Work Text:
Her eye twitches at the noises coming from the record player, lips pressed together in a tight line. Wednesday hasn’t written a single word in eight minutes, fingers idle against the keys on her typewriter. She doesn’t regret using her daily music veto at breakfast, shuddering at the memory of being forced to listen to a boy band—even if they were named after her favorite chess piece.
“You know,” Tyler says, turning a page in his book, “it wouldn’t be the worst thing for you to broaden your music taste. Maybe listen to something with lyrics. That isn’t opera.”
She huffs. “I can’t think of a single reason why I should do that.”
“Because you love me?”
Wednesday spins her chair around to face him. The way he looks at her—his hazel eyes creasing at the corners and mouth stretching in a smile that’s part teasing—reminds her of the sound of coffee machines.
“I refuse to be manipulated by your emotional blackmail.”
Putting the book on the couch, Tyler crosses the living room. It’s a testament to her feelings for him that Wednesday allows him to pull her to her feet. Anyone else attempting something similar would find themselves with a knife in the kidney. His free arm wraps around her waist, drawing her close and tucking their clasped hands against his chest.
“Slow dancing, really?” she huffs, but slots her body closer to his.
“Indulge me,” he murmurs into her ear, sending shivers across her neck. “You didn’t let me dance with you like this at the Rave’N. I’m just making up for lost time.”
She tilts her chin up to look at him. “As if I would engage in such a display in public.”
His chuckle rumbles through her chest. Wednesday rests her forehead against his collarbone, inhaling the smell of mint shampoo and coffee grounds that clings to him almost a decade after his short career as a small-town barista. His body is a never-ending furnace against hers. They sway slowly, guided by the voice on the vinyl singing about hidden treasure chests and golden grand pianos and losing it all.
The vinyl player is covered in a thin layer of dust.
She refuses Enid’s offer to stay with her after the funeral. She doesn’t want company. With company, even Enid—especially Enid—there are the painful looks of pity, the need to fill the silence with mindless prattle. Wednesday prefers the silence. She isn’t sure how long she’s been sitting on the sofa, knees pulled up to her chest.
Wednesday blinks.
She is no stranger to pain, more like a friend, relishing in the discomfort it brings, but this is one she’s never experienced before and one she takes no pleasure in. Her chest feels hollow, as though someone’s scraped out all her insides until nothing is left but a cavernous void. She doesn’t know what to do with that emotion. This isn’t an anomaly; Wednesday has never been good with emotions. For a long time, she refused to acknowledge that she possessed them. Until she didn’t. Until they were awakened by a boy who didn’t shy away from her macabre tendencies, who called her kooky and refused any attempt she made to push him away. Annoyance. Intrigue. Desire. Hate. Respect. Love. Anguish. Anger. She tries to cling to the anger. If she doesn’t, she will break.
He faded away quickly. At the Addams’ family summer solstice celebration, his smile was a bit dimmer, which he blamed on being tired before he tugged her behind a mausoleum and kissed her until she couldn’t breathe. Over the following weeks, the circles under his eyes became bruises, and every cough burned red. His skin turned colder against hers. It didn’t matter that she had been his master for years. It didn’t matter how much research she did on Hyde lifespans, trying to find a cure or information or anything at all. There was nothing she could do to save him.
When the first leaves fell, he was gone.
-
That night, Wednesday dreams of Tyler.
They’re in the Weathervane, the air thick with bitter coffee and sweet pastries. It’s ordinary enough that Wednesday can’t tell if this is a memory or not. She’s in the booth that’s unofficially hers with a pile of books open on the table, he’s behind the counter serving customers and pretending he isn’t watching her. It could be any of the countless times she went to the Weathervane with her backpack full of books for researching Crackstone and the monster. She rationalized her decision to walk to Jericho instead of using the Nevermore library with the fact that she wouldn’t be disturbed by her insipid classmates who spent more time bickering and making out than studying. Of course, this was only partly true. What she refused to entertain, even in her solitude, was that she wanted to see Tyler with his hazel eyes and sunny smile. Like a moth to a flame, she would gladly turn to dust to bathe in his warmth.
