.

“Then, as an Addams, I want to know how Grandmama is doing too,” Enid stubbornly insists, slotting into her place in the family with the ease of someone who has always belonged there. “I can hold out until we know more.”

“Enid, we’ve only got this line; how am I meant to get news if we keep it busy all night?” Wednesday points out. 

“Oh,” Enid says, dumbstruck. “Right.”

“Thing may remain with you so you aren’t alone, through the full moon as well,” Wednesday tells her, “though send the bird back so I may be able to send you updates on Grandmama more swiftly.”

“Russell.”

“Russell?”

“Yeah,” Enid hums sleepily, already losing the battle, “that’s his name now. Russell.”

“Russell,” Wednesdays repeats, tone deadpan with hints of exasperation that Enid detects. She knew Wednesday would be miffed about Enid naming her raven, and can already picture the minute tension in her facial muscles that Enid’s come to learn means annoyance. She misses Wednesday’s annoyed face so much. 

“Very well,” Wednesday grits out, “send Russell back.”

“Hey, Wednesday?”

“Yes, my beast?”

“I know that I can’t seem to express myself like you do, and it comes off like I’m not as into this, us, as you are,” Enid begins after taking a deep breath. “But trust me, I so am. Like, diving in head first, head over heels, every other cliché in the book into this. Okay? I don’t want you to think that I’m any less present for this. I want to say it, the big word, but I want to hold your hand and see your blank expression when I do. I… really miss your stupid face, Wednesday,” Enid finishes quietly, feeling like a raw, exposed nerve. 

“I… will refrain from saying it now as well, despite my tongue feeling like it is soaked in it, heavy from it. I, too, would very much like to look at you when I say it,” Wednesday admits after some minutes of heavy silence as she composes her thoughts. 

“Not long to go now,” Enid murmurs with a soft smile that is evident in her voice. 

“No, not long at all,” Wednesday replies, her own smile, small as it may be, also ringing clear in her words.

(They remain on the line until Enid falls asleep, her soft breaths the most haunting music Wednesday could ever dream of hearing.

“Sweetest of dreams, my love.”)

Russell is back by noon. 

Enid is back in her room, her family back and their presents exchanged. She’s giving Thing his Christmas present while telling him about what she got for their friends and Wednesday. 

(Thing’s gifted his favorite lotion and one single glove. Yoko will receive heart-shaped sunglasses and some new nail polish. She found the cutest swimsuit for Divina. A special hand guard for fencing sabers with a goldfish design for Bianca. A new beekeeper hat and smoker that Wednesday recommended for Eugene. As for Ajax… well, she’s gotten him a – admittedly cute – stuffed white mouse dressed in ancient Greek battle armor. She thinks she’s pretty funny personally.)

(A Hozier record for Wednesday that she’s nervous about because, “what if she hates it, Thing?”

He points at the new cello bow she bought, a tiny wolf head engraved on its frog, her back up present.

“What if she hates that too??”

Thing somehow manages a facepalm.

“Snood, Thing. Snood.”)

Before Thing can point out that things are different between them now, Russell manages to interrupt. 

(Enid squeals at the sight of him because he’s wearing a little black Santa hat, secured under his beak with twine.

Wednesday is such a softie. 

Enid laughs happily when Russell drops the note from his beak onto her desk, angrily using his talons to rip the hat off in disgust and throw it at Thing. 

Truly, Wednesday's child.)

It’s another Addams family letterhead, not Wednesday's private stationary, Enid notes first before briefly being distracted by Russell tapping at her desk. 

“W give present school.”

Enid smiles and nods, thanking Russell before turning back to the letter. 

It isn’t very long at all, but manages to comfort Enid immensely. 

“Grandmama would like to inform you that something as silly as ailment will not keep her from meeting you, and Death will certainly need to try harder than this to successfully woo her. She promises to send you tinctures to help alleviate your transformations’ side effects.

Thank you, Persephone.

- Your Wednesday”

Chapter Text

She isn’t hiding; Wednesday Addams does not hide. 

She is, however, avoiding. 

High up on Ichabod's branches, Wednesday watches her family’s frantic energy as it sets the tone for the upcoming day.

Her father is, expectedly, a mess as he rushes around with her trunks; hoisting one over his head out of the car and running back to the stairs where he sets it down, only to pick up another one in its stead to run back to the hearse with. He’s being sentimental and it makes Wednesday literally gag as her breakfast attempts to make a reappearance, only kept down because Ichabod threatens to catapult her off itself. 

(Wednesday can hear Lurch’s frustrated groans all the way up where she’s stood leaning against Ichabod, her father hindering his packing progress. She hopes Lurch will bite him.)

Her mother is standing nearby, arms crossed over her chest and voice a whole octave higher as she tries to wrangle Gomez. Clearly, the woman is a complete wreck, what an embarrassing display of rampant emotions. 

(Wednesday observes the way her mother lightly lays a hand on the faint bump growing, sees the way it instantly draws her father into her mother’s side, and finds herself forced to look away lest her eyes get assaulted with the image of them desecrating their driveway.

Again.

Savage beasts.)

Pugsley has been moping around all weekend, pouting about not being enrolled in Nevermore with Wednesday yet. A sentiment he’s expressed by trying to kill Wednesday for the past three days in increasingly more elaborate, albeit poorly executed, ways.

(Admittedly, she was impressed when he somehow found a way to convince Kitty to try and maul her. Perhaps there’s hope for him yet, she thinks as she absently touches a finger to her newly-forming eyebrow scar.)

