Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The mansion stood at the crest of the hill like a relic of some forgotten gothic age, its blackened spires cutting the gray sky into fragments of shadow and storm. Ivy choked its stone walls and iron gates groaned against the wind as though in constant mourning. Inside, silence ruled.

This was the home of Wednesday Addams. Twenty-nine years had passed since she first learned the ecstasy of solitude. Now, she lived it as though it were oxygen. Her days were carved into ritual: mornings began with the sound of her typewriter echoing through marble halls, afternoons dissolved into walks through corridors that smelled of dust and candlewax and evenings sank into candlelit vigils of thought so sharp it bordered on violence.

She was an author, though few knew her face. Her novels had torn their way through the literary world like knives: tales of cruelty, trauma, forbidden lusts, the dark chambers of human depravity that civilized writers only circled but never dared to enter. She entered. She described the unimaginable with surgical detachment, with sentences that read like dirges and metaphors that coiled like serpents around the reader’s mind.

And they bought them. They devoured them. They argued about her in universities, in underground book clubs, in the lonely hours of sleepless readers. Who is Wednesday Addams? they asked. What manner of life produces such horror?

No one knew. Wednesday refused to appear at signings, rejected every interview request and wrote her letters on parchment in black ink delivered by couriers who found no comfort in her gates. Her publisher had long since surrendered to her eccentricities and the legend grew from it. Wednesday was a specter, a ghost, a myth, and her words the only proof of her existence.

But Wednesday herself did not care for the myth. She wrote because it was the only thing worth doing. Her typewriter was not a tool, but an altar. Each keystroke was an offering to the void that had whispered to her since childhood. She preferred to believe her work was not entertainment but confession.

Her rooms bore witness. Stacks of typed pages leaned precariously against armchairs, their words bleeding into each other. Tall windows framed a landscape of dead trees and mist, the hill always cloaked as if the world outside were ashamed to be seen. No clocks ticked, Wednesday despised the arrogance of measuring eternity. Instead, she marked time by the decay of candle stubs, the accumulation of ash in her fireplace and the aching satisfaction of another manuscript complete.

She lived as if no one else existed. And to her, they did not.

However, Morticia Addams existed. And she was worried.

Morticia had always cultivated an air of calm devotion, her affection for Gomez burning in eternal flame, her love for her children a shadowed tenderness that needed no ornament. Yet even the most statuesque of women harbored quiet fears. She had watched Wednesday’s brilliance blossom, then sharpen into something too keen, too solitary. The girl—no, the woman now—had achieved what Morticia once dreamt for her: complete mastery of her chosen realm. But mastery had become a prison.

From afar, Morticia admired her daughter’s discipline. But in the quiet hours of the night, when Gomez slept soundly beside her, she would stare at the ceiling and wonder: Is this all Wednesday will allow herself? A life of walls and words?

Morticia knew the Addams tradition: passion, no matter how grotesque, was sacred. To live without passion was to rot while breathing. And Wednesday, though brilliant, seemed to be turning inward and folding tighter into herself like a raven caged in its own feathers.

Morticia’s lips, blood-red as wine, pressed together whenever she thought of it. She did not fear of madness, madness was familiar and even welcome, but of stagnation. To be swallowed entirely by the abyss, to live only for shadows... was a kind of death worse than the grave.

It was during these musings that a memory returned to her. A woman named Esther Sinclair. They had met decades ago in San Francisco, Morticia and Gomez on one of their more indulgent trips involving séances, obscure art galleries and a midnight walk through a cemetery that promised “restless spirits guaranteed.” Esther had been a farmer’s wife, a woman with calloused hands but eyes that glittered with resilience. They spoke of children, of futures, of fears. Though their worlds were galaxies apart, they shared the same instinct: the desire to secure something better for their young.

And now fate, or perhaps Morticia’s own cunning, presented an opportunity.

Esther Sinclair had five children: four sons, and a daughter. Enid. The girl was nineteen now, on the cusp of adulthood and caught between the safety of her mother’s care and the uncertain promise of what lay beyond. Esther had written long ago of her worries: I want her to find a life that will not break her. I want her to be treasured, Morticia. I want her to matter.

Morticia folded the memory into the present and saw, with startling clarity, an image: Wednesday cloistered in her mansion, Enid like a sunbeam cast across the cobwebs. Not to erase the darkness, but to remind it of contrast. To keep the abyss from swallowing itself whole.

Morticia allowed herself the ghost of a smile.

Wednesday was at her typewriter when the knock came.

She did not often receive knocks. The servants, those few who dared remain in her parents' employ were instructed to make no sound beyond the necessities of existence. Couriers left their packages at the gate. Visitors were not welcome. A knock meant intrusion.

Her fingers stilled. The carriage return of the typewriter clinked back into place like a guillotine’s blade. Slowly, she lifted her gaze to the door.

“Enter,” she commanded, voice flat as stone.

The door creaked open to reveal Morticia, her silhouette framed like a painting. The elder Addams glided into the study, her gown whispering across the floor.

“Mother,” Wednesday said, her tone acknowledging but not welcoming. “You risk interrupting the only worthwhile activity in existence.”

Morticia smiled faintly. “Then you honor me by allowing it.”

Wednesday studied her with her black eyes unblinking. Morticia’s presence in the mansion was not rare, but it was never casual. Morticia visited her daughter’s sanctuary with purpose, not whimsy.

“I have been thinking of you,” Morticia said softly.

“An error,” Wednesday replied. “Thinking of me is unproductive. I am as I have always been.”

Morticia’s gaze flicked across the room, taking in the scattered manuscripts, the dust-laden books, the curtains drawn tight against the sun. “Yes. That is what concerns me.”

Wednesday tilted her head. “Concern is for those in danger. I am not. I am fulfilled.”

“Fulfillment,” Morticia murmured, “is not the same as life.”

Wednesday’s lips curved slightly, her version of a sneer. “You mistake me for someone who values life.”

There was a pause. The kind of pause that stretched, not from silence but from words unsaid.

Morticia reached out, brushing her long fingers along the spine of a book on Wednesday’s shelves. “Do you remember my old friend, Esther Sinclair?”

“I remember everything,” Wednesday said curtly. “She was poor. You pitied her.”

“I admired her,” Morticia corrected gently. “And she has a daughter. Enid.”

Wednesday’s eyes narrowed. “I fail to see the relevance.”

Morticia’s smile deepened, but it was the smile of a strategist, not a mother. “You will.”

Wednesday leaned back in her chair, the old wood creaking. Her eyes narrowed further, the black pupils expanding as if to swallow the dim light of the candles flickering across her desk.

“You speak of strangers with a tone that suggests investment,” she said at last, her voice even and unnervingly calm. “It unsettles me.”

Morticia, ever the portrait of grace, folded her hands together. “You were always unsettled by suggestion, my storm cloud. And yet suggestion has power. A seed must first resist the soil before it pierces through.”

Wednesday arched an eyebrow. “I am not soil. I am granite. Seeds rot when they touch me.”

Her mother’s smile curved, practiced and unyielding. “And yet even stone can be carved by persistence. Time does not discriminate, darling.”

A silence fell between them. The silence in that room was not absence, it was presence. Heavy, like unseen eyes pressing down.

Wednesday returned her gaze to the typewriter, her fingers hovering above the keys like vultures over carrion. “You’re not here to discuss farmers’ daughters. You’re here to intrude upon my sanctuary with an agenda. I can hear the rustle of it, like rats in the walls.”

Morticia stepped further into the study, her long shadow stretching across Wednesday’s manuscripts. She did not deny it. Morticia did not lie to her children; she had long known they would detect it like the scent of blood in water. Instead, she allowed her silence to answer first.

“You are correct,” Morticia said at last. “I came to speak of futures.”

Wednesday’s lip twitched at the word. Futures, to her, were grotesque: projections of expectation, promises carved into nothing. A future was merely a corridor lined with the corpses of every present one had failed to savor.

“My future,” Wednesday said flatly, “is already chosen. I will write until my hands are skeletal. I will die in this house, surrounded by manuscripts. If the worms are fortunate, they will find me before Father does.”

Morticia tilted her head, her raven hair cascading over her shoulder. “So certain. So final.”

“Certainty,” Wednesday replied, “is the only luxury I permit myself.”

“And love?” Morticia’s question came not as a challenge, but as a whisper soft as silk.

Wednesday’s fingers froze above the typewriter. Slowly, she turned her gaze back to her mother, as if the word itself were an indecency uttered in a church. “Love is a delusion. A chemical spasm of the brain designed to ensure reproduction. A weakness dressed as poetry. If anything, it is anti-luxury.”

Morticia chuckled low in her throat, a sound that belonged to graveyards at midnight. “Darling, you speak as if you know. But you have not tasted it.”

Wednesday’s reply was instant. “I have observed it. And observation is far more reliable than indulgence.”

Morticia circled the desk now, her gown hissing against the stone floor. “You watched Gomez and I, did you not? You saw our devotion. You saw our nights filled with fire. You saw how one look could undo years of silence.”

“I saw,” Wednesday admitted. “And I catalogued it. You are two souls bound by pathology. Yours is an anomaly. An experiment in obsession that succeeded against statistical odds. It proves nothing about the common utility of love.”

Morticia stopped directly across from her, leaning down until her pale face hovered just above her daughter’s. Her dark eyes locked onto Wednesday’s with maternal ferocity.

“It is not about utility,” Morticia whispered. “It is about inevitability.”

Wednesday did not flinch, but she did not type either. For her, that was flinching.

Morticia continued, her voice low and almost hypnotic. “The Addams blood is a fire. To deny it is to extinguish what makes you ours. We do not live half-lives, Wednesday. We live all-consuming. Whether it is pain, or pleasure, or the exquisite agony of love, we surrender wholly. That is the only way we honor the darkness that bore us.”

Wednesday’s expression was unreadable marble. But her silence betrayed that her mother’s words had pierced the outer layer of granite.

“Love,” Wednesday said finally, “is a parasite. It drains rational thought. It compels one to compromise, to expose weakness. You mistake surrender for strength. I mistake surrender for rot.”

Morticia’s lips curved, satisfied. “Then rot, darling. For rot is simply transformation by another name.”

A chill lingered in the air.

That night after Morticia left, Wednesday could not write. The typewriter keys sat silent, accusing her. Her mind, usually so sharp and unwavering, felt cluttered with echoes of her mother’s words.

All-consuming.

Fire.

Rot is transformation.

She despised how they clung to her.

She rose from her desk and drifted through the corridors of her mansion. The halls were dimly lit by oil lamps and tall, dripping candles. Shadows swayed across the walls, reminding her of wraiths. Normally, this soothed her. Tonight, it felt like mockery.

In the great hall, she paused before a mirror. She rarely looked into mirrors, they were vanity and she had little patience for vanity. But tonight, her reflection seemed to hold a question.

Her face was pale, sharp and severe. Her eyes, black and depthless, stared back without judgment. She wondered, not for the first time, but for the first time with weight... what those eyes would look like if they softened. If they were undone.

Then she shuddered, not from fear, but from revulsion.

Meanwhile, Morticia sat in the hearse-like car that would take her back to the main family mansion down the hill. Gomez ever attentive, wrapped an arm around her waist.

“How did she receive it, cara mia?” he asked.

Morticia let her head rest against his shoulder. “Like stone resists the chisel. But stone always remembers the first crack.”

Gomez laughed, low and delighted. “Ah, my little death blossom. She will need someone worthy. Someone luminous enough to illuminate her, but not so bright as to blind her.”

Morticia’s smile was slow, “I may have found her.”

Gomez’s eyes gleamed. “Do tell.”

“Her name is Enid Sinclair.”

And far away, in a much humbler home in San Francisco, Enid Sinclair sat on her bed painting her nails a garish bubblegum pink. She hummed to herself, unaware that somewhere, in a mansion of shadows, her name had just been whispered into destiny.

Chapter Text

The Addams estate slept uneasily that night, the way ancient houses do when their walls overhear secrets. But Morticia did not sleep. She drifted to her study, candlelight illuminating shadows across the parchment she had laid before her.

Her quill hovered. She had always believed words carried weight more potent than steel, and tonight she would test that belief again.

With slow elegance, she began.

Dearest Esther,

Years have stretched between us like an endless corridor and yet I find myself thinking of you often. Time has not dimmed my memory of our talks, nor of your devotion to your children. You spoke then of fear, of wanting more for your daughter. I, too, have such fears. Perhaps more than I would admit aloud, save in the privacy of ink.

You may have heard of my daughter Wednesday. She has grown into a writer of some renown—eccentric, solitary, gifted with a mind that drinks deeply from shadows. She lives as the Addams always have: in passion, in seclusion, in relentless pursuit of her nature. And yet, I worry. Isolation threatens her like a slow poison. What she needs is not cure, but balance. A companion who might breathe warmth into her chill, who might remind her that fire burns as fiercely as frost.

I recall you once confessed your wish to see Enid wed into a family that might offer her comfort, security and dignity. Consider this letter a proposition: that our daughters may join their futures. Wednesday has wealth enough to protect your Enid from hardship, and a name that commands a certain immortality. Enid, in turn, may offer Wednesday the rarest of gifts: a reason to remain tethered to the world outside herself.

Do not mistake me, Esther, this is no light suggestion. To join our families would be to bind light with shadow, to let innocence dance with morbidity. But I see in such contrast not danger, but beauty. Think of it as a candle placed in the abyss, not extinguished, but made more luminous for the darkness that surrounds it.

I await your thoughts with patience and fondness.

Yours in eternal friendship,

Morticia Addams

Morticia let the quill rest. She blew gently over the ink, her breath as soft as a funeral hymn, then folded the parchment with care. A black wax seal marked with the Addams crest, two skeletal hands entwined and secured it.

As the courier was summoned, Morticia allowed herself a private smile. It was not triumph. It was anticipation.

The Sinclair farm sat under the waning light of a California dusk. Dust swirled through the air, tinted gold by the dying sun. The wooden farmhouse bore the wear of years, its boards gray with weather, its porch sagging. Yet it was alive with sound: the creak of rocking chairs, the chatter of chickens, the laughter of boys wrestling in the yard.

Inside, Esther Sinclair folded the day’s washing. Her hands were rough, the skin cracked, but her movements were careful. Each garment she smoothed with maternal reverence.

The knock at the door startled her. Mail rarely came so late. She wiped her hands on her apron and opened it to find a courier, a pale-faced, ill-at-ease, as though he had delivered the letter through haunted woods.

“A message for Esther Sinclair,” he muttered, pressing a sealed parchment into her hand before fleeing down the dirt path as though the shadows themselves nipped at his heels.

Esther frowned, closing the door with her hip. The seal was black wax. Strange and heavy. She ran her thumb over it, feeling the raised emblem. When she cracked it open and read the first lines, her breath caught.

“Morticia Addams,” she whispered.

Her husband, Murray, looked up from the table where he was mending a broken tool. “What about her?”

Esther sank into the nearest chair. “She’s written to me.”

“After all these years?” Murray set the tool aside, curiosity sharpening his features. He was a broad man, shoulders thick from decades of fieldwork, his face weathered by sun and worry. “What does she want?” Esther smoothed the parchment, her voice trembling as she began to read aloud.

She read every word. By the end, the farmhouse was thick with silence. The only sound was the distant chirp of crickets outside, a reminder that the world carried on even as theirs shifted beneath them.

Murray exhaled slowly, leaning back in his chair. “She wants... Enid. For her daughter.”

Esther folded the letter again, holding it as though it might crumble if she let go. “Yes.”

Murray rubbed a hand over his jaw. “That’s... unexpected.”

“Unexpected?” Esther’s voice pitched with incredulity. “It’s providence. Don’t you see? This is everything we hoped for. A way out for her. A better life than we could ever give.”

Murray frowned. “And what do you think Enid would say?” 

Esther pressed her lips together at the thought of Enid's reaction.

At that moment, a voice floated from the upstairs loft. “Mom? Dad? You should see the way Bruno looked at me today! He said he’d teach me to drive his daddy’s truck.”

Esther and Murray exchanged glances.

Enid came bounding down the stairs, a blur of blonde curls and restless energy. She wore a patched skirt and a bright sweater, her fingernails painted unevenly with the last remnants of polish she’d begged from town. Her smile lit the room, a beam of unfiltered joy.

“Bruno’s so funny,” she gushed, plopping onto the bench beside them. “He says once harvest’s done, he might take me to the county fair. Can you imagine?”

Murray forced a smile. “That sounds... nice, Enid.” Esther’s gaze lingered on her daughter to her softness, her innocence, the way she seemed to glow even in this dim, worn-down farmhouse.

She thought of Morticia’s words: a candle placed in the abyss.

Her heart warred within her.

“Mama?” Enid tilted her head. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Esther swallowed hard, tucking the letter against her apron. “No reason, sweetheart. No reason at all.” But Murray saw the storm behind his wife’s eyes.

That night after Enid had gone to bed, Murray and Esther sat together at the kitchen table, the letter between them. The oil lamp cast a soft halo of light, blurring the lines of their faces into tired shadows.

“She’s our baby,” Murray said quietly.

“She’s nineteen,” Esther countered. “She’s not a baby anymore. And she deserves more than this.” She gestured around them: the worn wood, the patched curtains, the smell of earth that clung to everything.

“She deserves happiness,” Murray corrected. “Not just wealth. What if this Wednesday is...” he searched for words “...strange? Dangerous?”

“She’s an Addams,” Esther said, as if that explained both everything and nothing. “They live... differently. But they love fiercely. You’ve seen them.”

Murray frowned. “And if Enid doesn’t want to leave? If she wants Bruno and county fairs and simple things?”

Esther’s hand tightened on the letter. “Then she’ll never know what she might have had.”

Murray looked at her for a long moment. “Or she’ll lose what she truly wants, chasing something she never asked for.”

The silence stretched between them, as fragile as spun glass. Finally, Esther whispered, “We must at least consider it.”

Murray leaned back, sighing. He stared at the rafters, listening to the creak of the house. “Considering is one thing,” he said at last. “But choosing for her... that’s another.”

Upstairs, Enid lay awake, staring at the ceiling beams. She replayed Bruno’s smile in her mind, her heart fluttering like a trapped bird. She dreamed of bright futures, though all of them were painted in warm, ordinary colors.

She had no idea that downstairs, a letter sealed in black wax waited to rewrite her life.

Morning came early on the Sinclair farm, as it always did. The sun was barely a pale smear on the horizon when the rooster screamed its shrill command, followed by the answering racket of livestock demanding attention. The farmhouse creaked awake under the weight of noise: boots thudding on floorboards, doors slamming, voices overlapping like an untuned choir.

Enid groaned and pulled the quilt over her head, muffling the chaos. It was hopeless, of course. Her brothers had never once in nineteen years allowed her the luxury of a gentle morning.

“Rise and shine, princess!” called her eldest brother, Jacob, from the hallway, his voice booming with mock cheer.

The door banged open before she could reply, and Samuel—next in line—threw a pillow straight at her. “Up! Ma says the wash needs hanging!”

“I’m sleeping!” Enid whined from under the quilt, her voice muffled.

“You’re dreaming of Bruno, you mean,” teased Caleb, the third brother, leaning against the doorframe with a wicked grin. “Heard you mooning about him last night.”

Heat rushed to Enid’s cheeks as she peeked out from under the quilt. “Shut up!”

“Ohhh, look at her blush!” Samuel crowed. “Little Enid’s got herself a farmer boy.”

“Bruno’s sweet,” she shot back, sitting up and tossing her hair defiantly. “Not that you knuckleheads would know anything about it.”

“Sweet,” Caleb repeated with exaggerated disgust. “That’s what puppies are. Men are supposed to be strong. Bruno’s about as strong as wet hay.”

Enid crossed her arms, glaring. “You leave him alone. He’s kind to me. That’s what matters.”

Jacob, older and calmer than the rest, stepped into the room and ruffled her hair with a heavy hand. “Don’t worry, kiddo. We’ll only have a little talk with him. Just to make sure he knows what happens if he hurts you.”

Enid swatted his hand away. “I don’t need you to scare him! You’ll ruin everything.”

“Ruin?” Caleb raised an eyebrow. “Nah. Just set some ground rules. If he’s worth your time, he’ll survive a little intimidation.”

The youngest of the brothers, Eli, who's only one year older than her appeared, already pulling on his boots. “You’re all being stupid. Let her be. Bruno’s fine.”

“Fine?” Samuel barked a laugh. “Fine’s not good enough for our sister.”

The brothers erupted into another round of argument, their voices overlapping until Enid shrieked in frustration and threw her pillow at them. “Out! All of you!”

They retreated, laughing as they went, the sound bouncing down the hall like unruly dogs. Enid flopped back against her mattress, groaning. Protective didn’t even begin to describe them. Smothering was closer.

Downstairs, the kitchen was already alive with the smells of frying bacon and bread toasting over the woodstove. Esther moved with practiced efficiency, flipping bacon with one hand while pouring coffee with the other. The kitchen table was a battlefield of elbows and mugs as the boys fought for food.