“One quad on ice,” his voice breaks the silence.
“I didn’t order this.”
“It’s on the house,” he says, mouth widening in a smile as he sets the cup on the table. “Still working on that monster in the woods theory?”
Wednesday looks down at the bright pink spiral journal in front of her. She blinks. The rounded handwriting is darker in some spots, as though the writer pressed the pen harder on the page in excitement. This is Laurel Gates’ journal.
She frowns. Wednesday didn’t acquire the journal until Gates was incarcerated, as her parents were settling into Rosewood Cottage and she resisted the urge to set the place on fire, not when things were still bright and Tyler was just a normie barista with too-sunny smiles.
“Have you figured out a way to save me yet?”
Her head snaps back to Tyler.
His skin has gone pale and waxy, face gaunt with deep circles beneath his dull eyes. He surges forward and grabs her shoulders. The smell of death turns her stomach.
“Why couldn’t you save me?”
Wednesday’s eyes snap open.
Her heart pounds in her chest, nervous system on high alert. She uncrosses her arms and sits up in bed, pushing her bangs from her clammy forehead, and wipes her hand over the dampness on her cheeks. She expects it to come away with inky black stains, but she hasn’t had a vision like that in years. Was it a vision? Most likely not. Her visions don’t include people who are… Deceased. She’s barely allowed herself to think the word in the days since the funeral. It doesn’t belong in the same sentence as his name. She doesn’t accept it, can’t accept it.
So she won’t.
Wednesday gets out of bed and crosses the room. The black t-shirt she raided from Tyler’s closet doesn’t protect her from the chill. She’s used to waking up with Tyler’s furnace-hot body wrapped around her and his face buried in her neck. In the beginning, she would complain of his possessive nature, and he’d kiss her until she stopped. Which meant she did it more.
Falling to her knees, she opens the trunk she inherited from her great-great-grandmother. She has to move several items of clothing and her spare knife set aside to find what she’s looking for: a book with a worn black leather cover, shoved in there when she got back from the funeral. She doesn’t bother closing the lid to the trunk as she takes the book with her into the living room. The rain beating against the windows offers her no comfort anymore; it holds too many memories. The soft light from the lamp by the couch is just enough for her to make out the embossed Addams family crest on the book cover.
The physical barrier of the door closing behind her is the closest she has come to comfort all day, fingers digging into the smooth wood and nails gouging lines she wishes she could feel on her skin. She hasn’t been able to breathe easily all day, her throat constricting around her windpipe. It stopped her from screaming as the casket was lowered into the ground, as Cousins Flora and Fauna offered fake condolences, from saying anything at all while Enid cried and Ajax pretended he didn’t. The tether frantically calls for Tyler, searches for her Hyde. She can’t think, she can’t sleep, she can’t eat without feeling its pull.
Where are you, it screams. I need you.
Something hits the wooden floor with a thud. Wednesday pushes away from the door, ignoring the dampness on her lashes. The book on the floor looks perfectly innocent, but Wednesday knows it’s anything but. She spent enough time in the library growing up to understand that some books want to be read. Especially when they’re the most needed.
The crystal ball on Wednesday’s desk glows with an incoming call. Only one person would call her this late, so she isn’t surprised when her mother’s face fills the glass orb.
“Mother,” Wednesday says flatly. “To what do I owe the displeasure?”
Morticia’s mouth sets in a firm line. “I’m sorry to disturb you this late, darling, but I needed to speak with you.”
“Oh?”
“I was coming back from picking roses in the moonlight when I had a vision of you using the ancestral grimoire to contact the realm beyond this one. Tell me you’re not planning on doing that.”