She wonders how Enid will feel about the new facial feature. 

Enid. 

She can feel her stomach clenching when the mere name brings forth images of Enid's face. Her smile, that ridiculous giggle. It’s as if her skin will fall off, her organs shifting around inside her loosely with nothing to anchor them in place, her very skeleton threatening to come undone at every joint until she can be held together again by Enid’s arms. 

What a wretched state she’s been rendered to; her chest feels cavernous and empty, echoing Enid’s name with each pump of blood through her heart. She feels cracked, leaking. The closer she is to seeing Enid again, the more hollow Wednesday feels. 

Unmoored. Restless. 

A crash below draws her focus back down to her family again, and a growl escapes her throat unbidden when she sees Lurch holding her typewriter case aloft, seemingly rescuing it from her father who stands among three of her overturned trunks.

(They’ve all looked up at her instinctively, Wednesday unimpressed with her father’s sheepish smile and little wave. Her mother redirects him with a few words and he’s quickly distracted again, Morticia sharing an exasperated look with her daughter.)

They’ve been talking about today all week; Wednesday tried to cut out Pugsley's tongue to make it stop. Her mind has been a mess of landmines that won’t go off no matter how hard she steps on them, unable to sift through her thoughts without finding herself overcome with longing for Enid’s detestable perfume. She sees the same… jitters in them too, the prospect of meeting Enid now, as Wednesday’s Persephone, filling them all with frenzy. 

(Curse their passionate Addams nature, they are going to embarrass her, today of all days.)

She watches Morticia secure a second crystal ball case beside her own; a gift for Enid, her mother said, despite Wednesday's best efforts against it. 

(“I want to be able to talk to her, see how she’s doing or if she needs something, Icarus; she’s family.”)

Should she have gotten Enid something as well, a gift of some kind?

Her mother had tried to get her to do so; she led her down the familiar path to the Addams vault, under the guise of needing help to find something to donate to a charity auction. Wednesday had made the mistake of touching a curious hand to some trinkets, hoping to trigger some kind of plague. Instead, she found herself haunted. 

By her mother. 

("That was your great aunt Calpurnia’s necklace; she was wearing it when she was burnt at the stake. The charring makes it quite charming, don’t you think? I’m sure adjustments can be made t o your liking, if you wish to have it.”

“Those earrings belonged to cousin Incense, cursed of course. You remember him, yes? Lived in our walls for a time when you were little. He cursed it to release a poltergeist, if memory serves. It would be a lovely addition to anyone's jewelry, I think.”

“Oh! Those shackles are wonderful, my little cyanide pill, though I wasn’t aware you were that far in your relationship.”

“Mother.”

“Unsurprising that you like such accessories, but I would not have pegged your darling sunbeam for masochism; those are pure silver, you know.”

“Stop, at once.”

“They are very safe and secure. Sturdy too, as your father and I know all too well. I can show you how to best install and use them, though your father and I will need to talk to you about the birds and-”

“Mother. ”)

A token, her mother had said, of her affections. As if Wednesday wouldn’t cut out her beating heart to present at Enid’s feet if she asked. No mere trinket or piece of stone could ever truly convey how Wednesday feels, no matter how old, ornate, or cursed it was. 

If she were being honest, Wednesday had considered it briefly when her eyes roamed the various jewels scattered about the vault. She’d chosen a few pieces, once Morticia’s prying eyes were turned elsewhere, that she thought Enid would like, even carefully wrapped them all until she could choose which one she’d like to present her with. 

But then, when it came time to pack, it all felt too… possessive , in an ownership kind of way that bore through Wednesday’s bones like acid in the most unpleasant way imaginable.

(What if Enid disliked the gesture? Or the offering? Worse, what if she pretended to like it and wore it to spare Wednesday’s feelings? Wednesday wouldn’t survive the humiliation.)

(And, yes, perhaps she had already staked a claim on Enid when she had sent her own jacket, but the potential for rejection then had been… dismissible when Wednesday wasn’t there to witness it for herself. She could pretend that she had not displayed such gross vulnerability.)

She ends up leaving her tokens in her room, unpacked. 

Leaning against Ichabod’s coarse trunk, Wednesday finds herself anxious, of all the sickening emotions she could be enduring. The idea of the long drive ahead, cooped up in a confined space with her parents pawing at each other, coupled with their destination, pushes her to do the unthinkable; she’s restless and fidgeting.

Wednesday looks down at her hands just as her mind counts the seventh rotation of her ring around her finger. It’s new, something that piqued her interest as she helped her mother rifle through crates of antiques; a ring perfectly fit for her pinky, sporting a round, flat top, in a faintly scratched up, matte-finished gold.

Unremarkable by all accounts, Wednesday thinks to herself as she presses her thumb to the flat surface, feeling the indents of the small rubies inlaid press back against her flesh. And yet, she’d found herself unable to resurface from the vault without it. 

Her eyes trace the delicate pomegranate design, catching on what’s meant to be three seeds fallen out of the fruit. 

(Her mother had peeked over her shoulder when Wednesday had seemed rooted to the spot, the pair sharing a silent look. Wednesday is unlikely to ever forget the softening look in her mother’s eyes, the way Morticia had squeezed her shoulder and offered a demure smile before turning away to head back to the house. The way the candelabra light had glinted off the tears building in her mother’s eyes.)

Wednesday thinks that, as far as tokens of affection go, wearing a symbol of commitment as historically binding as this one is rather… permanent. She doesn’t need to possess Enid with some kind of trinket, but she can offer herself to her Persephone instead. 

