Work Text:
The first thing Enid felt when her consciousness decided to return, was pain.
A lot of pain.
It was overwhelming.
It came from everywhere, burning her up from all sides.
She tried to open her eyes, but the pain flared.
It flared up badly.
She tried to squeeze her eyes further shut.
The same story.
She tried to open her left.
Same story.
She tried to open her right.
Wait.
No… pain?
No wait, still pain, but nowhere near as much.
She could push through, she could do this.
She needed to know where she was, what happened.
Was everyone safe?
Tyler, Laurel, were they gone?
What about-
What about Wednesday?
She tried to think, she tried to remember.
Yes, yes, she remembered.
The hug. Wednesday never hugs, not hugging is their thing.
But she did, because Enid needed it. Because she was hurt, and tired, and everything was finally okay.
She opened her right eye.
Oh boy, very, very bright.
She squeezed it shut again.
Okay, one more time.
She opened it once more, and kept it open, even as it felt like the lights were trying to bore right through her skull and scoop out her brains.
The brightness started to die down, the room came into view.
Ah, of course. She was in a hospital, where else would she be? The pain alone was reason enough, she couldn’t imagine what she’d gone through to make it feel so bad.
She was fine. She was in a hospital, everyone was safe.
Wednesday was safe.
Everything would be just… fine.
———————
The cycle would repeat like that for the next several days.
Wake up, pain, panic, remember, open eye (always the right), understand, go to sleep.
She never stayed awake more than a few minutes at a time, her energy sapped from healing and barely sleeping.
Every time, she tried to stay awake a little longer, if only to avoid the nightmares.
They changed every so often, Enid would watch Wednesday gutted in front of her, powerless to stop it. The Hyde would gut Enid in their fight, the sheriff too slow to save her. The worst was when Enid would be hurt from the fight, and Wednesday would step in to stop him, and would die in front of her eyes.
Every time her eyes would close. Again, and again, and again, and again.
It was torture. It was awful, awful torture.
Maybe it’d be Wednesday’s kinda thing. Enid could ask, once she got out of this damn hospital bed.
But for now. Sleep, nightmare, wake up, panic, calm down, sleep.
Four goddamn days of this.
On the fifth day, she stayed awake. She actually finally stayed awake. She could barely talk, barely turn her head around to look around her room, but hey, she didn’t just pass out after 5 minutes.
She got the rundown from the doctor that day, now that she’d stay aware enough to actually receive it.
Long story short, she got fucked up.
Her doctor actually had to take a breather before going through the list.
It was mostly wounds from the fight, gashes all over her body of quite honestly every kind of severity. Enid asked why she couldn’t open her other eye, the doctor said that side of her face was bandaged up.
He said it was bad.
Really, really bad.
He probably said it a bit more clinically, but that's how it translated into Enid-ese.
He told her she had people who wanted to visit. It was her choice whether or not she wanted to see them.
Of course she wanted to see them, she’d spent the last four days wondering if they were all okay over and over again.
First to arrive was Ajax.
She felt slightly guilty, knowing that before everything went up in flames they had actually been having a nice time.
Still, she was more than a bit excited to finally see him again, even if their plans to meet during the summer were still available as a backup.
She waited eagerly in her bed, the back of it raised up so she could watch properly for when the door finally opened.
The excitement wasn't to last.
The moment he lay his eyes on her, Enid watched his face fall from excited exuberance, all the way down to horrified pity.
She didn’t like how it felt, being watched by eyes that had previously held such adoration for her, now replaced with a mixture of shock, sadness, pity and… disgust.
They tried to talk, but the undercurrent of that last emotion, It never quite went away. Even once Enid’s voice started to recover its usual timbre, Ajax’s never quite recovered to the levels of unbothered happiness that she had grown so used to in their admittedly short time together.
Once he departed, Enid was left with a sour feeling broiling in her gut.
However, her next meeting went much better.
Admittedly, being a vampire meant Yoko had a much more habitual familiarity with blood and injury. Still though, while she recovered much better than Ajax did, watching Yoko’s face contort into a caricature of shock and disbelief was hard on the poor wolf.
“Oh shit, sorry about that pup.” She tried to apologize.
“No no, it's fine it’s just- it’s just something I might have to get used to now, y’know?”
“Hell nah, I know you Sinclair. Once that kickass werewolf healing finally gets into high gear you’ll be back to lookin’ fine as fuck.”
For the first time in days, something finally managed to bring a chuckle out of the girl.
“I’m serious. And hey, even if you’re not back all the way to before, you’ll still have some sick-ass scars from beating the breaks off some mangy Hyde.”
“Oh come on Yoko.”
“No no no, I’m not letting you get yourself down Sinclair. I asked for the low down from Addams and I swear to satan, that little goth damn near lit up like a Christmas tree talking about how you fuckin’ slammed into that asshole like a torpedo.” She punctuated her pick-me-up speech with some very dramatic motions and movements. The same kind Enid would do during her more spirited gossip sessions.
“She really said all that?”
“Maybe not so… dramatically, you know how she is, but yeah.”
“God I hope she’s okay… you know if she’s on the list to visit?”
“Oh uhhh. I’m not sure she’ll be able to make it pup. Faculty’s got the entire student body packing up for an early summer break. I can’t imagine she doesn’t want to visit but I’m not sure she’ll have the time.”
And just like that, Enid’s mood reset right back to the post-Ajax funk she’d been in before Yoko had arrived.
“Heeey, I know it sucks but you know her. She’ll probably send you some shit by crow or something like that the minute you’re both home.” Yoko tried to soothe the poor girl, careful not to disrupt any of the equipment around the bed. “From what I heard from her, you saved her life. And frankly by extension, you saved the whole damn school. If you hadn’t beaten the shit outta the Hyde, Addams woulda never been able to kill that stupid zombie.”
That managed to raise her spirits a bit. “Thanks Yoko. Honestly I’m just excited for when I’m finally able to get outta this damn bed, I’m bored outta my mind here you have no idea.”