“You’ve said it yourself, Mother: our visions aren’t reliable,” Wednesday says. “They show possibilities, not a future set in stone.”
“Yes, but I also know how determined you are.” Morticia’s face softens, eyes turning pitiful. “Wednesday, you can’t bring Tyler back.”
A sharp pain radiates from inside Wednesday’s chest cavity. Her nails dig into her palms.
“Go back to bed, Mother. You need your beauty sleep.”
Severing the connection, Wednesday blocks incoming calls. She can’t deal with her overbearing family right now. She’s got a spell to research. The rain doesn’t let up as she goes through the grimoire page by page, calling on the ancestral powers to guide her. The tether coils tighter, stealing her breath.
By daybreak, Wednesday has a plan.
She sips her quad by the rain-streaked window, free hand clenched in the shirt over her chest. It’s three days until Día de los Muertos. Her family will be out of town—Thing included—visiting Cousin Itt and Margaret for the celebration. The timing is perfect. Calling on this type of magic can be volatile, and she will not risk being interrupted and having the ritual fail.
She is getting Tyler back.
-
Wednesday enters the family estate by climbing the stone wall at the end of the grounds. Even though she watched her family leave for the annual Día de los Muertos celebration at Cousin Itt and Margaret’s house hours ago—from a hidden vantage point, obviously—she’s not risking going through the front gates. They can be exceedingly chatty when they want to be. She parked the car—the same one Tyler drove her and Enid to the Gates’ mansion in—on a nearby dirt road.
She didn’t bring a flashlight, but she knows the grounds like the back of her hand. She passes the Victorian greenhouse containing her mother’s carnivorous plants on the south side so they don’t pick up on her scent, avoids the headless rose bushes. Veering off the gravel path and onto the grass, she slips through the arch in the tall hedge that separates the family cemetery from the rest of the garden. Despite the circumstances, a pleasant shiver travels through her spine. The cemetery has been a place of comfort for her since she got her first grave-digging kit for her seventh birthday. She’s spent countless hours burying Pugsley alive and playing among the tombstones.
Wednesday resents the unseasonably warm weather. Even the breeze lacks the usual chill of early fall. A crow flies down to perch on Aunt Debbie’s headstone and caws. It stares at Wednesday, head cocked. It blinks—both eyes black—then caws again before flying off. She follows its flight over the cemetery until it disappears into the night sky. Tyler’s hand is cool in hers, his thumb tracing patterns on the inside of her wrist. She’s cocooned between his bent knees, his chest fitting snuggly against her spine. She counts each breath against her back, something she’s taken to doing at night as he sleeps against her. It’s a habit unrooted in logic but one she can’t shake.
“Wednesday, look at me.”
Her eyes close, just for a moment. But she can’t deny him anything, so she turns in his arms, sitting back on her knees and keeping their hands interlocked. Tyler looks tired, his pale skin making the skin under his eyes appear like bruises. His brows are slightly furrowed, and she knows he blocks most of his pain from coming through the tether. It’s unnecessary and insulting, as if she wouldn’t gladly bear his pain for him, and has been the source of several arguments in the past weeks.
“I need you to be okay,” he continues. “When I die—” a heavy cough swallows his voice, wracking through his body.
An unfamiliar wave of pain and panic washes over her as his control of the tether slips. She swallows against the nausea rising swiftly inside her.
His hand comes away from his mouth stained in blood, which he wipes on the grass next to them. “Wednesday, promise me…”
“How can you ask that of me?” she bites out and attempts to pull her hand back. His grip tightens painfully. “You might have given up on finding a cure, but I certainly have not.”
Tyler swallows harshly. “Please.”
It’s not the word, but the tone and the pleading look in his hazel eyes that constricts her throat like his hand is wrapped around it. He never asks her for anything, not like this.
She stifles the urge to scream into the air. “I promise.”