The thought has barely finished forming when her hand shoots up and catches the crossbow bolt headed for her face, her brain aware enough to register the sound of it whizzing in the air. Wednesday’s glare lands on her brother out of pure habit, his face set into a disappointed scowl at having missed his target, dropping the crossbow to his side and stomping off. Before she can request for Ichabod to set her back down on the ground so she may properly teach Pugsley the art of crossbow shooting, a foreign weight on the bolt draws her attention and turns her blood solid. 

A familiar envelope; a beloved letter. 

It brings Wednesday to her knees, precariously sitting on Ichabod's restless branch. She has, despite her apathetic exterior, been worried the past few days; she hasn’t heard back from Enid since the full moon, and neither Thing nor Russell have returned.

She wasn’t expecting any more letters.

Is Enid well? Is she as restless about reuniting as Wednesday is? Is she eager for it like Wednesday? 

Is she well?

(Has she had a change of heart about Wednesday?)

Fingers shaking uncharacteristically, Wednesday slides her pointer finger under the flap and smoothly unseals the envelope. The rest of her fingers feel along the envelope, detecting its lightness; no additional photographs or gifts of any kind as Enid had been prone to add to her previous letters, and likely a short, one-page note. It does nothing to ease Wednesday's building dread. 

Is she well?

The concern - and admittedly, the curiosity - overrides her dread for herself, nimble fingers grasping the piece of paper inside and freeing it from the confines of the envelope with practiced ease. She can’t even bring herself to feel shame over how greedily her eyes drink in the words before her. 

(The plain blue ink gives her pause. Worries her, makes her want to abandon Nevermore altogether to find Enid instead.)

“Hi baby,” it begins, without any insipid drawings, or hearts over the i. Wednesday's eyes catch on the date printed on the paper, the day of the full moon. 

“Sorry about this, i don’t even know if you’ll get this before we come back to school. I guess if it does then great! And if it doesn’t it won’t really matter because I know we can at least trust your parents to mail it to you here. At school I mean. Where we’ll be together again anyway so yeah it doesn’t matter either way huh? 

 I hope anyways. That we’ll be together. Not because i don’t want to be don’t think that. But. Well it’s the full moon tonight. I don’t know what’ll happen. My mom has been pretty excited though, she says it’s going to go great. I guess i should believe her, she’s done this a lot more than me. 

Thing has been great but are we really surprised about that? Him and Russell both have been, and you’ll be happy (miserable?) to know that they’ve been total menaces to my family, probably on your orders. I’m sorry you’re missing out on it. I’ll bring them back to school in relatively good conditions promise. 

I hope. 

It really shouldn’t be such a big deal right? Why am I scared then, Wednesday?

It’s going to hurt.

I wish you were here to hold my hand. 

I’ll see you soon, roomie. Okay?

yours always,

Enid.”

It’s short, far too short, Wednesday thinks. Her eyes slip over the words again, hands turn the page over in search of more, all to no avail. She hasn’t gotten her fill, not enough of Enid. 

The scar on her belly burns with phantom pains, her insides knotting as if the knife is still twisting in her guts; the absence of Enid in all of her spaces was so all encompassing, the hollowness so deep, Wednesday had no space left for the worry ripping her insides apart now. She had not once, in all the restless nights of joyful, Enid-focused insomnia, accounted for the possibility of Enid not being well, of them not finding themselves orbiting one another again. 

She brushes her finger over Enid’s letter again, carefully tracing the uneven line striking through the word ‘hurt’. A lump lodges itself in her throat that she chooses to choke on. 

Irrationally, Wednesday finds her vision - still diligently going over the words that have bled onto the paper in her hand - impaired; obscured by a thin film of water that may as well be a tsunami knocking Wednesday over from the sheer suddenness of its arrival. The single wet trail carving a path along her cheek burns her skin with utter humiliation, and she angrily swipes a finger over it to erase it from existence entirely.

She feels pathetic and it fills her with rage, the overwhelming sensation of inexplicable guilt continuing to spill out as salted liquid. 

Why does she feel guilty? 

The sound of doors and trunks slamming shut below her yank Wednesday back to her reality, eyes landing on her mother just as Morticia opens her mouth to call her down. Even from this high above, Wednesday can see the gentle furrow of her mother’s brows, Morticia undoubtedly sensing something is amiss. It makes Wednesday want to rip her braids out and use them as a noose. Nevertheless, she silently begins her Ichabod-assisted climb down towards the ground, Enid’s letter delicately replaced into its envelope and lovingly tucked away into Wednesday’s jacket pocket. Any thoughts of guilt wiped from her mind as deftly as the tears on her face were, the upcoming eight-hour drive sufficient to scrub her mind clean in preparation for the new semester ahead. 

(Why, then, can’t she stop the images of blood from assaulting her mind as she settles into her seat across from her parents?)

(Is she well?)

(She was Icarus flying into the sun, but what if the sun has been extinguished?)

Despite her best efforts, Wednesday succumbed to sleep at some point. 

The last thing she remembers is her frustration with Pugsley when he insisted on pulling over to pick up the roadkill possum they drove by, the anger about the delay manifesting in her loss of composure, to the point of lunging to the front of the hearse to strangle him. The silence after he passed out was blissful. 

(She asked Lurch to pull over, and retrieved the possum for him herself, glaring at her father as he wiped away his sentimental tears.)