“Heh, I can imagine. You’re not one to stay still for more than five minutes let alone five days.” Yoko peeled away slightly, her hand coming up to pinch her chin as if in what Yoko called ‘Analytical Observation Mode’ whereas Enid preferred ‘The Judgement Stare’ “Honestly I woulda pegged you as the kinda gal to just up and leave out of spite for being kept still like this.”
“I’ve barely been properly awake for a day, my spite levels need a bit more time to make me that irrational.”
Unlike with Ajax, Enid couldn’t find it in her to want to stop the conversation short.
Their words flowed back and forth for another couple hours and by the end, Enid started to feel like she might be approaching her old sense of self again. But time stops for no wolf and soon enough Yoko had to leave Enid alone once more.
It felt lonely, sure, but Enid started to feel like the benefits were starting to outweigh the negatives now. It just took a bit of time with her best friend to realize it.
———————
The benefits did not outweigh the positives.
On the sixth day of her stay at Jericho General, her parents finally arrived.
Esther took no time before she started fussing and analysing the girl in the bed. For as much judgement as she would pass, there was at least a modicum of care that her mother possessed for her, and seeing Enid in such a state could not have done wonders for her state of mind.
Murray, as always, was a silent, constant presence. But Enid could see that even in his normally immovable posture, she saw the slightest tremor as his eyes raked across Enid’s broken form lying across the bed.
Soon enough, the doctor in charge of her care walked in. He talked with her parents for a moment, going over what they did know and what they didn’t.
They discussed discharge, with Esther and Enid for once insisting on the same thing. They wanted out as soon as possible.
Enid was sure she could walk, and Esther simply didn’t trust the area anymore.
They discussed the bandages, namely the ones on her face. They’d been changed several times but the doctor had mentioned that with all the other damage across her face and body, combined with the frankly hectic situation caused by the Crackstone incident, they hadn’t the time to make any observations and analysis of her bandaged eye since she had been admitted.
Little by little, the bandages were taken off. The nurses working gingerly to not hurt the poor wolf, and even though it likely took less than a minute from start to finish, it had felt like eternity.
The good news was that the bleeding had long since stopped, and the gashes were scarring over.
The good news… started and ended there.
Enid heard her parents gasp in shock, and looked toward the doctor for some kind of explanation.
He merely looked at her, a crestfallen expression descending upon his face. His only retort was to hand her a small mirror so that she could see for herself.
Yoko’s confidence had bled into Enid being confident, and it almost felt cruel to watch that confidence be stripped away damn near immediately.
Four massive gashes across her face.
One splitting her chin in two.
One tearing open the corner of her mouth, so that she never could close it properly again.
One stretching way down from the back of her neck and upwards all the way to bisect her eyebrow
And the last across the left part of her forehead and down onto her temple.
Those would have been bad enough. Hell, Enid would have gladly taken those if only the last thing of note never needed happened at all.
Her left eye was gone.
She knew it had felt off.
She bought the story about the bandages because she never accepted just how wrong her eye had felt all this time.
But this? This put a cause to the concern.
She looked at her parents, the wellspring of her tears almost immediately opening up. It was almost cruel how she could only feel them track down one side of her face.
Her mother looked at her then, an expression that combined the typical motherly concern with an all too noticeable glint of dissatisfaction running through it. Cause apparently Enid couldn’t even get permanently maimed correctly in her eyes.
Her dad however, if he hadn’t sidestepped her, his advance towards his daughter would have bowled over his wife. He wrapped his arms around Enid and held on as if his life depended on it, Enid’s own arms coming up around his neck as she began to sob uncontrollably.
They stayed like that for a good long while, the doctor leaving the room with Esther to discuss things at greater length while Murray simply held onto his daughter.
It felt like yesterday when they’d last spoken in person.
“I’m proud of you kiddo. You do you.”
So much had happened since then.
And so much more would have yet to happen still.
But for now, Enid just held on while she rode out the throes of grief.
The journey back to San Francisco was long, tedious, and an exercise in restraint of the kind Enid had never experienced before.
The hospital gave her an eyepatch, and yeah, it certainly covered her ruined eye.
Enid noted that it did between jack and shit for the rest of her face. Eyepatch or not anyone with a functioning brain could see and register the fact that Enid had been mauled to hell and back.
She kept it on anyways. Seeing how people would react with either badly disguised flinches or giving her a several foot wide berth whenever she came around any corridor, she couldn’t imagine how they’d react if they saw what was under the patch.
For most of the journey back, through airport terminals and cramped economy class seating, Enid buries her face in her father’s jumper.
Murray for his part, keeps a hand over her shoulders, keeping her close. Esther meanwhile seems like she can’t get away fast enough.
Her father keeps her where he believes she’s safest. Close to him. Away from the crowds, the prying eyes, the judgement and the pity, the kind only afforded by those who wouldn’t care enough to understand what they were even pitying if given the chance.
She sees his eyes again. The sadness is still there, but its quality is… different, than when she saw them at the hospital. She doesn’t know whether its due to the clarity of knowing exactly what he’s seeing when she looks at her or if it's something else.
But there’s a new emotion, and undercurrent that sits as a backdrop to the sadness taking centre stage. It’s almost… a hardening of sorts. Like something has finally settled in his subconscious and now serves as a driving force where once there was none.
She wonders what this new feeling is, but she gets the answer soon enough.
Her mother’s off on one of her tangents again, lamenting her latest arsenal of Enid’s qualities she finds disappointing, but the moment she mentions the scars, the eye, the fight that gave Enid both.
“That’s enough… leave her alone, Esther.”
For a moment, the three of them just stare. Enid and Esther at Murray, and Murray off into the distance. Enid had never heard her father speak with such conviction, as quiet as it was. Esther cannot believe her husband would talk back after so many years of silent begrudging acceptance, and Murray looks like he can’t quite believe it either.
But he starts moving first, Enid following along, her face still somewhat buried in his jumper but looking up at him with a fresh curiosity. Esther stumbles forward after them, her silence more telling than any words could have been.
They arrive back home. Her brothers are all here, they arrived first, while Esther and Murray went off to retrieve Enid from the hospital.
