Chapter Text
Wednesday had decided that jealousy was the worst of all emotions. She usually didn’t mind pain, be that mental or physical, but this specific kind was absolutely horrible. She was angry, and sad, and her stomach hurt like she had been stabbed all over again. She thought she might throw up and her suppressed tears threatened to choke her, but that wasn’t even the worst part.
The worst part was that she felt guilty about it, too. She knew that she had absolutely no right to feel anything like this, not over Enid, who had the right to do whatever she wanted with whomever she wanted, and Wednesday had no claim on her whatsoever. Besides, Enid deserved to be happy, even if it hurt that Wednesday wasn’t the one who brought that beautiful smile to her face. It should have made her happy, too, and it sort of did, but mostly it just made her feel like she was dying again.
If she stayed there one moment longer, watching Enid smile at Ajax, who certainly didn’t deserve her attention, she would snap and end up either hurting everyone around her or breaking down in public, neither of which would be good. So she did the only thing she could think of, and ran away. She should have probably left the school premises altogether, or at the very least found a proper hiding spot somewhere, but she was too distraught to go anywhere other than her room.
Her side of the room was just as dark and cold as always, and she considered working on her novel to calm down, the straight-backed chair and heavy typewriter calling out to her, but decided against it in the end. She shouldn’t write anything worth writing when she was this upset, it tended to impact her work negatively so she would have to toss out everything and rewrite it later anyway.
The next best idea was to play something on her cello, but when she looked down she saw that her hands were shaking bad enough that she wouldn’t be able to even hold her bow properly, so she discarded that idea as well. She would have probably still been able to get something halfway decent out of the instrument but nothing she would consider good enough to play where anyone else – least of all Enid, but Wednesday didn’t want to think about that right now – could hear her.
In the end, she completely gave up on doing anything productive, knowing that neither her body nor her mind would cooperate if she tried anything even remotely complex right now. So she just sat down by their window, her back to it and her knees pulled up to her chest with a heavy blanket pulled tightly around herself, as if that would make all of those horrible feelings go away.
She hid beneath her blanket, surrounded by darkness and warmth even as half of her back was bathed in rainbow lights from Enid’s side of the window, as if the cover of darkness would do anything to keep away the images her mind kept replaying – the images that shouldn’t have bothered her but hurt worse than an arrow to the shoulder or a knife to the stomach. They were so persistent that she even considered clawing her own eyes out of her skull, but she was pretty sure that not even that would have helped.
All Wednesday could do was sit there on the hard floor and try not to throw up. She really didn’t think simply seeing her friend happy should hurt this much, regardless of how she felt about her deep down. She had no right to be in pain over something like this, even less because Enid didn’t even know about her feelings, which was probably for the best.
If Wednesday told her, she was sure Enid would be less open about her affection for Ajax, and the selfish part of her that she wished wouldn’t exist rejoiced at the thought, though the rest of her mind tried to shut this horrible voice up. It would be cruel to tell Enid, to let her dampen her own happiness for the sake of Wednesday’s wretched and twisted heart, and she would never again willingly do anything to harm Enid, no matter how much she had to suffer for it herself.
There were tears running down her face now, which was embarrassing but she just couldn’t stop, could barely even bring her hands up to roughly wipe them away before they could drip down onto her knees. It hurt, and her face already felt raw, but she almost enjoyed the pain, appreciating the distraction from her emotional pain and guilt, even if it wasn’t nearly enough to fully clear her mind.
She didn’t even know if what she thought was actually what she had seen. After all, Enid smiled a lot, and maybe Ajax of all people being there had just been a coincidence, but she didn’t really believe that herself. The world wasn’t that kind to her, not that it would have actually made any difference whatsoever, and denial and self-delusion never helped anyone in the long run. Even the smallest trace of hope now would only cause more pain later on, once all of her worst suspicions were confirmed. Besides, Wednesday Addams had never once been anything close to an optimist, especially not in moments like this one.