And then…

Wednesday is jerked awake an hour away from Nevermore by Lurch’s demented driving, a turn taken too fast. She feels out of place, struggling to orient herself for a moment as the car continues to thunder along the road. There’s a roaring in her ears, making it difficult to focus, as her heart hammers from the abrupt awakening. Her skin feels like it’s vibrating across her muscles, the most peculiar tremor sensation she’s ever experienced. Her eyes fall on her parents as she takes in her surroundings, fingers curling her hands into fists when she finds Morticia eyeing her with intense concern. It makes Wednesday itch, a finger sliding under her tightly buttoned collar to pull it away from her skin. 

Eyes firmly out the window in an effort to avoid the talk her mother so clearly wants to inflict upon her, Wednesday begins to analyze her dream. 

If she can even call it that.

Wednesday is no stranger to bloodshed and violence in her dreams. If anything, she mastered lucid dreaming so she may actively engage in both herself. But this time… she finds herself unable to call it a dream at all as the disorienting flashes continue to play across her eyes. 

Visions of sharp, glistening teeth, saber-sharp claws swiping through the air. The sound of crunching leaves underfoot. Splashes of blood everywhere, splattering everything despite the darkness shrouding her. The metallic scent of blood that often comforts instead overwhelms Wednesday, sets her teeth on edge as if she’s chewing on tin foil. By all accounts, all common enough themes and images to her dreams. 

Except. 

Her dreams make sense, happen at a coherent pace. She is able to distinguish every element independently, even enjoy it. This… nightmare came to her in bursts. Flashes of images, each too short to make sense of, each too fast to determine any origins or involved individuals. 

She’s trapped in her own brain, working it overtime in an effort to recapture any snippet of the images, find something familiar within their unappetizing violence that will help her make sense of the dread stinging her tongue with its foul salty taste. She’s replaying the flashes again, wondering if her eyes truly saw tufts of pink fur when she begins to recognize her surroundings; Jericho.

Not long to go now, not at all. 

(The thought makes her squirm in her seat. Should she unbutton her collar?)

They’re driving down the main square when she sees him; Sheriff Galpin. He doesn’t know it, but they make eye contact through the tinted glass of the hearse’s windows, his eyes tracking their car every inch it crawls past him. He looks dreadful of course, like he’s spent the entirety of the past month at the bottom of a bottle of whisky. She would think he hasn’t slept a single second since that night if she didn’t already know he always looks like that. The bleeding heart of a man that he is, he likely thinks the events that occurred a month ago are on him, Wednesday muses to herself as she watches his hunched shoulders disappear as Lurch navigates a turn. 

(And why shouldn’t he feel guilty? She certainly does, deep down, and she’s the one that saved them all. She can only wish for the kind of torture the sire of a murderous monster is going through.)

It occurs to her then; could it be that her mind has conjured its own interpretation of that night, filling in the blanks of the battle that left Enid coated in blood and bearing those glorious wounds? 

Enid. 

Beautiful, blood-thirsty Enid. 

The memory of those sharp, glistening fangs, ready to shred the Hyde to ribbons, spreads a different kind of heat under Wednesday's collar. The anticipation of arriving at Nevermore feels like ants are crawling along just below her skin, Enid’s rumbling growl fresh in her ears as she observes the familiar trees herald her imminent arrival at the school; some of the branches are broken, leftovers from the fight, and Wednesday longs for Enid’s promised carnage upon her very being. 

It all makes her aware of the fact that her hand, completely numb, is tucked into her jacket pocket, has been the entire drive. Her fingers feel along the familiar paper, the envelope texture grounding her enough to momentarily forget the remnants of her nightmare, even temporarily… 

… Only to replace it with the dread that began swirling in Wednesday’s chest when she read the letter, a roaring tornado spinning all of her organs around before they land in the wrong place. That must be the only reason her heart feels like it has lodged itself in her throat as the hearse passes the imposing Nevermore wrought iron gates. 

She barely holds herself back from slamming the car door open, clinging to the shred of composure she still has and waiting for Lurch to open the door for them, even waiting for her parents to slip out first before she moves to follow them. Only for her mother to stay seated after her father steps out, the door shutting behind him and trapping Wednesday to face the wretched talk she had managed to avoid so far. 

“If you use that miserable name on me right now, Mother-”

“I will miss her,” Morticia says before her daughter can finish whatever colorful threat she was thinking up, surprising Wednesday into silence briefly before she sets her expression into something more somber. Almost remorseful. Understanding. 

“I do miss her. Isn’t that the strangest thing in all of this? I hadn’t spoken to her in decades, but now…” Wednesday watches her mother’s eyes grow distant, as if she’s no longer inhabiting her body. “I hope she was happy,” she whispers eventually. 

(Perhaps, Wednesday thinks as she watches her mother, Larissa Weems wasn’t plagued with unrequited affections as she believed.)

“By the lake, wildflowers grow,” Morticia says, hand on the car door handle.

Wednesday offers a small, half nod. “I’ll bring her some.”

“Daffodils. She liked those best.”

“Daffodils,” Wednesday quietly promises her mother. 

Morticia shakes herself out of whatever memory she allowed herself to be swallowed by so she can aim that serene smile back at Wednesday, “have a dreadful semester, Icarus. Let yourself step out of the shade; it isn’t so horrific to fly into the sun.”

Wednesday bites her cheek until blood spills over her tongue.

The sole of her shoes have barely found purchase on gravel when she feels it; something wicked this way comes and, for once, it isn’t Wednesday herself. 

