Chapter Text
Failure was a foreign concept to Wednesday.
For as long and she could remember, she had always succeeded in everything she had set out to achieve. From winning all of her fencing tournaments to solving previously unsolved murder cases, Wednesday Addams had never experienced what it felt like to fail. Until now, that is.
28 days. It had been 28 days from the events of that fateful night. 4 weeks. 672 hours. 2,419,200 seconds. 28 days since Enid, her begrudging best friend, had sacrificed her humanity to protect her. 28 days since Isaac Night and Francois Galpin had attempted to finish what they had started all those years ago. 28 days since she had succumbed to her own worst instincts and freed him.
He had lied to her, manipulated her, tried to kill her—however enjoyable his attempts may had been—and she had freed him. No matter how often she thought about that night, she couldn’t bring herself to understand, to accept, why she couldn’t do it. So she didn’t think about it. She focused all of her energy on finding Enid. Enid was her priority. Enid was the goal. Enid. Enid. Enid.
She had called her Uncle Fester to request his assistance after returning back to Nevermore that same night, and he was there by noon of the next day. In the time it took him to get there, she had managed to go through every book on Werewolves, shifters, or any other type of outcast that could possibly correlate in the schools main library, the nightshade library, and had even resorted to going through the outcast section in Jericho’s public library, despite how limited their outcast section actually was, with it consisting of only 4 books, with only four kinds of outcasts. It was pathetic really, Jericho housed thousands of outcasts of all different origin, so you’d imagine they’d want to keep their normie population well-educated, especially after the events of last year.
However, her searches had led her to nothing. Nowhere to start and no where to search. She had gotten no where. All she had to go off of was a blurry wildlife cam image that Agnes—another one of her begrudging friends and surprisingly adequate detective sidekick—had acquired for her. Wednesday had then attempted to locate Miss Capri, the werewolf music prodigy who had supposedly had a lot of experience dealing with shapeshifters and had intensive knowledge on alpha werewolves, only to find that she had left town, and no one around knew where she was headed.
How convenient.
Agnes could not come along with them in search of Enid, but swore to help in anyway she could. She had been updating them on any possible werewolf sightings via the crystal ball that Wednesday had reluctantly trusted her with, and mailed any physical evidence to wherever she was headed next. Wednesday had to admit, Agnes had been extremely helpful, no longer wanting to help her purely out of her intrepid desire for attention, but now wanting to help out of true interest and ability. It was bearable.
They had being goimg in circles, literally. They had started Canada, where once they found nothing then went to Alaska, Washington, Idaho and more. But every time they exhausted all other options they would end right back at Canada, where they had started.
Which was where they were now too. They were currently situated deep into the Boreal Forest, with practically no leads and her patience was rapidly declining. She loved her Uncle, she really did, but he was not the greatest person to be around for extended periods of time. His ideas of entertainment were just childish games, such as jumping out of trees and screaming “Boo!” with a machete, or playing hide and seek but with all of their weapons—Thing would hide them and Fester would have to seek them—the only issue was, Fester often couldn’t find the majority of the weapons, and due to the severity of the forest’s size, Thing couldn’t remember where he had hidden them, which would lead their weapons stock to diminish after every game, which eventually resulted in her giving Fester a stern talking to about wasting their supplies and his levels of maturity.
She was currently sat at a portable camping table, with all of their leads placed on the table, a long thread of red string connecting each paper to the last. This had been her routine for the last few weeks. Wake up, go over everything Agnes had sent her, search wherever they were that day for a few hours, head back to where they had set up their tents to go over evidence once again, go back to searching, head back so Fester could eat, just to head out again before returning to the tents for yet another night of restlessness.
Wednesday had never been one to self pity, mope, or dwell on misfortunes, but her evident failure to keep her promise to Enid had been slowly eating away at her from the inside out, and it had not been nearly as enjoyable as she had anticipated. She would spend all day searching, and then retire to bed for the night just to spend hours re-analysing evidence she had already gone through numerous times. It wasn’t as if she didn’t try to get some sleep, she did, but her mind would spend the entire time spinning with possibilities of what could happen to Enid if she didn’t find her. Would she ever be the same? Would she ever turn back? Would she be captured? What if she was already captured? What if she was already dea-
That last thought was a particularly nasty one, but also a particularly persistent one lately, as her investigation continued to draw dead ends. For someone like Wednesday, her welcomed death like an old accomplice, the fact that she was so bothered by the thought of it deeply unsettled her. So she would distract herself. She would never allow for her mind to be quiet—not that is ever was, even when she wanted it to be—by focusing on what she knew, and figuring out where to go next.
That was what she was doing now, actually. Trying to figure out their next move. She hadn’t heard from Agnes for 3 days, so it was safe to assume she wasn’t the only one struggling on where to take their investigation.
Fester and Thing had been out searching for 2 hours now, so it was safe to assume they would return soon in search of a way to satiate Fester’s seemingly endless appetite. That was one of the downsides to working with her uncle, he was helpful—sure. Had connections, knew his way around the world and had no issue or lack of efficiency when it came to stealing or destroying evidence, but his hunger was like a rabid beast, constantly needing attention.