Murray sat at the head silently, sipping his coffee slowly. Her eyes flicked to Murray more than once, but he avoided her gaze. He knew what she wanted: a decision about the letter. He wasn’t ready. Not with the boys clamoring around her and Enid soon to come bounding down the stairs, full of girlish energy and dreams that might be ripped away.

The black-sealed letter was hidden safely in her apron pocket. It felt heavier than gold.

“Pass the bread, Ma!” Caleb shouted over Samuel.

“Don’t hog the bacon!” Jacob scolded.

“Shut it, I was here first!” Samuel barked back.

Eli snatched the last slice of bread and grinned at his victory until Caleb cuffed him over the head.

“Boys,” Esther said calmly, without looking up. The single word was sharp enough to still them, if only for a moment.

Enid burst into the kitchen then, her cheeks flushed and her hair a golden mess. “You’re all animals,” she declared, sliding into the last empty chair. “Actual animals.”

“Animals eat better than this,” Samuel muttered, earning himself a jab in the ribs from Jacob.

Esther watched them all, her four sons and only daughter filling the kitchen with noise and life. They were rough, they were loud, they were sometimes cruel in their teasing, but they were hers. Her eyes lingered on Enid. Bright, radiant, endlessly hopeful Enid.

She thought of Morticia’s words again. She could imagine Enid in that dark mansion, her light swallowed by shadow. She could also imagine her transformed, sharpened, tempered by the abyss into something greater.

And yet, what of Bruno? What of county fairs and laughter and simple joys?

Esther’s hand touched the letter in her apron pocket as though it were burning her.

Murray caught the gesture. He set his cup down slowly. “We need to talk,” he murmured.

But not here. Not now.

“Later,” Esther mouthed back.

The boys didn’t notice. Enid didn’t either, busy defending Bruno again against her brothers’ relentless teasing.

“...and if he breaks her heart, we’ll string him up by his ears,” Caleb declared with mock ferocity.

“Over my dead body,” Enid shot back, half-laughing and half-serious.

“Don’t tempt me,” Jacob said with a smirk.

The kitchen erupted into laughter again. Esther forced herself to smile, but her heart twisted. If only they knew what choice was looming over them all.

The Sinclair farmhouse was never truly quiet, but mornings after the boys left for the fields came close. Once their heavy boots stomped across the porch, once their laughter and shouts drifted out toward the wheat and vanished under the sky, a hush would settle in the kitchen. It was a hush filled not with peace but with the residue of all the noise that came before.

Esther sat at the table, her hands wrapped around a chipped mug of coffee gone lukewarm. Murray leaned against the counter, his arms folded across his chest, gazing out the window with the solemnity of a man who had spent too many years watching fields grow and seasons turn.

Through the glass, they could see Enid in the yard. She stood barefoot on the dew-soaked grass, her hair catching the morning sun in golden tangles. Her laughter floated faintly into the kitchen.

Opposite her stood Bruno. He was tall and broad, his shoulders already marked by years of labor and his long curly hair pulled back with a frayed band of cloth. He shifted nervously, one large hand clutching a single wildflower he must have plucked on his way. He held it out to her, awkward and earnest.

Enid’s face lit as though he had handed her the sun itself. She accepted the flower, pressing it against her chest, her cheeks flushed with a joy so innocent it ached to behold.

Murray's breath caught slightly. Esther noticing, said nothing.

“She loves him,” Murray murmured at last, his voice low, as if speaking too loudly might shatter the moment outside.

Esther said calmly. “She thinks she does.”

Enid reached out and touched Bruno’s arm lightly, a shy gesture, her laughter bubbling again. He smiled, crooked and boyish. He spoke too softly for them to hear. Then he tipped his cap to her before striding off toward his family’s land, leaving Enid clutching the flower as though it were priceless.

Murray's eyes followed his daughter. “He makes her happy.”

Esther sighed. “For now. Happiness doesn’t fill stomachs. Happiness doesn’t pay doctors when sickness comes. Happiness doesn’t keep the roof from leaking.” She shifted her gaze back to the table where the black-sealed letter sat now, folded like a living thing waiting to be fed. “Morticia’s offer could.”

Murray pressed his lips together, torn between two visions: Enid’s flushed cheeks at a boy’s touch, and Enid draped in finery, shielded from hunger and want.

“She’d hate us if we forced her,” Murray whispered.

“She’ll hate us more if she spends her life hungry and tired,” Esther countered. Her voice was rough and tired, but her eyes betrayed the softness he could not put into words.

Then, from the corner, their old television flickered to life. Murray had left it on for the morning news, though neither of them had been listening. The signal was grainy, the sound faint, but a name cut through clear as a bell:

“Wednesday Addams...” 

Both their heads turned.

The news anchor, a crisp woman in a blazer was speaking with animated intensity. “...her latest novel has skyrocketed to the top of both U.S. and European charts, selling over a million copies within its first month of release. Critics call her the defining voice of modern Gothic literature. Readers describe her as 'a haunting enigma.'”

A black-and-white photograph of Wednesday’s book cover flashed on the screen: bold lettering, an ominous illustration of a noose coiled like a snake.

The anchor continued: “Though she has never made a public appearance, the mystery surrounding the author only fuels her popularity. Wednesday Addams’ books are now required reading in several university literature courses and she has been nominated for multiple international awards.”

The screen flickered again, then cut to another segment.

But the damage was done.

Murray whistled low under his breath, amused for a mere second. “That’s... something.”

Esther sat very still, her heart hammering. Wednesday Addams. Morticia’s daughter. The girl they had spoken of as children now a woman, her words reaching across oceans, her fame undeniable.

“That could be Enid’s life,” Esther whispered. “Security. Comfort. Belonging to something larger than this.” She gestured at the peeling wallpaper, the cracked floorboards, the fields outside that never yielded quite enough.

Murray rubbed his temples. “Or it could be a cage. You heard the anchor. That girl doesn’t show her face. Doesn’t go out. Do you want that for Enid? Locked away in some mansion with a woman who writes about murder and misery?”

“She’d be taken care of,” Esther insisted.

“By someone who doesn’t believe in happiness,” Murray shot back. His voice was sharp now. “Do you want to trade one kind of poverty for another?”

Esther faltered.

Through the window, Enid twirled with her flower, her laughter floating up like birdsong. For a moment, she looked like something otherworldly, untouched by hardship. But Esther knew better. Hardship was already pressing at the edges of her life.

She thought of Morticia’s letter: a candle placed in the abyss.

Her daughter was the candle. The abyss waited.

Esther pressed her palm against the letter, as if trying to feel its heartbeat. “What if the abyss is better than this?”

Murray shook his head. “Or worse.”

The day stretched long across the Sinclair farm, the kind of day where the sun seemed reluctant to move and the air clung heavy with the scent of hay and dust. Chores multiplied endlessly: feed the chickens, mend the fence, haul water, patch the roof where rain had chewed through the shingles.

Yet for Esther and Murray, the work blurred into something half-conscious. Their bodies moved, but their minds circled relentlessly back to the same thing: the letter sealed in black wax.

It sat on the table in the kitchen as though it had grown roots, refusing to be ignored. Every time Esther passed through the room, her eyes fell on it. Every time Murray passed from the kitchen, his gaze found it again, his jaw tightening.

By late morning, Esther’s heart had begun to lean more heavily toward Morticia’s offer. She could not stop herself from imagining.

She imagined Enid stepping out of poverty and into a grand mansion, where her laughter would bounce off vaulted ceilings instead of sagging beams. She imagined her daughter dressed in finery, speaking in drawing rooms, being whispered about in places where power gathered. She imagined Enid’s name entwined with Wednesday’s in newspapers and on television screens, as though fate itself had drawn a line between them.

Enid Addams, she thought. The name glittered in her mind like silver.

And yet what Esther imagined most vividly was not fame but change. Enid’s sweetness, her innocence, her infectious joy... surely these things could soften Wednesday’s darkness. Morticia had said as much in the letter, though not in so many words. Enid could be a candle in the abyss. And what mother would not want her child to be remembered as light?

The thought both thrilled and frightened Esther.

Murray, however, walked a different path in his thoughts. Suspicion stalked him like a shadow he could not shake. He had seen the way the news spoke of Wednesday Addams... an enigma, a recluse, a woman whose books dripped with blood and madness. Words had power, and hers were knives.

He imagined his daughter, bright and tender, walking willingly into a house built of shadows. He imagined Wednesday Addams looking at her the way a scientist looked at a specimen, dissecting, analyzing, perhaps even destroying.

Murray’s hands, rough from decades of labor, curled into fists each time he thought of it. He trusted Morticia’s intentions less than Esther did. What mother, he wondered, would give her daughter over to such a woman if not out of desperation?

“She’s dangerous,” he muttered to himself more than once. “And God knows what she’d do with our Enid.”

Inside, Enid was blissfully unaware of the storm brewing in her parents’ minds. After the morning chores, she lingered in the kitchen, helping her mother knead dough for the day’s bread. She was the only daughter and though her brothers often teased her for being spared the heaviest field work, she carried her weight in other ways.

Esther watched her from the corner of her eye as they worked side by side, hands sinking into the soft dough, flour dusting their clothes and hair. Enid hummed under her breath, some cheerful tune she must have picked up from the radio and her face glowed with the simple joy of being useful.

“Careful not to overwork it,” Esther murmured.

Enid laughed. “You always say that. I think the bread turns out fine.”

“Bread’s like people,” Esther replied without thinking. “Too much handling makes it tough.”

Enid giggled. “Well, you handle me plenty, and I don’t think I’m tough.”

Esther’s hands stilled on the dough, her throat tightening. She looked at her daughter then, not just as the child she had raised, but as the woman she was becoming. Nineteen. On the edge of everything. A life waiting to be shaped, to be hardened or softened by choices made now.

Her heart tugged painfully.

She imagined Enid’s future with Bruno. A small house on a small plot of land. Babies on her hip, laundry strung on a line, dinners scraped together from what little they had. Bruno was kind enough, steady in his way, but he was rooted in the same soil that had trapped them for generations. His world was small. Enid’s laughter would fill it, yes, but slowly it would fade under the weight of bills, illness and years of sameness.

And then she imagined Enid with Wednesday Addams. The picture was harder to hold more shadowy and unfamiliar, but it shimmered with possibility. Enid’s laughter ringing in marble halls. Enid’s warmth clashing against Wednesday’s cold, creating sparks that the world would not be able to look away from. Perhaps it would not be love, not at first, but it would be something monumental. Something that mattered.

Her hands pressed harder into the dough as the visions fought within her.

“Mama?” Enid tilted her head, noticing her distraction. “You’re quiet.”

Esther forced a smile. “Just thinking.”

“About what?”

Esther hesitated. The truth pressed against her lips, desperate to escape, but she swallowed it back down. “About how lucky I am to have you here, helping me.”

Enid’s grin returned, bright and unguarded. “Well, of course. Who else would keep you sane with all these boys around?”

Esther laughed, though it sounded strained even to her own ears. “Who else indeed.”

By afternoon, Murray had returned from the fields, sweat darkening his shirt, dirt clinging to his boots. He washed up at the pump outside before coming in, his face set in grim lines.

He found Esther sitting in the parlor, the letter in her lap, her gaze fixed not on it but on the old television across the room. The screen flickered, showing a rerun of the morning news segment. They had caught the rebroadcast.

Again, the anchor’s words filled the room: “Wednesday Addams’ newest book dominates the bestseller lists...”

Murray scowled. “Turn that off.”

Esther did not move. Her eyes remained locked on the screen, where the book cover filled the frame again. “Look at it, Murray. Look at what she’s become. Morticia’s girl. A world name. People know her everywhere.”

Murray’s jaw clenched. “And they don’t know her face. Don’t you think that’s strange? Someone who hides herself so completely, yet wants our daughter tied to her?”

“She doesn’t need to show her face,” Esther said softly. “Her words are enough.”

“Words,” Murray muttered, “can cut deeper than any knife.”

Esther turned to him then, her voice urgent. “Don’t you see? This is exactly why Morticia wrote to us. She knows Wednesday needs someone like Enid. Someone bright, someone kind. And Enid...” she broke off, her throat tight again “...Enid needs more than this. More than dough and laundry and being reduced to a housewife before she’s even twenty.”

Murray’s face softened, just slightly. He looked toward the kitchen, where Enid’s laughter drifted as she teased Eli about the chickens.

“She’s happy,” he said simply.

“She thinks she is,” Esther whispered.

They sat in silence for a long moment, the television buzzing faintly in the background. The letter rested heavy in Esther’s lap.

Finally, Murray spoke again, his voice low. “If we send her into that world, there’s no undoing it. We’d be giving her over to something we don’t understand. And if Wednesday is as dangerous as she sounds...” He trailed off, shaking his head. “I won’t put her in harm’s way. I won’t.”

Esther looked down at the letter, her fingers tracing the black seal. She thought of Morticia’s words, thought of her own dreams for her daughter, thought of the flower still tucked behind Enid’s ear.

Two futures. One safe but small, one vast but shadowed.

And Esther, caught between them, felt as though she were standing on a knife’s edge.

Chapter Text

The next day began as so many others had at the Sinclair farm.

The boys rose before dawn, their boots thudding across the wooden floors, voices echoing in rough banter as they pulled on their work clothes. The house rang with their noise: doors slamming, spoons clattering in bowls of porridge wolfed down too fast, arguments over tools and chores. Esther moved among them with practiced efficiency, placing food on the table, swatting the back of a head when tempers flared.

And then, as the first light bled across the horizon, the four sons filed out, their laughter carrying into the fields. The door shut behind them and quiet fell like a blanket dropped over the house.

It was a familiar quiet, one that Esther and Enid cherished but Murray often distrusted. Silence left too much room for thoughts.

Today, Murray did not follow his sons immediately. Instead, he lingered. He found himself watching Enid, who flitted about the kitchen barefoot, gathering the dishes left behind by her brothers.

She hummed as she worked, some bright little tune with no particular melody. Her hair was a golden mess from sleep, but she tied it back with a ribbon, her face fresh and glowing. She scolded the family dog for trying to lick the plates clean, then bent to scratch his ears with a giggle.

To Murray, it was all a painful reminder of how young she still was. She had the body of a young woman, but her heart was untouched by the world’s cruelties. She saw good everywhere, found joy in scraps of song, treated every moment like a small adventure.

He wondered how long she could stay that way.

“You’re watching her too close,” Esther murmured, breaking into his thoughts. She had come up behind him, wiping her hands on her apron.

“I’m her father,” Murray replied gruffly. “It’s my right.”

Esther said nothing. She only followed his gaze to where Enid twirled a dishcloth like a ribbon.

Murray shook his head. “She don’t belong in that world Morticia wrote about. You’ve seen the things they say about Wednesday. You heard it yesterday.”

Esther’s eyes lingered on Enid. “I’ve also seen what it means to live in this one. What it does to women like her when they’re left with nothing but fields and men who don’t understand them.”

Murray opened his mouth to retort, but the sound of voices from the old television interrupted. It had been left on again, its flickering screen casting pale light across the parlor.

“...and joining us now is Mr. Charles Henning, senior representative of Blackthorn Publishing, here to discuss the unprecedented success of Wednesday Addams’ latest release...”

The voice of the anchor pulled them both toward the set. Murray frowned but didn’t move. Esther settled onto the edge of the couch, hands folded tightly in her lap.

Onscreen, a thin man in a tailored suit sat across from the host. His hair was slicked back, his manner precise.

“Yes,” the man was saying, “Wednesday Addams’ new novel, A Dirge for Hollow Hearts, has exceeded all expectations. Within two weeks of release, it has sold nearly two million copies worldwide. Critics describe it as both devastating and revolutionary. She continues to challenge boundaries few authors dare approach.”

“And can you speak to the content?” the anchor asked. “There’s been some controversy.”

The man adjusted his glasses, unbothered. “Certainly. As with all of Ms. Addams’ works, the subject matter is... uncompromising. The novel explores themes of inherited trauma, sexual repression, and the slow disintegration of human morality under constant surveillance. There are graphic depictions of cruelty, but each scene is purposeful, designed to reveal uncomfortable truths. Her genius lies in her ability to marry horror with philosophy. Readers come away unsettled, but changed.”

Murray made a low sound in his throat. “Genius, he calls it.”

Esther’s eyes, however, were fixed on the screen.

The anchor leaned forward. “And does Ms. Addams plan to appear at any readings or interviews?”

The man smiled faintly, almost conspiratorially. “As always, she refuses all public appearances. We at Blackthorn respect her privacy. She communicates through her work, and that is more than enough.”

The anchor nodded. “Fascinating. Do you have a passage you could read for our viewers?”

The man lifted a small black-bound copy of the book. He cleared his throat.

His voice carried a chilling calm as he read:

"She pressed her hand against the glass, not to seek warmth but to remind herself of her own body. Beyond the window, the world rotted quietly. A child’s laughter drifted from somewhere unseen, and for a moment she envied the sound. How it cut through decay like a knife through silk. She wondered if innocence was the most exquisite cruelty of all, a fleeting mercy doomed always to be lost."

The words hung in the Sinclair living room like smoke.

Esther shivered, though she could not say why. Murray scowled deeper.

Behind them, Enid emerged from the kitchen with a basket of laundry balanced on her hip. She caught the tail end of the passage, wrinkled her nose and laughed.

“Well, that’s gloomy,” she said lightly. “Sounds like she needs a hug.”

She sailed past them, humming again and the moment shattered.

Murray barked a laugh, though it held no mirth. “There. Out of the mouths of babes. That’s who you’d give her to? A woman who writes like that?”

Esther’s throat tightened. Because Enid’s offhand remark, careless and sweet, was precisely what Morticia had counted on.

She watched her daughter disappear down the hall, her ribbon swinging like sunlight. And she thought of Wednesday’s words on the screen, of a woman envying innocence as though it were an impossible treasure.

Perhaps Enid truly was the candle Morticia had named.

But Esther knew that candles could burn out.

The words from the television still lingered in the air long after the screen had gone dark. Murray could not shake them. He turned them over in his mind while pacing the kitchen, while checking the tools on the porch, while pretending to sharpen his pocketknife.

Innocence was the most exquisite cruelty of all.

Who wrote such things? Who looked at something pure and thought of cruelty? He could almost hear Wednesday Addams’ voice whispering the line in his ear, though he had never once heard the woman speak. And perhaps that was what troubled him most of all, that no one had.

It was not natural, he thought, to be a figure so large and yet remain unseen. What was she hiding? A deformity? A madness etched so clearly in her face she dared not show it? Or worse, some hunger that revealed itself in the eyes alone?

The thought of Enid stepping across the threshold of such a woman’s home made Murray’s stomach churn.

However, Esther sat at the table with her chin propped in her hands, gazing into some vision only she could see. She was quiet, but her silence was not troubled like his. It was full of dreaming.

He recognized that look. He had seen it years ago, when she first spoke of leaving San Francisco, of moving to the country to raise their children in open air. It was a look that reached past the present into a shimmering, unreachable future.

And he hated it now, because he feared where it might lead.

“You’re building castles again,” Murray muttered, breaking the silence.

Esther looked at him, startled. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve got that look. Like you’re already marrying her off, already sitting her in that mansion. Like you’ve already decided.”

Esther’s lips tightened. “I’m only considering. You think I don’t see the risks? Of course I do. But you saw her, Murray. You saw how she laughed at that passage. Who else could do that but our Enid? Who else could meet darkness with light so easily?”

Murray slammed his knife shut with a snap. “And what if the darkness eats her instead?”

Esther opened her mouth to reply, but the sudden crunch of tires on gravel outside interrupted her.

They both froze.

A moment later came the sound of heavy boots on the porch, the creak of the screen door opening and a brisk knock against the wood.

Murray frowned. “Mailman again?”

Esther rose, smoothed her apron and went to the door. When she opened it, there stood Mr. Givens, their usual mail carrier, his face pink from the sun.

“Morning, Mrs. Sinclair,” he said, lifting a small envelope in one hand. “Special delivery.”

Esther blinked. “So soon?”

The man shrugged. “Came with the morning post. Thought I’d bring it round quick, seeing as it looked important.”

She took the envelope with a murmur of thanks. It was heavy in her hand, sealed in black wax, the emblem unmistakable.

Murray’s stomach sank.

When the door shut and Esther carried the envelope back to the table, both of them stared at it in silence. The room seemed to grow colder, as though the seal itself radiated some otherworldly chill.

Finally, Esther broke the wax with careful fingers. Inside was a folded sheet of thick stationery, the ink neat and delicate, Morticia’s hand unmistakable.

Esther read aloud:

My dearest Esther,

Time presses forward, and so too must we. I should be most delighted to host you, your husband and your daughter Enid at our estate next weekend. Consider this a chance not only for introductions, but for Enid to see the world that may one day be hers. Gomez and I would consider it an honor.

I have taken the liberty of arranging your travel. Enclosed, you will find three tickets to New Jersey, business class, departing Friday morning. A car will meet you upon arrival. I insist you accept these accommodations; it would be an affront to our hospitality otherwise.