It’s the first time she’s lied to him since the night in Iago Tower. He can probably feel the dishonesty through the tether, but doesn’t comment on it. Instead, he kisses the top of her head, and she clenches her eyes shut. Without Tyler, Wednesday will never be okay.
His grave is near the garden wall underneath a large black oak tree. Tyler chose the spot, voicing a preference for resting under the open sky rather than in one of the family mausoleums. Wednesday sinks to her knees and removes her backpack, ignoring the dampness from the dewy grass seeping into her pants. It’s only when she has removed all the items from her backpack and placed the candles along the edge of the dirt that she lifts her eyes to the headstone. The ache hits her swiftly, starting in her lower ribs. Her eyes burn. She blinks until the feeling goes away. This is not the time. Pushing her emotions back, she sets out the rest of the items: the grimoire, a small silver knife, a photograph of Tyler from his latest birthday. Wednesday glances at her watch. Ten minutes until midnight.
She unclasps the delicate silver chain from around her neck and lets it pool in her hand. The tiny vial of blood—his blood—hanging from it is warm. A similar vial hung around his neck ever since the night they knelt under a blood moon in Woodstock and wove an oath into their bones and souls. They were foolish to think it would save him.
The strike of a match is loud in the stillness. The smell of sulfur and wood wafts through the air as she lights the candles and sits back at the foot of the grave. When Wednesday opens the grimoire, a gust of wind blows the pages until it settles onto the right page. She does the next steps of the ritual on autopilot: pouring the vial of blood on Tyler’s picture, using the silver knife to slice a line through her palm. She presses her bloody palm to Tyler’s picture, their blood mingling.
Wednesday focuses on her power, drawing on the broken ends of the tether to find him. Her skin pebbles painfully all the way to her scalp, an electrical current crackling underneath her skin. Then her head snaps back. Her body tenses, falls backward and forward through space and earth, her lungs compressing painfully, all the air forced out and she can’t breathe or think, and then it stops.
When her body is upright and the world no longer spins, she finds herself back in the Addams family cemetery. The sun beats down on her from a cloudless sky, and everything is so green it hurts her eyes. In front of her, the ground has given way to a narrow staircase descending into the darkness. Wednesday rises to her feet. It worked.
Wait for me, her thoughts echo around her. I’m coming.
Each step down the stairs comes with a weight across her shoulder blades that drags her backwards. Annoyance flickers across her brow. The base of the staircase gives way to a path with no end. Wednesday keeps walking. The path narrows, walls brushing against her shoulders. When she drags her hand along it, it comes back covered in a powdery black substance. She rubs her fingers together. Soot. She has spent more time than most thinking about what the realm of the dead is like, starting at age six when she lost Nero. She read countless books about different mythologies and their gods—Hades, Pluto, Hel, Osiris, Ereshkigal—filling notebooks with designs for her perfect underworld. She always hoped the underworld would be made of brimstone and ashes.
The path stretches on, but now there is a light in the distance. It increases in size as she gets closer, and Wednesday squints. The path opens into a vast chamber, its brightness almost blinding despite the absence of any visible light source. It takes Wednesday a moment to realize the gleaming walls are not gleaming at all, but covered from floor to ceiling in thousands of gilded mirrors. Her eyes burn from the light.
“You seek me, Wednesday Addams.” The voice is barely human; light but still grounded, accented yet wordless. It wraps around her like an ice storm and a raging fire, echoing inside her skull and around her body. Wednesday’s gaze is drawn to the creature sitting on a raised glass throne. It looks like a human woman, draped in white hooded robes with equally white eyes, but there’s something deeply unsettling about its presence.
“You have something of mine,” Wednesday says flatly.
“You’re here for the Hyde.” The creature tilts its head, pale lips lifting gently. “I knew you would seek me out eventually, but I must admit I wasn’t expecting it to be so soon.”
Wednesday folds her hands in front of her. “Then you know refusing me would be unwise.”
The unnerving laugh reveals sharp teeth. “They told me you were arrogant, but this level is astounding. You are threatening the God of the underworld?”
