Chapter Text
"If I am the monster, then why haven’t I killed you?”
To her credit, Wednesday didn’t balk at his attempt to be intimidating. His pain rolled off her like water.
“Because for some reason I can’t seem to fathom or indulge, you seem to like me,” she concluded, unable to keep her voice from wavering.
Xavier wanted to bite back with something scathing. He wanted to grab her by the neck and kiss her breathless, shackle his wrists with her braids.
He studied her face, pale in the half light of the cold, circular room. She looked exhausted. Her hand was tight and defensive on the strap of her bag.
“I don’t get it, either,” he scoffed, a bitter laugh tacked onto the end. She blinked. “I do like you, Wednesday,” he admitted.
“Why? What could possibly attract you to me?” her normally monotone voice hitched up an octave. She was genuinely perplexed. She blinked again, obviously perturbed with herself for allowing the conversation to take this turn. He could feel warmth pulling up from his heartbeat into his throat.
“Your loyalty,” he answered honestly. She looked taken aback, dropping her stiffly held posture. “Your tenacity,” he added. Her eyes fixed on his sternum, intense. “You’re probably the most self-actualized person I’ve ever met. To a fault, even.”
“All of her best qualities. This young man has taste!” a wheezing, overly excited voice declared from the shadows. Xavier straightened up, abashed. The man’s fingertips sparked as he rubbed his hands together gleefully.
“How much of that did you hear?” Wednesday seethed. The way her jaw clenched made Xavier’s heart skip. She was embarrassed. Most people would willingly swallow glass before admitting she was cute, but it couldn’t be argued.
“Enough to feel the tension between you two!” the man’s face lit up from the snap of electricity between his hands. He chuckled. “Fester Addams,” he introduced himself, holding out his hand to shake.
Wednesday looked over her shoulder at him and looked, if possible, even more embarrassed. Her hands had curled into fists and her breathing was thin; her dark, soul crushing eyes unblinking. Xavier felt tiny, thrilling pinpricks shoot up his neck laced with terror; to crush on Wednesday Addams was a reckless thing. He took half a step back and raised his hands, palms up. “Bianca and the others are still pissed that you snubbed the Nightshades. I’m not covering for you.”
“Maybe you can help,” she suggested, reaching out to twist her uncle’s wrist. “We’re conducting research on Hydes.”
“Like Jekyll and Hyde?” he said after a beat of awkward silence, warily shifting his gaze between the two Addamses.
Fester snorted and chuckled. Wednesday glared at him. “The sooner we find what we’re looking for, the sooner we can make ourselves scarce,” she added, squaring her shoulders.
“Did you try the library?” he gestured to the dark hallway off to the left. “According to Yoko, that’s where the Nightshades stockpile knowledge that isn’t kept on campus.”
“What we’re looking for is Nathaniel Faulker’s diary. If it’s here, it’ll be with the other logbooks written by notorious outcasts or hidden away someplace,” Fester interjected, scanning the room. “There used to be a safe somewhere down here hidden behind a painting. I just can’t remember which…” he tiptoed uneasily in place.
Xavier walked over to an ornately framed portrait of a creature that looked like a cross between a Wookie and a mass of hair that might be pulled up from a clogged drain, prying it away from the stone wall like a cabinet door, revealing the safe tucked behind it. “Maybe here?”
Thing jumped out of her back and scuttled over to it, scaling the old writing desk under it to climb into the hidden recess and start poking at the seams of the safe, tapping at it. He and Fester launched into a heated argument that Xavier mostly tuned out. Wednesday was staring intently at him. Her knuckles had gone bone-white. She opened her mouth to say something, but was interrupted by her Uncle’s whoop of delight. The safe door had been sprung; Thing was flexing proudly. Wednesday wrenched it all the way open and scoured through, ignoring the other things spilling out to pull out a worn leather book with ragged page edges.
“That’s what the monster is, isn’t it?” he said, understanding. He could hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears. “A Hyde. That’s what you think I am.” He advanced on her. “Why don’t you see if you can get me to transform, then?”
“I’ll torture you into it,” she hissed up at him, her mouth set in a snarl. He wanted so badly to kiss it away.
“I dare you.”
Wednesday blinked, dropping her eyes down to his mouth.
“Whoa!” Fester split the narrow space between them with a cracking spark from his hands. Xavier jumped back, just avoiding the shock. The air sizzled with charge.