Until then, I remain, as ever, your devoted friend.

Morticia Addams

Esther’s hands trembled as she lowered the page. Inside the envelope, three slips of stiff paper slid free, the plane tickets. Business class. Their glossy edges gleamed against the worn wood of the table like jewels dropped in dirt.

Murray swore under his breath. “She moves quick,” he muttered.

Esther touched the tickets reverently. She had never flown business class in her life. The price of one of these seats could have fed the family for months.

“It’s generous,” she whispered.

“It’s bait,” Murray snapped. “And you’re already swallowing it.”

Esther’s head rose, her eyes flashing. “She’s inviting us. Inviting Enid. What harm can come from a visit? At the very least, we’ll see the estate, meet them properly. We’ll know more than we do now.”

Murray rubbed his face. “I know enough already. The woman hides her own daughter like a ghost. She writes books that could curdle milk. And now she’s dangling fancy tickets in front of us like we’re fish on a line.”

“She’s offering us respect,” Esther countered. “She doesn’t have to invite us. She doesn’t have to give us anything. But she has. Because she values what Enid could bring.”

“What Enid could bring?” Murray barked a laugh, harsh and humorless. “She’s our daughter, not a dowry!”

The sound carried down the hall. A moment later, Enid peeked her head around the corner, a dishcloth still in her hand.

“What are you two shouting about now?” she asked, oblivious.

Both parents froze. The envelope lay on the table, the tickets gleaming like secrets.

“Nothing, sweetheart,” Esther said quickly, folding the letter back into its envelope. “Just... mail.”

Enid wrinkled her nose. “You’re fighting over mail?”

“Something like that,” Murray muttered.

Enid shook her head, grinning. “You two are so weird.” She disappeared again, humming as she went.

When her footsteps faded, the silence returned. Heavy.

Esther placed a hand over the envelope. “We should go.”

Murray stared at her, his jaw working. “You’re out of your mind if you think I’m putting Enid on a plane to that place.”

“She deserves to see what could be hers.”

“She deserves to be safe.”

The words hung between them like a drawn blade.

And in the center of the table, Morticia’s letter lay waiting, patient and unyielding, as though it knew the decision had already been made.

Chapter Text

Morticia had made her move, and now she waited. That was her gift, patience. She had sent her letter, her invitation, her golden lure wrapped in black wax. Now she lingered in the shadows of her estate with Gomez humming merrily somewhere in the cellar, listening to the wind at the windows, waiting for the Sinclairs’ reply.

But her thoughts inevitably turned inward, toward her daughter.

She believes herself immortal in solitude, Morticia thought, gazing across the dim corridor. But even tombs crack eventually. Even obsessions fray.

And Wednesday as ever, was unaware. 

Wednesday Addams rose every morning at precisely 10:31 a.m., not because she enjoyed the lateness, but because she considered waking any earlier a concession to conformity. Ten-thirty had been the compromise she struck with herself at age fifteen and the additional minute was her own private rebellion against the tyranny of round numbers.

The first sound in her chamber each day was the shriek of her old clock, an antique brass contraption that sounded like a murder of crows being strangled. She did not silence it with her hand but with a small dagger kept at her bedside, which she used to tap the release lever.

The ritual pleased her. It meant that from the moment she awoke, her day began in violence.

She rose from her four-poster bed, draped in velvet black, its canopy embroidered with moths and crossed to the window. Curtains remained drawn; she had no desire to be assaulted by the morning light. Instead, she opened them just a crack, enough to admit a sliver of gray illumination, then shut them again. It was not the light she wanted, but the confirmation that it was there, unwanted and excluded.

From there she moved to her mirror; a tall, cracked antique whose glass distorted faces into grotesqueries. She regarded herself briefly: pale, severe, hair braided with mathematical precision. She approved.

Dressing was swift; a black silk blouse buttoned to the throat, a long skirt heavy enough to drag across the wooden floorboards, stockings, boots polished until they gleamed. She never varied. To change clothing styles was to indulge in the trivial theater of the living.

Then came the typewriter ritual.

On her writing desk, beneath the glow of seven black candles, sat her Olivetti Lettera 22, a typewriter rescued from a secondhand shop years ago. Wednesday had named it Guillotine. She treated it not as a machine but as a confidant, a conspirator. Each morning she polished the keys with a square of linen dipped in vinegar. Each key she pressed once, listening to the click, ensuring the springs retained their bite. She oiled the ribbon spool, adjusted the platen and inhaled the faint metallic scent of ink.

Only when Guillotine was properly appeased did she load a fresh sheet of ivory paper.

Breakfast was taken at the desk; black coffee brewed until it tasted of burnt earth and one slice of pumpernickel bread left to harden overnight. She ate mechanically, chewing each bite thirteen times, because thirteen was auspicious.

Only then did the writing begin.

Her fingers struck the keys in sharp bursts, each word landing like a stab wound. She did not pause to consider spelling or flow. The first draft was always bloodletting. Words poured forth in torrents: grotesque images, cruel metaphors, confessions masked as fictions. Her shoulders hunched, her breath slowed, her eyes grew wide and fevered.

By noon, dozens of pages littered the floor. She let them lie, scattered like the bones of prey animals, until she decided whether to piece them together into something coherent or to burn them outright.

If she burned them, she burned them immediately. She carried them towards the large fireplace at the corner of her study. She would stand there, feeding the paper into the flames one sheet at a time, listening to the hiss and curl. Sometimes she recited fragments aloud before consigning them to ash, just to hear them in the air once before erasure.

If she kept them, she stacked them meticulously, not in piles but in strange formations: pyramids, spirals, lattices. She claimed the arrangement of drafts revealed hidden structures in her prose. No one else had ever seen them to confirm.

At two o’clock, she permitted herself a break. This consisted of pacing the grand hall of the mansion, her boots echoing against marble while she recited dialogue aloud as though to an unseen jury. Sometimes she addressed the portraits on the walls: great-uncles and aunts with hollow eyes, stern mouths and faces preserved in oil like insects in amber.

They never replied, of course, but their silence was exactly the audience she preferred.

Lunch, when she bothered with it, was raw vegetables sliced with her dagger and eaten with salt. Occasionally she added a boiled egg, but only if she felt she had earned it. Food was fuel, not pleasure.

By late afternoon she returned to the desk, this time to revise. Here her obsession showed in sharper detail: she might spend forty minutes debating the precise word for a scream. Was it a howl, a shriek, a wail, a keening? Each word had its own marrow, its own violence. She tasted them aloud, rolled them across her tongue like bitter candies, then struck out one with an angry slash of her fountain pen.

Evening brought music. She descended to the crypt where her cello stood in permanent vigil. She played not melodies but dirges, low and resonant, notes that made the very stone tremble. Sometimes she imagined her music seeping into the graves outside, stirring the bones beneath the earth.

Dinner was skipped as often as it was taken. When she ate, it was simple: black olives, hard cheese, more bread left to stale.

The nights belonged to her entirely. Once the typewriter had cooled and her eyes could no longer bear the fever of words, Wednesday turned to the second half of her rituals. She believed the mind required different kinds of exercise: the intellect sharpened by prose, the hand steadied by craft, the patience honed by poisons. To her, it was all one continuous act of creation.

Others might have called it madness.

It began with the ravens.

On the second floor of the mansion, past a hallway lined with moth-eaten portraits, stood a locked oak door. Few had ever stepped beyond it. Inside lay her aviary, though the birds there had long since ceased to fly.

Rows of glass cabinets lined the walls, each filled with specimens she had preserved by her own hand. Ravens with wings spread in eternal flight, their feathers iridescent even in death. Others perched on branches she had twisted from blackened iron. A few bent forward, beaks open mid-caw, frozen forever in silent warning.

She had been practicing taxidermy since childhood, but now, in her twenty-ninth year, she considered herself a master. She moved among the cases with a surgeon’s precision, checking each stitch, each glass eye, each plume of feather. Dust was her enemy here; she wiped it away with obsessive care.

Her latest project lay upon the central table: a raven that had perished near the woods two days prior. She had retrieved it at once, cradling it as tenderly as one might a child, then laid it out upon black velvet.

Now she worked with needle and scalpel. She had already removed the innards, embalmed the flesh with careful mixtures of arsenic soap and powdered alum. Tonight, she was reconstructing its form, stuffing the body with cotton and straw, shaping it with wire until it seemed ready to leap back into the air.

Her fingers were steady, her gaze unflinching.

As she sewed the final seam, she whispered to the bird: "You will outlive your brothers now. Death has made you immortal." 

When the work was complete, she placed the raven in a waiting cabinet among its kin. She stepped back, arms folded, regarding her collection with grim satisfaction.

The room was a cathedral of black wings, a choir of silence. To others, it would have seemed grotesque, but to Wednesday it was a triumph. Each bird was a testimony to her skill, her devotion, her refusal to let the beauty of death decay.

From there, she walked further into the dark hallway. 

Near the end, lay a heavy iron door that required three locks to open. She unlocked each with slowness, savoring the scrape of the tumblers.

Inside stretched her laboratory.

Shelves lined with glass bottles gleamed in the lamplight. Some held clear liquids that caught the glow like jewels; others swirled with viscous colors: green as absinthe, yellow as bile, black as tar. Each was meticulously labeled in her sharp, angular hand.

Hemlock. Belladonna. Nightshade. Digitalis. Extracts of fungi rare enough that collectors would have paid fortunes, but she had gathered them herself from forests and forgotten cellars.

On the central workbench sat her current experiment: a tincture she hoped would simulate the sensation of drowning when ingested in small amounts. She stirred it with a glass rod, watching the liquid spiral.

Poison to Wednesday was not merely a weapon. It was art. The right mixture could evoke terror, euphoria, visions, silence. Each vial was a sonnet in chemical form.

She tested only on herself. Always small doses, carefully measured, recorded in a black leather journal. The margins were filled with her notes: two drops, hallucinations of crows; three drops, heart palpitations; four drops, blackness for seventeen minutes, then waking with taste of iron.

She accepted the risks. To her, there was no art without danger.

Tonight, she prepared new samples, bottling them with wax seals. She arranged them by color on the shelf, her gaze lingering on the symmetry. A sigh of satisfaction escaped her lips, not pleasure but recognition of order restored.

Once her poisons were secured, she wandered.

The mansion at night was alive in ways most would never endure. The old pipes groaned like distant moans. Windows rattled though no wind blew. Floors creaked beneath steps that were not hers.

Wednesday welcomed it. The Addams estate had always been more organism than structure. To her, its murmurs were company. She paused often, head tilted, listening. A faint scuttling might be a rat or the restless bones of the buried. Either answer satisfied her.

She visited rooms at random: the ballroom where cobwebs draped the chandeliers like veils; the nursery long abandoned, still filled with cracked dolls; the gallery where portraits of unknown ancestors seemed to watch her pass with grudging respect.

At each threshold, she lingered, as though the house itself whispered to her.

Beyond the rear doors lay her garden. Midnight found her there more often than not, with a candle in hand.

The garden was not one of roses or tulips but of poisonous flora. Monkshood and oleander crowded the beds, their blossoms ghostly in the moonlight. Rows of thorned vines crawled over trellises, heavy with blossoms that could kill in a touch.

Near the center lay her bone garden: a patch where animal skeletons had been carefully arranged among the soil. Skulls of deer, foxes and birds jutted from the ground like pale flowers. Some she had painted with black runes; others she left to weather naturally.

She knelt among them, fingertips brushing skulls as though greeting old friends. The bones were not trophies. They were muses. Their silence gave her metaphors her typewriter could not.

Sometimes she read passages of her drafts aloud here, to the poison flowers and skeletal blossoms. She swore they listened more attentively than critics ever could.

By three in the morning, she always returned upstairs.

Her typewriter awaited her faithfully, a sentinel in the dark. She fed it another page, sometimes to transcribe thoughts from her poison journal, sometimes to capture an image born in the bone garden.

Her sentences at night were different, sharper, more venomous, as though the ravens and toxins spoke through her fingers.

Only exhaustion could pull her away.

At last, when her eyes burned and her back ached, she retired to her bed, the day’s rituals complete. She extinguished the candles one by one, leaving the room in darkness.

Sleep came reluctantly, but when it did, it came thick and suffocating. Her dreams were filled with black wings and burning flowers, and she welcomed them as companions.

At 10:31 a.m., the cycle would begin again.

Morticia alone understood how fragile such cycles could be. It was genius, but it was also a prison.

She will write herself into a coffin, unless someone comes bearing a candle bright enough to reach her. Morticia thought and she waited. Her letter sent, her plan set into motion.

Far across the country, Esther Sinclair held tickets in her hand. Soon, very soon, innocence and darkness would meet.

Chapter Text

For the first time all day, the Sinclair farmhouse was still. The boys’ boots no longer stomped across the floorboards, their voices no longer boomed in teasing or bickering, their laughter no longer shook the rafters. The fields had claimed their exhaustion. One by one they had dragged themselves upstairs, muttering halfhearted goodnights before collapsing into the chorus of snores that would soon rise like a storm.

The lamps downstairs glowed low, their glass chimneys fogged with soot. A kettle sat cooling on the stove, abandoned after supper. The night beyond the windows was thick and humid, full of cricket-song and the far-off baying of dogs across the valley.

At the kitchen table sat Esther and Murray, the letter folded between them, its fine stationary and Morticia’s elegant script looking starkly out of place against the worn wood. Neither had spoken in several minutes. Murray’s jaw worked silently as if chewing on words he refused to voice. Esther’s fingers traced the black-ink loops of Morticia’s hand.

It was Esther who finally broke the silence. “Call her down.”

Murray’s head turned, shadow sharpening the lines of his face. “Now? At this hour?”

“It cannot wait any longer,” Esther replied, her tone firm though her voice wavered with nerves. “We’ve carried it in our hearts long enough. It’s her life we’re weighing. She deserves to hear it from us, tonight.”

Murray exhaled through his nose, heavy and reluctant. Yet he rose from his chair and climbed the stairs with boots that made the old house tremble.

Moments later, Enid descended with him, tying the belt of her night robe, her golden hair spilling in loose curls around her shoulders. Her expression was puzzled but unbothered, as though she expected nothing more serious than being asked to fetch water or fold laundry left behind.

“You wanted me?” she asked, looking between them with wide, unguarded eyes.

Esther gestured to the chair at the table’s end. “Sit, sweetheart.”

Enid sat, folding her hands atop the wood, her gaze flicking between her parents. The serious set of their faces unsettled her. “Did I... do something?”

Murray shook his head. “No. Nothing of the sort.” He paused, cleared his throat, and looked toward Esther. “Your mother has a story she’s been keeping for some years. And... an offer. From an old acquaintance that you probably don't remember.”

Enid tilted her head like a curious bird.

Esther smoothed the folded letter before her, weighing each word as if it might tip the balance of fate.

“Years ago,” she began softly, “your father and I made a living in these same fields, though times were harder then. We harvested not only crops, but herbs, wild ones that grew near the marshlands and the forest’s edge. Some folk paid handsomely for roots and plants they could not find in the city markets.”

Enid nodded faintly. She had heard bits of this before.

“One autumn,” Esther continued, “a couple came through San Francisco on some peculiar errand. They were unlike anyone I had ever met, he with a booming laugh, she with a presence that seemed to darken the air and yet... draw you into it, like the pull of the moon on tides. Their names were Gomez and Morticia Addams.”

The name hung in the air, strange and unfamiliar to Enid.

“They sought herbs no apothecary would sell them,” Esther explained, her lips curving with a memory. “Nightshade berries, belladonna leaves, henbane root. Most would have turned them away, but I knew where such things grew. And so I guided them. We spent two days wandering the fields and woods together. In that time, Morticia and I...” Esther’s eyes softened. “...we spoke. Truly spoke. About womanhood, about children, about the weight of legacy. She was... different. Fearless, unashamed of her strangeness. I admired her, in my way.”

Enid leaned forward, fascinated despite herself. “And you stayed friends?”

“In letters, now and then,” Esther admitted. “Not often. Just enough that when she remembered me, I remembered her.”

She lifted the letter delicately, as though it might crumble. “And now, she has written again. For you.”

Enid blinked. “For me?”

“Yes,” Esther said. Her fingers tightened on the paper. “She and Gomez have a daughter. Wednesday Addams. An author of... some renown.”

“She’s famous,” Murray muttered, not hiding his bitterness. “Her books are all over the radio and papers. The kind of stories no decent folk would pen. Murder, madness, sin dressed as literature.”

Esther cast him a sharp look but pressed on. “Their daughter has made a name for herself, yet she lives alone and withdrawn. Morticia fears she is too consumed by her own darkness. She believes...” Esther hesitated, then said it straight, “...she believes you could be the one to soften her. To bring a little warmth into her world.”

Enid’s mouth fell open, then closed, then opened again. “You mean... she wants me to... meet her?”

“More than meet,” Murray said gruffly. He jabbed a finger at the letter. “She wants you tied to her. Married.”

The word struck Enid like a thrown stone.

“Married?” Her voice cracked on it. “To someone I’ve never even met? Someone who...” She faltered. “An Addams?”

Esther reached across the table, touching her daughter’s wrist. “I know it sounds sudden. But consider what it means. The Addams family is wealthy. Powerful. Their estate could give you a life far beyond this farm. Comfort. Security. You would never want for anything.”

Enid’s eyes widened. “But... I...” She thought of Bruno, his easy grin, the way he was pressing a wildflower into her hand every morning. Her heart fluttered and sank all at once. “I don’t know them. I don’t know her.”

“Better not to,” Murray muttered darkly. “A girl locked in a mansion, writing about murder and torment? God knows what she’d do with our Enid. She’s poison.”

“She’s human,” Esther countered sharply. “Flawed, yes, eccentric. But perhaps lonely. Morticia believes Enid’s lightness could help her.”

Enid’s lips trembled. “I’m just me. I laugh too loud, I talk too much, I burn bread half the time. What could I possibly do for someone like her?”

Esther squeezed her hand. “You could be yourself. That is what might matter most. Morticia invited us to their mansion this weekend, she send the plane tickets too.”

The silence stretched. The lamp hissed faintly, casting long shadows across the worn boards.

Murray’s fist closed around his mug. “I’ll say this plain: I don’t trust it. Not one bit. That woman wants to pluck you from here, dress it up as charity, and give you to a daughter who might as well be a ghost. That’s not love. That’s an arrangement.”

“And what has Bruno to offer?” Esther shot back, her voice suddenly sharp as a blade. “A cottage with holes in the roof? A field as barren as his father’s? Hard years and harder winters, with no more to your name than we have now? Is that the future you want for her?”

Enid flinched at the clash of their voices.

Murray glared. “Better hardship with a man she chooses than comfort as a sacrifice.”

Esther leaned forward, her eyes blazing. “Better a chance at something greater than watching her spirit be smothered in the same dirt that’s smothered us!”

The words hung like smoke.

Enid’s throat tightened. Tears pricked her eyes, though she fought them. She looked from her mother’s pleading face to her father’s stormy one, torn between the two halves of herself, the girl who dreamed of more, and the girl who wanted the simplicity of holding hands with Bruno under the sun.

Finally, she whispered: “What if I go... just to see?”

Both parents froze.

“I’m not saying yes,” Enid hurried to add. “Not saying I’ll marry her. But... if they’ve invited us, if they’ve sent the tickets... maybe I should see for myself. Then I’ll know.”

Her voice shook, but beneath it was a trace of steel neither parent expected.

Esther’s face softened with cautious relief. Murray looked away, jaw clenched, as though fighting against a tide.

“You’d have to be careful,” he muttered. “Watchful. Don’t trust them. Don’t give your heart to the first thing they promise you.”

Enid nodded. “I’ll be careful. But... I want to see.”

The clock ticked loudly in the silence that followed. The decision was not final, but the direction was set.

The candle had been lit. And whether it would guide Enid to brilliance or burn her to ash, none of them yet knew.

The farmhouse went completely silent long ago after Esther and Murray retreated to their bedroom.

Her brothers’ snores shook the rafters like the drone of some great engine, their voices rising and falling in discordant rhythm. Even the livestock outside had settled, the cattle’s soft lowing faded into silence, the dogs curled against one another in the barn. The crickets droned, steady and eternal. The wind pressed against the old boards of the house with sighs that seemed like ghosts searching for cracks.

But Enid could not sleep.

She turned once, twice, a dozen times beneath the quilt her mother had sewn from scraps of flannel. The pillow beneath her cheek felt too hot, then too cold. She shoved it away, pulled it back, kicked her legs free from the sheets, then tugged them close again. Nothing eased the restlessness in her bones.

The words from downstairs rang through her still.

A marriage. A girl you’ve never met. A life different from this one.

At first she thought it laughable, some wild story her parents had spun. But the letter was real, the tickets were real, Morticia Addams was real. And Wednesday Addams... was real.

She rolled onto her back, staring at the cracked plaster of the ceiling. The glow of her phone sat on the nightstand. She bit her lip, resisting the impulse. But resistance lasted only a moment.

