Chapter Text
Wednesday shut her door harder than necessary, reveling in the way that the door frame rattled. It did little to dissolve the leftover adrenaline from that evening’s events. Wednesday allowed herself a small grin in the privacy of her dorm, allowing herself to truly feel and process everything associated with being buried alive and fighting a psychopath alongside her family.
It made her feel so alive.
She knew the normal response would probably be to cry, or feel traumatized, or feel even mildly disturbed. Wednesday had never been a normal person, though. Events like these were what she thrived on. Mayhem, murderers, and high stakes. Just when she thought the end of the semester would be boring and full of unresolved riddles.
She did, however, avoid looking to the right side of the dormitory. She refused to acknowledge the sense of loss and loneliness that came with Enid’s disappearance. She had already developed a plan and called her Uncle Fester, who would be rolling into town at the end of the week. Together, they would track down Enid. Wednesday had made a promise, one she didn’t take lightly. She had full confidence that she could find Enid, and they would figure out their next steps together. Who knows? Wednesday might even like Enid more as an alpha wolf, even if it wasn’t Enid’s preferred form. She’d certainly be more quiet, and more deadly.
Wednesday squared her shoulders. Principal Dort was dead and her Grandmama’s fortune was safe. Pugsley was back in her parent’s smothering embrace. She was glad she managed to convince her family to let her return to her dorm. The police had thoroughly sweeped campus and were working on removing the Hyde corpse and leftover debris from the Iago Tower explosion anyway. Thing had stayed behind with the family though. He had always been too sentimental for Wednesday.
That suited her just fine. Despite not finding a publisher for her first novel, she had already been working on the sequel. She needed to spend a couple hours in front of her typewriter to relax and decompress.
First, she needed to change. After they had left Iago Tower, much time had been wasted giving statements to the Jericho police and their charismatic but useless head sheriff. Then she had been forced to spend at least a little time with her family, celebrating Pugsley’s first kidnapping and attempted murder (or in Wednesday’s case, lecturing him about foolishly allowing himself to be so easily kidnapped).
Case in point, her clothes were still covered in dirt from her own attempted murder, along with dust and sweat. While the sweet embrace of the cold dirt had been comforting, it now felt irritating as it clung to her skin and stuck beneath her nails. Yes, she would shower and change and then type until she couldn’t hold her eyes open anymore.
The perfect end to a perfect evening.
Well, perhaps she was fooling herself. Just a bit.
In reality, had it been a truly perfect day she might have been content to shower, change, and crawl into bed. She could cross her arms and lay back in her normal corpse-like sleeping position, replaying the feeling of being buried alive and relishing in it, allowing it to soothe her into a dreamless sleep. A sleep of the dead.
Instead, her fingers were itching to type. She needed to let words flow forth, to have something to focus on. Otherwise, Wednesday might have to think about him. She might have to confront the fact that Wednesday Addams, known for her ruthlessness on quests for revenge, had been handed a golden opportunity to take all of her anger out on the one who betrayed her and end the threats to her and Enid’s life once and for all, and she hadn’t been able to do it.
“I chose not to do it,” she spoke out loud, talking no one. Convincing no one. “It was too easy.” What kind of testament to her cunning and skill would that be? Taking an axe to someone who was fastened to a table by someone else? Who was utterly helpless.
“Kill me,” Tyler had begged her. She squeezed her eyes closed, unable to get the image of him out of her head. The hopelessness and despair in his eyes. The way his mother’s betrayal seemed to weigh his whole body down, making it impossible to turn into the Hyde and fight back. He had given up.
It would be too merciful to kill someone who had already accepted his death. Who had asked for it.
Wednesday Addams was many things, but merciful was not one of them.
At least, that’s what she told herself. She had never considered herself a liar. Her brutal, unflinching honesty was something she prided herself on. She walked through the world speaking her mind, uncaring how her words and actions affected others. She was steadfastly true to who she was.
Except that the past two years had taught her another ugly truth: she frequently lied to herself.
It was a revelation that had been deeply disturbing her. It had disrupted her entire view of herself, and her psyche. So much of her identity had been wrapped up in the fact that she thought she knew herself and would be unapologetic about it. She had been so confident she had been far above the rest of the students at Nevermore, who were still “finding themselves”. She was not some insecure, wavering teenager lost trying to find her identity.
She knew herself.
And yet, she had never considered herself a liar.
“I missed.”
She snatched a stuffed animal from Enid’s bed and threw it against the wall. It bounced off harmlessly, landing on the rug. Wednesday wanted to scream. “I missed, I missed, I missed.” The words echoed in her head, taunting her.
The part that was even worse, and the real reason she needed to sit and type until her fingers bled, was that buried under the lie there was a truth more brutal than she could handle.
“I missed."
A lie, if she had been talking about her swing of the axe. Wednesday Addams never missed. She had received her first axe at the age of four. Her parents had been so proud when she ruined their heirloom dining room table with a precise swipe to each leg.
“I missed you.”
A truth so damning she could never have uttered the last word. She could only say what could be easily misconstrued, and hope her eyes had done the rest of the talking. If Tyler was still Tyler, if any of that soft-spoken boy who smelled like coffee beans and offerended endless sarcasm and eyerolls still existed, he would understand. Tyler had always been able to read between the lines with her. It’s one of the things she hated most about him.
She threw another stuffed animal at the wall, and then another. She wished she could throw something else. She eyed Enid’s alarm clock. The bulky square could surely shatter a window. Just the sort of violent release she craved. But the Jericho police force was still crawling around the courtyard, and she couldn’t let anyone see her like this. They couldn’t watch her fall apart.
Focus. She needed to focus.
Wednesday fought against the barrage of thoughts swarming her, threatening to pull her to her knees and keep her there all night, replaying every word she and Tyler had ever exchanged. Focus. She needed to change. Then she needed to sit. Once she started typing, once she became Viper de la Muerte and not Wednesday Addams, everything would be okay.
She forced herself over to the closet to get a fresh pair of clothes for after her shower. She jerked the door open with more force than necessary, and pulled the hanging string so that the light flicked on. Her closet was immaculately organized, so she didn’t really have to think as she mechanically walked over to where she kept her softer leisure clothes and pajamas.
In hindsight, the tidiness of her closet meant she should’ve noticed that something was out of place sooner.
As she reached for a sweater, a flash of white caught her eye. She looked down. A sliver of a dirty, battered sneaker was peeking out from the bottom of her clothes hanging close to the floor. She didn’t own white sneakers, and if she did, they would never be so grimy.
Slowly, she crept to the corner of the closet and reached for the hangers. Taking a silent breath inward, she steeled herself and then quickly shoved the clothes down the rack, creating a large gap between them.
There he was, curled up in a tiny ball in the back of her closet, covered in scratches and blood and breathing haggardly.
She wasn’t going to escape this confrontation tonight.