They all look at her differently now. A silent, but warm appreciation for what she did for them, for the school. But it's underscored by yet more pity, the patch on her eye doing little besides hide her ruined eye, her scars still visible and leaving little to the imagination.
She gives them a tired wave, turning to thank her dad for trying to help where he could, before taking her leave for the day to her room.
When she reaches her bed, she spares little flourish in taking off all but the necessary layers, and collapses right onto the mattress. She winces as some of the less healed injuries decide to make known their complaints, before the pain ebbs away and she’s left to just sit.
She expects to wallow for a couple hours, until her mother calls her for dinner and she goes down to deal with all eyes looking toward her with all manner of emotion.
What she does not expect however, is for her phone to start ringing with an unknown number not ten minutes since she first collapsed.
She considers for a second to just let it go, but relents by the second ring and answers on the third.
When the mystery caller seems too nervous to start talking, Enid decides to do it for them “… Hello?”
“Hello there Sinclair, it seems my memory of your number has retained its accuracy.”
Enid lets out a breath, in complete disbelief. With her unable to visit her in the hospital, she had presumed that the next time they’d see or hear from each other would be next semester after the break, not mere minutes after she got home.
“… Wednesday?”
She almost couldn’t believe it. She probably wouldn’t believe it if she wasn’t speaking to her at that very moment.
“Yes I believe I am, unless the spirits populating the manor have decided otherwise.”
If she wasn’t so tired from the trip she might’ve laughed, It was just so completely in character.
“You’re calling me? On a phone?”
“Yes, you may hold fast your tongue, I can already imagine the many jabs you may utter about my seeming ‘hypocrisy’. Rest assured my belief in the vapidity of social media and my feelings on technology enslaving weak minds remains entirely intact.”
Enid’s mouth shut with a click, it was like the words were stolen from her throat. “I wasn’t-… Well actually you kinda did take the words outta my mouth. Never mind that, why- how the hell do you have a phone in the first place?!”
“It was actually a gift. Despite my continuous showcase of complete disinterest in his affections, Thorpe decided that it was worthwhile to gift me this device for the sake of correspondence over the extended break. Why he believes I would ever willingly contact him joins the ever-growing menagerie of qualities I find rather displeasing about that man.”
Enid could feel the disdain passing through Wednesday’s voice.
“Ughhh…I do not get what that man is seeing…” Enid sat up at her slip, panicking slightly. The reunion between the two was still quite fresh in their history, hospital stay not included. “N-Not about you obviously, you’re great, fantastic even, but you’re not exactly the kinda person that plays ‘hard-to-get’, so to take all of what you’ve said about him and to him even and come to this conclusion is kinda…”
“Yes, his continual ability of misreading what I intend would make me think him dyslexic were I not speaking directly to his face.”
Okay well now, tired or not there wasn’t really anything that would stop Enid from laughing at that.
She thankfully managed to compose herself in time for Wednesday’s next sentence. “I do believe I should disclose my true purposes for this surprise call.”
“Mhm, go ahead.”
“I wanted to ascertain your current health and wellbeing, given that you were taken to the hospital and the unmitigated chaos of the packing week left me unable to visit and find out for myself.”
That caught the blond by surprise. Wednesday Addams was hardly ever known to care about much outside of her own curated list of obsessions, much less about another person.
Though, the novelty of such an occasion did little to endear the blond to the idea of telling the whole truth. She had already seen glimpses of her future with people in the stares of disgust, horror and pity. “Oh uhm… I’m doing fine I guess… yeah the hospital fixed me up good, got a lotta bandages that should come off soon, give a point to werewolf healing for that, I couldn’t imagine wearing all this shit for weeks like the normies have to.”
“I am glad to hear that I-... I am sorry I couldn’t visit you while you were nearby.”
The tone of voice almost sounded wrong to Enid’s ears, but she realized that it was because this kind of line was not something she had ever heard from Wednesday before. After all, despite everything she’d never heard the seer apologize.
“Oh no that’s okay Wednesday, I’ve got a lotta stuff on me right now but back then? Whoo-boy I woulda looked like a mummy, it’s better to talk to you now when I can actually, y’know, talk.”
“I understand, I appreciate you answering in the first place, I feel more at ease to know you’re all right.”
The wolf's eyebrows continue to furrow, not only with the appearance of an apology at all but also at the sincerity she could feel over the phone.
“No problem roomie.”
“However, I do have one last query.”
Enid shuffled her way until her back leant against the headboard of the bed. “Oh, go ahead then, shoot.”
“I couldn’t help but notice a slight impediment in your speech. I had assumed it was simply from awakening from a nap but it has persisted throughout our conversing.”
‘Ah’ Enid thought. ‘Of course she’d catch that.’. The gash nearest her mouth had left it torn open permanently, and with the recency of the injury she’d had little time to acclimate and adjust accordingly. “Oh… uhh, that’s just the medication. Werewolves might have super-healing but shit still hurts y’know. Everything feels a lil’ foggy right now.”
The lie rang hollow to Enid’s ears, while she hoped what little distortion there was across their phone call would muffle it from the seer's ears, at least for now.
“I see, my thanks for your explanation. For reasons I cannot parse, my concern over your health has overridden much of my normal faculties, as such I appreciate being able to finally quell this feeling at long last.”
Enid exhaled silently in thanks. “No problem bestie.”
“If you wouldn’t mind, I shall take my leave now. My time at Nevermore has left Pugsley feeling an inordinate amount of safety and I must rectify this affront immediately.”
“Gotcha, you go do your thing Wendy.”
To say Enid panicked after letting an unsanctioned nickname slip through her filter would be both accurate and not. While she did end the call much faster than she would have otherwise, her brain had been wracked with thought of an observation of her own.
Despite all the time that had passed between when they had last spoken, Enid knew Wednesday’s voice well, and despite the seemingly clear and concise delivery, it almost sounded too put together, as if it were being held up manually rather than existing as normal.
Combine that with the uncharacteristic concern for her status and health, Enid began to wonder what might have changed in the days since the attack by Crackstone and her fight with the Hyde.
