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Wednesday counted her steps in tens.
Ten. A tree. Twenty. The moon, in all its crescent glory. Thirty. A bird on the ground. Forty. She stumbled over a root. Fifty.
A trembling hand reached for her shoulder. Liquid pooled between her fingers and ran down her knuckles, staining the hem of her already dirtied sleeve. There was an injury there somewhere, torn into her with all the bane of everything she’d tried to outrun, and yet she couldn’t feel it. Fingertips cold and senses delayed by no less than five seconds, she couldn’t decide what part of her shoulder the blood came from, nor what the injury that had pitted her body against itself was.
Wednesday simply bled. She bled as all things did when mortality caught up to them. No one could evade it for long, but Wednesday was versed in doing so. She wasn’t sure what that made her. A thief, perhaps—a thief that stole life where life wasn’t due. Penance must be hot on her trail. It had been, in fact. She wasn’t sure how she had escaped it again. Every odd that had tried a hand at defying her had its bets burned.
Wednesday wasn’t to thank for that.
Sixty. It had been sixty steps. Seventy. The trees were stripped of their bark by a frenzy of claw marks. Eighty. Ninety.
Wednesday wasn’t thinking about any of those things. They reigned in a part of her mind, but only a part, locked away and writhing beneath the devils that haunted her every shaking step. They were insignificant. When this was over, she would mull over them beneath the candlelight of her affliction. She would think of them when her hands weren’t covered in black veins and her lungs didn’t hurt from how rapidly they drew air. Then, and only then, would she stop thinking about the one person on her mind.
Enid. Her hand fell away from her shoulder. Enid. One hundred steps. Crimson seeped over the bile beneath her skin. Enid. Enid. Enid.
One hundred and ten.
Wednesday knew what she was going to find. She knew what would be waiting for her. One hundred and twenty.
Enid hadn’t been there. Not at first. Just when Wednesday was poised to be gutted, she flew into the scene and knocked her out of the way, sending them both sprawling across the dirt, intertwined.
Wednesday hadn’t wanted to let go. She knew what it had been. She knew what was happening. She knew it would end with a headstone and a body drained of blood.
She had told Enid not to do it. She’d screamed her name until her voice no longer worked, but Enid hadn’t listened. She had pushed Wednesday back and made her leave, told her to leave her behind. She had flung herself into danger like it was the easiest thing she’d ever done, bought Wednesday time like fate wasn’t soon to knock at her door. Like Enid, Wednesday didn’t listen. The only thing that had made her turn on her heel and walk away as Enid, with weak human skin and nothing but claws, lunged into battle was the call of Pugsley somewhere in the distance.
One hundred and thirty.
Wednesday was one to focus on what she could control and try to take the reins of what she couldn’t. It was why she told herself she wouldn’t be too late. She kept walking, even as her legs threatened to buckle every step, even as she bled from wounds she didn’t know she had.
One hundred and forty. Wednesday was always punctual. She would not be late. The forest was silent, but she told herself she wasn’t too late. Stillness eclipsed the aftermath, but she told herself Enid was all right.
Wednesday would make it back in time. She was going to prevent it.
Her visions caught the jagged edges of her mind. They snagged, stayed there like specters intent on watching the end of their plan unfold.
One hundred and fifty. Wednesday walked faster. Her jaw quivered. Tears welled in her eyes and ran down her face, a gravely familiar companion in the too-still wood. She didn’t need to feel for them to know they were black. Enid. Enid. Enid. Enid.
Wednesday knew. She knew it like she knew old poems and strategies that had never been practiced. She knew it like she knew Enid’s laugh. This was irreparable. Final, in some worlds, and she didn’t want to accept that this was one of them.
One hundred and fifty-two. Counting tens had grown tiring. She couldn’t remember where she had last left off. At another time, she might have found such an admission, such a deprived state of being, horrifying. Nothing of the sort crossed her mind, for its scope was occupied only by dread.
It wasn’t panic that doubled her stride. It was present, but it was overshadowed by that sheer dread. Fate wasn’t forgiving. Its hand was cruel and unrelenting. Wednesday knew this, too. It was the reason her lungs hurt. It was the reason the veins in her arm ran black. They spoke of her failures, of her losing battle against a death that wasn’t hers.