“It’s not a threat, it’s a fact.” The tether quivers. Wednesday glances at the mirrored wall. Her reflection smirks back at her. “Tyler is mine. We took an oath under the blood moon, and you had no right to violate that.”
The creature appears in front of her. A smell of rotting flesh and sickly sweet overripe fruit washes over her, at one time comforting but now it turns her stomach. Wednesday’s jaw clenches, but she doesn’t move.
“I had every right.” The creature leans in closer, head tilting from side to side. “I am death.” It moves around Wednesday as if inspecting her. “It was his time, and I claimed him.”
Her nails are pinpricks of pain against her palms. “I’m not leaving here without him.”
The creature steps back and spreads its arms wide, the long sleeves appearing like wings. There’s movement from the corner of Wednesday’s eye at the same time the tether gives a tug so strong it almost doubles her over.
Wednesday.
She spins around, eyes searching the chamber. That was Tyler’s voice. Where are you? I will find you.
“You long for him.” The tone is condescending. “You humans with your feelings. Clinging to each other as though it makes a difference. Bargaining to remain in life’s fickle embrace. You end up mine all the same.”
The mirrors change.
It takes all of Wednesday’s willpower not to react.
Tyler’s face fills the thousands of mirrors. His face is gaunt and waxy with the deathly pallor of a decomposing body, hair hanging in greasy strands over his forehead. There’s no life in his eyes, no teasing grin. Wednesday’s jaw clenches, the hollow in her chest aching like a wound.
“I don’t relinquish what I’ve taken,” the creature coos. “This is my right.”
The tether pulls taut, shimmering with love, fear, longing. I won’t leave you, it whispers. Wait for me.
Wednesday forces herself to look away from the mirrored image of Tyler and meets the creature’s eyes with a steely resolve. “I don’t accept that. You have enough souls to keep you occupied. Let me have his.”
There is only silence.
Wednesday has always enjoyed silence. She finds comfort in the absence of small talk and the need to fill every moment with noise. But this silence is stifling, pressing onto her as though she’s being buried alive underneath it. It’s a relief when the creature speaks.
“Your resolve is commendable.” The creature flickers its bony fingers, and the mirrors return to their blank state. “It almost makes me consider granting your request. If you can prove you’re worthy.”
Things that sound too good to be true usually are. Wednesday learnt that when she was four.
“Is this a trick?”
“No.” The creature grins too widely, teeth gleaming. “You amuse me, Wednesday Addams. So I will give you a chance to prove yourself.”
“What do I have to do?”
“You say the Hyde belongs to you. Prove it. Lead him back above, trusting he will follow you.”
Wednesday’s brows lift. “You are making me Orpheus? I thought you’d be more imaginative than that.”
The laugh reverbs through the chamber and prickles her skin like the iron maiden she got for her eighth birthday. “I’m not making you anything. You decide how this goes. Unless you doubt yourself. Or him.”
“I don’t.”
“Very well.” The creature’s white eyes gleam, like sunlight hitting ice. It makes Wednesday shiver. “Until you are both back on human soil, I can claim him. If that happens, there is no power in this world or the next that can change that. These are my terms. Do you accept them?”
There’s a chance this is a trick. But even if it is, she has to try. She can’t leave Tyler here.
Wednesday nods. “Yes.”
The creature bows its head. “Then I release you to your task, Wednesday Addams. Do not forget my terms. I wish you good luck.”
Wednesday turns to leave. Her skin prickles at leaving her back exposed to a predator. She reaches through the tether, searching for reassurance that Tyler is there, that she is not being played for a fool. The tether quivers. The air around her smells like coffee grounds and mint shampoo. With a long exhale, she walks out of the chamber.
She will not be Orpheus.
The entrance to the path is a black chasm in the glaringly bright walls. Stepping through it sends a chill through her. It’s not the darkness—she’s never been afraid of the dark—but something invisible slithering around her like Pugsley’s favorite boa constrictor.