But before she could come to some concrete theory or theories, her mother shouted to her for some errand, and broke her concentration. She groaned as she sat up from the bed, already regretting acquiescing this much, but she knew if she could choose to be yelled at now or later she’d choose later.
———————
The next few weeks were… an adjustment, to say the least.
Apparently not just for her either.
Wednesday Friday Addams, the one and only, had submitted to the throes of the world of electronic devices. Or well, electronic device, seeing as she barely cared enough for the phone for their daily evening calls, no one could expect her to take care of more than one kind of device.
But not just her.
Something unravelled in Murray Sinclair that night he saw his daughter. Wrapped up in bandages, suffering the consequences of a fight way out of her weight class on her first ever time wolfing out.
The sadness in his eyes was something Enid couldn’t help but notice, but admittedly it took a week or two to notice it wasn’t of the same quality as the sadness seen in her brothers, Yoko’s, or Ajax’s eyes. Theirs was the sadness of pity, of seeing Enid at her lowest and with the scars to prove it.
Murray’s? His sadness was the grief of a father who had seen his little girl hurt from a fight she never should have had to fight. His sadness came from a place of shame that he wasn’t there to shield her. And it took such a sight for him to realize that his public silences and private support wasn’t shielding Enid at home either.
So he changed.
Slowly, of course. A paradigm shift in personality doesn’t happen overnight after all, but even in the beginning it was noticeable. His outburst at the airport set the tone for what he would become, but there had to be a starting point.
And that started with the chores.
Enid was the youngest, the runt, the late bloomer and the only girl save her mother. She got the lions share of the housework, her brothers focused with yardwork or working full time jobs. Even despite that, there were two of them still around a lot of the time, doing small scale menial yard work.
They had the time to help. But most often they didn’t, either because they were told to work the yard from Xam to Ypm, or they simply stayed in their room and didn’t move.
Murray started to help though. He would come back same time as ever, but instead of lounging around, taking his weight off his feet, he kept moving.
He would find Enid wherever she was, doing whatever needed doing, and would start to help. And once they were done with that, he would pick up whatever else was left. His daughter had fought a Hyde goddamnit, she needed rest and time, not manual labour dressed up as ‘household chores’.
Next came dinner.
It had usually been a tense affair. Enid would sit quietly at her chosen seat, nearest the corner opposite her mother, and her mother would spend every moment where she didn’t have food in her mouth praising her brothers, and admonishing her ‘inadequacies’.
The turning point came one night on the second week. It was the same night Enid realized his sadness came from elsewhere compared to everyone else she knew (besides Wednesday, but that was rather deliberate.)
Her mother had started another one of her rants, this one lasting a mediocre ten minutes before ending off with “And y’know what? Despite it all you’re still just not wolf enough honey. If you just leaned into that more it’d all be okay.”
And her father, quiet even for him, but loud enough for Enid and Esther to hear, simply responded with. “You and I both know she’s plenty wolf. Name one other wolf you or I know that could fight a Hyde and live. Let alone Win.”
The table went silent.
Everyone already knew that Enid was Murray’s favourite. It wasn’t a well kept secret, but until tonight the support had always been private, unseen and unheard. Kept out of sight and left there where it could be ignored, especially by Esther.
Now? It was vocal. It was public. It was real.
It couldn’t be ignored anymore. And no one quite knew what to do with that.
The rest of the dinner was uncharacteristically silent. Plates were cleared, carried to the sink, washed, dried and stacked. No one even dared to glance at the elephant on the dinner table.
Enid found her dad taking the trash out later in the night, just coming out of her nightly 8pm call with Wednesday.
“Didja mean it?” Enid asked, standing half in half out of the doorway, scarred side kept as out of view as she could manage without hiding completely.
Murray placed the garbage back into the bin, ready for collection. He sauntered back to his daughter, hands in his pockets.
“‘Course I did.”
“Why?” Murray’s features shifted to confusion. Enid clarified. “Why now? Why not before… what changed?”
“Oh Enid.” His face softened, the expression the same as back at Nevermore, albeit without the smile. “You know the answer to that.”
“So why not before?” Enid asked, pulling herself out of the doorway proper. Hand drifting to the scar at her mouth, the one she continues to pretend doesn’t exist to Wednesday. “Why did it take… Why did it take until now? Until these?”
Murray sighed, an exhalation of a man who’d been quietly deconstructing every action and inaction of the past sixteen years. “I was scared. That’s really the long and short of it dandelion. I was scared of what’d happen if you didn’t wolf out, what’d happen if you were forced to go and I’d- I’d lose you.”
He squared his shoulders, no longer hunching over, no longer hiding. “But that night… when I saw you at the hospital. All those bandages, all the blood that had to have been there. That scared me half to death. I realized that- that I could have been this close to losing you for good. Not pack expulsion, not a lone wolf… dead. My sixteen year old daughter, dead in the woods at the hand of a monster.”
He came forward, slowly, almost unsurely. He stopped right before her, placing a large hand on her shoulder. “It put some things into perspective. It put a lot of things into perspective. I wasn’t doing enough. I hadn’t been enough. I’d been… quiet, complicit, and you were suffering for it.”
Enid’s shoulder began to shake, with as of yet tearless sobs wracking through her body at the admission, the admission she hadn’t known she wanted- needed for so many years. “Dad-”
He placed his other hand on her other shoulder, holding her firm, solidifying his presence now as he should have done for so long. “I want… I want to be enough for you kiddo. I wanna be the dad you deserved, the dad you should’ve had all this time. If-... if you’ll let me.”
The tears were free now, trailing down the right of her face, falling in time with a heaving frame that still looked far more composed than she felt inside. She heaved forward in an instant, wrapping her arms around his middle, fingers clawing into the back of his jumper, so tight you would be forgiven for thinking she thought he’d disappear at any moment.
It's the reassurance she’s been chasing after for so long, but she’s been chasing after it from the wrong parent the entire time.
It's not enough to undo so many years of silence. But it’s a start.
As for Enid’s adjustments?
The first and most major adjustment is simply living without her left eye anymore.
The only real saving grace of it all is that Enid’s always been a rightie anyways, so her sight still remains on her dominant side.