It was impossible to tell how much time passed this way, with Wednesday sitting in place, unmoving except for the shudders that ran through her body from barely suppressed sobs and gasps for air that refused to enter her lungs. It must have been a long time, though, because the next time she peeked past the blanket, their room was almost completely dark, the only light in the room coming from the sting lights Enid must have forgotten to turn off when she left for class that morning.
Just seeing the colourful lights was enough to bring a fresh wave of misery crashing over Wednesday, though not in the way she would have expected them to just a year earlier. By now, she usually liked Enid’s colourful decorations – not that she would ever admit that – but right now they just reminded her of what she had seen earlier that day, though she tried desperately to purge the entire thing from her memory.
At this point, Wednesday was in physical pain as well as emotional from sitting in such an uncomfortable position for hours without moving. She’d have to pay the price for that later, but right now she didn’t – couldn’t – care, her mental anguish too overwhelming for anything else to still matter.
It was surprisingly exhausting, and despite everything, Wednesday eventually drifted off into an uneasy sleep, all without moving from her spot by the window. She was plagued by nightmares, and not the fun kind, forced to watch as Enid gave all of her attention and affection to Ajax while Wednesday was left behind in the shadows, all alone once more.
In the dream, they didn’t notice her at first, just like it had happened in reality, but then Enid turned around to look at her, and for a brief moment Wednesday hoped against all hope that things were about to get better, that Enid would see her and choose her instead of Ajax. That hope was cruelly shattered when, instead of that kind and understanding smile Enid sometimes got when she saw that Wednesday was upset, Wednesday found herself face to face with cruel laughter and mockery.
She didn’t really look like Enid, and Wednesday was distantly aware that this wasn’t real, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. Wednesday tried to look away, and to drown out her uncharacteristically cruel voice by squeezing her hands over her ears hard enough that it hurt, but nothing worked. Those haunting visions, so much worse than anything her powers had ever shown her, refused to give her peace for even a moment. She curled further into herself but didn’t wake up.
That was how Enid found her when she returned to their room around an hour later. She’d had a really nice day with some of her friends, but she couldn’t fully enjoy it because the only thing she could think about all day was that Wednesday wasn’t there. She was worried, but even more than that, she just missed her. They were already roommates and best friends, and Enid was not-so-secretly hoping that they would become even more than that, so it kind of hurt that Wednesday hadn’t even told her she was leaving before she had disappeared.
So now Enid had spent the last several hours searching the school grounds and their surroundings for her friend, growing more desperate as the sun disappeared further behind the horizon. She hadn’t given up until she tripped and twisted her ankle, and decided to return to the search as soon as she could walk properly again. But for now, she limped back to her room, trying not to cry.
She froze in her tracks as soon as she spotted the black lump outlined against their window. It took her a moment to figure out what she was seeing, but the moment she did, she broke free from her stupor and raced to her best friend’s side, all pain forgotten for the moment. All that mattered to her was making sure that Wednesday was okay, and that she hadn’t been attacked again. She always got herself into trouble, which was something Enid loved about her despite her better judgement.
Her hand shook, hesitant when she reached out, not because she was afraid of being attacked – that time had long since passed – but simply because she knew how much Wednesday valued her personal space and she didn’t want to cross any boundaries and make her uncomfortable. But Wednesday didn’t move, didn’t even react when Enid got closer, so her worry eventually won out over her respect of her roommate’s boundaries.
Wednesday’s hands, curled around her knees tight enough that her knuckles had turned white from the pressure, were cold even for her, but at least her fingers twitched when Enid’s brushed against them, which was the first sign of life she had gotten out of the still girl since she found her. That at least was a relief, albeit a small one, and Enid relaxed slightly at it. She had really been completely freaked out until now.
It took a while but Wednesday eventually at least somewhat came back to herself, though she didn’t pull her hand away from Enid’s, which surprised both of them. She looked up at her past her knees, wide-eyed and with a face more open than Enid had ever seen her before. She was devastatingly beautiful, even with messed-up hair and red-rimmed eyes that were brimming with pain and disbelief.