The overcast weather is cold, the breeze and air filling her lungs freezing. There’s a promise of rain in the air. The sun is hiding entirely, its rays struggling to penetrate the thickest clouds Wednesday’s seen all winter. The metaphor raises her hackles, distresses her. Her fingers twitch in her pocket, feeling the envelope hidden away crinkle as her grip tightens a little. She’s restless, on edge, a salty scent of electricity in the air that used to comfort her because it heralded the arrival of Uncle Fester. Now, it makes her teeth hurt. Utterly putrid. 

The space before her is already awash in purple, waves of students ebbing and flowing around her. Unlike the first time they arrived, the Addams family’s presence - while noticed as always - draws much less gawking this time. Still, Wednesday hears them, the chattering of the students and their parents unceasing. Only their topic changes, Wednesday senses it even before they pass the first cluster of students to hear them talking about her and Enid. The other Furs in particular are the ones with the most to say. Despicable gossip mongers. 

It does nothing to quell Wednesday’s unsettling unease, a sensation she usually thrives in; the eyes in the crowd are looking around just like her own are, seeking something, someone , out. And not a single pair of eyes can locate their target  - hers included. It puts an urgency into her steps that is unbecoming, but Wednesday struggles to care as she leads her parents through the parting purple sea, heading straight towards her dorm.

(Her thumb never stops caressing the letter in her pocket.)

It comes to a head the moment she’s passed the arches leading into the Quad, all at once. 

An individual in a suit and a new face that she doesn’t recognize sees them, clear about their intent to stop her family for a conversation as they make a beeline for her; likely the new principal. She has less than no time for them, turning her gaze away towards where she knows the stairs to her dorm lie in wait.

(Weems truly is gone. The thought passes through her like a specter; cold if brief, haunting.)

(Daffodils, she reminds herself.)

Her ears pick up a familiar laugh, albeit not the one that sets every last one of her nerves on fire. Without thought, her head turns to where she knows the fountain is, where those blasted sirens congregate; the horrid fruit bat will be there, no doubt making a fool of herself in front of her beloved fish finger. If Yoko is there, Enid will not be far behind. Except neither Yoko nor Enid are to be seen anywhere in sight, Wednesday realizes with pooling agitation as the sirens by the fountain notice her. Her agitation must be more obvious than she’d like, because Wednesday sees Bianca’s condescending smile falter briefly when she rises, intent on walking over to begin poking at Wednesday, no doubt. 

(Or perhaps Bianca Barclay knows Wednesday better than Wednesday thought. A truly horrifying idea.)  

Wednesday feels the animalistic growl in her chest more than she hears it, eyes sweeping away from Bianca’s approaching posse, thumb pressing into the edge of the letter in her pocket when she senses them.

The Sinclair pack.

The sons are wrestling, the parents are watching. One a silent column as is his nature, the other fussing and yapping pleas for civil behavior, ironically enough. Not a blond head in sight.

Wednesday abandons her quest to reach her dorm without any bloodshed, unblinkingly turning directly for them when she’s noticed; making eye contact with Esther Sinclair electrifies her in the worst way imaginable. 

Still, ultimately, it’s the letter desperately clutched in her hand that is her undoing.

Esther has turned to face her fully, ready for her approach when Wednesday feels the delicious burn of a paper cut against her thumb.

Her blood spills, taints the edge of the letter, and it feels like being struck by lightning when her neck snaps up so violently that her back arches backwards unnaturally, painfully so. 

The last thing Wednesday registers is a cry of her name, Yoko running towards her as the vision takes her, eyes milky-white and unseeing. 

(Her last thought - as all of her thoughts have become now - are of Enid.)

The acrid scent of an electric fire fills her nose and makes her mouth water unpleasantly when Wednesday gasps awake, trembling, in her vision; the stench clings to her own consciousness, the remnants of her wretched gift in its most violent form yet. 

She would find joy in such agony had it not been for the realization that, somehow, Enid has triggered this vision. 

It’s a forest, dense with barren trees bearing the brunt of winter. Wednesday cranes her neck around to find something familiar, desperate to find Enid herself. To finally lay eyes on her even if it’s in this sickening vision. 

She hears branches breaking to her left, wasting no time in running that way until she’s past a line of trees into a clearing. There’s a creek cutting through it, and Wednesday is struck by how clearly she can see her surroundings. 

The moon is full, almost blindingly bright when she turns her head up to look at it. It glints off the gently streaming water and Wednesday wishes it were deep enough so she could drown herself in it; whatever dark and twisted thing her vision is going to show her has already happened. It has happened and she will be unable to prevent it.

Rationally, her mind tries to tell her that it could very well be the next full moon. But the slice of her soul that detached itself to fuse with Enid’s knows it is the one she’s already lived through.

(The one Enid was frightened of.)

(The one she hasn’t heard from Enid since.)

Despite not physically being there, Wednesday feels herself grow queasy as she wanders closer to the water, coming up short when she hears the howls - dozens of them all around her through the woods, and her heart clenches because one of them must be Enid. 

Twigs break by the stream, and Wednesday all but breaks her neck looking over.

She’s panting, limbs uncoordinated and shaking a little as she limps towards the water. Ungraceful when she drops onto her front paws to drink. She looks utterly exhausted, depleted.

Enid looks devastatingly beautiful.

Wednesday wants to offer her own body at her altar.

Wednesday drinks her in as greedily as Enid’s tongue laps at the creek, memorizes the shade of her shiny fur, the way the moon’s rays make her fangs glisten. Enid puts the moon, all the stars, and the very sun to shame.