However her peripheral vision is still short on her left side, a fact her brothers seem to find endless entertainment from as they try and attract her attention just beyond her line of sight and giggle as they watch her have to turn around properly before she’s able to see them.
She wants to kill her brothers more than she usually does, if that wasn’t obvious.
At the end of every day she simply shuts her eye for hours on end, sometimes even during her calls with Wednesday as she just needs some to give it some relief from the stress of being her one remaining avenue for proper vision.
But the second major adjustment?
Usually, a werewolf has their first shift around about two years after the start of puberty, culminating in a second more major growth spurt as their body acclimates to the pressures caused by turning into an enormous wolf every full moon.
For Enid, this meant a growth spurt where she gained an extra four inches to her previously 5’3” frame, whilst the rest of her body broadened as it shifted to support more substantial musculature.
But the most obvious change was her hair. While her hair before rested in a bob that ended just above her shoulders, now it grew and lengthened at an absurd rate Enid could barely wrap her head around, growing to extend all the past the lowermost points of her shoulder blades, whilst becoming so thick Enid was forced to find much heavier duty combs and brushes to keep up.
For a short while, Enid lamented the loss of her shorter cut. She debated endlessly whether or not to restore it all back to the way it was until she found out a neat new ability her longer mane gave to her.
If she angled and styled it correctly, it would be able to obscure and block her scars from view far more capably than her shorter hair ever could hope to replicate.
So she decided to keep it. Albeit begrudgingly, and only once she was able to replicate her signature pink and blue streaks in her new style.
All in all, the second puberty was one of the first instances after she was scarred where a new development brought more advantageous or neutral changes to her life rather than outright negative ones.
She held onto that reassurance as she dealt with the third and most problematic adjustment to her life.
Her scars.
Or more specifically, the size and visibility of them.
They were extremely apparent to everyone who spared Enid even the smallest of passing glances. Even despite the new shield she had made out of her hair, there was only so much she could do to hide them without simply blinding herself entirely with a full face covering.
She saw the stares everywhere she went. People looking at a girl who wore soft, bright pastel colours but whose face couldn’t look any more different to the impression those clothes gave.
She tried to ignore them, she tried to simply pretend they weren’t there. But they were there, they were here, they were there, they were everywhere she looked. Wednesday had assured her that the scars (the little she knew of them) were glorious markers of a hard won battle, an external figment of Enid’s own ferocity and valour in the face of insurmountable adversary.
But that was all well and good when people who knew what had happened were the ones to see them. But that list started with Yoko and ended with Ajax and had no one in between. This was San Francisco, a city on the opposite coast whose people couldn’t care less about what great battle had resulted in the softly dressed pretty pastel coloured girl bearing the kind of scars you’d see in a military hospital.
All they saw were the scars, and the girl. And they would judge her for it. And it hurt.
And it was worse at home.
Her mother stared with open disdain, though the verbal assault had waned since her father had made his stance known.
Her brothers either looked with pity, curiosity or some strange combination of the two. They were also frequently insistent to touch them, and despite the repeated and fervent denials that Enid would return in kind, they would often try to distract or surprise her with random unwanted touches.
But despite it all, it wasn’t something Enid found herself caring enough about to raise an issue over. Her mother was a bitch, her brother's assholes, it had been the anthem of her life that she’d known for sixteen years now.
No, the worst part of them was how Ajax looked at her now.
All the time she had spent in the prior semester to get him to notice her, and now all she wanted from him was to stop looking.
She had invited him over the summer, and at the time he had gleefully accepted. Even despite their rather tumultuous reunion after the battle at Nevermore, they were both still mutually excited over seeing each other.
She had told him the scars were bad. She had neglected to send visual evidence, she had instead been confident that if anyone would still see her for the preppy girl who loved pastel colours she was, it was him. She was confident enough that when they saw each other at her door, she had decided to forgo her eyepatch.
She had been a fool.
Over the entirety of their time together, the week that he had been at her home, in her room, in her space, she could scarcely recall a time where he had looked at her. Not the scars, not her eye. Where he had spared a single cup of concern for anything other than the injuries she sustained and gave a moment to look at the girl beneath it all.
By the end of the week she was finished.
Finished with being scared
Finished with being ashamed
Finished with feeling like she was lesser for getting injured in a life or death battle against a monster.
But mostly, she was finished with him.
Finished with the staring, the attention, all the goddamn unending pity!
She caught him at the patio as he left at the end of their week.
“Hey… ‘Jax”
“Hm? Whatsup Enie?”
She shuffled beyond the doorframe, coming to lean against the beam holding up the little roof above their heads. “There’s-... There’s something I need to say. If you’ve got time to hear it.”
He turned to face her proper, a dopey grin growing across his face. She had once dreamed of this, that grin now meant for her, growing because of her. Now all she could see was how it stopped reaching his eyes whenever it was directed towards her. “Yeah, I’ve got some time. Whatcha need?”
She didn’t return the smile. She’d tried at the beginning a few times, but her grin always leaned left, and she couldn’t help but notice how his gaze would always drift down to where the scar would stretch from the movement.
Taking a deep, steadying breath, she steeled her nerves for the confession she’d been feeling for days now. “I don’t think-... *huff* I don’t think it’s gonna work… between us… anymore.” The words getting quieter and quieter as she neared the end.
“What?” The grin faltered for a moment, before falling completely as what he’d heard registered properly.
Enid just nodded solemnly. “Yeah… this past week has been- it's been rough, ‘Jax.” Her good eye locked onto his, the words coming out only further resigning her to the faith that this was the right choice. “A-and… It’s put some things into perspective. About what I’m looking for, what I need… what I need in a partner.”
“Waitwaitwait, Enid- wait Enid, why? What happened?” He started back up the steps, stopping just one down from where Enid remained.
“Don’t-... Don’t play dumb about this, Ajax.” She broke eye contact, turning her face away, deliberately showing the left side more prominently. “You think I don’t see it… but I do.”
“See what Enid?! What is it?!”