She knew. She knew. She knew. But panicking over the inevitable did nothing to erase its consequences, so Wednesday kept walking. A stumble marred her gait every two steps, but it was even, nonetheless.
The dread festered. It grew into something ugly—something she couldn’t grapple with lest she fall apart right then. One hundred and fifty-five. The trees loomed above her like sentinels turned against the one they’d vowed to protect. Her hands shook, little more than helpless, traitorous beasts. Try as they might, they hadn’t been able to rewrite the future. Try as Wednesday might have, she couldn’t change the truth.
One hundred and fifty-seven. The sharp tang of blood drifted on the air towards her. She felt like vomiting. One hundred and sixty.
One hundred and sixty-two. That’s how many steps it took to reach Enid. Wednesday hadn’t glimpsed her at first. Amongst the foliage, she hid from the fringes of a reality that so brutally followed at her heels.
Wednesday didn’t realize she’d said Enid’s name before she was hobbling over to her. She couldn’t move fast, but she went as quickly as she could. Blood gleamed, dark and final, on the verdure. It pooled beneath Enid like a eulogy.
Enid. Enid. Enid. Wednesday collapsed at her side. Blood. Blood. Blood was everywhere. She had never hated the sight of it so much. Wednesday didn’t know where Enid’s body ended and the blood began. It mixed in shreds, in the weak shift that spurred Enid into motion, in the whimper that escaped her lips.
“Wednesday?” she choked out. It was only when the clouds receded from their place before the moon and cast a milky pallor on Enid that Wednesday noticed the gash in the side of her neck.
“I’m here,” Wednesday breathed, barely able to force the words out from behind her teeth. With hands that had never been so gentle, she slowly eased Enid from the soil and the pool of her own blood and onto her lap. She breathed out a wrenched, quiet apology when Enid whimpered again.
Enid’s eyes fluttered open halfway. Her mouth opened, but all that came out was a wet, sputtering cough that left flecks of blood dotting her bottom lip. Wednesday clutched her closer with ceaselessly trembling hands and bit her own lip to avoid screaming.
“Did you—” Enid’s voice gurgled, “did you . . . win?”
“Yeah.” Wednesday’s voice shook with the effort it took to keep herself composed. “We did. We won.”
Enid smiled weakly and leaned her head against Wednesday. “You did it.” Her words were nothing more than a trembling breath, but she still managed to smile, even though it was a battered thing and fell not three seconds after.
“I just asked myself,” Wednesday began, “WWED?” She pushed a strand of bloody hair from Enid’s tired eyes. Her voice broke. “What Would Enid Do?”
Enid’s lips twitched like she wanted to smile again, but she never did. Her eyes slid shut, and her hands, which had been weakly clutching at some unseen wound on her abdomen, slackened. Wednesday swallowed down something heavy and held her tighter.
Apologies plagued her tongue, but none of them came out, despite this being entirely her fault. If she had tried harder, been faster, done more, this wouldn’t be happening. Her visions would have never amounted to anything, would have never deigned to enter reality in an alliance. Enid wouldn’t be bleeding out in her arms. Enid would not be dying.
“I’m sorry,” she finally managed. The words were foreign to her, for it was rare that she ever bled an apology, but this one was stricken by grief. It was real and unrivaled. She wished it lacked the grounds to be so real.
Enid struggled for a long time. Before Wednesday could tell her not to speak, she whispered, “Don’t be.”
You know it’s my fault. Wednesday did her best to press her palm to the site where the blood seemed to be coming from. It was one of many places. Enid opened her eyes again and blinked slowly, as though the action took a monumental effort that she couldn’t muster. There was no strength, no liveliness, none of that fire Wednesday had come to know. There was nothing but the encroaching weight of fate, and it was tearing Wednesday apart mercilessly.
It was silent for a few minutes. Wednesday wasn’t sure when she had begun rocking them, slow and minuscule. She counted Enid’s breaths as she did so. They grew shallower with every passing second.
“Wednesday?” Enid stared up at her, eyes half-lidded, chin streaked with the blood that now slipped past the corners of her mouth. Wednesday sat her up so she wouldn’t choke.
Enid seemed to know she was listening. She took a breath and stopped short, sputtering against it. Blood leaked from a laceration just on top of her lung, drawing Wednesday’s attention. She bit her lip harder.
Enid continued after another moment. “I’m going to die, right?”