She’s transfixed, frozen in place and watching the way Enid’s sharp claws dig grooves into the ground beneath her paws. Wednesday thinks she could probably sit here and watch Enid do nothing more than drink from a stream for the rest of her miserable life when it all comes crashing upon them.

(Too soon. She’s not had her fill of Enid yet, never enough.)

They’re twice Enid’s size when they emerge from the treeline, their collective growls shaking the pebbles at Wednesday’s feet.

She watches them surround Enid effortlessly, watches Enid’s eyes dart back and forth over them and around her for a way to escape. The scent of fear carries on the wind and suffocates Wednesday. 

They’ve backed Enid up against a tree now, Wednesday registers as she forces herself to keep watching. To memorize these beasts. She will mount their heads in the mansion, clean her teeth with their bones, water the trees with their blood. 

Wednesday watches Enid yip and bark at the pack gnashing and snapping its teeth at her, watches her ears flatten against her head as she shrinks in on herself to appear as non-threatening as possible. It makes Wednesday want to rush them herself, gut them with her bare hands until she can wear their entrails as jewelry.

The smallest of the wolves, still considerably larger than Enid, fakes a swipe at Enid then and howls gleefully when Enid flinches. 

Persephone whimpers then; a pathetic sound brimming with fear that rips Hades’ tattered soul apart. 

It takes nothing at all, after that, for the rest of them to lunge. Enid tries to fight them off, puts up a spectacular fight despite their claws slicing at her flesh. But she’s outnumbered, exhausted from her painful transformation, and - ultimately - she doesn’t possess neither strength nor experience to fight off an entire pack, on her own. 

When the runt that initiated the attack blindsides Enid from behind, razor sharp teeth sinking into Enid’s shoulder, the sound of bone breaking ripples across the water, and Wednesday feels the breath leave her lungs, wishing for it to never return. 

Wednesday watches the blood mix with rancid saliva and pour out around the runt’s mouth, teeth still clamped in Enid’s shoulder as she struggles to throw him off. She makes the mistake of looking up at Enid’s face, knowing it will plague her till her last breath when she realizes Enid’s making direct eye contact with her. 

The despair threatens to consume her until there is nothing left but ash right then and there.

Enid’s howl - agonized, desperate, pleading, - will haunt Wednesday to the end of her days and beyond. 

The first splash of blood-swirled creek water under her boot violently ejects Wednesday back to Nevermore.

When Wednesday’s consciousness is slammed back into her body, it is with full-body chills and the scent of blood coating her tongue.

Chaos has befallen her senses; her ears feel full, every sound around her is both too loud and muffled all at once, and her eyes can’t focus, rolling around in her skull like a pinball. She can feel what little thoughts she can scrounge together echo in her head loudly, like someone banging on a drum. The smell and taste of blood, spilling from her nose into her mouth, makes her skin crawl.

(Childhood comforts that are now tainted.)

She can’t draw in a single molecule of oxygen, her lungs tightening up, no matter how hard she gasps. Her fingers are curled in on themselves, like a dead tarantula’s legs, and stiff; any attempt to move sends the lightning that thrust her into her vision coursing through every last bone in her body.

(She’ll never be able to find pleasure in electricity again.)

Her mind feels fractured; she’s barely able to discern that she’s surrounded in a manner that shields her from the rest of the school - she can vaguely make out Eugene now - as her father cradles her in his lap.

(Her body betrays her, too weak and stiff for her to even attempt crawling away, let alone stabbing him first before she makes a run for it.)

(It occurs to her, then, as the vision continues to play across her eyes, that - if she’s right about the outcome of what she witnessed - Wednesday would much rather surrender into the oblivion of death than face this world without Enid.) 

Her eyes are watering as reality begins to force itself onto her awareness, making out the Nightshades hiding her from curious eyes. Bianca’s lips are pursed as they make eye contact, no doubt worried about what catastrophic vision Wednesday must have seen and how it’ll impact her chances at the fencing championship. Lurch is physically blocking the principal from reaching her. Yoko is here, undead grip on Wednesday’s arm cutting off her already slow circulation. Dully, in the back of her mind, Wednesday wonders if it was Yoko that broke her fall.

Her mother is missing, nowhere in sight to fuss over her. 

Humiliatingly enough, that’s what proves to be too much; her already tight lungs seem to cave in on themselves, and a slimy ball of mucus builds in her throat to further block any air fighting to reach her brain. 

Rapidly and without any control over herself, Wednesday finds herself descending into panic.

What little of her eyesight she had regained is lost to her when the tears form, blanketing everything before her in water she wishes would just drown her already. Her fingers twitch, threatening to shatter into bone powder when they’re caught in Yoko’s firm grip. There are words, she hears sounds, but Wednesday is unable to decipher a single letter.  

Fault. 

Enid. 

Attacked.

Fault.

Mine. 

Alone. 

“Wednesday, for Vlad’s sake, breathe. You’re not making a lick of sense! What about Enid, was she in your vision? Who is alone, who’s at fault for what. ” Yoko’s words penetrate the fog just as her sharply manicured nails penetrate Wednesday’s skin. There is franticness in the sound, Wednesday notes with detachment, similar to the energy that her own family radiated that morning as they prepared for their long drive.

(Has it really only been hours? Wednesday feels like she’s lived a lifetime already, aged entire centuries. Will all her remaining seconds without Enid now feel like nails are swimming in her bloodstream?)