With a sigh, she snatched it up and unlocked the screen.

The name felt strange beneath her thumbs.

Wednesday Addams.

The search results flooded instantly. Articles from newspapers, magazines, blogs. Lists of her books, reviews that praised or condemned with equal passion. Forums where readers dissected her every word like clues to some greater mystery.

But not a single photograph.

Enid scrolled, and scrolled, and scrolled again. There were pictures of her books with dark covers stamped and stark titles: Blood of the Innocent, The Anatomy of Silence, The Violet Hour, A Feast for Ravens. Each cover was minimal, unsettling, heavy with implication. But no author photo.

There were fan theories too, spiraling down into obsession.

One claimed Wednesday was hideously scarred, another that she wore a permanent veil, another that she was not a woman at all but a collective pseudonym for several writers. Some claimed she was already dead, her novels dictated posthumously. Others whispered of cult followings, private readings held in secret chambers.

Enid’s eyes widened with every line. It was thrilling, in a way, to peer into this void where certainty vanished and rumor reigned.

Only one fact repeated across sources: Wednesday Addams was twenty-nine years old. Ten years older than Enid. A whole decade of life she had not lived, mysteries she could not imagine.

Another detail surfaced occasionally: Hispanic heritage through her father’s line. Beyond that, silence.

Enid set the phone down on her chest, staring up into the dark. The absence was louder than the noise.

She tried to picture her. Was she tall, with shadows carved into her cheekbones? Or small and sharp, like a knife that cut only when you dared to touch it? Was her hair long or cropped? Did she smile, ever? 

Enid imagined her voice, low and dry, the kind of voice that could turn a compliment into a curse with only a shift of tone. The kind of voice that lingered long after the sound was gone.

What did she wear? Black gowns, of course. But were they stiff and severe, or loose and flowing, like shrouds? Did she sit at her typewriter in lace gloves, or barehanded, letting the ink and blood of her words stain her fingers?

Enid’s heart thudded. The image was frightening, but also mesmerizing.

And the books... Enid couldn't help herself, she unlocked her phone screen again. She opened one of the descriptions, skimming a synopsis. A child raised in silence by parents who feared her voice, discovering language only through screams carved in flesh. She winced, but read again. Another: A town where every family kept one corpse at the dinner table, feeding it until it bloated and burst.

Horrid. Unspeakable. Yet people adored them, consumed them, devoured the darkness as though starving.

Enid hugged her pillow tight, shivering though the night was warm.

This is the woman they think I could marry.

Her mind spiraled with possibilities.

What if Wednesday hated her? What if she took one look at her bright sweaters, her nervous chatter, her clumsy laughter and despised her?

What if Wednesday mocked her the way her brothers sometimes did? What if she turned her into a character in her next book, some simpering fool who became a cautionary tale?

And yet... what if she didn’t?

What if Wednesday listened to her, even a little? What if she let Enid’s cheer seep into her cracks like sunlight through shutters? What if Enid could really matter to her?

The thought made her chest ache, half with fear, half with longing.

She thought of Bruno, of the way he smelled of earth and hay, of the warmth of his palm when he slipped the flower into her hand. Safe, familiar and kind. A life with him would be small, perhaps, but warm.

But the Addams girl was a door. A door to something else.

Enid turned over again, burying her face in the pillow. Her thoughts ran wild, overlapping, tangled. Fear of leaving, fear of staying. Fear of being too much, fear of not enough.

By midnight her eyes burned, but sleep refused her. She picked up her phone again, scrolling back through the forums.

Some users worshiped Wednesday as a goddess of literature. Others condemned her as the herald of society’s collapse. One long thread debated the absence of her image, insisting it was purposeful, that to be faceless was to be untouchable, beyond human judgment.

Enid chewed her lip. Untouchable. That was the word.

She closed the phone at last, laying it on the nightstand, face down. The glow faded, leaving only the shadows of the room.

Her dreams, when they came at last, were strange: she stood in a garden of black flowers that reeked of sweetness too strong to bear. Ravens wheeled overhead, their cries like laughter. And from the far end of the garden, a figure approached, dark and faceless. Enid tried to run, but her feet rooted to the soil. The faceless girl reached her, touched her cheek and though there were no eyes to see, Enid felt herself being seen.

She woke gasping, heart hammering, the sheets twisted tight around her legs.

Dawn had not yet come. The house still slept. But her world would never be the same.

The morning broke loud, as always. Roosters crowed from the yard, their cries slicing the dawn air. The Sinclair boys thundered down the staircase like cavalry, boots striking the wood in uneven rhythm. Pots clattered in the kitchen, arguments rose and fell over who stole whose shirt, who ate more than their share of bread. The smell of coffee mingled with hay and sweat drifting in from the fields.

But Enid moved through it like a ghost.

Her blonde hair was messy from tossing all night. Shadows bruised the skin beneath her eyes, and though she tried to hide it with smiles, they slipped, crooked and thin. Her thoughts had not left her for a moment; they had followed her into waking, filling every corner of her mind with the same image, or lack of one.

Wednesday Addams.

And as always, Bruno was waiting outside.

He leaned against the fence post with that easy grin of his, long curls falling into his eyes, a flower held between his fingers. He plucked them daily from wherever he passed, never roses or lilies, but the wild blossoms that grew along the ditch or in the meadow, simple things that carried the scent of grass and sunlight.

“Morning, Enid,” he called softly, holding out the stem like a peace offering.

Usually, she would beam and bounce forward, take it with a flourish and tuck it behind her ear. But this morning her hand hesitated. She took the flower, but she turned it in her fingers instead of wearing it, her gaze distant.

Bruno’s smile faltered. “Rough night?”

Enid forced a laugh. “Something like that.” But her voice lacked the usual sparkle, and Bruno noticed. His brow furrowed, concern creeping into his gentle features. He wanted to press, but the sounds of his father shouting for him across the field pulled him away.

“I’ll see you later,” he said reluctantly before jogging off.

Enid watched him go, guilt twisting in her chest. He was kind, steady and safe. But her heart was caught elsewhere, in the mystery she could not touch, the shadow of a girl who had no face.

From the window, Esther had seen it all. She saw the hesitation in her daughter’s hand, the dimness of her smile, the way Bruno left with confusion in his eyes. Esther’s heart ached. She knew her daughter well enough to recognize when something had shifted.

And she knew the cause.

By the time Enid returned to the kitchen, Esther had already poured two mugs of coffee. She gestured to the chair beside her.

“Sit, darling.”

Enid sat, fingers playing nervously with the wildflower still in her hand.

“You didn’t sleep,” Esther said gently. It was not a question.

Enid shook her head, her curls bobbing. “I tried. But I kept thinking about her.”

Her voice was small and hesitant, as though speaking Wednesday’s name aloud might summon her from the shadows.

Esther reached across the table, covering her daughter’s restless hands with her own. “Tell me.”

Enid swallowed, eyes fixed on the table. “I looked her up,” she confessed. “Online. I thought maybe I’d see her, just a picture, even one. But there’s nothing. Not a single photo of her anywhere. Just books and stories and... theories.” She shivered slightly. “Some people say she’s scarred. Others say she’s not even real. That she’s... a monster.”

Her voice dropped on the last word, half-fear, half-wonder.

“I keep trying to picture her,” Enid went on, words spilling faster now. “Does she have burns across her face? Or eyes like glass? Is she tall? Short? Does she smile? Or is she like those faceless dolls in the attic, the ones that make you feel cold just looking at them?”

Her fingers clenched the flower until the petals bruised. “I don’t know which scares me more, the idea that she’s hideous or that she’s beautiful. Either way, she’s...” Enid trailed off, breath trembling. “...she’s not just a person anymore. She’s a story.”

Esther’s heart tightened.

Enid lifted her gaze at last, her blue eyes wide and pleading. “Mom... if you choose to go, I’ll come too. I’ll get on that plane. But I have one condition.”

Esther held her breath.

“I need to see her first. Just once. A picture. Anything. I can’t walk into a house and face a stranger who’s only a shadow. I need to know she’s real. That she’s not...” Enid faltered, whispering the word again. “...a monster.”

The silence that followed was heavy.

Esther smoothed her daughter’s wild hair with a trembling hand. “Oh, my sweet girl. I understand.”

She did. More than Enid could know. For Esther herself had seen Morticia and Gomez flesh and bone, years ago in those fields. Strange, but real. She could not fault her daughter for wanting proof before stepping into the unknown.

Still, she knew the risk. Morticia guarded her daughter’s privacy like a dragon hoards gold. To ask for an image of Wednesday was to pierce the veil Morticia had drawn deliberately. Would she grant it? Or would she bristle insulted and retreat behind shadows?

Esther pressed a kiss to Enid’s temple. “I will write to her,” she promised. “I will ask. But you must know, darling, she may not give us what you want.”

Enid nodded, lips trembling. “Then I won’t go. I can’t.”

When Enid left to help her brothers in the fields, Esther remained at the table, staring down into the dregs of her coffee. Her hands shook slightly as she folded Morticia’s letter again.

She wanted this for her daughter, the chance at something beyond the dirt and sweat of their fields, beyond the narrow path Bruno could offer. But she could not force Enid into a faceless fate.

If Morticia refused, what then? Would the fragile hope she had nurtured shatter? Would her daughter drift back into Bruno’s arms, safe but bound to hardship?

Esther’s heart pulled both ways, torn between practicality and love.

Above all, she feared one thing: that her daughter’s bright light might be smothered, either by the soil of this farm, or by the abyss of a girl no one could see.

Chapter Text

The boys had collapsed into their beds, their snores reverberating through the wooden beams of the Sinclair farmhouse. The night insects hummed outside, crickets droning in rhythm with the distant rustle of the fields. Esther sat alone at the table with a lantern burning low, the flame stretching shadows along the walls.

She had spread a sheet of paper before her, the edge trembling under her fingers. The pen hovered above it, not that she could not write, but because she knew how much rode on the words.

Morticia Addams was not a woman to be approached carelessly.

Esther had known her briefly, years ago, enough to sense the darkness that clung to her like perfume. Morticia’s grace had been undeniable, her beauty otherworldly, but so too her sharpness. One wrong phrase could turn this opportunity to dust.

And yet, her daughter’s plea rang in her ears: I can’t walk into that house blind. I need to see her first.

So Esther began.

Dearest Morticia,

I write with gratitude for your last letter and the invitation enclosed. The generosity you have extended to my family humbles us deeply and I confess I have spent many days in careful thought over the possibility you have raised.

You must forgive a mother’s heart, for it is not suspicion but protectiveness that moves my hand tonight. My Enid is young and unformed still, bright of spirit and tender in her innocence. For her sake, and not for doubt of you or your daughter, I find myself asking for something I hope will not be taken as offense.

She has asked to see your Wednesday, even if only once, in some manner. To place a face upon the name she has heard. It is not fear that drives her but a need to feel that she is walking toward a person of flesh and bone, and not a shadow of rumor. I believe this small grace would grant her the strength to step forward.

I know well that privacy is a treasure, and that you and yours guard it wisely. Still, I hope you might indulge a mother’s plea for her child.

With respect and friendship,

Esther Sinclair

The ink dried slowly under the lantern’s glow. Esther read it again, smoothing the creases from her worry, then folded it carefully, sealing it in an envelope. When she pressed it into the mailman’s hand the next morning, her heart fluttered with both dread and hope.

Hundreds of miles away, Morticia received it.

The Addams estate loomed silent around her as she slit the envelope with a long nail. The handwriting was familiar, delicate and restrained, so different from her daughter’s keystrokes on the typewriter. She read slowly, savoring the undertones.

A mother’s protectiveness... she had expected this. For what was Wednesday if not a constant provocation for worry? To strangers, she was a phantom. To admirers, a legend. To gossipers, a specter of morbidity.

Morticia folded the letter once more, pressing it to her lips briefly in thought.

She had no photograph of Wednesday to send. None existed, not by her daughter’s command. Wednesday loathed images, declaring them "soul-thieves" and "vanities fit for fools." Whenever family insisted on portraits, she would endure them only on the condition of brush and ink, never a camera’s lens.

But there was something.

In the great hall of the mansion hung the Addams Family Generational Portrait. Every twenty years, the family gathered before a chosen artist, never the same one twice, lest familiarity dull the brush and they were captured anew.

The tradition was old, stretching back centuries, each canvas like a window into the peculiar evolution of their bloodline. Candlelight always guided the hand, shadows and chiaroscuro making every face at once alive and spectral.

The most recent one had been painted nine years ago. Wednesday had been twenty, freshly shed from Nevermore, sharp as a knife, not yet swallowed whole by her solitude. She had tolerated the sitting with characteristic disdain, but in the end the likeness was uncanny.

Morticia’s gaze lingered on the section of the portrait that held her daughter.

Wednesday’s hair was in two long braids, the strands gleaming like strands of black silk. A blunt fringe rested above her dark, unyielding eyes, the eyes that the painter had rendered so faithfully that they seemed to follow you across the hall. In the left brow, a narrow slit interrupted the line, a scar she bore with silent pride.

Her skin was pale as candle wax, yet tinged faintly with her Mexican heritage, a warmth beneath the pallor that deepened the shadows of her cheekbones. Her lips, painted in the faintest shade of dark crimson, pressed together in that thin and unsmiling line that was so utterly hers.

She wore black, of course. The portrait caught only from the waist up, but it was enough to suggest the monochromatic layers she favored: stark collar, severe bodice and cloth that devoured light rather than reflected it.

Her expression was not cruel, but it was merciless. A face that held no compromise, no yielding softness. And yet, there was a beauty in it. Not the rosy bloom of youth, but the dangerous elegance of a blade honed to its edge.

Morticia reached out, her fingertips grazing the dried paint as though it were flesh.

“Yes, my little viper,” she murmured. “You were terrible even then.”

Morticia could not send the portrait itself, of course. But she summoned the house’s archivist, a cadaverous cousin who specialized in preserving Addams history and within a day a detailed ink reproduction had been made. It captured Wednesday’s likeness faithfully enough, though some of the shadowy presence of the original was inevitably lost.

She placed it into an envelope, along with a note penned in her precise, elegant hand:

Dearest Esther,

Your words moved me deeply. I understand well the ferocity of a mother’s care, for I carry the same in my heart every hour of the day.

You ask to see my daughter. Know that she has long refused the vanity of photographs and shuns the gaze of the camera, but we do possess a family tradition which has preserved her likeness. I enclose here a reproduction of her portion of our most recent generational portrait, painted when she was twenty years of age. While it does not reflect her current state entirely, it is a close representation of her features and presence. Time has, of course, etched its subtleties upon her face, as it does upon us all.

I trust this will suffice to reassure your Enid that she is flesh and not fable. Though be warned, dear friend, Wednesday’s spirit is more difficult still to capture than her likeness. That, I fear, Enid will have to meet in person.

With fondness,

Morticia Addams

Morticia sealed the letter with black wax and pressed into it the family crest, a skeletal hand clutching a rose.

When the courier departed with it, she leaned back in her chair, a faint smile curling at her lips. She had given the Sinclairs just enough to comfort and just enough to unsettle.

The days that followed Morticia’s invitation moved like treacle.

For Enid, time refused to keep its pace. It slowed, snagged on every task, then jolted forward when her mind wandered into daydreams of what might be waiting in the next letter. Her brothers teased her for bumping into doorframes, dropping spoons and even tripping over her own boots. Usually, she’d giggle along with them, her cheeks pink and tossing back some playful retort. But now her laughter rang thinner and distracted.

Even Bruno noticed.

He came every morning, as reliable as the sunrise, with his clumsy wildflower in hand. His voice was soft as always, his smile wide, his curls damp with dew. But where Enid had once glowed under his gaze, she now seemed to wilt. She accepted the flower but fidgeted with it, the petals falling between her fingers as she twisted it restlessly.

“Are you sick?” Bruno asked one morning, his voice rough with concern.

Enid shook her head, smiling too quickly. “Just tired.”

But her eyes were elsewhere, unfocused, as though she were watching something unfold just behind the horizon. Bruno left with worry weighing on his shoulders, muttering to himself in the field.

Esther, though, knew exactly what clouded her daughter’s thoughts. She had seen the restless pacing at night, the faraway look, the way Enid’s hands lingered on the envelope Morticia had already sent, as though willing another one to appear.

Her heart twisted. She had hoped Morticia’s plan might plant a seed of curiosity in Enid, but she had not expected it to blossom so quickly into this flush of anticipation. Her daughter was caught, not by Wednesday herself, but by the mystery of her.

Still, Esther reassured herself, curiosity was natural. What girl of nineteen wouldn’t want to see the face of the woman she might be bound to?

She prayed that Morticia would answer swiftly. And Morticia did.

On the third morning after Esther's request, the clatter of hooves drew near. The Sinclair boys were already outside, clamoring for the mailman, hoping for catalogues or farming notices.

But Esther saw the envelope the moment he reached into his satchel. The paper was cream, the seal black wax pressed with a skeletal hand clutching a rose. Her heart skipped.

“Give that here,” she said quickly, intercepting before curious eyes could linger.

“What’s that?” one of her sons demanded, brow raised.

“Nothing for you,” Esther replied smoothly, slipping it into her apron pocket. “Now help your father with the calves.”

The boys groaned but obeyed. Only Enid caught the flicker of tension in her mother’s face, and her heart began to race.

They waited until night.

The house settled into quiet again, lanterns dimmed, the boys heavy in their beds. Murray sat at the kitchen table with his arms folded, watching Esther with the envelope between them. Enid hovered near the hearth, her knees drawn to her chest, chewing her lip raw.

“Open it,” she whispered.

Esther broke the wax seal with care, her fingers steady though her pulse thundered. The paper slipped free, folded neatly, Morticia’s handwriting curling across the page. Beneath it, wrapped in protective parchment, lay the drawing.

For a long moment, no one touched it.

Finally, Esther lifted the paper. The inked face emerged. Wednesday's face pale, sharp and framed by two severe braids. Her dark eyes stared out with such unflinching intensity that even the dim kitchen light seemed to darken around them.

Enid gasped.

Her breath caught in her throat as though she’d been struck. She reached forward before she could stop herself, fingertips hovering just above the drawing.

“She’s... ” The word trembled out of her. “...real.”

And not at all what she expected.

Enid, for nights she had imagined scars, deformities, shadows twisting a face into something monstrous. But this was worse, because it was better.

Wednesday was beautiful. Not softly or warmly, but with the cutting beauty of a storm on the horizon. Her features were sharp, her gaze merciless, her mouth unsmiling yet magnetic.

Enid’s cheeks burned. She studied every detail: the fringe across her brow, the scar slicing her eyebrow, the high bones of her cheeks, the way her eyes seemed to pierce. She imagined her older now, nine years past the portrait, how the sternness might have deepened, how the lines of her face might have sharpened further.

She imagined her voice. She thought about is as low and steady, She imagined the weight of her silence too.

The flower Bruno had given her that morning lay forgotten on the table.

Esther was surprised too, though in her case, pleasantly. She had not expected such a severe beauty, but she saw the strength in those features, the nobility. If her daughter was to be tied to someone of this lineage, at least she would not be hidden in shame.

“Yes,” Esther said softly. “That’s her.”

She glanced at Enid, whose wide eyes had not moved from the portrait. Something in her daughter’s expression both thrilled and unsettled her. Fascination, almost reverence. The hook had sunk deeper than she anticipated.

Murray leaned back, scowling.

“Look at those eyes,” he muttered. “Cold as the grave. I don’t like it.”

Esther shot him a warning glance, but he pressed on. “You think a face like that will treat our Enid kindly? She looks like she’d sooner carve her open than hold her hand.”

Enid snapped her head toward him, her cheeks hot. “That’s not fair. You don’t even know her.”

“I don’t need to,” Murray said, his voice low. “That picture tells me enough. She’s not one of us. And I’ll be damned if I hand you over to someone who looks at the world like it’s a corpse on a table.”

The room went silent, tension stretching between them.

That night, long after her parents had gone to bed, Enid lay awake with the portrait tucked beneath her pillow. She pulled it out again and again, tracing the ink with her fingertips.

What would Wednesday look like at twenty-nine? Would her hair still fall in braids, or would she let it flow dark and loose? Would her lips still be painted, or bare, pale as her skin?

Would she be taller than her? Would her hands be cold? Would she ever smile?

Enid closed her eyes and imagined meeting her. Walking into that vast, dark mansion she probably lives. Seeing those eyes fixed on her not from paper, but across the room.

Her heart pounded in her chest, equal parts fear and something else she could not yet name.

Chapter Text

The days before their journey stretched taut with secrets. Esther and Murray told the boys a simple excuse: that they were taking Enid for a short trip, just the three of them to visit old friends in New Jersey. The boys grumbled about being left to manage the farm, but they shrugged it off quickly enough. None of them imagined anything more.

Enid told Bruno the same.

He caught her near the fence as he always did, flower in hand and his smile soft. When she explained she would be gone for the weekend, something in his expression faltered.