“The way you look at me… it's not the same. It’s different now, and I can’t stand it anymore.” Her gaze slid back to his eyes, staring at him over the bridge of her nose. “You’ve stopped- You’ve stopped seeing me, ‘Jax. You see the scars, the eye, the hair. You see all the ways I’ve changed- been forced to change, and you don’t- you don’t see me anymore, you’ve forgotten all the ways I haven’t changed and I just- I can’t stand it anymore.”
His eyes started flickering all over the place. The potted plant, the doorknob, the stairs, everywhere except Enid as his mind raced to understand. “Hold on, waitwaitwait, it doesn’t have to end like this. I can- We can do something about this, Enid, please.”
Enid just huffed quietly, her eye gazing down towards the floor now. Of course not even this could be easy. “And what exactly can ‘we’ do about this Ajax? Tell me honestly, do you think you could ever look at me again? Without you judging me with my scars and everything else?”
“Well I mean… I could learn? Or-or-or we could… Wait! This is the freakin’ 21st century Enie! You can get uhh-uhh surgery or-or something like that, even contacts for the eye. Boom haha, problem solved.”
That did it. She turned to fully face him now, coming down one step on the patio closer to his level, eye flashing a quick burst of yellow as anger overran rational thought. “WHAT?!”
Ajax leaned backwards, shocked at the sudden aggression. “We-well I mean, you obviously hate them I just- I just thought it’d be a solution for us both. You lose your scars, we get to stay together, win-win.”
Her voice dropped now, an almost icy calm that washed over Ajax. “Do you have any idea what I did to earn these scars? I fought a Hyde. I pummelled a monster the kind not even the teachers at Nevermore knew about. I saved Wednesday, I saved the whole fuckin’ school, and you think I would just get rid of them?”
“B-but you- you always talk about-”
“What I hate about the scars, and the eye, and my mouth, and everything else is because other people, everyone else, will not stop judging me for them. I thought you of all people would stop judging me for them. I thought you of all people would stop pitying me for them.”
She stepped down once more, coming properly face to face with the gorgon. “But every, single, freakin’ time I catch you looking at me… you’re never looking at me. You’re looking at them. The scars, the eye, the hair. You’re looking at everything on the surface, you can’t even try to see who I am underneath it all now. YOU DON’T CARE!”
“That-thats not true Enid, c’mon you know me I’m not like that.” At that very instant, his eyes flickered over, once again, to her ruined left eye.
Enid caught it. She had caught it every single time it’d happened, and it'd happened hundreds of times now. “I stopped judging myself by what I suffered a while ago. I learnt, with difficulty, that no matter what I did to hide them, I’d still know they were there. And as long as I try to hide them, I let them define me, just as everyone else tries to define me with them.”
She took a step back, the yellow in her iris drowned out now by a calm sea of turquoise. “I’m done, letting my scars define me. And I am done, letting people judge me by them. Everyone can either look at the scars, or look at Enid Eleanor Sinclair. And I think that the first kind, can Beat. It.”
As Ajax continued to try and sputter through apologies and pleas, Enid simply closed her eyes and turned back towards her home, stopping at the door before offering a final goodbye. “I’m sorry ‘Jax. I’m done, and that means we’re done. Get home safe, I’ll see you at Nevermore.”
Closing the door softly behind her, she stumbled backwards to lean against it, hearing the sound of Ajax slowly and reluctantly leaving the premises, waiting until she couldn’t hear him anymore before slowly sliding down the door, her breaths coming in and out in stuttering fashion as a small expulsion of tears escaped down the side of her face as breadth of what she had ended dawned on her.
In spite of knowing what she had planned to do, in spite of coming to terms with it the night previous, in spite of all of that, there is a big difference between imagining and planning to commit to a course of action like this, and actually committing to it.
The only saving grace for the rest of the night, was her call with Wednesday. Standing up from her place at the door, she allowed herself a small smile at whatever insightful yet ludicrously personal barb she’d fashion for Ajax when she told her of the evenings events.
Yes the girl had certainly been growing on her indeed.
———————
It was official. Enid was screwed.
Properly, royally, screwed.
If she were being completely honest with herself (she was not), then she’d probably understand she’d been screwed for a while now.
How long exactly? She couldn’t tell for certain.
Was it after she broke up with Ajax? Certainly possible. Had she been screwed long before even that? More likely than she was comfortable admitting.
And how exactly was she screwed?
Well to put a long story short, somehow Enid had found herself crushing on the mistress of all things dark and broody herself, Wednesday freakin’ Addams.
The very same Wednesday who had A. brushed off every single attempt of any guy trying to come on to her, and B. hadn’t even known that she had been doing it.
That was who Enid’s extremely inconvenient organ she called a brain had decided was her next romantic fixation.
She couldn’t exactly say she couldn’t see why she had started crushing on her.
Wednesday was an enigma in every sense of the word. Unknowable in so many ways.
Her habits, her interests, her capabilities. Each and every one of her qualities was something that one would have to discover and verify its truth. You couldn’t simply take a look at the girl and understand damn near anything about her.
And yet, quite serendipitously, Enid had been paired with her as roommates. Which among many other adjustments, meant that by the nature of their arrangement Enid had spent more time around the Addams girl than almost anyone else. More time than literally anyone else if you didn’t count her family.
Sure she had her investigation, her traipsing in the woods as she searched for clues and hunted for the monster and its master. But at the end of every night, and at the beginning of every day and at various times in between, she came back to their room.
And with a combination of long-term exposure and a frankly hilarious degree of effort on Enid's part, she began to peel back layer after infinitesimal layer of the girl. Her colour affliction, her general demeanor, her routines, her writing, her investigation, her drive.
Layer after layer after layer. It was slow going at first, but like a snowball down a mountain as she gained more and more momentum the layers began to fall faster and faster.
The very last layer Enid had peeled back in person, was when they’d had their long overdue hug at the gates of Nevermore, where Enid had learnt one final little fact about Wednesday.
She ran cold. Pleasantly cold. The kind of pleasant cold you long for when you turn your pillow over when one side’s gone too warm.
She missed that coldness. She wanted to feel it again.