Suddenly, Enid had to fight the urge to kiss her until she stopped looking so unbelievably sad. She bit her lip to stop herself and just squeezed Wednesday’s hand a little tighter instead, hoping that that would bring her at least some comfort while she was clearly distressed. She wasn’t sure if it actually worked or if Wednesday just managed to calm down a bit on her own, but it only took a few more moment until she looked like she would at least be able to understand Enid’s words.
“Wednesday? What’s going on?”
Enid really hoped that she sounded compassionate rather than pitying, but it was honestly hard to tell because Wednesday’s walls were coming back up rapidly, her face returning to the calculated blankness it normally wore, as if nothing had happened. Only the way her hair was sticking up and the faint streaks of tears that still lingered on her cheeks gave away that this wasn’t just a normal evening in the Addams-Sinclair dormitory.
When Wednesday got to her feet, her knees shook so much that she might have fallen straight back down if Enid hadn’t held her up by their still-connected hands. She pulled herself away as soon as it was clear she wouldn’t fall, and Enid tried not to show her pain at the apparent rejection. Still, she put her own pain on the backburner, still worried about Wednesday and focussed on watching her friend move around the room instead.
She dumped the blanket onto her bed with far less grace than she normally would have and then immediately busied herself with straightening it out rather than turning around to face Enid, who was still waiting for an answer, or really any kind of response, to her question. When she finally got one, it was about what she had expected, and she really wasn’t happy with it.
“Nothing, I’m fine.”
It didn’t sound nearly as dismissive as Wednesday had clearly intended, and her voice even broke on the word fine, which just made Enid worry even more. She kept telling herself that it was just that – very justified – worry that made her follow Wednesday to her side of the room, and made her talk again.
“Don’t lie to me, I can tell you’ve been crying. You don’t have to hide from me, you know?”
She didn’t mean to sound angry, but some frustration slipped into her voice anyway, mingling with the fear and desperation that were already there, and suddenly she felt kind of sick. She hadn’t meant to yell at Wednesday, and probably just upset her even more in the process, and that thought alone was enough to bring stinging tears to her eyes.
Meanwhile Wednesday was having her own crisis. She was still struggling to adjust to that day’s new pain, and now she had also upset Enid, and that just made everything even worse. Images of her packing that horrible red bag with tears in her eyes and storming out of their room joined the ones of her laughing with Ajax, and Wednesday struggled to breathe once more.
It was harder than she had expected to fight the urge to double over in pain, but there was no way she was going to let Enid see how bad she was truly doing. Her face was completely out of control at this point, but at least she managed to keep her body still and her posture relatively normal, hoping desperately that that would be enough to fool Enid’s strangely perceptive eyes.
Several deep breaths later, she was finally ready to stop acting like she was making her bed and turn around again, though she regretted it as soon as she did. Enid was staring at her, almost as if she was looking directly through her, and Wednesday felt uncomfortably seen all over again. She was tempted to turn back around, or to run and hide like she had earlier, but it was too late for that now, so she gave a defeated sigh and at least somewhat gave in, instead.
“Fine. There is something going on, but I cannot tell you what it is. I will be fine eventually, I just need some time to recover.”
Her voice was steady but her breathing rapid, and her heart raced. She was pretty sure she would have been able to act completely normal if Enid hadn’t still been staring at her like that, stepping into her personal space as if that would get Wednesday to change her mind. She almost backed away from her, but stopped herself just in time, though she couldn’t keep looking her way, instead turning her head aside, almost in shame, too weak to keep up eye contact.
Even with all of that, Wednesday still clung to the hope that Enid would give in to her wishes, that she would just drop it, at least for now. Because Enid couldn’t find out, no matter what, and Wednesday was pretty sure that she would crack and confess everything if Enid applied even the slightest amount of pressure. But, of course, she wasn’t that lucky, and Enid demanded an explanation while getting even closer to her than she already was.