Wednesday had lied to her enough, which is why she quietly said, “Yes.” She brushed another strand of her hair away so it wouldn’t become bloody like the rest of her had become. Enid never liked her hair to be a mess.
Enid said nothing else in response. Her silence was acceptance.
“You’re crying,” she rasped. The crimson from her mouth trailed down her jaw and spotted the collar of her sweater. It was one of her favorites.
Black tears, Wednesday knew. They hadn’t stopped for what felt like hours. Sitting here, with Enid curled against her and the weight of the night catching up to her, Wednesday was starting to feel their effect. She had been drained of all her energy down to the bone, but adrenaline, up to this point, had prevailed. There was nothing to fall back on now. None of that mattered, though, not in the slightest, because Enid was fighting to take another breath, and her blood was staining Wednesday’s clothes.
“Real tears,” Enid murmured like she knew what Wednesday was thinking. It was possible she did. She’d come to know Wednesday too well. “Don’t . . .” a broken breath, “cry. It’s okay.”
Wednesday hadn’t realized it before she mentioned it, but her chest was shuddering with barely-restrained sobs, and her lips tasted like salt. Even on the brink of her demise, Enid found it in herself to be concerned for someone else, for her. Wednesday blinked back the decidedly not black tears and shook her head. She couldn’t speak. Was this truly all she could do for Enid?
“It’s—” Enid started, “—not your fault. Not.” One of her pale hands came to rest on a shaking one of Wednesday’s own. It squeezed, a featherlight presence that retreated too quickly for it to be easy.
“I die because of you!” The words echoed in Wednesday’s head. This world’s Enid was wrong. That one had been right, had known the failures that would linger in Wednesday’s stead long after Enid had become nothing but a memory and a forgotten voice.
Just when Wednesday nearly gathered the strength to speak, Enid pulled her hand away. She moved her other one gradually, like gravity fought against her, and lifted them both to Wednesday’s face. A gentle tug was all Wednesday needed to lean down, sparing her the pain of pulling herself up. After another broken breath, Enid tilted Wednesday’s head down and pressed a weak kiss against her forehead.
Wednesday bit back another unbridled sob as she shut her eyes. Enid, with her good heart; Enid, with her cheeky smiles and teases; Enid, with her colors, with her fiery spirit; Enid, with her bubbly sweetness; Enid, with her kindness too potent for a world so cruel. Enid. Her Enid. That’s who lay in her lap, dying. Wednesday opened her eyes when Enid dropped her hands.
Wednesday pulled back and found one of Enid’s hands again. It was slick with blood. She gripped it atop Enid’s tattered chest like a lifeline as her eyes slid shut again.
Stay awake. Stay awake. Wednesday might have said it once, but she wasn’t selfish enough to ask that of Enid tonight.
Wispy clouds covered the moon again. Wednesday wondered if this would have ended differently had it been full. She doubted it.
Enid’s breaths grew terrifyingly spaced apart. They were shallow and labored in tandem. No. Enid didn’t open her eyes again. No.
Before her stillness convinced Wednesday of something else, she coughed again. More blood slid out of her mouth. Wednesday adjusted Enid once more, pulling her closer and letting her rest the entirety of her weight upon her.
“Wednesday?” she asked again. Wednesday, with her chin resting on the crown of her head, nodded against her hair.
“Do you think . . .” another cough, “will you write a story about me?” It was the quietest she’d been. Wednesday had to strain to hear her.
Wednesday shuddered an inhale past the new tears that slid down her face. “I’ll write a story about you, Enid.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
Enid didn’t say anything else after that. Her breaths grew shallower still. Her eyes stayed closed. Wednesday choked back the tears constricting her throat at the knowledge of what was happening. She could no longer prevent it. She’d bargained everything she had to stop this, but it hadn’t been enough.
“Enid.” Her voice shook. “Enid.”
Enid didn’t reply.
“Enid.”
Enid didn’t move.
“Enid.” The word grew desperate, loud.
Where were her breaths?
Wednesday pulled back to look at her. Even in sleep, she had never seen Enid so still. Her breath caught in her throat.
“Enid? Enid, no. Enid. No. No, no, no.” She lifted a hand smeared with crimson to Enid’s slack face. There was already so much blood there that it left only the ghost of a mark. “Enid. Enid, please.”