He ate six meals a day, with snacking in between. Luckily, he didn’t seem to care what it was he was eating as long as it was so much as semi-edible, but acquiring foods for him to eat was becoming an issue. Ordinarily, they would just head to a local store, pick out enough food to last the average human a month or two in hopes of it lasting Fester a week, and head back to wherever they were staying. But being situated deep into a Canadian forest, with no forms of civilisation for miles, made his constant desire for food difficult to deal with.
She couldn’t even hunt animals for him to eat either, because he had lost her bow during one of his hide and seek games.
Wednesday loved her uncle, she really did, but if he didn’t cut out his incessant whining soon she was going to fillet his body and eat him. Although, it’s not as if that would do her any good, as she couldn’t keep any food she ingested down anyway. Which was another problem, one that she had paid no mind to at first but was gradually starting to reap the effects of—her lack of eating. No matter what she ate, or how hungry she was she could not keep her food down for the life of her. She hadn’t cared at first, writing it off as an extremely minor stomach issue that would resolve itself in days, nothing worth halting her investigation for.
But it didn’t cease in a few days. If anything, it worsened.
Every meal she would eat would make its way back up within the hour, causing her to have to pause her search and wait for her body to stop its awful retching. After about a week and a half of this routine, she realised it would probably be best if she stopped eating meals, focusing only on small snacks every couple hours, to prevent herself from wasting time. But when that also didn’t help much, she decided to stop eating and just drink water instead. Not that it made much difference, she had lost her appetite anyway and now didn’t have to face the difficulty of forcing food down her own throat. Besides, she didn’t deserve the luxury of food when Enid was out in the wilderness all alone, being hunted and stuck in werewolf form all thanks to Wednesday’s own failure to find her.
It had been fine for the first two weeks, but over the last two she had begun to feel the effects that both the combined lack of sleep and lack of food had started to have on her body. Her mind and body were slow, dazed. It was taking her longer and longer to figure out things that she would’ve noticed in seconds prior to Enid’s disappearance, and her reaction time had gotten embarrassing. Her memory was depleting too, not detrimentally, but enough to unsettle her. It was small things, where she left evidence or weapons, where she had planned to go next, what Agnes had told her on the phone the other day. Small, yet, important things that she couldn’t remember. And that wasn’t mentioning her physical appearance.
She had never been the type to analyse herself in mirrors or take note of any changes in her body, but recent ones were becoming harder to ignore. She had lost weight, and quite a lot of it. Considering that she had already been a small girl before, the fact that she had even noticed how her body had slimmed out made her wonder how drastic it looked to other people, not that she cared, of course, about what other people thought about her. She had, however, began layering her clothes, not only with the intention of hiding her slimmer physique, but also to retain her heat. Despite it being the middle of summer, she was feeling constantly cold, something that also made her uncomfortable as she had always ran cold, but was starting to notice it more now. Her face had changed too, she wasn’t sure when it had happened, but her cheeks were suddenly a lot more defined, as if the bone was seconds away from popping through the skin. And her under eyes had taken a purple-bluish tone to them, becoming darker as the days went on. All things she chose to ignore, in favour of using her time more wisely and constructing new plans to save Enid.
She was snapped out of her thoughts suddenly by the sound of Fester’s manic laughter echoing through the three as she approached their camp.
“Heya kiddo! Still looking at those snapshots of our wolf?” Her uncle’s enthusiasm could either be due to the fact that he has the IQ of a 10 year old, or the fact that he is attempting to distract from the fact that he had gotten no where in his search. Wednesday knew it was the latter.
“We have gotten nowhere. We have no new images, no new leads, nothing that could point us in her direction. Agnes has been radio silent for the past three days, we’ve been going in circles for a month, searching the same places with no sign of Enid.” Other than failure, rambling was also a foreign concept to Wednesday, one that she had recently adopted and loathed herself for. Her lip twitched slightly as she started at the ground, trying to regain her composure.
“Look, I’m sorry kid, I know she’s your friend. Don’t be too hard on yourself, we’re doing everything we can.” Wednesday glanced up in surprise at her Uncle’s rare show of seriousness, but glanced away again when she caught his empathetic gaze. She wasn’t the one that deserved the empathy, not when it was her own incompetence that led them to where they were now.
She raised her chin again, preparing herself to reassert herself into her position and claim her control back of the situation, opening her mouth to speak, just to be interrupted by the glow of the crystal ball flashing bright blue and purple, witty retort dying on her tongue.
“Wednesday? Wednesday, are you there? Wednesday?” The redheads voice flowed through the crystal ball, and Wednesday felt her heart spike with anticipation at whatever Agnes had found.
“Agnes.” She greeted, moving to sit on the chair closest to the crystal ball. “I assume you have news?”
She watched as Agnes nodded hastily, a worried look flooding her usually porcelain doll-like face. “Yeah, I do, but you’re not going to like it.”
“Tell me.” Wednesday ignored the frantic racing of her pulse in favour of hearing the new information as soon as possible. She could see Thing scurrying around in her peripheral, presumably signing something to her Uncle, but the sound of her blood rushing through her ears was enough to block out anything that wasn’t whatever she was about to hear from Agnes.