Wednesday’s head shakes, as if she can physically slot things back into where they’re meant to go if she tries that, only for her experiment to be halted by Yoko’s frigid hands holding her face. If Wednesday didn’t feel like an empty coffin, she would have bitten Yoko’s fingers off for the audacity. 

“Look at me,” the vampire commands, and Wednesday’s body obeys despite her mind not being all there. She’s shivering as her eyes connect with Yoko; she’s never been cold a day in her life until now. 

“I left her,” Wednesday croaks, her voice not her own. Nails on a chalkboard would sound more soothing. 

The words stop Yoko short, her eyes - when did she raise her glasses to sit in her hair? Her retinas must be scorching - blood-red and confused. There is a deafening hush around them. Gomez’s grip on her shoulders tighten even as he helps her sit up better, despite her body’s shaking persisting.

“I abandoned her to fend for herself,” Wednesday says, as monotone as ever and, somehow, carrying the devastation of millennia, “it’s my fault. She was alone and scared. I left her alone.” 

Despite being cursed with the gift of prophecy, Wednesday doesn’t see it coming when Yoko’s finger flicks her forehead so hard there’s a small knocking sound echoing in their circle. 

“Listen to me, you dramatic, morbid, egotistical ass . If this is about your vision, about something happening to Enid, then you’re going to tell me every last detail and we’re going to prevent it if it hasn’t already happened. If it has- then we’re going to find whoever did what ever and show them the truest meaning of pain.

But if you’re tapping into your deranged teen angst out of some latent sense of guilt over what happened before the break, snap the hell out of it. Not everything revolves around you, Addams; she made her own choices with her own brain and nobody could have stopped her. She would have done it over and over again if she had to. You didn’t abandon her. If those stupid dogs could speak, she would have told you to leave herself. Don’t think for a second that you abandoned her. She’ll freaking kick your ass if she hears you say that. And I promise you that I will record it and post it on youtube when she does, while honest to god cackling the whole time.”

“He could have killed her.” 

“Crapstone would have killed us all if you hadn’t trusted Enid to win.” 

It wasn’t that simple, Wednesday knew. It couldn’t be. 

Enid could have been ripped from her even before she’d had her. 

And then she’d done it again; abandoned Enid when she had explicitly been told of Enid’s full moon concerns. Her fear. She should have ignored Enid and gone to find her. 

(Held her hand.)

She looks around for her still-absent mother, wondering if Morticia could offer any semblance of sense.

(Of comfort.) 

“It’s not so simple or black and white, Addams, but it’s nothing a shiny, brand new, hardass therapist can’t help you with.” 

“Stay out of my head, leech,” Wednesday warns.

“I don’t have that power,” Yoko waves her off and the dismissal irks Wednesday to no end. Then she winks with a fanged smirk, tacking on a cheeky, “yet.”

“I should pin you down with a railroad spike through the husk of a heart in your chest,” Wednesday threatens, some of the color draining back out of her cheeks as she composes herself more. 

“That won’t slay me.”

“No, but it’ll raise my spirits significantly.”

“Well, start by raising your ass off the ground and tell me what you saw.” 

Yoko’s clasped her arm, about to yank her up - or her arm out of its socket, one can never know with these vampires; they had a bizarre sense of humor - when Wednesday’s anxious eyes - roaming in search of her mother, or better still, Enid herself - sees them again; through the gap between Eugene and Pugsley, her eyes connect with Esther’s again, and Wednesday tenses in preparation for another violent vision that never comes. 

She’s watching Wednesday closely, like she’s trying to make up her mind about something. Murray stands beside his wife, slightly behind her shoulder, and Wednesday is grossed out by the concern she sees in his eyes aimed directly at her. 

It fills her with unquenchable rage; Enid had been by herself, packless. Again . Wednesday couldn’t have been there, but where were they?

Relishing in the vertigo that threatens to overcome her when she shakes Yoko off to rely solely on her own feet, Wednesday shoves past the barrier of people keeping her from the rest of the school population’s prying eyes. She sees Bianca hold the principal back from following her in her peripheral vision as she advances on Esther. Something about it being better for their own health. 

She should have packed her silver, Wednesday thinks to herself, stalking towards Esther with clenched fists. A prowling predator foolishly charging at another apex predator.

Esther boldly, stupidly, doesn’t move an inch away. Instead, she stands straighter, watching every thundering step that brings Wednesday before her. Continuing to challenge Wednesday, she even lands the first word.

“You,” says Esther, eyes studying Wednesday. Her tone is calm, curious even. It drives Wednesday to the brink of murder.

“Me,” she growls back, uncaring that she sounds more animal than the beast before her might. 

“Hm,” Esther nods after a brief moment of silence, infuriating. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. I should have seen this coming the moment I saw you together at parents’ weekend. Enid’s always been…”

“I will tear your tongue out of your skull with my teeth if you raise it against Enid.”

Wednesday’s threat doesn’t phase Esther in the slightest, though Wednesday sees Murray’s gaze drop to his shoes; he’s hiding a smile. She wants to tie him down and shave him bald so his wolf is riddled with bald patches upon his next transformation. Coward. 

(Perhaps she has something in common with him.)

Esther only nods again, the condescending wench. 

“Parents only want what’s best for their kids, even when the kids can’t see it. Even when the methods and practices are unbearably wrong. Children forget that it’s our first time doing this too,” Esther tells her. “Of course, not all parents care or love their children. But I do, despite my poor track record. It hasn’t always been enough, not nearly so, but…” 

Wednesday watches her, top lip sneering faintly at Esther’s excuses. Gomez and Morticia were hardly perfect, but she never doubted their love for their family the way Esther and Murray Sinclair raised their entire pack to feel. How utterly pathetic. 