“Hydes can only shift under the command of their masters,” Fester said patiently. Wednesday flipped the journal open until she found what she was looking for and poured over it. The writing was cramped and disorganized, but Xavier recognized the picture; the misshapen, lank-limbed creature had haunted the edge of his nightmares for weeks.
“Born of mutation, the Hyde lays dormant until unleashed by a traumatic event or unlocked through chemical inducement or hypnosis,” Wednesday recited from the text. “That gives me plenty to work with.”
Xavier’s stomach turned. It was bad enough she had one innocent person in her crosshairs.
He set out for his studio early the next morning, sick from visions that had plagued him all night. The latest reoccurring one was fresh on canvas now. He rolled his wet brush in the blend of reds he’d made and felt the pull he always felt when his psychic powers took over, possessing him to snap and flick in the same way he’d seen it in his nightmares. When he regained his sense of self, he was startled to see Wednesday to standing in the open doorway. She was clutching the diary.
“According to Faulkner, Hydes are artistic in nature,” she said by way of greeting. She looked pleased with herself, as though she’d caught him in the act. He scoffed and threw the brush down on his worktable.
“Is she your next victim?”
“I’ve been having that nightmare for the past week. I told her about it, but she doesn’t believe me.”
A thin wrinkle creased her brow. “Dr. Kinbott doesn’t strike me as the type to ignore her patients’ concerns,” she murmured, more to herself than to him.
“I’m not so much her patient as a high-profile problem.” He crossed his arms and leaned against the worktable. “She’s under a lot of pressure to be discreet because of my dad,” he explained. “She has plenty of Nevermore clients, but my visions put her off.”
“I know.” Wednesday’s hands clenched on the diary and she turned away from him to study the painting.
“She doesn’t believe you, either.”
“It’s hard to believe myself, sometimes,” she said after a long, uncomfortable silence. Her stare was guarded, her words measured carefully. “My visions aren’t like yours. They aren’t this vivid. They’re just flashes.” A note of frustration tinged her voice. She stared at him. “If you’re going to lecture me like you did on Outreach Day, I don’t want to hear it.”
“Why are you even here?” he asked instead.
“I was in the neighborhood,” she deadpanned, humorless. The paintbrush rolled off the table and she snorted, bending over to pick it up. Xavier studied the part in her hair from that angle, squirming at the vulgar image that floated up from a prior fantasy. Wednesday’s spine snapped up and curved back violently. Xavier reacted instantly, securing the back of her head and gently lowering her to the ground. Once she was settled, he checked his watch. She was out for roughly thirty seconds, give or take. A little longer than a vision should normally take, but still out of the range of concern. Her eyes, which had blown completely open, went back to their placid, stoic look. The paintbrush was still clutched in her hand and she hurled it at him.
“You lied,” she accused.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” he reached out to help her up and was surprised when she clung to him. The vision must have been a powerful one. He hoisted her more gently than necessary, guiltily savoring the feeling of her frame tucked against him.
“At the dance. You said that Tyler and his friends ‘gave you a hard time’ and ruined your mural.”
He pulled away from her and turned his back on her, rifling through his meager collection of mixtapes. Humiliation rose from his pores. “You saw it.”
“It looked like they gave you a concussion and maybe broke a rib or two.”
He wondered if the vison allowed her to feel it. He nodded, jamming a tape into the old cassette player. “I got flown out to a private hospital. They made an example of Tyler because he’s the sheriff’s kid and was technically the main aggressor. The others got off easy.” The PR coverup had been exhausting. He hadn’t been allowed back in school until the bruises on his face healed. He’d been required to attend a hearing and listen as the judge outlined Tyler’s consequences.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Everything about that night already sucked. I wasn’t going to add trauma dumping on the girl I like.” He would have sounded like such a loser describing how he got the shit beat out of him. Especially since she’d basically only asked him to cover up her investigation.
As if reading his thoughts, she drew herself in tightly. He was willing to bet that no one had ever told her they liked her. “My only interest in you right now is as a suspect.” She had that perturbed look on her face again. Xavier’s lungs spasmed and he folded up the words to keep like a note passed in secret.
Early the next morning, he found the tracker snagged in the fabric of his hoodie. For a solid half hour, he considered flushing it just to see where it would lead her.
His phone lit up with a new message.
I talked to your father and cleared things with Principal Weems. I can pick you up this afternoon.