She watched intently as Agnes cleared her throat and pulled out her cell phone. “I overheard this on the news this morning while my Dad was watching,” she unlocked her phone and scrolled through her videos until she landed on one of a black screen, playing only audio. The sound started with the voice of a man, mid sentence.
“-and another outcast related issue to add to the books this week, a monster of some sort seems to be roaming the Canadian border, leaving a trail of gruesome murders in its wake.”
Then, another voice, now female, joined the male voice, adding to the story. “The bodies of 7 civilians have been located along the border by police, each one said to have suffered severe slashes and have even been found to have had organs and limbs ripped away from their body. We have no images of this monster, but eyewitness accounts have claimed that it appeared to have been a werewolf. The only issue is, however, the most recent of these killings happened two days ago, and the last full moon was nearly a month ago. Meaning it couldn’t have been a werewolf. And if it wasn’t a werewolf, then what was it?”
“Well I’m not too sure myself Sarah,” the male voice replied, “but one thing I do know, is that whatever killed those innocents is visceral, and needs to be put down before we lose anymore lives to it.”
By the time the reporters made it onto their next story, Wednesday’s stomach had dropped 6 feet below the earth.
Enid. Bright, bubbly, unicorn-loving, wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly Enid, was killing people.
She heard Agnes begin to speak again and tried to force her mind it quieten down to hear whatever it was she had to say, although something inside of her knew she wasn’t going to enjoy it.
“And I’m afraid that’s not all either. After listening to that this morning, I did some more research into the witnesses and watched all of the interviews each of them had given so far, to all different news networks. All of their stories add up, a regular looking colourful werewolf just out in the wilderness minding her own business before lashing out and brutally murdering people, so we know it’s Enid. But the problem is these witnesses are all playing the ‘innocent civilian’ card, and some of them have hired outcast hunters to track her down and kill her.”
“Outcast hunters?” Wednesday had grown up in a very outcast dominated world, with her parents being who they were, they had never shied away from broadcasting their outcast origin to the world. But even with that level of heritage and the education she had received while at Nevermore—a specialist school for outcasts—she had never heard of an outcast hunter.
Somewhere behind her she could hear Fester clearing his throat. “They’re normies who have trained to capture and test in outcasts,” he spoke in a grim voice, “they’re usually in a family business, so have been learning since they were kids, but their goal is to collect rare outcast types, use them as lab rats and then murder and preserve their bodies to keep them as trophies. Eugh.”
Hearing that finally snapped Wednesday out of her trance, as she turned to face her uncle for the first time since Agnes called her. “How haven’t they been caught yet?” Surely the police forces would acknowledge that these people existed, especially if they’ve been around for as long as Fester implied.
“Outcast hunters usually come from very wealthy families, so a lot of the time they can just pay the authorities into ignorance and get away with murdering whoever they want, it’s sickening.”
Despite not having eaten anything on substance for days now, Wednesday could feel the bile rising in her throat as she processed what she had just heard. Enid was being hunted, by outcast hunters. They were going to find her and kill her and it was all Wednesday’s fault.
Agnes seemed to think this was an appropriate time to add to the conversation, obviously wanting to lessen the tension that had got Wednesday in a chokehold. “I have good news too though, I finally managed to locate Miss Capri! And better yet, she’s only an hours walk from where you are!”
“You located her?” Wednesday cringed at the clear relief in her tone, but didn’t care enough to attempt to mask it.
“Yeah, I’ve spent the last couple weeks searching through all her social media accounts and trying to narrow down her posting address, but there is one thing that I think you’ll need to-“
“Where is she?” The raven haired girl had no care for minor details, eager to learn her ex-teachers whereabouts and finally move forward with her investigation. Her mind was racing with possibilities, things to ask her. Capri would know what to do. She was a werewolf herself and an outcast specialist. she had been working to help Enid suppress her alpha gene for months before she was forced to turn to save Wednesday from being buried alive.
“Wednesday-“ Agnes was cut off by Wednesday standing up suddenly and beginning to pack her belongings away, preparing to leave. She gestured to Her Uncle and Thing to help before adressing Agnes once again, “Where is she?”
Agnes sighed deeply from the other side of the crystal ball, before giving in. “She’s four miles south, in an outcast rehabilitation camp. But Wednesday-“
“An outcast rehabilitation camp? What could she possibly be doing there?”
“Wednesday-“
“Fester, Thing, pack your things and we’ll leave shortly. Thank you Agnes, your work is greatly appreciated.” She spoke with genuine gratitude, a level of emotion displayed that she would normally be embarrassed of showing, but her relief was palpable and her mood was too great to be suppressed.
“Your welcome, but seriously, your gonna want to listen to this-“
Wednesday ignored her and ended the call.
She hastily packed away their evidence into their respective folders, ensuring they stayed organised for travel. Fester and Thing were taking down their tents and packing them away extremely messily but also extremely quickly, which was infinitely more important.
She was finally going to have another lead. She was finally going to get somewhere with her investigation. She was finally going to fulfil her promise.
She was finally going to save Enid.