“New Jersey?” he repeated with his brows knitting.

She nodded quickly, too quickly, clutching the flower like a lifeline. “Just with my parents. I’ll be back before you know it.”

He tried to smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’ll save you a flower for when you get back.”

Enid’s throat tightened. She kissed his cheek lightly before retreating, heart pounding, guilt gnawing at her ribs. Bruno was steady, familiar and yet her mind kept drifting back to the inked portrait folded carefully in her drawer upstairs.

Preparation became its own ritual. Esther guided Enid through her modest wardrobe, folding her best dresses, brushing the fabric until it looked almost new. “It doesn’t matter if we come from little,” she murmured, smoothing the wrinkles. “We must still walk with dignity.”

Enid listened half-heartedly, her thoughts elsewhere. When her mother wasn’t looking, she slipped the folded portrait of Wednesday into her bag, tucking it between layers of clothing. She could not imagine going without it.

Meanwhile, Murray scowled as he packed his threadbare shirts. “What kind of people send tickets like this without asking?” he muttered. “Like we’re puppets they can move around.”

Esther ignored the complaint, though her stomach tightened. She needed Murray steady, but his suspicion had been growing louder since the portrait arrived.

On the morning of departure, the family piled into the old truck, rattling down the highway toward San Francisco International.

Enid pressed her forehead to the window, watching the world blur past. Each mile closer made her chest tighter. Dread and excitement tangled in her veins until she could no longer tell one from the other.

The airport itself overwhelmed them the moment they entered. The sheer size of it the soaring ceilings, the walls of glass, the constant tide of people pulling suitcases left them gawking like country folk at a fair.

Murray muttered curses under his breath. Esther clutched her daughter’s hand tightly. Enid, though nervous, couldn’t help but thrill at the rush of it all.

Then came the tickets.

“Business class,” the attendant confirmed, her smile polite but slightly surprised as she scanned the Addams crest stamped on the booking. “This way, please.”

The Sinclairs followed uncertainly, led away from the crowded main terminals into quieter, carpeted halls.

The business class area was another world. Wide leather seats with enough room to stretch out, soft blankets folded neatly at each place. The clink of real silverware as attendants set trays. Glasses of champagne offered before takeoff.

Esther’s eyes widened as she sank into her seat. “My word...” she whispered, stroking the armrest as though it might vanish.

Enid giggled, her nerves momentarily forgotten as she explored the seat, the buttons that tilted it back, the pouch of little gifts and the window with a view of the wing. She bounced with the giddy thrill of it, imagining Wednesday in such a place, dark and composed, sipping something bitter as though luxury were her birthright.

Murray was less enchanted. He sat stiff with his arms folded, glaring at the glass of champagne offered to him. “All this comfort’s just another trick,” he muttered. “Trying to make us forget what we’re walking into.”

Esther sighed but said nothing. She sipped the champagne instead, letting the bubbles fizz against her tongue. For just a moment she allowed herself to dream.

If this was even a shadow of the life Wednesday could provide for her daughter... was it so wrong to hope?

Enid pressed her forehead to the window again as the plane taxied, her heart hammering. She had never flown before. The vibration of the engines thrilled and frightened her, the tilt of the earth as the plane rose into the sky stealing her breath.

Down below, San Francisco dwindled to a patchwork of lights. The farm, Bruno, her brothers, all of it seemed suddenly small and left behind as the clouds swallowed them.

She thought of the portrait. She thought of the eyes that had stared at her through ink and paper, unyielding.

What would those eyes look like in person? Would they narrow with disdain? Would they soften, even for a moment, at the sight of her?

The thought both terrified and delighted her. She hugged the blanket to her chest, a smile tugging at her lips even as her stomach knotted.

She was flying toward something, or someone that felt larger than fate.

Esther glanced at her daughter, watching the blush creep into her cheeks as she stared out the window. She knew that look. It was the look of a girl teetering between fear and infatuation.

It frightened her, but it also gave her hope.

Perhaps Morticia had been right. Perhaps Wednesday, with all her darkness needed a spark like Enid. And perhaps Enid needed someone who could pull her into a world far beyond the dirt and toil of their farm.

She allowed herself to imagine her daughter’s life transformed with silk sheets, glittering halls, respect, security. No more calloused hands from endless chores, no more worry about bills or broken tractors.

She imagined grandchildren raised in luxury, their Sinclair blood entwined with the Addams name.

Her heart swelled with longing.

But Murray did not share the vision.

He shifted uncomfortably in the wide seat, his boots awkward against the polished floor. Every time an attendant smiled too politely, every time he noticed the discreet Addams crest embossed on the ticket sleeve, his suspicion deepened.

“Mark my words,” he growled under his breath. “No one gives away this kind of comfort without expecting a price. And the price is always higher than you think.”

Esther tried to soothe him, but his eyes never left Enid. He watched his daughter with a father’s fear, convinced she was being drawn into a snare.

Hours passed and the hum of the plane settled into a lullaby. Esther dozed with a silk blanket over her lap. Murray sat awake and tense, arms folded.

However, Enid remained restless. She pulled the portrait of Wednesday from her bag, shielding it from view as though it were a guilty secret. She studied it under the dim cabin light, her breath catching at the familiar features.

She whispered softly to herself, words she could not admit aloud: I’m coming. 

And the inked girl on the paper stared back, silent and unyielding, as the plane carried her across the country toward the woman she had never met, but could no longer stop imagining.

The wheels of the plane landed on the New Jersey runway with a thud that rattled Enid’s teeth. Her mother had dozed beside her, her father had stayed rigid and watchful, but Enid had stared out the window through darkness and sunrise, her heart was hammering loudly.

Now, as the cabin doors opened and the passengers filed out, she clutched her bag a little too tightly, the folded portrait hidden inside.

The airport here was smaller than San Francisco’s but no less overwhelming. Voices overlapped in the terminal, carts squeaked, screens flashed arrivals and departures. The Sinclairs moved awkwardly among the crowd, their plain clothes and weathered faces setting them apart from sleek travelers in suits.

“Stay close,” Esther murmured, though she herself looked wide-eyed at everything around them.

Murray grumbled something inaudible, his broad hand resting protectively against Enid’s shoulder as though to anchor her in the sea of strangers.

And then they saw him.

Lurch

He stood near the glass doors, impossible to miss. Nearly seven feet tall, his shoulders like an ox and skin pale as candle wax. His suit was black and perfectly pressed, though it seemed to stretch oddly over his towering frame. His eyes drooped in their sockets, his lips downturned in a permanent mournful line.

In one massive hand he held a sign with their name, “SINCLAIR,” written in elegant looping ink.

Esther stopped in her tracks. Murray muttered, “Good Lord...” under his breath. Enid’s mouth fell open slightly.

The man did not approach, but when their eyes met, he dipped his head in acknowledgment. Then he moved slowly and with one enormous arm gathered their luggage, as though it weighed nothing.

“You rang?” he asked in a voice that rumbled like a distant organ.

Enid squeaked a laugh she couldn’t suppress. The sound of it startled her; she clapped a hand over her mouth. Murray scowled, uneasy, but Esther whispered, “It must be him... Morticia’s manservant.”

Lurch turned toward the sliding glass doors. “This way.”

Outside, the sky was heavy and gray, clouds bruised with the threat of rain. Parked at the curb was a vehicle that drew stares even from the jaded locals: a limousine stretched long and glossy, but shaped like a hearse, its windows tinted, its frame detailed with wrought iron patterns reminiscent of tomb gates.

The Sinclairs hesitated.

Lurch opened the door with a creak. The interior glowed dimly with amber light, lined with plush velvet. Crystal decanters gleamed in holders, and silver trays offered candied fruits, dark chocolates and wine.

Esther gasped. “It’s like something out of—” She stopped, unsure if finishing with a funeral would be polite.

Enid slid in first, drawn by curiosity, her eyes drinking in every gothic detail. She had never imagined luxury could look like this, not clean and sterile like the plane, but dark, lush and almost theatrical. It felt like stepping into another century.

Murray entered last, grumbling as the door shut behind him with a finality that felt too much like a lock.

The limousine pulled away, gliding from the airport into the countryside. Buildings gave way to trees, traffic thinning until the road seemed swallowed by forest.

The windows muted the world outside, but Enid leaned close to the glass, watching the trees blur. The air grew heavier as they drove, mist curling across the ground, branches arching like skeletal fingers above.

Esther clasped her hands together, her face pale but alight. “Do you feel it?” she whispered. “As though the air itself changes the closer we come.”

Murray snorted. “I feel it, all right. Like we’re being hauled to the gallows.”

Enid didn’t answer. Her stomach fluttered as though with butterflies, though they felt more like moths, their wings dusting her insides. She imagined Wednesday living out here, tucked away from the world, feeding on the quiet gloom. It made sense. It fit everything she had read, everything she had dreamed.

The portrait burned in her memory, the sharp features, the unflinching gaze. She pressed her palms against her knees to still the tremor in her hands.

At last, the trees parted. The Addams estate rose ahead, sprawling across the land like a shadow given shape. The mansion loomed with turrets and gables, windows set like watchful eyes. Iron gates stretched wide, their bars twisted into thorn-like spirals. Crows perched along the posts, their wings shivering as the limousine approached.

Esther inhaled sharply, awe softening the lines of her face. “Magnificent,” she whispered.

Murray muttered a curse under his breath, though his own gaze could not leave the structure. It was unlike anything he had seen, part castle, part cathedral, part mausoleum.

Enid pressed against the window, her breath fogging the glass. She had never seen anything so strange, so beautiful, so frightening.

And then her gaze lifted higher.

Beyond the mansion, on a rise of stone further up the slope, stood another structure.

It was more solitary, less sprawling than the main estate, but even darker in its silhouette. Its tower rose like a finger pointing toward the storm-thick sky. The windows glowed faintly, though whether with candles or something colder was impossible to tell.

“There,” Enid breathed. “What’s that?”

Lurch, who had been silent as stone until then, rumbled low. “Miss Wednesday’s residence.”

Esther’s eyes widened. Murray’s frown deepened into a scowl. Enid could not look away. Her throat went dry, her pulse quickened.

It wasn’t the mansion that unsettled her most, but that tower, that isolated silhouette against the sky. That was where she was going. That was where she was meant to meet the woman whose face had haunted her for nights.

Her heart stuttered as she whispered, “That’s her house...”

The reality of it struck her with full weight: She was not dreaming. She was here. 

Chapter Text

The limousine rolled to a stop before gates that had already opened of their own accord. Gravel crunched beneath its wheels as it followed the long drive toward the looming mansion.

Enid’s nose pressed against the window as she drank it all in: the twisting hedges shaped like skeletal hands, the cawing of crows that wheeled above, the statues that lined the path. There were angels with broken wings, saints with faces half-eroded, gargoyles leering as though alive.

And yet, the deeper they went, the more the darkness revealed its opulence. Lanterns burned with golden light among the shadows, casting a glow that seemed almost theatrical. The iron gates and carvings were intricate, masterful. The windows of the house gleamed as though freshly polished. The grounds were immaculate in their strangeness.

“It’s like a castle,” Enid whispered, awe and fear in equal measure.

Murray grunted. “It’s like a cemetery dressed up for a ball.”

Esther squeezed her daughter’s hand gently. “It’s... extraordinary,” she murmured, her voice carrying a tremor.

The car slowed before steps that swept up to massive double doors of blackened oak. At their center gleamed knockers shaped like wolves’ heads, fangs bared, eyes set with polished yellow.

Lurch stepped out first, unfolding to his full height. He opened the door for them, his expression unchanged.

“Welcome,” he rumbled.

The Sinclairs climbed out, their boots crunching against gravel. The sheer size of the mansion dwarfed them, its shadow stretching long across the grounds.

Then the doors opened.

Gomez Addams strode forward with the energy of a man half his age, his pinstriped suit clinging to him as though he had been sewn into it. His dark hair was slicked back, his mustache immaculately groomed. His eyes, black and bright, glittered with warmth and mischief.

“Mis amigos!” he cried, arms spread wide as though he meant to embrace the entire family. “At last, the Sinclairs grace our home! What joy, what honor!”

He seized Murray’s hand before the farmer could react, shaking it vigorously. Murray nearly lost his footing.

“So glad you are here, Murray Sinclair.” Gomez said with a flourish, bowing slightly but never releasing his grip until he chose to.

Murray blinked, muttered, “Uh... Thanks,” and pulled his hand back as though scorched.

Then Gomez swept to Esther, catching her fingers lightly and bowing over them with courtly grace. “Ah, Esther Sinclair,” he said warmly. “Even time bows before you, not a day older than the day we met.”

Esther flushed faintly, startled, but managed a smile. “Mr. Addams... Gomez. You are as charming as always. Your reputation is still accurate.”

Gomez’s eyes twinkled. “It is no reputation, merely fact.”

And then, as though the world itself paused to allow her entrance, Morticia appeared.

She moved as though she glided rather than walked, her gown of black clinging like a living shadow. Her hair, raven dark, flowed like liquid silk down her back. Her pale face was serene, her lips a perfect slash of deep crimson. She carried herself with such poise that even the towering doors behind her seemed diminished.

“Esther,” she said, her voice low, velvety, and resonant with memory.

The two women regarded one another across the threshold of years. For Esther, the sight tugged loose images she had not touched in decades: long conversations over strange herbs, laughter in the dim light of a San Francisco evening, the uncanny comfort of a friend both alien and familiar.

“Morticia,” Esther whispered, her throat tight. “It has been... far too long.”

Morticia extended a hand, her smile subtle, restrained but genuine. Esther stepped forward and clasped it. Their fingers lingered together, a brief spark of old camaraderie reigniting.

Then Morticia turned her gaze and Enid felt it like a physical touch.

For a moment, Enid forgot how to breathe. Morticia’s eyes swept over her, dark and heavy-lidded, seeming to read her at once. They lingered not with disapproval, but with recognition, as though Morticia saw more than Enid had ever shown anyone.

A small smile curved Morticia’s lips. Not the polite smile of a hostess, nor the sharp one of strategy, but something gentler. Pleased.

“My, how you’ve grown,” Morticia murmured, her voice carrying the faintest lilt of amusement. “The last time we met, you were hardly more than a toddler. You clung to your mother’s skirts and hid from Gomez.”

Enid blinked, stunned. “I... don’t remember that.”

“Of course not,” Morticia said smoothly. “But I do. And I must say, the years have been most kind to you. You blossomed beautifully, my dear.”

Enid’s cheeks warmed, though she tried to school her features into composure. Something about Morticia’s presence made her feel both small and strangely significant.

Esther exhaled softly, watching Morticia’s gaze on her daughter. It was the very thing she had hoped for. Morticia saw what she had seen all along, that Enid was light itself and light could transform darkness.

“Come, come,” Gomez urged, sweeping them forward. “Our home is your home. Step inside, and leave the dull world behind you!”

The Sinclairs hesitated only a moment before following him across the threshold.

The interior of the mansion was no less overwhelming than the exterior. Dark wood paneled the walls, polished to a gleam. Chandeliers of wrought iron dripped candles whose flames danced in unseen drafts. Tapestries hung heavy, their designs intricate and unsettling: family crests entwined with skulls, gothic landscapes, scenes that blurred the line between beauty and grotesque.

And yet, for all its darkness, the house was immaculate, its air scented faintly with roses and incense. Every shadow seemed curated, every corner alive with strange elegance.

Esther stared in awe. Murray’s jaw tightened. Enid turned in slow circles, her eyes wide. She could not decide if it was terrifying or wondrous, perhaps both.

From somewhere deeper in the house came the faint sound of harpsichord keys, delicate and haunting.

Morticia glided ahead of them, her hand brushing Gomez’s arm as they walked in unison. They were the perfect pair: Gomez’ exuberance and Morticia’s restraint, his fire and her stillness.

At the grand staircase, Morticia paused and turned once more to Enid.

“Welcome, my dear,” she said, her voice silk. “To the House of Addams.”

Enid shivered. Not with fear. With something else she could not yet name.

The keys of her typewriter rattled like machine gun fire, each word a bullet tearing into the page.

Wednesday sat hunched in her chair, the candlelight painting her pale face in harsh lines. Her hands moved with manic precision, pressing ink into permanence. Words poured out of her like venom from a punctured fang.

The chapter she was working on was reaching its crescendo: a character driven to madness by the sound of a lover’s voice long after their throat had been slit. The echo of grief becoming a noose. Wednesday’s pulse matched the rhythm of the prose. Her lips curled faintly at the beauty of it.

And then, she froze.

Something shifted. Not in the room, not in the mansion of stone that she had turned into her sanctuary, but in the air. The radiation of the darkness, the delicate hum of energies she lived by trembled with intrusion.

Her hands stilled over the keys.

Her black eyes narrowed.

She rose with the fluid grace of a predator, the hem of her black gown brushing against the cold floor. Each step was soundless. She crossed her study, the walls lined with books, jars of poisons, pinned birds, until she reached the window.

The curtain was heavy, a velvet so thick it nearly swallowed light. She pulled it back only an inch, enough to peer down the hill.

There, below, the Addams mansion gleamed with its usual gothic majesty. But what caught her attention was not the house itself, it was the carriage of modern intrusion that stood at its door. The hearse-like limousine had not come for her. No, its purpose was her parents’.

Figures stood outside, gathered at the threshold.

She adjusted her gaze with the sharpness of a hawk. She saw them clearly despite the distance.

A man, broad and awkward in posture, clothes that screamed of toil rather than refinement. A woman beside him, composed but plainly dressed. And between them... 

Wednesday winced.

The girl radiated color like an infection. Blonde hair, bright clothing, a presence that practically glowed against the dark backdrop of the Addams estate. Her laughter carried faintly even up the hill, bright as the crack of glass.

Wednesday’s eyebrows creased slightly.

It took only a moment for memory to supply the answer. Her last conversation with her mother, two weeks ago. Morticia’s voice smooth as velvet, her words dripping with carefully measured weight. The future. Love. A companion who might bring warmth into your life.

Wednesday had dismissed it at the time. Morticia was relentless with her sentimental campaigns. All her life, she had been hounded by the Addams creed of "overbearing love." Even as a child she had despised it, her parents’ perpetual devotion, their insistence that passion was life’s highest truth.

Now she saw the proof of her mother’s plotting, paraded in technicolor at the foot of the hill.

Her eyes narrowed further.

Morticia never acted without layers of intent. And this, this was larger than the petty matchmaking attempts she had orchestrated before. Wednesday could see the scale of it in her mother’s movements, in the very fact she had brought strangers into the sanctum of the estate.

This was not chance. This was design.

Her mind unraveled it as though disassembling a clockwork. Morticia had always believed that Wednesday’s isolation was a crack in the Addams legacy. She tolerated it, even admired it at times, but she feared it would consume Wednesday whole. So now, she had chosen to interfere.

This girl, this colorful creature, was her weapon.

Wednesday turned from the window, pacing slowly, her arms folded tight behind her back. She could already sense the narrative Morticia wanted to weave: that light must temper dark, that warmth must soften cold. That Wednesday, like some unfinished sculpture, required polishing by another’s hand.

Disgust curled in her stomach.

What her mother called "love," Wednesday called dilution. Corruption. Weakness disguised as intimacy.

And yet, her mind betrayed her with an image of that girl again. Her hair catching light even beneath the gray sky, her face open and bright.

Wednesday scowled, shutting the thought down with ruthless precision.

This was not the first attempt.

Wednesday remembered the past vividly: the endless suggestions of "acquaintances," the orchestrated dinners, the carefully arranged meetings with peers Morticia had deemed "suitable." All failures.

Wednesday had annihilated them one by one, with her words, her silence, or simply the sheer suffocating gravity of her disinterest.

Her mother had always retreated gracefully, but never entirely. Morticia’s belief in love was not shaken by failure. She treated it as inevitability.

But this time Morticia was gambling more. Wednesday could feel it. Inviting outsiders into their home, tying family reputation to a stranger’s presence... this was not a casual attempt. This was a calculated campaign.

Her mother had shifted the battlefield.

Wednesday returned to the window. The girl had vanished inside the house now, swallowed by the doors. Only the echo of her brightness lingered, vibrating faintly in the evening air.

Wednesday’s face was unreadable as she watched the empty threshold.

Morticia thought she could manipulate her. That she could orchestrate some grotesque imitation of romance and chain Wednesday with it.

Her jaw tightened.

Let her try.

Wednesday had long since learned the art of resistance. Her will was iron. Her solitude was not prison, but freedom.

If her mother believed she could ensnare her with ribbons of sentimentality, she would soon remember why her daughter was feared as much as she was admired.

And yet, her gaze lingered one moment too long on the place where the girl had stood, radiant against the dark stone.

She let the curtain fall with a snap, blotting the view. The room returned to shadow and candlelight, the silence wrapping around her shoulders like a cloak.

She crossed back to her typewriter, sat and placed her fingers on the keys.

The page waited.

But for the first time in weeks, the words did not immediately spill forth. The ink held itself back, as though mocking her.