This time, she couldn’t bite back the sob that tore from her throat. It was messy and unrestrained, and she couldn’t find it in herself to care.
Finally, panic overtook the dread.
With heaving inhales, she glanced over Enid’s face and lifted her eyes to the vacant woodland. Nobody was around. That didn’t stop Wednesday, with her mind overtaken by a poignant mixture of exhaustion and hysteria, from clutching her body tighter.
“Help,” she said. At first, it was quiet. Upon her next scream, it was nothing of the sort. “Help!” Frantic, Wednesday dropped her gaze back to Enid and breathed rapidly. “No, no, no.”
Asking for aid was a vulnerability, something she had deviated from since childhood. She only grabbed its lifeline when strictly necessary; she couldn’t remember the last time such a plea left her lips, but right now, they wouldn’t stop.
There, alone in the woods with the body of her best friend, Wednesday Addams broke.
Wednesday ran her hand over Enid’s face, her hair, her bloody clothes, looking for anything to reverse the permanence of it all. She found nothing. “No, no.” She pushed Enid’s hair from her eyes, but it did nothing to change the fact that they were never going to open again. “No. No.”
A chorus of pleas and wails she hadn’t known she was capable of stormed past her defenses, and she could do nothing to stop them.
She didn’t stop when her voice grew strained. She didn’t stop when her throat was raw from begging someone, anything to help, to change what had happened, to give her another chance to make it right.
When her gravelly voice echoed into the woods a final time, unanswered, she didn’t try again. With shaking shoulders, she clutched Enid and buried her face in her neck, gasping with the force of her stifled cries. Enid didn’t move, didn’t stir. She didn’t take a breath.
Under the metallic tinge of it all, Wednesday caught the faintest whiff of her familiar perfume. Her following sob was too sudden for her to choke back. She squeezed her eyes shut and cradled the back of Enid’s head as she held her, rocking, pleading, waiting with silent tears that tracked lines down her cheeks and smeared the ink upon them.
Enid, Enid, Enid.
Wednesday held her tighter.
They were found 30 minutes later. It took ten to get a word out of Wednesday. It took hours for her to let go of Enid. Sometime during that, she was distantly aware of her mother frantically sweeping into the scene. She’d seen the realization cross her face through the tears in her eyes. She’d felt the gentle hand at her back and seen the other reach to sweep Enid’s hair away from her limp face ever so gently.
When Enid had been taken from her and Morticia opened her arms, Wednesday hadn’t been able to stop herself from clinging to her and burying her face in her shoulder. The sobs, though they hurt in her raw throat, had done nothing more than shake her frame soundlessly as she gripped her mother’s clothes with clenched fists. She hadn’t let them do anything else. In the end, they hadn’t changed anything.
Wednesday had only managed to get on her lonesome after detachedly assuring Morticia that she was all right. She hadn’t believed her, she knew. It was why Morticia waited outside the door of her and Enid’s dorm when Wednesday went inside before going back with her to the cottage.
She needed something of Enid’s, anything to take back with her for the night. The panic had turned to numbness, but her hands still trembled. She still hobbled. When she shut the door behind her, she stared, and stared, and stared at Enid’s vacant side, covered in drying blood that now wasn’t mostly her own.
She limped all the way to Enid’s bed, where a plethora of stuffed animals resided, expecting someone who wasn’t her to return. She grabbed one in her hands, a well-loved wolf, and held it close as she stared at nothing. It smelled like Enid. As childish as it was, she kept hold of it as she blinked slowly and stepped away from the bed.
It was only in front of Enid’s mirror that she stopped again. Her hair was loose and nearly undone, her clothes ripped and dirtied. The white of them was now red, and she didn’t know whose blood it was. Her palms were red, and the back of her hands, too, where blood had seeped between her fingers and trailed down her knuckles.
A heavy shadow hung over her face, her bangs were disheveled, and she caught herself shaking in her reflection, but none of those things made her stop.
Staring back at her was a kiss mark stained in blood on her forehead. She lifted her free hand to it and ran her fingers across it. By now, it was so dry it didn’t smear. Wednesday choked back the newfound wave of emotion lest the numbness she wielded be shattered.
It was only her mother coming into the room after such a long period that finally made her move from in front of the mirror. Because Wednesday had sunk to the floor in front of it, holding Enid’s stuffed wolf, and stared at Enid’s kiss mark like it would bring her back.