And during her stay in the hospital, all through her journey back home and up into her room, she had been lamenting that she would never feel it again for a long while. Neither physically, nor in spirit.
But words could not describe the utter elation she had felt when that first call had ended.
And in the days after, which turned to weeks after, Enid continued to pull back more and more layers of the Addams girl.
And each and every time she did, she found that what she saw only made her want to see more. More and more until every last iota of her was out on full display for Enid, and only Enid, to see.
She learnt that Wednesday absolutely couldn’t stand texting (though she appreciated the ability to share photos.), she had recently finished, edited and finalized her final copy of her Viper de la Muerte book, and that she was getting better with offering apologies (even if at times she still sounded quite stilted when delivering.).
She also learnt that Wednesday, the poor girl, had developed some significant issues regarding the whole Crackstone debacle.
More than a few times she’d had to forcefully pull the seer out of rapid spirals of ‘What if’, ‘I could have’, and ‘If only’, as she debated and more commonly berated herself for what she perceived as almost critical failures of character that she felt made her directly responsible for the loss of Doctor Kinbott and Ms Weems.
Enid had taken to the strategy of shocking Wednesday out of the spiral, forcing her to engage with her again as she tried desperately to comfort the girl, reminding her that whatever failures she perceived of herself, greater powers had failed first and forced an out-of-her-depth sixteen year old to pick up their slack when she never should have had to bear such a burden.
Enid also learnt firsthand just how well Wednesday’s memory functioned. A throwaway line about how much she missed Wednesday’s cello music would often come back to the forefront of their calls, as Esther would take whatever opportunity she had at night when Murray wasn’t there to stop her to lambast Enid for whatever failures she perceived of her daughter, and once she had stopped and the noise died down, Enid would hear soft notes of Wednesday’s cello drifting through the speaker. It went unspoken, but Enid made a note to thank the goth profusely once they saw each other again at Nevermore.
All that to say, Enid had fallen irrevocably for the murderous little seer.
Which presented its own host of issues.
The greatest of which were stuck to Enid’s face.
Enid still had neglected to inform Wednesday of the scars. She believed Wednesday wasn’t so stupid to think absolutely everything was fine, a blowout argument during the first week when Wednesday had pressed and pressed as to why Enid kept refusing to turn her camera on was example enough that something about her appearance had become a touchy subject, but Enid was certain Wednesday knew nothing of the sheer extent of the injuries.
Enid wasn’t much worried that Wednesday would find the scars disgusting exactly. Her rather blasé attitude towards injury, blood, death and gore of various kinds was example enough of that.
But Enid was still conscious of her perception.
She wanted people to still think of her as she always had been at Nevermore. It had been the image she curated, and regardless of how true it was to all the issues beneath the surface, it was the image she wanted to keep.
How then does one stay perceived as a peppy bubbly pastel-obsessed gossip girl, when she looked like she’d been thrown into a woodchipper.
Enid was sure Wednesday would honestly be positively thrilled at the scars, maybe even the dead eye, but she didn’t want the girl to think of her any differently for them at the same time.
And while whatever change in Wednesday’s perception of Enid would be positively endearing in her view, Enid didn’t want that change, at least not until she knew exactly how much it encompassed the image she already curated.
There was also the slight concern of Wednesday’s developing complex with misplaced guilt. Regardless of whether or not Enid blamed her for them (she didn’t), she wasn’t positive if Wednesday would ever be able to see it that way, and she couldn’t bring herself to give the girl more grief, unwittingly or not.
All of which culminated in the decision to keep the scars out of sight and out of mind for as long as possible.
There was a second reason, something that Wednesday would probably grant a begrudging nod in its usage of information control in order to direct a person towards a specific outcome.
She wanted people to still see her the way she had wanted to be seen back before the fight and the scars.
Most of all, if she was now falling for the seer, she wanted her specifically to see her in that way. In a perfect world Wednesday would be reciprocal of her feelings from the jump once they reunited in person.
And while Enid was quite frankly laughing to herself at the sheer improbability of that, if she had learnt anything from Wednesday over the course of their time together, it was that it always paid to be prepared.
So she played all the cards she had curated during her time with Wednesday in the previous semester, keeping the newer ones in her back pocket to be used once they saw each other again and she could better control how Wednesday finally found out.
It was genius, kinda. It was genius in the sense it relied quite heavily upon the hope that Wednesday wouldn’t be either perturbed by the sight of the scars because of her misplaced guilt or incensed by the fact that Enid had refrained from sharing a very personally important development.
But, every plan has its flaws. And badly timed crush or not Enid was quite certain her course of action would remain the same regardless, the only thing that had really changed was now she had… a bit more… to lose, because she was deceiving Wednesday Addams the girl she had feelings for rather than Wednesday Addams the roommate and BFF.
“Oh my god whyyy do I do this to myself?” She groaned out into her pillow.
She had arrived at Nevermore early in the morning, using the time she had free to wander the campus once again and mingle with the friends she had left here after the events of the previous semester.
People stared at her scars, Enid was prepared for that by now. It didn’t escape her that the kind of emotion that dawned on the faces of those who watched her was of stark difference to the kind of emotion she’d seen on the normies of San Francisco.
These people knew what she had done. They had heard the stories of a monstrous beast in the woods for weeks during the murder scare. They had watched an undead pilgrim light the quad ablaze and try to kill them all. They had all watched her stumble out of the woods covered in slashes, bruises, blood, dirt and leaves and knew what she had done to receive such punishment.
The normies back home stared at her like she was broken, like she was dirty, like she was both monster and victim. The outcasts of Nevermore stared at her with awe. They stared at her like a hero back from war, and she would be lying if she said she didn’t like the feeling.
But to a degree, she didn’t. Good or bad impression, the scars were still doing what they had been doing all through the break. Providing a mask behind which the girl that had always been there could never seem to escape.
It would take time to regain the station she had taken during her earlier years at Nevermore. But thankfully, here she was not alone. Here she had friends who knew the girl from before, who had befriended the girl from before because of who she was, and with their help they would get the rest of the outcasts to remember that she was still that girl, and she didn’t want to be anything else simply because some scars had decided that was who she is now.