Wednesday stared at the blank space, her reflection in the typewriter’s metal shining faintly.

Her mother’s scheme had reached her hill. The air itself knew it. And though Wednesday loathed the manipulation, she could not deny the shift it had caused.

Somewhere in her mind, the girl’s laugh still rang. Bright, fragile and unwanted.

Wednesday flexed her fingers. Then, she pressed the first key with force.

The typewriter clacked. She would write it out of her system. She would not yield.

Her solitude was her fortress, and she would defend it, even if Morticia brought an army of radiant girls to breach its walls.

The Addams dining hall had always been a theater as much as a place of nourishment.

Its long, black-lacquered table stretched nearly the length of the room, adorned with silver candelabras that dripped wax in elegant stalactites. Portraits of ancestors, unsmiling and half-shrouded in gloom, lined the walls. Their painted eyes following every movement. The ceiling rose into shadowed arches where bats sometimes nested, occasionally stirring when disturbed by laughter.

The Sinclairs had never seen such a room.

They had entered with quiet awe, led by Morticia herself, who glided like a raven across the floor. Gomez followed, his step lighter, his grin wide and already speaking in grand flourishes as if he were greeting long-lost family instead of near-strangers.

“Welcome, welcome!” Gomez declared as they were shown to their seats. “Tonight, you dine not as guests, but as kin in waiting.”

Esther smiled faintly, touched by the warmth beneath the eccentricity. Murray, however, stiffened. Words like "kin" carried too much implication for his comfort. He tugged at his collar and sat down heavily.

Enid sat between her parents, her bright eyes darting everywhere: the chandeliers of wrought iron, the velvet drapes, the tablecloth that shimmered like midnight. The room felt both frightening and enchanting, like stepping into the page of a fairy tale where witches reigned as queens.

The servants filed in, bearing platters. Lurch moved with glacial grace, his towering figure balancing trays that looked heavy enough to crush most men.

The food was... peculiar.

A roast pheasant with blackened skin, served with sauces the color of ink. A salad of exotic herbs, some of which Murray swore he had once pulled as weeds from his own fields. A tureen of soup that steamed with an aroma both savory and faintly metallic.

Enid hesitated at first, but when Morticia urged her gently, “Do try the pheasant, dear, it was roasted in the old family style,” she complied. To her surprise, the flavors were rich, complex and not frightening at all.

Esther tasted with curiosity, her palate challenged but intrigued. Murray ate with caution, as though every bite might be poisoned.

The Addamses themselves ate with relish. Gomez carved his meat with the same flourish he used in fencing, while Morticia lifted each morsel with a grace so controlled it was as though she were performing a ritual.

The conversation flowed easily, at first about trivialities. Gomez asked about San Francisco and if it's still the same as he remembered, about the land, about the "valiant toil of farmers." Esther responded with polite detail. Murray spoke in short, guarded sentences.

Enid, shy at first, found herself drawn into Gomez’ enthusiastic questions. “And what of you, señorita? Surely a young flower like you has admirers buzzing about?”

Enid blushed furiously, muttering something about Bruno. Esther gave a quick warning glance at Gomez, but he only chuckled warmly.

It was after the main course, when the servants cleared the plates and returned with teapots of dark brew, that the air shifted.

Candles flickered as though on cue.

Morticia’s long fingers rested lightly on the rim of her teacup. Her black eyes lifted to meet Esther’s, then Murray’s, then Enid’s in turn.

She did not smile this time.

“The time for pleasantries has passed,” Morticia said, her voice smooth as silk stretched over steel. “Let us not wound each other with hesitation. You know why you are here. And I will not insult your intelligence by pretending otherwise.”

The words fell like stones into the silence.

Enid’s breath caught. Murray stiffened further. Esther set her cup down with care, her composure tested but not broken.

Gomez leaned back in his chair, swirling his wine as if this were the finest theater. “Ah, cara mia, you do have a way of cutting straight to the bone. It’s why I adore you.”

Morticia did not glance at him. Her gaze remained on the Sinclairs.

“My daughter,” Morticia began, “is not a woman easily understood. She has chosen solitude, embraced it as a lover. But solitude, though it can be a fortress, is also a tomb. The Addams line thrives not on isolation, but on passion. Unrestrained passion, love that devours and is devoured in turn.”

Her words were not sentimental; they were clinical, dissecting, as if she were lecturing on a truth carved into bone.

“I do not expect you to understand her fully,” she continued, “just as I do not expect her to yield easily to companionship. But I see in Enid,” Morticia’s eyes flicked to the girl, “a vitality, a brightness that is not weakness, but strength of another kind. It is precisely what Wednesday has never permitted herself to embrace.”

Enid flushed, caught between pride and embarrassment. She fidgeted with the edge of her napkin, unsure where to look.

Morticia’s gaze returned to Esther and Murray. “I will not dress it in ribbons. What I propose is a match. Between your daughter and mine. For Enid, it means security, comfort and the kind of life few can imagine. For Wednesday... it means the possibility, however small, of something beyond her own darkness.”

Esther’s heart pounded, but her face remained calm. She had known about this, but hearing it laid out so starkly sent a chill through her. And yet, Morticia’s words carried a strange allure. She imagined Enid in gowns, in opulence, her laughter echoing through gothic halls instead of farm sheds.

Murray nearly slammed his cup down. “And what of choice?” he said gruffly. “What of what Enid herself wants? You speak of tombs and fortresses, but my daughter is not a tool for your schemes. She is...”

“A woman,” Morticia interrupted softly, “who must one day decide her fate. I do not chain her. I only offer her a door.”

Her tone was calm, but her authority was undeniable. Murray’s words faltered in his throat.

Enid stared down at her hands. Her mind spun with images, Wednesday’s portrait, the mystery of her hidden life, the luxury she had glimpsed on the plane. And Bruno, sweet Bruno, offering her a flower every morning. One world small but known, the other vast and unknowable.

Sensing the weight of the moment, Gomez leaned forward, his grin softening into something more genuine.

“My friends,” he said, “understand this. We Addamses may be strange, but we do not deceive. Our love is absolute. If this match were to be made, your daughter would never know neglect, never know abandonment. She would be adored, cherished, treasured in her own way, of course, my little stormcloud is... unique. But Wednesday, when she loves, will love with the fury of a thousand storms. Of this, I have no doubt.”

Esther swallowed hard. The imagery was terrifying, but also beautiful.

Murray still scowled, but a seed of doubt pricked at his certainty.

The conversation lingered, heavy with unsaid words. The tea in their cups cooled, untouched.

Morticia did not press further. She had planted her seed. She knew better than to harvest too soon.

Instead, she shifted the topic with effortless grace, asking Enid what she thought of the house, if she liked the gardens, if she had noticed the ravens nesting in the spires.

Enid answered nervously, her voice soft but Morticia listened with a focus so intense it felt like being studied.

The meal ended not in resolution, but in tension thick enough to cut.

When the Sinclairs were finally shown to their chambers, Esther’s mind raced with temptation, Murray’s with suspicion and Enid’s with confusion so deep it knotted her stomach.

And above, in the castle on the hill, Wednesday Addams continued to write, unaware, or perhaps very aware, that the first stone of Morticia’s design had been laid.

Chapter Text

Wednesday’s study resembled the aftermath of an autopsy. The typewriter sat silent, its platen still holding the last page she had written, a sentence cut short: "He realized too late that the ocean was watching." Around her, papers were stacked in precarious towers, each one bearing some fragment of story, each a shard of her obsessive craft. The air smelled of wax and ink and scorched coffee grounds.

Outside the window, the night pressed heavy, the only movement the slow crawl of fog from the woods.

Wednesday had sensed it hours ago, even before the dinner below had ended. She felt a disturbance, faint but undeniable. She knew the way the mansion’s atmosphere shifted when her mother pulled the strings of her schemes.

Morticia never schemed carelessly. Which made it all the more dangerous.

Wednesday sat rigid in her chair, her dark eyes fixed on the blank wall ahead. She was still in her writing dress: black silk and high-collared, her braids perfectly neat despite the hour.

And then, the sound.

A soft scuttle. A familiar patter across the floorboards.

She did not turn. She waited. A hand climbed onto her desk, its pale skin lit by the candle glow. It paused dramatically, flexing its fingers once, as though to announce itself.

“Thing,” Wednesday said evenly. “You’re late.”

The disembodied hand signed indignantly, fingers darting and curling with quick precision.

“You were spying on the dinner,” she deduced flatly. “Mother’s invitation wasn’t for idle gossip. You heard what was said.”

Thing tapped twice: yes.

Wednesday leaned back, fingers steepled under her chin. “Then report.”

Thing launched into motion. His fingers flew with speed, shadow stretching against the desk as the candle sputtered. Wednesday followed every sign without error; they had spoken this way for years, his gestures as clear to her as a voice.

He described the Sinclairs, Esther with her careful grace, Murray with his suspicion heavy as a lead weight, Enid with her radiance that seemed almost out of place in those shadowed halls. He recounted the meal, Gomez’s booming laughter, Morticia’s poise.

And then he detailed the shift. The moment Morticia set down her cup and stripped the night of its veil. The proposal. The word match. The way Murray had bristled, Esther had softened and Enid had flushed, caught between worlds.

When he finished, Thing curled his fingers into a fist and rapped it once against the wood.

That was everything.

Wednesday sat utterly still, her expression unreadable. Only the slow rise and fall of her breath betrayed thought. “So,” she murmured at last, “the prophecy is fulfilled. Mother has once again tried to feed me on the carcass of romance.”

Thing signed quickly: This time is different.

Her eyes flicked to him, sharp as daggers. “Different? In method, perhaps. Not in futility. You know as well as I do, love is a fever that drives men to stupidity. I have no desire to be infected.”

Thing spread his fingers, then tapped his middle finger to his palm repeatedly, his sign for wait.

Wednesday’s lips curved faintly, though it was not quite a smile. “You think this Enid creature is worth consideration?”

Thing hesitated, then signed with careful precision: She is... not what you expect.

Wednesday stood abruptly, her chair scraping back across the rug. She paced to the window, sweeping the curtain aside. Below, the Addams mansion glowed faintly, torches along the path burning against the mist. The Sinclairs would be sleeping there now, under Morticia’s watchful eye.

Her reflection in the glass stared back at her. Pale, severe and hollow-eyed.

“A modest family, thrust into the belly of this house. A daughter paraded as if she were a lamb before the altar,” Wednesday said coldly. “Mother’s theatrics are tiresome.”

Thing tapped sharply, catching her attention. His fingers spelled out: She is not lamb. She is color. She laughed, even here.

Wednesday turned slowly. Her eyes narrowed, the candle flame reflected in their dark depths. “Color fades. Laughter dies. It is entropy, Thing. A bright flower wilts all the faster in poisoned soil.”

But even as she said it, the words rang slightly hollow.

She sat again at her desk, pulling the half-written page from her typewriter. She held it in her hands, staring at the unfinished line.

"The ocean was watching."

How fitting. Morticia was always watching. And now, apparently, so was this girl.

Enid.

Wednesday let the name roll silently through her thoughts. It was absurdly cheerful, like the yip of a small dog. Hardly a name meant to stand beside hers.

Yet, Thing’s insistence unsettled her. He was not prone to sentimental exaggeration. If he believed the girl possessed something unusual...

Wednesday’s fingers tightened around the paper until it crumpled.

“She will expect me to meet her,” she whispered, almost to herself. “To stand as specimen for her bright curiosity. To play the role Mother has written.”

Thing signed carefully: She is already curious. She asked for your image.

Wednesday’s head snapped up. “What?”

Thing repeated it: She wanted to see your face. Morticia gave portrait.

Wednesday froze. Slowly, her mind drifted to the far wall, where one of those infernal family portraits hung. Her at twenty years old, already carved in her severity, her youth tempered by darkness.

“They have seen me,” she said, voice like ice cracking. “They already speculate. She already speculates.”

For a long moment, silence.

“Good. Let her speculate. Let her imagine me a monster. It will keep her away.” Her usually cold tone betrayed a fissure, a note of uncertainty that even she heard.

Thing crawled closer, pressing his palm against her wrist. The gesture was strangely gentle, almost pleading.

Wednesday stared at him, unblinking. “You want me to meet her,” she said flatly.

Thing signed one word: Yes.

Wednesday closed her eyes. She saw the Sinclairs at Morticia’s table, saw the girl’s blush, her nervous smile. She saw herself, an ink-stained recluse, a specter of a woman carved out of shadows.

The match was absurd. It was an insult.

And yet, the mystery gnawed at her. Who was this Enid Sinclair to make her mother conspire so boldly, to make Thing himself insist? Who was this girl to enter the Addams estate and not be crushed under its gloom?

Wednesday opened her eyes. They gleamed, cold but burning.

“If there is a game being played,” she whispered, “I will not be the pawn.”

She turned to her typewriter, fed it a new sheet, and typed with decisive keystrokes: "The beast, disturbed by the trespasser’s laughter, left its cave at last."

The keys clacked like loudly.

Below the hill, Enid Sinclair likely slept dreaming perhaps of flowers and portraits. Above, Wednesday Addams prepared, not to fall into Morticia’s snare, but to watch, to judge and perhaps to strike.

The candles had burned low in Wednesday’s study, their wax puddling into grotesque shapes across her desk. Thing lingered near her elbow restless, his fingers twitching with urgency.

“You are unusually persistent tonight,” Wednesday remarked without lifting her gaze from the page she had just typed. Her tone was cool, but Thing knew her well enough to hear the thread of irritation underneath.

Thing signed again: She is good. Don’t frighten her away.

Wednesday’s lips pressed into a thin line. “I frighten without effort. It is not a talent I can shelve for convenience.”

Thing gestured insistently, spelling each word with clarity: She laughed. She brought color.

Wednesday turned in her chair at that, her eyes narrowing. “Color is an infection, Thing. Laughter is a mask. Both dissolve under scrutiny. Do you truly believe this... girl is any different from the countless fools who mistake morbidity for allure?”

Thing crawled forward, his fingers tapping urgently on the desk: She is nineteen. You are twenty-nine. That matters.

Wednesday stilled. The typewriter waited in silence, the candle sputtered and even the night outside seemed to still.

Her voice, when it came, was edged with steel. “You think my mother lured me into cradle-snatching. Delightful. Add that to the list of her sins.”

But the words did not dismiss the thought. It stayed, gnawed, echoed. Ten years. A decade. A gap large enough to feel like another country and yet small enough to feel dangerously bridgeable.

Thing tapped once, firmly: She is young. Do not devour her.

Wednesday turned back to her typewriter, though her hands did not move. Her gaze was sharp, cold, but her stillness betrayed the storm she was hiding. “I devour nothing that does not first walk willingly into the abyss.”

Down the hill, Enid could not sleep. Her chamber in the Addams mansion was unlike anything she had ever known. The bed was carved of dark wood, its canopy draped with velvet heavy enough to drown sound. The wallpaper was patterned with twisting vines that almost seemed to move when the candlelight flickered. A clock somewhere ticked, slow and sonorous, like the heartbeat of the house itself.

She had turned under the blankets once, twice, a hundred times. She had stared at the ceiling until her eyes ached.

But her thoughts were louder than any silence.

Wednesday Addams.

The name rang in her head, each syllable heavy. The mysterious author with no face, no photograph, only words sharp enough to cut flesh. The woman whose portrait she had studied with obsessive curiosity.

Nineteen and twenty-nine. A gulf stretched between them. But the mystery pulled her tighter than fear.

Finally, with a frustrated groan muffled into her pillow, Enid sat up. The candle by her bedside had burned nearly out. She lit another with trembling hands, but even its glow seemed to deepen the shadows instead of dispelling them.

“I can’t...” she whispered to herself. “I just can’t sit here.”

She slipped from the bed, pulling her pajama shirt tighter across her chest. The floor was icy under her bare feet, so she shoved them into her shoes and wrapped herself in the woolen coat her mother had insisted she bring.

The window called to her first, but it was too high. So instead, she crept through the hallways, each creak of the wooden floors loud as thunder to her ears. She passed portraits with eyes that seemed to follow, vases of flowers long dead, doors locked with secrets.

The front doors of the mansion groaned open when she pushed. The night air slapped her cheeks, cold and damp. Mist curled across the ground, wrapping her ankles as she stepped out.

And there it was.

The castle on the hill. Wednesday’s sanctuary.

It loomed like a skeleton against the sky, black spires cutting into the stars, windows faintly glowing like eyes half-closed. Enid’s stomach twisted at the sight, part dread and part thrill.

She pulled her coat tighter and began to walk.

The path wound through untamed gardens, where thorned bushes snagged at her coat and the ground sloped treacherously. The night was alive with small sounds. A crow calling, the rustle of unseen creatures, the wind moaning through the branches.

Her breath puffed white in the cold. Each step made her feel more exposed, more foolish, yet also more alive.

Her mind spun with questions she could not silence.

What if she really is a monster?

What if she’s scarred, broken and cruel?

What if she opens the door and sees me as nothing but a child?

And yet... what if Wednesday was something else? Something that the world could not explain?

Her heart hammered as the castle grew closer, its stones slick with damp. 

Meanwhile, Wednesday stood at the window. Her arms folded and her gaze turned toward the path below. She had felt it the way one feels the tremor before an earthquake. A disturbance in the rhythm of the estate.

And then, the faint movement in the mist: a figure; small, hesitant, but determined was climbing the hill.

Wednesday’s lips parted slightly.

“So,” she whispered, “the lamb walks willingly.”

Thing tapped urgently at the desk, signing: She comes.

“I am aware,” Wednesday said, voice low and almost reverent.

Her eyes followed the figure, her pulse steady though her mind sharpened like a blade. Enid Sinclair, nineteen, wrapped in her coat, pajamas hidden beneath, ascending into her dominion.

The night itself seemed to hold its breath.

Wednesday did not move to stop her. She did not move at all.

She only waited.

Enid reached the gates at last. They loomed iron and ornate, twisted into shapes that might have been roses or skulls. The doors stood ajar, as if expecting her.

Her hand trembled as she pushed them wider. The courtyard was silent but for the echo of her steps. Every instinct screamed at her to turn back and yet she pressed forward, her eyes fixed on the door of the great house.

The castle was awake. She could feel it. It was watching her.

When she reached the door, she paused, her chest rising and falling in rapid bursts. She raised her hand, ready to knock and froze.

The door was creaked open. Inside, shadows and candlelight spilled onto the steps.

And at the far end of the hall, framed in the golden glow, stood Wednesday Addams.

Waiting.

Chapter Text

Enid stood trembling the threshold, the night’s cold at her back, the breath of candlelight spilling over her shoes. She blinked wide-eyed into the darkness inside. The hallway stretched vast and hollow, its walls rising high into shadow. Only one flame lived there, a single candle burning from a holder clutched in the pale hand of the woman who waited at the far end.

Wednesday Addams.

Her figure seemed carved from shadow and ivory. Two black braids fell heavy against the darkness of her dress, each strand so neatly tied it might have been woven by ritual. Her face was pale, flawless but for the faint suggestion of sleeplessness around her eyes. A subtle shadow lingered there, deepening her gaze into something almost unearthly.

She did not move. She only watched.

Enid’s heart thundered. She could not recall ever feeling so small, as though the space itself shrank her down, as though the air inside this house bent to the woman who owned it. But she had come this far. To turn back now would feel like cowardice.

Her feet crossed the threshold slowly. The heavy door closed behind her of its own accord. Enid flinched and spinning slightly, but the sound was already swallowed by the vast hall. She turned back, her breath shaky. Wednesday was still there, her expression unchanged, her candle steady.

“I...” Enid swallowed. Her voice sounded faint against the silence. “I’m sorry for... just... showing up.”

Wednesday’s lips twitched, not into a smile but into something sharper, a crack in the ice. “People do not arrive here by accident. They arrive by compulsion. They arrive because they cannot resist.”

The words were low, precise and almost clinical. Enid shivered.

She forced her legs to keep moving, each step echoing through the hall. The air smelled of wax, of dust and something metallic beneath. The faint tang of tools, of ink, of secrets.

When she reached the middle of the hall, she hesitated, then drew her coat tighter around herself. “Your... house is...” She searched for a word that wouldn’t sound foolish. “Like something out of a movie.”

Wednesday tilted her head, the candlelight catching her sharp profile. “Horror, or documentary?”

Enid blinked. “H-horror, I guess.” Then, realizing what she’d said, she flushed. “Not in a bad way. It’s just... different.”

Wednesday studied her as though dissecting a specimen. Her silence was not empty but weighted, each second stretching long. Finally, she stepped forward. The candle’s glow moved with her, illuminating more of her face, more of the hollow beneath her cheekbones, the exacting line of her lips.

“You are not the first my mother has escorted here,” she said, her voice echoing slightly in the chamber. “The others lasted minutes. Some seconds. They fled as though the sight of me were an omen they dared not test.”

Enid’s stomach twisted. She forced herself to hold her ground. “And you think I’m going to run too?”