Then, like an out of body experience, Wednesday’s fist connects with Esther’s nose. The soft crunch is drowned out by the growls of Enid’s brothers, their instinct to attack Wednesday to defend their pack leader kicking in and all it does is enrage Wednesday more.

(Wednesday feels possessed, might actually be when she realizes she can hear Goody in her ear goading her into doing it again.)

She watches Esther regain her balance and check for any blood with a swipe of her finger under her nose, surprised to find none, staring down Enid’s brothers in a dare to attack when Esther raises her hand to keep them back. 

“Where were you when she was attacked? She trusted you and you failed her,” Wednesday spits out, the venom in her voice acidic and scorching. 

Her question unbalances Esther, Wednesday sees it in her eyes when Esther connects the dots between Wednesday’s violent vision and her words. It fills Wednesday with obscene glee. She takes a step closer, relishing in the flicker of fear that, albeit briefly, passes through Esther’s eyes before she composes herself. Wednesday will begrudgingly admit to being impressed when Esther doesn’t step back from Wednesday. 

“You abandoned her when she needed you most, you always have,” Wednesday sneers, voice pitched menacingly low. “She was scared and vulnerable, and she trusted you. You left her to fend for herself when you knew she’d need you most.” 

“Despite what you might think, Wednesday, what you might have seen,” Esther says, voice composed and calm, unwavering, “you don’t know the whole story.”

“Spare me your pitiful excuses and the story about a lifetime of neglect.” 

“They blindsided her, and us,” Esther persists despite Wednesday’s silent promises of more violence. “I looked away for a moment, only a moment, and she’d wandered off into another pack’s territory, where a stream ran. They didn’t recognize her, and they attacked. She was only thirsty…”

Wednesday hears the regret, the remorse. The guilt and the hurt. It echoes her own. But she can’t yet shake off her anger at Esther, “you will never deserve her, no matter how hard you try to earn her. And for reasons beyond my understanding, she will continue to give herself to you. She is the sun continuing to shine even at night, blessing you with her rays reflected onto you from your wretched moon.”

It’s silent then as they stare at each other, Wednesday’s keen eyes studying every last twitch on Esther's face, gleeful that her words landed like punches to the throat despite Esther not outwardly showing any signs of distress. 

“You are not what I wished for her,” Esther says eventually.

“To Tartarus with what you wished for,” Wednesday fires back without missing a beat.

“Yes, well. You’ve got my… not quite blessing, but. Something.” 

Before Wednesday can tell Esther what she can do with her not-quite blessing, where exactly she can store her something , she catches Esther’s eyes finally leave her person to find something behind her. 

There is a breeze that ruffles her sweaty bangs, a beam of light shining down onto the Quad as the wind parts the thick clouds. The metallic scent of blood around her is overrun with something far too sweet for Wednesday’s taste - sickeningly, it faintly smells like hope, though she doesn’t dare turn yet.

“Icarus,” her mother’s lilting voice carries to her. There is a smile in the sound, and Wednesday swallows; Enid would hate hearing that name in relation to her. 

(All she wants is to see Enid hate it with her own eyes.)

Esther looks back at her, lips quirked up in the faintest hint of amusement. She nods behind Wednesday in a wordless ask for Wednesday to turn around already.

She can only spare a moment to appreciate the image; Morticia in all her darkness sharply contrasts with the brightness of the sun cradled under her wing. Their smiles, soft and full of affection, match.

Wednesday turns her head to look at Esther over her shoulder, contemplating the image the two of them must be projecting; all black and drab grays, cynicism and harshness. Rough edges and all sharp corners presented to the world. Deadly predators.  

(Perhaps she has something in common with Esther too.)

No conscious thought goes into it when her feet move to carry her forward. Wax wings craving the sun.

Her skin is pale, healing bruises around her neck and what’s visible of her shoulders a stark contrast against the unusually sickly complexion. Under Wednesday’s black leather jacket, draped over her shoulders, Wednesday can see a sling cradling her arm. The cast is stark white, though likely not for much longer.

Enid’s eyes shine the bluest she’s ever seen them. Wax wings already melted, plummeting into the sparkling sea instead.

Wednesday is a step away when Morticia offers Enid’s shoulder under her fingers a gentle squeeze, plum-tinted lips pressing a loving kiss to blond hair before Enid’s taking that final step to bridge the gap between them herself. 

Wednesday wonders, after all the relentless flying, where she’s meant to go now, if not instantly into the center of the sun beaming at her?

For the second time in the span of ten minutes, the advantage of the first words are stolen from Wednesday.

“Howdy, Hades,” Enid whispers with an indulgent smile.

Wednesday’s eyes track every last scratch and cut she can see on Enid’s hand until the gentle fingers touch her skin. They touch upon Kitty’s scar and glide down to cup her jaw momentarily. Enid’s thumb gently brushes across her upper lip to wipe away flaked, dried blood, lingering on the bottom lip instead. It is an instant inferno.

“You know, we have to stop meeting like this,” Enid says with a teasing tone, her breath catching when both of Wednesday’s hands lift and cradle hers as if it’s the most precious gemstone known to the universe.

When Wednesday’s lips press themselves to Enid’s knuckles, it rights every wrong in the world. 

“Hello, Persephone.”

A pyre, set ablaze.

Fin.