“Absolutely not, you have to tell me what’s wrong! Maybe I can help you.”
The only way Wednesday managed to keep herself from bursting out with the truth right then and there, baring her entire soul to Enid and most likely ruining the only truly good thing she’d ever had, was by biting her tongue hard enough that it bled and squeezing her hands into fists so her fingernails cut crescent wounds into her palms.
Her eyes were closed tight now, and she was stumbling back onto her bed, desperate to put as much distance between herself and the girl she loved before she could do something she would most likely regret for the rest of her life. Her voice sounded hollow, and raspy, and painfully desperate even to her own ears.
“You can’t. You’ll just have to trust me when I say that I can handle it. I would really appreciate if you dropped the topic now.”
Enid only took a moment, maybe even less, to consider that, but she still refused to back off or give Wednesday the space she desperately wanted to long for but dreaded instead. Wednesday’s eyes were still closed but she could feel Enid’s eyes on her, burning into her, and her response was anything but reassuring.
“Fine, then I’ll just have to figure it out myself!”
She didn’t actually sound upset or anything like that, but it still sounded aggressive to Wednesday, who just curled further into herself in response. She had no idea what she was supposed to do, or how she could possibly get Enid to leave her alone and let her keep her terrible secret that was far too invasive to keep their friendship in tact without revealing too much.
At this point, Wednesday was breathing rapidly again, and her head was spinning as dizziness threatened to overtake her, but she powered through, once again focussing on the taste of blood in her mouth to keep from passing out. The tang of metal was enough to bring her mind somewhat back to the forefront, at least enough that she managed to beg for mercy once more.
“Please don’t.”
By now, Wednesday’s voice was barely more than a whisper, though Enid seemingly still didn’t fully notice just how distressed she really was. She wasn’t crowding her or backing her into a corner again, even moving back a bit, but Wednesday was too far gone to notice. She barely even heard what Enid said next, though the words still managed to seep into some corner of her mind past the blood rushing through her ears.
“Too late, I already started planning my investigation!”
And with that, Enid finally went back to her own side of the room and Wednesday could breathe a bit more freely again, though it still hurt to do so. The worst part was that that horrible, possessive, desperate thing that she hated about herself rejoiced at that declaration, at the way Enid clearly cared about her, even enough to disregard Wednesday’s own words. It was all she could do not to start crying again out of disgust at and hatred of herself.
She pulled the blanket back over her head and curled up into the smallest ball she could, and just tried to ignore everything she was thinking and feeling, as well as the sounds of Enid moving around on the other side of the room, probably getting ready for bed. Wednesday should have probably done the same, but she couldn’t bring herself to move, the most she managed to do was kick off her shoes and shrug her arms out of her jacket before she went completely still again.
Wednesday was still awake long after Enid’s breaths evened out, waiting for sleep to overtake her once more and hoping desperately against all hope that she wouldn’t be plagued by those horrible nightmares again. The thought alone scared and sickened her, which wasn’t something that usually happened, and nothing she tried could distract her enough to finally let her fall asleep.
After what felt like several hours of this specific type of torture, she came to the conclusion that she wouldn’t be able to sleep and that she might as well use this time for something more productive than lying in the dark and listening to her friend’s far too adorable snores, each one of which felt like a fresh stab wound in her abdomen as yet another reminder that they would never be closer than they were right then.
It didn’t take her long to slip back into her heavy boots and carry her cello out to the balcony, making sure to close the window all the way behind her so her playing wouldn’t wake Enid. She wasn’t sure if she would be able to play anything, but as soon as she sat down with her bow in one hand and the neck of her cello in the other, the music started flowing from her fingers. She poured all of her pain and anger and self-loathing into it, creating a haunting melody that gave several of the weaker-minded students nightmares and lasted until the sun came up on the horizon.
While Wednesday played, she lost herself to the music entirely, until she was nothing more than her instrument and the tears that were once again running down her cheeks. It would have been almost embarrassing, if she had still had enough energy left to muster up another emotion.