Coming up to the centre of the quad, she looked up at the tree that had been once set ablaze in that final battle. Seeing it back to health despite the scars it dealt lifted a weight off of Enid's heart. If the tree could bounce back despite the scars it had been dealt, who’s to say she couldn’t as well?
She turned on her heel and started back to Ophelia Hall, ready to face her old dorm again and get it right back to the way she had made it before.
Hours later, after an intense effort to remake it all, with some extra personalisations courtesy of Wednesday’s more macabre influence, it was all ready in time for her nightly call with Wednesday.
Wherein her brain decided that after several weeks tiptoeing around the issue it would entirely dispense with subtlety for a brief two seconds wherein she’d said ‘Love you’ to Wednesday before panicking so badly to hang up she nearly threw her phone into the wall all the way on Wednesdays side of the room.
Her plan was going swimmingly if you couldn’t tell.
Still, the inadvertent and entirely overzealous confession hadn’t been out of character enough for Wednesday to break her weeks long self-imposed ban on texting to demand clarification so, small victories.
Flipping herself over on the mattress to stare up at the ceiling, she laid one arm over her forehead, her face finally cooling down after trying to soft boil her brain in embarrassment.
“Tomorrow. I’ll see her tomorrow. Good or bad, at least this whole goddamn circus will be over and frickin’ done with by tomorrow.” She sucked in deep breaths at every pause, this mantra a newer one and already quite ready for retirement once the gothic menace crossed the boundary of the room tomorrow.
———————
The reunion went… well, all things considered.
The three way wombo-combo of hearing Wednesday whisper ‘sorry’, watching her face crumble out of its usual indifferent mask, and seeing actual godforsaken tears come from the girl had sent Enid into a spiral so dizzying that the only discernable instinct she had left was one that she had been sharpening over the many instances of Wednesday trying desperately to blame herself for raising an undead pilgrim from a crypt and attempting genocide.
However now, she was right there in front of her, and Enid would be damned before she let the poor girl suffer alone. And in a stroke of confidence bordering on insanity, she wrapped her arms around her and hugged her as tight as she could manage, repeating the assurances she had been practicing ever since this had first happened.
At first she felt the girl melt into it, and then she tried to escape it. And when Enid refused to allow her to deny herself the comfort she so clearly needed, she melted back in once again.
After she let her go, Enid felt her brain short circuit at the seers' admission that she wanted more of that kind of contact, and even more shockingly was willing to initiate it herself. She thought that the two of them had already beaten their quota for paradigm shifting changes in their dynamic, but she was in for just one more itty-bitty shock.
She kissed her.
Or… maybe the other way around? The shock of the moment briefly shorted out Enid’s memory so in all honesty both could be true.
But she wouldn’t change it for the world.
Honestly, she was beginning to believe there were a lot of things she wouldn’t want to change anymore.
Her scars, for as disruptive as they have been to her reputation, to her self perception, to her life, have also been the catalyst for so much growth and change in the opposite direction as well.
Her father found the spine he had always lacked in his life. He found the strength to stand up against his family for the sake of his daughter for the first time in living memory.
Despite how tumultuous the affair was, her scars had shown Enid exactly what Ajax had valued in their relationship, and exactly what he saw in her. And it gave Enid perspective to find out what she valued in a relationship instead.
The injuries that had borne the scars had caused enough concern that Wednesday had reached out to her with a method of communication she had staunchly refused to entertain beforehand. Without that, their correspondence over the break might never have occurred, and both her and Enid might never have found in each other what they had looked for in others and failed to find.
And in spite of the grief the revelation caused her, the reveal of the scars had catalysed Wednesday into admitting to feelings she might have stewed on or never have realized in herself had it not happened.
And without the combination of all of that, Wednesday and Enid might not be where they are at this very moment.
In Wednesday’s bed, under her covers in the dead of night, regaling each other with stories from the break they had never the opportunity to share over their many many nightly calls, their bodies so completely intertwined that when looked at with the covers over them, it was difficult to tell where one ended and the other began.
When she had seen her in the room just hours before, she had been so utterly terrified of what could happen when she turned around.
Now she was simply happy she’d had the courage to turn in the first place.
“A-and then, he just stepped right in front of her, like he was daring her to say something else. I swear, I’ve never seen mom so goddamn angry and so petrified at the same time, she was vibrating so hard I probably coulda used her to charge my phone.”
“I am glad to know how far your father has come. Though it is quite late for him to do so, but so long as it makes you happy to see I will attempt to keep my critiques to myself.”
“And my mother?”
“*huff*… I will… refrain from-…”
“…Introducing her to the business end of a silver dagger, riiight?”
“…correct.”
“Thanks! I understand how much you wanna gut her, believe me I do but she’s still my mother and it would still be murder. Like it or not I prefer how you look in this uniform than I would in a prison uniform.”
“I understand.”
As the conversation finally petered out, the two girls turned back to stare up at the ceiling, the sum total of what had occurred in the day having sunken in by now and now was simply being processed.
After several minutes of comfortable silence, Enid turned to stare at Wednesday, and Wednesday turned to stare back at Enid.
Her stare never left Enid's good eye, and after watching Ajax, Esther, and so many others flick away to stare at the dead one watching someone simply not brought relief in and of itself.
“…I’m so happy it's you.” Enid whispered.
“And why is that?” She returned, her voiced lowered in kind.
“Because… you don’t look at me like I’m a whole new person. With almost everyone else, I’m Enid with the scars, but with you I’m just-… I’m just Enid. and I missed being just Enid.”
“You were always enough, you have never been not enough. I fell for the girl who challenged me whenever I allowed obsession to override reason. Everything you have become now is simply… a bonus.”
“…Thank you.”
“For what, mi loba?”
“For choosing me as I was… as the person I used to be, the person I still want to be. Instead of the person the world has tried to make me.”
Wednesday looked at Enid with a renewed intensity, before moving forward to press a soft kiss to the wolfs lips.
“Always.”
Enid stared for a moment, before smiling softly, and returning the kiss in kind.
“Always.”