Wednesday tests the tether. It responds quickly: a warmth around her chest cavity telling her that Tyler is there, unseen, unheard, trusting her to bring him back, following her without questioning.
Her shoulders brush against the walls of the path, the stone rough against her shirt. Was it this narrow before? She can’t remember.
Her braids move with an unseen wind.
You won’t make it, a voiceless echo whispers in her ears.
Her jaw clenches.
You couldn’t save him before. What makes you think you can now?
She shakes off the voice.
The wind turns cold, stinging against her face and hands. Wednesday shivers. Is she even moving? There’s nothing ahead but darkness.
Has she been set out on a road she can never escape?
It doesn’t matter. She will find a way. Wednesday always finds a way.
There’s a pressure over her chest; an invisible force pushing her back with every step. It’s too quiet. Her footsteps—a single pair of footsteps, where is the other pair of footsteps—drum against the floor. Her breaths split the air.
The tether remains a warm reminder that Tyler’s there. He still follows her. Trusts her. Just like he did when he first got sick. He trusted her to find a cure. His master, his partner. And she failed him.
Why would he follow you?
Wednesday...
You have brought him nothing but pain.
You’re not scary. You’re just kind of… kooky.
Wednesday’s fists clenches. This is the test. It wants her weak, wants her to doubt herself, doubt him. She won’t let that happen. No matter what the creature said. Failure is not an option. Wednesday doesn’t fail.
You already have, the echo mocks.
I mean it, Wednesday. You’re beautiful.
Wednesday Addams, who always prides herself on being the smartest one in the room, it continues, gliding over her like mist. All that brain power, and where did you end up?
Her lashes grow wet and heavy. She blinks, trying to rid herself of the sensation. Wednesday hasn’t cried in years. Not since almost losing Thing in the hummers’ shed.
She didn’t cry at the funeral or the wake. Her grief is beyond tears, wrapped around her soul like barbed wire, digging into every part of her until she can’t tell where it ends and she begins.
I need your help.
Dark, it’s so dark.
Wednesday!
It’s the night Tyler met her in the woods, burying her face in the sheets with a moan, the night by the Skull Tree, kneeling beneath the blood moon, closing her eyes when he kisses her.
Then, light.
It’s bright—too bright—and her eyes burn, the dampness in her lashes escaping and leaving cold trails on her cheeks.
Moving gets heavier. Her torso bends, hands pressing against the walls to anchor her forward, feet— a single pair of footsteps, where is the other pair of footsteps, where is he, where is he?—dragging on the ground, chest splitting, lungs withering with every breath.
What does it feel like to lose?
To lose.
What does it feel—Wednesday!
tolosetolosetolosetolosetolose
Promise me you’ll be okay.
The tether flickers.
Her foot catches on something, Wednesday stumbles, hands scraping against the walls.
Did you really think you would make it?
She wipes at her eyes.
You ruin everything you touch.
No. It’s not true.
The light burns brighter, the stairs at the end of the path now visible. A sob forces its way from her throat without permission. She’ll see Tyler again soon. The wind changes, grows warm. Too warm.
Wednesday reaches for the tether.
It doesn’t respond.
She tries again.
Steps onto the stairs.
And again.
Wednesday…
The sky comes into view, still disturbingly blue.
And again.
The barbed wire in her chest tightens.
Another step, she’s almost at the top now, the cemetery stretching out in front of her and the branches of the black oak tree swaying in the wind.
The tether doesn’t respond to her frantic attempts.
It’s a trick.
Wednesday would know if the tether was gone.
If Tyler were gone.
She would feel it around her barbed-wired heart.
She’s on the final step.
But what if she wouldn’t?
What if the tether fades away, and she’ll never remember how she felt about him, how he made her feel?
Wednesday, look at me.
She turns.
The tether snaps.
The world plunges into darkness.