Wednesday stopped just a few feet from her. The candlelight painted Enid’s face now, revealing her wide, bright eyes and the pink flush of nerves across her cheeks. Wednesday’s gaze lingered there, cold and unblinking.

“You climbed the hill alone,” Wednesday pointed out, analyzing the situation in her own cynical way. “In nightclothes. In the cold. That suggests either courage or compulsion. Perhaps both.”

Enid exhaled, realizing she had been holding her breath. “I... I just wanted to meet you.”

The words slipped out before she could catch them.

Wednesday’s eyes narrowed slightly, as though measuring the truth of that admission. She remembered her mother’s schemes, the ridiculous parade of strangers who had come before. Each one coaxed, manipulated, convinced they might be the one to "soften" her. Each one had cracked the moment they met her eyes.

But this girl...

This girl came of her own will.

Wednesday stared straight into Enid's eyes, studying her as one might study an animal that behaved against its instincts. “And now that you have, do you regret it?”

Enid shook her head too quickly, then hesitated. “I mean... I’m scared. But... not like I thought I would be.”

Wednesday’s brows lifted by a fraction, the closest she came to surprise. She leaned closer, her candle between them, the flame dancing in Enid’s eyes. “Fear is rational,” she said sharply. “It is useful. The absence of fear is idiocy. But the willingness to carry it, to walk into it... That is something different.”

Enid swallowed hard, her throat dry. The proximity made her chest feel tight, not only from nerves but from something she couldn’t name.

“I’m not going to run,” she said softly, almost defiantly.

Wednesday’s gaze held her there, unblinking, unrelenting. Finally, her lips curved, not into warmth, but into something sharper. Something close to approval.

“Then you may follow.”

She turned, the candlelight spilling deeper into the house.

Enid stared after her, her heart hammering, her body trembling with adrenaline. For a moment, she considered turning back. But then she stepped forward, further into the domain of Wednesday Addams.

The candle flickered as Wednesday moved down the hall, her braids swinging with each precise step. The vast corridor stretched before them, its walls lined with oil portraits of Addamses past, gaunt faces, stern brows, eyes that seemed to follow. Enid trailed just behind, her sneakers squeaking faintly against the polished stone floor.

The silence pressed heavy, until Enid, nerves getting the better of her, blurted: “Uh... so. No electricity in here?”

Wednesday stopped. Slowly, she turned her head just enough for the candlelight to carve her profile in pale relief. Her dark, cutting eyes locked onto Enid’s.

The weight of that stare was enough to clamp Enid’s mouth shut mid-breath.

“Okay,” Enid whispered quickly, raising her hands in surrender. “Never mind. Stupid question.”

Wednesday turned back without a word and continued walking. The only sound was the steady drip of wax onto brass.

She went up on the second floor and opened a heavy oak door into a chamber that made Enid’s skin prickle. Glass cases lined the walls, shelves upon shelves filled with jars. Some held liquids tinged amber or green, others shapes suspended within, like claws, feathers, bones.

Enid’s gaze darted, her pulse quickening as she realized some of those jars held birds. Perhaps ravens, their black feathers dulled but preserved, their wings folded tightly against themselves.

At the center of the room stood a long table draped in black cloth. Metal instruments gleamed faintly in the candlelight: scalpels, tweezers, needles, threads. A raven lay upon the table, its body rigid, wings half-spread as though frozen mid-flight.

Enid’s breath hitched.

Wednesday set the candle upon a stand, then picked up a needle and thread with steady hands. She glanced at Enid once, then lowered her gaze to the bird. Her movements were methodical, reverent even, as she stitched a tear in the raven’s wing with black thread finer than hair.

“You embalm them?” Enid asked, her voice hushed.

“Taxidermy is too crude a word,” Wednesday murmured. “What I practice is preservation. Memory without decay.”

Enid bit her lip. “So... like, pets?”

Wednesday’s eyes flicked up sharply. “They are not pets. They are echoes. Fragments of beauty stolen back from rot.”

Enid nodded quickly. “Right. Got it. Not pets. Echoes.”

Her stomach churned, but not enough to send her running. Instead, she watched, oddly mesmerized by the precision of Wednesday’s hands.

Minutes passed and finally, Wednesday set the needle down, turning to her. “You are pale. You wish to faint.”

Enid straightened, blinking fast. “N-no. I’m fine. Totally fine. Just... y’know... not what I expected to see tonight.”

“What did you expect?”

Enid shrugged weakly. “A, um... cup of tea? Maybe a tour with, like, a brochure?”

Something in Wednesday’s expression shifted, the faintest twitch of her lips, gone almost before it appeared. “You mock me.” She deadpaned.

Enid froze. “No! No, I—” She faltered. “...Okay, maybe a little. But in a nice way?”

Wednesday studied her. “Most people, confronted with death, recoil. You attempt humor.”

Enid swallowed nervously. “It’s my thing. If I didn’t joke, I’d be screaming right now.”

Wednesday’s eyes narrowed as though dissecting the admission. But she did not press. Instead, she retrieved her candle and motioned with a slight tilt of her head.

“Come.”

They moved through more rooms, each stranger than the last.

A library stacked so high with books Enid swore the shelves touched the ceiling. She craned her neck until it ached, blinking at titles: 'On the Art of Poisonous Botany,' 'The Anatomy of Silence,' 'The Elegy of Knives'. 

Wednesday pulled a volume down at random, flipping pages with speed and precision. Enid glanced over her shoulder, half-expecting sketches of demons. Instead, she saw pressed flowers, their colors long faded but their shapes perfectly intact.

“Poison catalog,” Wednesday explained before Enid could ask. “Belladonna, monkshood, foxglove. Each page an obituary in bloom.”

Enid forced a smile. “Your scrapbooking game is... intense.”

Again, the twitch of lips. This time, Wednesday closed the book without comment and replaced it.

Next came the conservatory. Except there were no roses or daisies. These plants were strange, curling, some mottled with dark spots, others trembling faintly as though alive. A faint, sweet, almost sickly smell clung to the air.

Enid took one cautious step inside. “Do they... bite?”

Wednesday’s gaze lingered on her. “Only if you scream.”

Enid’s eyes widened. She froze again, then realized the faint smirk ghosting across Wednesday’s face.

“Wait,” Enid breathed. “That was... a joke, wasn’t it?”

Wednesday’s silence was answer enough.

Enid let out a nervous laugh, half in disbelief, half in relief. 

Finally, Wednesday led her into a room that looked more lived in: the study.

The old typewriter, Guillotine, sat on a heavy desk, stacks of paper surrounding it like battlements. Black candles burned low, their smoke curling upward. The scent of ink and wax filled the air.

Enid drifted closer, curiosity tugging her. She lifted a sheet from the stack before she realized what she was doing. Her eyes darted across a sentence: "The ocean did not drown him. It simply whispered until he walked willingly into its throat." 

A chill ran down her spine. She set the page back gently.

“You write here?” she asked softly.

“I bleed here,” Wednesday corrected.

Enid blinked. “That’s... wow. That’s a lot.”

Wednesday stood unmoving, studying her reaction. 

Enid shifted, hugging herself. “It’s beautiful. Dark, but beautiful.”

The words seemed to hang between them. For the first time, Wednesday’s gaze softened by a fraction.

They stood in silence, the candle flickering between them.

Wednesday expected Enid to crack now, the way the others had. To excuse herself, to flee the strangeness of it all. But instead, Enid rocked slightly on her heels, her eyes roaming the room with unease that never quite tipped into terror.

Finally, she spoke, her voice small but steady: “You’re not what I thought you’d be.”

Wednesday arched a brow. “And what did you think I would be?”

Enid hesitated. “...A monster.”

The word hung, stark.

Wednesday’s lips pressed into a line. But instead of bristling, she leaned closer, her eyes gleaming like a blade in the candlelight.

“Perhaps I am,” she murmured. “And perhaps you are simply too foolish to recognize it.”

Enid swallowed, her pulse loud in her ears. But she didn’t step back.

“Or maybe,” she whispered, “you’re just... lonely.”

The silence after was heavy and Wednesday didn’t have a retort ready.

They stood there, two opposites bound by candlelight. Shadow and color, dread and warmth. One testing, one enduring.

Wednesday turned away at last, extinguishing the candle with a sharp breath. Darkness swept the room.

“Enough for tonight,” she sternly. “If you are still here tomorrow, we will continue.”

Enid let out a shaky breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “I’ll be here.”

Even though the words sounded small, they carried a weight Wednesday could not ignore.

The door of the sanctuary shut with a heavy sigh, leaving Enid standing in the night air. Her breath puffed in white clouds, mingling with the faint mist that clung to the hill.

She glanced over her shoulder once and found Wednesday still there, the moonlight carved her outline with spectral sharpness. She stood straight and composed, as though carved from the stone itself.

Enid blinked. She had expected Wednesday to dismiss her, to close the door and vanish into shadows. Instead, she had walked with her, each step measured and silent, until they reached the gate. She hadn’t spoken a single word the whole way, but the gesture was unmistakable: she had seen her out.

Like a host, Enid thought. Like a knight walking someone to the edge of the forest.

Her chest ached strangely.

She gave a small, awkward wave, her hand trembling in the cold. “Um... thanks. For... not locking me in there with the poison plants or anything.”

Wednesday’s face betrayed nothing. Only her eyes lingered, steady and unreadable, before she turned without a word and disappeared back into the shadow of her house.

Enid bit her lip, her cheeks warming. She hadn’t expected gratitude to feel so useless in front of someone like Wednesday.

She adjusted her coat and hurried down the hill.

The descent felt longer than the climb. Her legs ached, her sneakers slipping slightly on the frosted grass. Behind her, the great silhouette of Wednesday’s mansion loomed, its towers stabbing the sky. Every step away felt like tearing herself from a magnet.

By the time she reached the courtyard of the Addams mansion, her body hummed with adrenaline and exhaustion both. The stone lions flanking the door seemed to leer at her as she crept back inside.

The house was silent, a silence deeper than the countryside back home. Even the air felt heavy here, as though it carried centuries of secrets. Her footsteps echoed faintly across the black-and-white tiled floor as she slipped back up the winding staircase to the guest chamber Morticia had given her.

She closed the door behind her and leaned against it, her chest heaving.

Only then the reality of what she had done settle fully into her bones. She had walked into the lair of Wednesday Addams, the Wednesday Addams, and she hadn’t run. She had sat in her study, seen her strange rooms, even touched one of her manuscripts. And she was still here, whole.

Barely.

Her hands trembled as she shrugged off her coat. She caught sight of herself in the mirror: cheeks flushed, hair wild, eyes wide as though she’d seen a ghost. Maybe she had.

She flopped onto the great canopy bed, sinking into the heavy velvet covers. The mattress was too soft, the sheets too rich. Everything here felt alien, like wearing clothes two sizes too big.

But none of that mattered. Her mind kept circling back to Wednesday.

That pale face, those sharp eyes, that voice cutting through silence with a strange sense of authority. The way she stitched the raven with hands steady as stone. The way she had leaned close enough for Enid to see candlelight caught in her pupils.

Enid squeezed her eyes shut.

Her stomach twisted with fear, but her heart pounded with something else entirely. Fascination.

She rolled onto her side, hugging a pillow.

Why her?

Why did Wednesday feel so different from everything she knew? Bruno’s face flickered in her mind, soft and familiar, his goofy smile as he handed her a flower every morning. The comfort of his presence, the ease of it.

And then Wednesday, all hard edges and shadows, her words soaked in darkness, her presence like standing too close to fire.

The contrast made Enid dizzy.

With Bruno, she knew exactly who she was: sweet and silly, the girl who blushed at every glance. With Wednesday, she wasn’t sure of anything. She felt like she was being stripped bare, like every nervous laugh and every twitch of her hands was being studied, cataloged.

And yet... she wanted more.

She sat up suddenly, clutching the pillow to her chest.

“What is wrong with me?” she whispered to the empty room.

The Addamses’ guest chamber did not answer. Its dark wallpaper and looming portrait of a headless horseman only made her feel smaller.

She flopped back down, staring up at the canopy. Sleep wouldn’t come, not when her mind kept replaying every second in that house.

The silence stretched.

She imagined Wednesday in her study again, her typewriter clacking and the candles guttering. Did she even sleep? Or did she write until dawn, unraveling more of those twisted, brilliant stories?

Enid shivered at the thought of Wednesday awake at this very moment, just up the hill, working like a machine. She wondered if she ever smiled when she was alone. She wondered if she ever laughed.

She wondered if she was capable of love.

Her cheeks burned at the thought.

Time passed and Enid tossed and turned, her body restless under the velvet sheets. Every creak of the mansion made her startle, every whisper of wind against the glass made her pull the blanket tighter.

But through it all, one truth gnawed at her: she wasn’t afraid enough to regret going.

She wanted to go again.

Wednesday had never been one for courtesy. Courtesy was a mask that ordinary people wore to grease the machinery of their hollow interactions. To her, it was the cousin of hypocrisy.

And yet, when the Sinclair girl had followed her through the study, through the bones of her private sanctum, and finally out into the frost-tipped air of the hill, Wednesday had not retreated as she usually did. She had not dismissed her with a withering glance or turned her back to resume her work. She had walked with her. Step for step, down the echoing stone hall, through the vestibule, and across the threshold to the gates.

It was not a conscious decision. It was something older and deeper, like a ritual of her own invention: if someone entered her domain and survived, she would see them safely to the boundary. Not out of kindness, she despised that word anyway, but out of symmetry. A visitor was an interruption in the balance of her solitude. Escorting them to the gates restored equilibrium.

That was what she told herself, at least.

But when she closed the gate behind Enid Sinclair and stood there, her hand resting on the iron as the girl’s bright figure receded down the slope, Wednesday felt something out of alignment.

She returned to the study, candle sputtering as she lit it again. The air still held the faint trace of lavender. Enid’s perfume, or perhaps only the ghost of her imagination. Wednesday scowled and pulled the window open to let the night air scour the room clean.

Thing scuttled in after her, dropping from the beam above where he had been lurking. He drummed his fingers against the desk in what could only be described as pointed amusement.

“I did not 'escort' her,” Wednesday said flatly, setting the candle on its holder. “I merely ensured she did not stumble and break her neck on the way out. That would have been inconvenient. Corpses invite inquiries. And inquiries invite journalists.”

Thing tapped twice, skeptically.

Wednesday’s gaze narrowed. “Do not suggest that I was motivated by... chivalry. The very notion is repugnant.”

He signed a phrase with brisk, articulate motions: She is young.

Wednesday turned away. “Twenty is not a child.”

Thing added another flourish: You are twenty-nine.

The words stung more than they should have.

“Nine years, ten years, time is elastic,” she said, her tone colder than she intended. “In the Addams family, we measure lifespans by tragedy, not birthdays.”

But her eyes betrayed her. She had noticed Enid’s age the moment the girl stepped across the threshold of the study, as one notices the hue of a bruise or the texture of a scar.

Wednesday sat at her typewriter and rolled in a fresh sheet of paper. She struck one key. The sound clapped in the stillness, sharp as a shot. Normally the rhythm soothed her, but tonight it rang hollow.

Her mind would not surrender to fiction. It replayed the scene in fragments: Enid’s wide eyes staring at the embalmed raven, her nervous laughter like glass clinking, her small act of defiance when she reached out to touch the manuscript.

No one touched her work. Morticia herself did not lay a hand on her drafts without permission. And yet Wednesday had not snapped, had not ripped the paper away, had not hissed her fury. She had merely observed, cold and silent, and allowed it.

That, more than anything, unsettled her.

Thing perched on the edge of the desk, signing again: She did not run.

“No,” Wednesday admitted. Her fingers hovered over the keys, stilled. “She did not.”

The last one, a boy from a well-to-do family in Boston, had bolted after ten minutes. He had shrieked at the taxidermy collection and fled into the night. Another, a girl from Madrid, had fainted when she glimpsed the shelves of preserved organs.

Wednesday recalled the look of horror in their eyes, the relief in her own chest as the doors closed behind them. Their terror reaffirmed what she already knew: she was not meant to be softened, not meant to be "matched."

But Enid Sinclair had walked deeper instead of turning back. She had asked questions. Foolish, bright questions that scraped against Wednesday’s patience and yet, she had asked them.

Thing signed: She likes you.

Wednesday’s jaw tightened. “Liking is a triviality. A chemical error in the bloodstream. What she feels is fascination with novelty. My life is a grotesque cabinet of curiosities to her.”

Thing shook his fingers in a gesture somewhere between disagreement and mockery.

Wednesday exhaled a long, controlled breath. She could not afford fascination in return. Curiosity was a poison more lethal than anything in her apothecary.

And yet, she remembered the way Enid’s hair caught the candlelight. A warm color, absurdly out of place in her sanctuary of monochrome. She remembered her stubbornness, the way she squared her shoulders even when fear trembled through her voice.

That was not novelty. That was will.

Wednesday rose from the desk. The night was deepening and her rituals called. She went to her her aviary and lit a cluster of candles on the altar in the corner, their wax black as tar. She lined up her instruments of taxidermy, her poisons, her obsidian-handled knives. Each object she touched steadied her, reminded her who she was.

But tonight, even as she worked, her focus slipped. The raven’s feathers blurred in her vision. The vial of aconite seemed to glow too brightly. She had to force her hand steady.

Because, behind it all, the image of Enid lingered. A bright pulse of color, intruding on her shadows.

Wednesday despised intrusions. She also despised the part of herself that did not, in this case, despise it enough. Thing tapped her shoulder gently, signing one last phrase before settling into the shadows: She will return.

Wednesday said nothing. Her lips pressed into a thin and bloodless line. But her heart skipped once, traitorous and unwanted as though it already knew he was right.

Chapter Text

Enid woke to the sound of a clock tolling somewhere deep in the Addams mansion. It was not a bright sound, no clean chime of brass but a dull, resonant clang that reminded her of a church bell heard through fog. The walls of the guest chamber seemed to breathe with it, as if the entire house exhaled darkness at each strike.

She had tossed and turned most of the night, replaying the walk into Wednesday’s sanctuary again and again. She’d thought she would be terrified, and she was, but fear hadn’t driven her away. It had propelled her forward. She had followed Wednesday deeper, even as the shadows clung to her skin and the silence pressed into her ears.

She thought of Bruno then, as she always did when fear struck. Bruno, with his sun-warmed hands and easy smile, always ready with a wildflower pulled from the fields. With him, she had imagined a life that stretched in a straight, predictable line: marriage, a cottage, perhaps children, days spent cooking, sewing and listening for the sound of his boots at the threshold after hours in the fields.

It was the only dream she had ever been taught to want.

And yet last night she had felt something else. It was not safety, but a pull, an undertow. Wednesday was everything Bruno wasn’t. Cold. Severe. A presence that demanded gravity rather than warmth. And instead of fleeing, Enid had found herself walking straight into it.

Her stomach twisted at the memory. Not because she regretted it, but because she couldn’t name the feeling that remained.

When she finally emerged from her chamber, the scent of roasted meats, spiced teas and something faintly metallic filled the corridor. Breakfast at the Addams estate, was no modest affair of porridge or bread. It was a feast worthy of midnight banquets: silver platters, towering arrangements of fruit so darkly ripe they glistened, urns of steaming liquid, some of which she did not recognize.

The dining hall was a cavern lit by high chandeliers. Shadows clung to the carved beams and portraits of stern-faced ancestors watched from the walls, their eyes following every movement with unnerving devotion.

Morticia sat at the head of the long table, her posture a sculpture of grace. Gomez lounged beside her, his mustache twitching as he hummed cheerfully over a plate of blood sausages. Esther and Murray were already seated, their expressions stiff with the effort of adapting to this peculiar luxury.

Enid felt her cheeks warm as she slipped into her chair. The table was so long she could barely see Morticia’s face through the haze of candle smoke. Yet, she felt those dark, assessing eyes the entire time.

“Did you sleep well, Enid?” Morticia asked, her voice as smooth.

Enid swallowed. “Y-yes. The bed’s very comfortable.”

“A good bed,” Morticia said, lifting her teacup, “will cradle the body but not let the mind grow complacent. Our chambers are built to inspire dreams. Or nightmares, depending on the dreamer.”

A faint curve of a smile tugged at her lips.

Enid forced a laugh, but her fingers fidgeted with the napkin. She thought of her restless night, the vivid flashes of Wednesday’s pale face across the darkened hall. Had the room been built to summon that? Or had it been her own imagination?

Murray cleared his throat, attempting to anchor the moment with practicality. “It’s a fine home you have here, Mrs. Addams. Very... sturdy.”

“Why thank you,” Morticia replied. “Every brick remembers the touch of the mason’s hands. I like to think the house watches over us.”

Esther gave a polite nod, but her gaze kept darting to Enid, as though gauging every reaction.

The breakfast unfolded in a blur of flavors Enid had never known. Rich pastries laced with dark chocolate. Fruits sliced into delicate crescents. Tea that tasted faintly of smoke and roses. She wanted to enjoy it, but her mind wouldn’t settle.

Because Morticia’s eyes never left her.

It wasn’t harsh scrutiny, not quite. It was more like an artist examining a canvas, searching for the faintest brushstroke that would reveal the whole picture.

And Morticia saw it. She saw the way Enid chewed more slowly, how she was distracted. The way she blushed at nothing. The way she did not chatter as brightly as she had in San Francisco.

Morticia knew. She knew about the shift.

When the plates were cleared and the tea served in thin porcelain cups, Morticia finally spoke again.

“You’ve been very brave, Enid,” she said, the words light, but with a current beneath them. “Most girls would not have endured their first night here without tears.”

Enid blinked. “I— I guess I’m used to noise, with my brothers and all. This was... different. But not bad.”

“Different,” Morticia repeated, savoring the word. “Yes. That is the most precious experience one can have. To encounter a soul so unlike one’s own that it unsettles the heart. To choose to stand in that dissonance rather than flee.”

Her gaze cut across the table like a blade and went straight into Enid’s.

Enid felt her breath catch. She looked down at her teacup, her hands trembling against the porcelain. She wanted to protest, to deny that she understood what Morticia was implying, but she couldn’t. Because part of her did understand.

Morticia smiled faintly, as if the silence was answer enough.

Esther’s hand found her daughter’s under the table, squeezing softly. Enid didn’t look up.

Murray shifted in his chair, suspicion darkening his face. He could feel Morticia’s current, and he didn’t like where it was pulling his daughter. But the richness of the meal, the luxury surrounding them, the memory of the airplane seats... all of it pressed against his mind with weight. Could he keep resisting forever?

Morticia sipped her tea, satisfied.

Enid had not run. Enid had walked into the sanctuary on her own feet and returned restless, curious and alive. Morticia had seen this before: the spark of contrast that turned into flame.

She finally found the one who might hold the candle in her daughter’s abyss. And Morticia Addams never wasted time.

The tea had cooled, the steam curling languidly into the vaulted dining hall. Morticia, elegant as always, set her cup down with the softest clink. Her gaze drifted over the Sinclairs, pausing on Enid again.

She spoke as if in passing, her tone silken and conversational, yet with a needlepoint hidden in the softness.

“Tell me, dear Enid... do you leave a heart behind in San Francisco?”

Enid stiffened, nearly choking on the last sip of her tea. “Wh-what do you mean?”

“A lover,” Morticia said simply. The word floated across the table like a drop of ink into water, blooming darkly as it spread. “Surely a girl as radiant as yourself would not go unnoticed. Hearts are fragile things. They bruise easily and sometimes they cling when we least expect them to.”

The question hung there, suspended between the polished silver and the flickering candelabras.

Enid’s cheeks flushed a vivid pink, warmth creeping down her neck. She darted a glance at her parents, who were suddenly paying very close attention.

Esther’s lips curved with a faintly proud smile, while Murray’s jaw set wary.

“Well...” Enid faltered, twisting the napkin in her lap. “There’s... Bruno. Back home. He’s—he’s just a boy from the fields. We’ve known each other forever. He brings me flowers, sometimes. Nothing serious.”

Morticia tilted her head, listening with the rapt attention of someone savoring a tragic poem.

“Ah. A boy of flowers.” Her voice held no mockery, only a velvet softness that somehow made the words sharper. “And what do you dream with him, Enid? A cottage? A hearth? A life woven from the soil and the seasons?”

Enid swallowed. “Yes. I suppose so.”

Her voice was small and the answer sounded thinner than it had when she used to whisper it to herself under the stars of San Francisco.

Esther, eager to display her daughter in the best light, leaned forward. “Our Enid is still untouched, Morticia. Pure as the day she was born. We raised her to keep her innocence, to hold herself for the right person.”

Enid’s face burned. “Mom!”

Murray, though equally proud, cleared his throat gruffly, eyes flicking to Morticia with a protective edge. “She’s our youngest. We’ve looked after her carefully. She’s not... frivolous.”

Morticia’s lips curved, a smile that did not mock but glowed with quiet satisfaction. “How admirable. Purity is not a word I often encounter in these times. To preserve it, not only in body, but in spirit, is a testament to both the girl and her family.”

Her gaze returned to Enid and it lingered. “But purity, my dear, is not an end in itself. It is a door. And doors are meant to open, not remain locked forever. The right key determines whether the opening leads to a garden... or an abyss.”

Enid shifted uncomfortably, caught between embarrassment and curiosity. She hated that her hands fidgeted in her lap, betraying her.

She remembered Bruno’s flowers. Daisies, sunflowers and wild blooms plucked without thought. She remembered his hands, calloused but warm. And she contrasted them with Wednesday’s hands: pale, slender, resting on typewriter keys, steady on the spine of a raven. She hadn’t touched them, but the memory of their poise lingered like a shadow.

She hated herself for even making that comparison.

Esther beamed at Morticia’s words, missing her daughter’s discomfort. “It’s what we’ve always wanted, for her to open that door to the right life. A comfortable life. Something more than what we can give.”

Murray bristled. “Comfort is not everything, Esther.” His voice was low but firm. “A girl needs more than wealth. She needs kindness. Safety.” His eyes cut toward Morticia as if accusing her of dangling the opposite.

Morticia received the look with the serene patience of a predator humoring prey. “Of course, Murray. Safety is essential. Love without safety is a fire that devours rather than warms. But love without depth is merely... companionship. And companionship, while pleasant, does not sustain an Addams soul.”

Her words, though directed toward Murray, were meant for Enid.

Enid pressed her lips together, her heart racing.

Love without depth.

She thought of Bruno again, of his laughter echoing across the fields. Safe, yes. Kind, yes. But did her heart race with him like it had in the shadow of Wednesday’s gaze?

The thought scared her. And the fact that she could not shake it scared her even more.

Morticia reached across the table, brushing her fingers lightly against the rim of her cup, as though sealing the thought in porcelain.

“My daughter,” she said softly, “is not like other women. She does not offer roses and hearthfires. She offers something... deeper. Darker, but eternal. It is a love that consumes, not comforts. One that scars, but in scarring, also immortalizes. Few can endure it. Fewer still embrace it.”

She let the silence follow with a pause, heavy and expectant.

Enid could feel the weight of every eye on her. She wanted to look away, but Morticia’s voice, smooth and low, had rooted her in place. And the strangest part? A tiny part of her wanted to hear more.

Esther looked at her daughter with pride, unaware of the turmoil boiling beneath the blush. “Enid has a strong heart. She could endure anything.”

Morticia’s smile widened, soft and satisfied. “I believe she could. Perhaps that is why fate brought her here.”

Enid’s throat tightened. She lowered her eyes, focusing on the tea she could not drink.

By the time the meal ended, the conversation had left Enid flushed and restless again. Murray remained guarded, Esther seemed more convinced than ever, and Morticia... Morticia sat in perfect calm, like a weaver who had tightened the first strands of her web.

She had asked only one question. But it had been enough.

The candelabras were extinguished, leaving the dining room veiled in morning gray. The Sinclairs had been guided to a parlor of somber beauty, where portraits of ancestors with hollow eyes watched from their gilded frames. Enid lingered there, lost in her own turmoil, while Morticia with a grace like drifting smoke, touched Esther’s hand lightly.

“Perhaps we might speak together,” she suggested. “Just us... mothers.”

Esther glanced at Murray, whose brow tightened in suspicion. But Morticia’s tone held no coercion, only calm invitation. Murray, though reluctant allowed it, muttering something about stretching his legs in the garden.

And so the two women withdrew to Morticia’s private sitting room.

It was a chamber draped in velvety black color. A chaise longue of carved ebony waited near the tall windows, where heavy curtains permitted only slivers of daylight. A faint perfume of myrrh lingered in the air. On the mantel, a silver candelabrum still held the melted wax of last night’s flame.

Morticia gestured gracefully. “Please, Esther. Sit. Make yourself comfortable.”

Esther did so, feeling small against the gothic grandeur. Morticia herself lowered into a chair opposite her, her movements precise, as though gravity itself obeyed her command.

They sat in silence for a moment, before Morticia folded her hands and spoke softly. “I believe honesty is the only language worth speaking between mothers. You deserve to know that last night... your Enid made a choice.”

Esther frowned, her pulse quickening. “A choice?”

Morticia’s dark eyes gleamed. “Yes. While the house slept, she slipped away. She climbed the hill to the castle where my daughter resides.”

The words fell like stones into still water. Esther stiffened, hands gripping her knees. “She went—alone? At night?”

Morticia nodded serenely. “Indeed. In nothing but her pajamas, a coat thrown hastily over them. It was cold. The path is steep. And yet, she went. Voluntarily. Of her own will.”

Esther’s breath caught. “Why would she—”

“Because she wished to see Wednesday,” Morticia interrupted gently.

Esther pressed a trembling hand to her lips. Her heart pounded with fear, the thought of her daughter wandering a gothic hill alone, into the lair of the infamous Wednesday Addams, felt reckless, dangerous and almost unthinkable.

But, she had returned unharmed.

Esther’s mind reeled.

Morticia’s voice broke through her thoughts, calm and steady, each word deliberate.

“You see, Esther... my daughter has known others. Prospective matches, carefully chosen. Each one crumbled before her. They fled. Some screaming, some weeping, all terrified. They could not withstand the weight of her presence.”

She leaned forward slightly, her pale face illuminated by the dim sliver of light. “But Enid... your Enid... walked willingly into that darkness. She sat with Wednesday. She did not flee.”

Esther swallowed hard. “You mean... Enid is the first?”

Morticia’s lips curved into the faintest smile. “The very first. In all my daughter’s years, no one has ever walked in by choice and emerged not shattered, but stronger for it. She is the only one who dared. That, Esther, is not coincidence. That is destiny.”

Esther felt her throat tighten. Pride and fear wrestled within her. The thought of her daughter being the one for Wednesday was both terrifying and strangely flattering.

Morticia, sensing her hesitation, reached with words as gentle as a caress.

“You raised a girl of courage. Of spirit. You should be proud. For I tell you truly, Enid may be the key that unlocks my daughter’s heart. And if she is, then your family, your legacy, will be forever entwined with ours.”

Morticia rose in one fluid motion and drifted toward a black lacquered cabinet. From within, she drew forth a folder of thick parchment, bound with a ribbon the color of dried blood. She returned and set it upon the low table between them.

“This,” she explained softly, “is not a contract in the crude sense. Think of it as... an accord. An understanding between families. It outlines not only the alliance of marriage, but the privileges, protections and prosperity such a union would bring. Your Enid would not enter into poverty, nor uncertainty. She would inherit legacy. Respect, wealth and influence. She would be safe within the arms of a family that guards its own with ferocity.”

Esther stared at the folder, her fingers twitching with the urge to touch it and yet fearing the weight it carried. Her heart thundered. She thought of Enid’s glowing innocence, her dreams of cottages and wildflowers. Could that same daughter stand in shadowed halls, bound to a woman whose eyes burned like a flame?

She also thought of the riches, the status, the security that Morticia promised. The Addamses were feared, but also untouchable. A life here would be unlike anything the Sinclairs could ever give.

And Enid had gone to Wednesday willingly.

Esther’s pulse raced. Could she truly deny fate when her daughter herself had walked into its jaws?

Morticia reached across the table, her long fingers brushing the parchment. Her voice softened, low and almost hypnotic.

“You need not decide today, Esther. But know this: your daughter has already chosen in her heart. She may not understand it yet, but she has felt the pull. And once felt, it cannot be undone.”

Her dark eyes locked onto Esther’s, unblinking. “I see it. You see it. All that remains is to honor it.”

Esther exhaled shakily, the weight of the revelation pressing against her chest. She lowered her gaze to the folder once more.

The room was silent, save for the faint rustle of the velvet curtains. Somewhere far above, in the castle upon the hill, Wednesday likely sat at her desk, writing words that could wound or enchant. And Esther’s daughter, her sweet and innocent Enid, had stepped into that world without hesitation.

Perhaps Morticia was right. Perhaps destiny had already been written.

Chapter Text

The corridors of the Addams mansion sighed with the echoes of old wood and stone. Esther moved quickly through them, clutching the folder Morticia had entrusted to her, her pulse sharp in her throat. She had excused herself from Morticia’s presence with as much composure as she could manage, but inside her hands trembled.

She found Murray wandering the inner garden, where twisted black roses bloomed among creeping vines. He had been inspecting the strange flora with a farmer’s suspicion, muttering to himself about how 'nothing good grows without sun.' 

“Murray,” Esther called softly, her voice carrying urgency. “Come to our chamber. I need to speak with you.”

The tone in her voice silenced his grumbling. He followed her, his heavy boots sounding against the stone floors, his jaw tight with unease.

Their guest chamber was richly appointed, walls lined with crimson wallpaper patterned with thorny vines, a canopy bed looming at its center. Esther shut the door behind them and crossed to the table, where she carefully placed the folder down.

Murray frowned. “What’s that?”

Esther hesitated before opening it, the parchment within rustling like old bones. “It’s a contract. Morticia gave it to me. She says if Enid signs it, her future will be secured. Ours, too.”

Murray stiffened. “Contract? What kind of contract?”

Esther drew out the first sheet, the thick, cream-colored parchment, written in black ink that shimmered faintly as though still wet. The handwriting was elegant, curling and unmistakably old-fashioned.

The Accord of Shadows and Legacy

Sealed beneath the hand and honor of the House of Addams

Be it known that this document bears testament to an alliance between the House of Addams and the House of Sinclair, in the year of our macabre Lord, witnessed under shadow and candlelight.

1. On Union of Blood and Name

The Lady Wednesday Friday Addams, daughter of Morticia and Gomez Addams, shall be joined in binding covenant to Miss Enid Sinclair, daughter of Murray and Esther Sinclair.

This union shall be recognized as legitimate and eternal in the eyes of the Addams lineage, whose bonds transcend mortal courts and temporal law.

2. On Protection and Legacy

Miss Enid Sinclair, upon the signing of this document, shall be claimed as a member of the Addams household, afforded all rights, protections and immunities thereof.

Any who bring harm upon her shall invite the wrath of the Addams line, which is legendary and unrelenting.

3. On Prosperity

A dowry of one million U.S. dollars shall be secured in Enid Sinclair’s name, placed in trust upon the consummation of this union.

The Sinclair family shall be ensured financial security, their debts erased and their land holdings protected by Addams estate influence.

4. On Lineage and Inheritance

Any offspring born of this union, by natural means or otherwise, shall bear the name Addams-Sinclair and be raised within the gothic tradition, with reverence to both family heritages.

The inheritance of Wednesday Addams, including estates, rights, and royalties, shall pass wholly to Enid Sinclair upon the natural death of the elder, should the union endure.

5. On Fidelity of Spirit

Neither party may abandon the other, nor dissolve this accord, save in death. Love, once pledged, is to be bound in shadow and eternity.

Signed beneath wax and night,

Morticia Addams-Frump, matriarch

Gomez Addams, patriarch

Space left for the signatures of:

Wednesday Friday Addams

Enid Sinclair

The document ended with a flourish of black wax, impressed with the Addams crest: a skeletal hand clutching a rose.

Murray’s face darkened as Esther finished. He muttered a curse under his breath, pacing the chamber with heavy steps.

“This is madness,” he said sharply. “A contract? With words like blood, shadow, eternity? Do you hear yourself, Esther? This isn’t a marriage proposal, it’s a trap.”

Esther closed the folder gently, though her fingers lingered on the parchment. “It’s also... protection. Prosperity. Murray, look, a million dollars, debts erased. Enid would never know hunger, never break her back in the fields. She would live secure.”

“Secure in a coffin!” Murray snapped. He jabbed a calloused finger at the folder. “They’re not farmers, Esther. They’re not like us. That girl of theirs, Wednesday, she frightens me. You’d give our daughter over to that?”

Esther’s voice quavered, torn between fear and hope. “And yet Enid went to her. Don’t you see? Morticia told me, no one else has ever dared. But Enid did. She wasn’t broken by it. She came back... different, yes, but not destroyed. Murray, maybe that means something.”

Murray's face hardened, frustrated. “It means our daughter is curious, maybe reckless. She’s young. She doesn’t know what she wants. And they’re ready to sign her life away with fancy parchment and promises we don’t understand.”

Esther’s eyes softened. “She’s also brave. And if she is brave enough to stand beside Wednesday Addams, maybe she deserves the chance. Maybe this is her fate.”

The folder sat on the table like a third presence in the room, humming with silent promise. Murray glared at it as though it might sprout fangs and bite. Esther looked at it with a strange mixture of fear and longing.

Both knew the truth: if Enid signed her name upon that parchment, her life would change forever.

The choice loomed, heavy and unrelenting.

And somewhere above, in the looming fortress on the hill, Wednesday Addams herself was writing, oblivious or perhaps not, to the destiny that had been inked in her name.

The hour was late, though time within Wednesday’s sanctuary obeyed no ordinary rhythm. Candles guttered along the high bookshelves, dripping their wax like bleeding wounds. The keys of her typewriter rested silent for once, the last page rolled halfway, lines half-finished. Words had fled her fingertips.

She knew why.

Even before Thing scrambled into the room, the air had changed. That slight, intrusive stirring she always felt when Morticia’s machinations pressed closer.

The door clicked shut behind the disembodied hand. He crossed the rug with urgent hops, landing on the desk before her, his fingers flexing rapid and frantic.

Wednesday leaned back in her chair, hands folded on her lap and waited. Her face was a marble mask, her eyes pools of unbroken black.

“Begin,” she said, voice flat, the command an iron rod through the silence.

Thing wasted no time. His fingers curled, tapped, pointed, signing in the rapid gestural language they had long since perfected between them. Wednesday’s gaze followed each movement unblinking.

Thing began with the morning meal, sketching in the gestures for food, tea, conversation, then a quick pantomime of Morticia’s graceful hand sweeping toward Enid. He shaped the letters L-O-V-E sharply, then mimed a heart, tapping once over where his chest might be.

Wednesday’s lips thinned. “My mother, forever the puppeteer.”

Thing’s fingers shifted. He mimed covering his face in embarrassment, then tapped rapidly: girl, blush, innocence. He made the motion for clean, then held up a single finger and pointed downward, the gesture they had once agreed meant untouched.

Wednesday’s brows twitched, a fractional movement but noticeable.

“Ah,” she murmured, voice low. “So Mother pried into the sanctity of Enid Sinclair’s virginity over scones. How tasteful.”

Thing slapped the desk with emphasis, nodding furiously.

Wednesday’s gaze slid past him, her eyes distant now, dark thoughts knitting together. “Fascinating,” she continued. “My mother believes purity makes a better offering. As though innocence were more precious than blood, more binding than iron.” She tilted her head. “I wonder, is it innocence she craves for me... or for herself?”

For just a moment, her lips curved, not into warmth but into something sharper and darker. “And here I thought the subject of Enid Sinclair’s bed had not yet been opened. How premature.”

Thing tapped impatiently, redirecting. He gestured a rectangle, pages, then mimed signing with a pen. His fingers struck the table decisively. Contract.

Wednesday’s face cooled again, eyes narrowing. “So it comes to parchment already.”

Thing described in gestures the parts he remembered: dowry, protection, Addams wealth, a million dollars. His fingers swept through the air in a dramatic flourish when he mimed Morticia’s sealing of the wax crest.

Wednesday listened, her silence thicker than stone.

Finally, she rose. The chair’s legs scraped across the rug. The candlelight caught the sharp line of her cheekbones as she moved to the window, staring down through the black panes toward the mansion below.

“My mother,” she said quietly, “has prepared everything, hasn’t she? Wealth, legacy, name. All of it, balanced on the edge of a fountain pen. One stroke, and I am tethered for life.”

Thing signed vigorously: YES.

Wednesday’s reflection stared back at her in the glass, pale and severe. She lifted a hand, traced the line of her braid absently, as if grounding herself in ritual.

“Marriage,” she whispered, the word falling like ash. “A chain disguised as devotion. My mother has dreamt for years to see me bound and contained, devoured by what she calls love.” Her eyes narrowed, her voice hardened. “Does she believe I will bend now, simply because this girl did not faint at my doorstep?”

Thing hesitated, then signed carefully. He described Enid creeping up the hill, her courage, her trembling but refusal to run. He mimed wide eyes, then drew a tiny circle before tapping Wednesday’s arm with it.

Wednesday turned, her gaze cold. “You presume to tell me I was impressed?”

Thing hesitated. His fingers curled into a shrug.

Wednesday stepped closer to him, her shadow falling across the desk. “She is ten years younger. Bright as candy, loud as a songbird. And yet...” Her words faltered, just for a breath. “She walked into my house willingly. She did not flee.”

Her hand closed into a fist at her side.

“That alone,” she admitted quietly, “makes her anomalous.”

Thing nodded eagerly, slapping the desk again.

Wednesday’s lips curved again, this time into something nearly imperceptible. Not joy or humor, but recognition of irony. “An anomaly. My favorite kind of experiment.”

She returned to her chair, lowering herself slowly, her fingers steepled before her mouth.

So, Enid Sinclair, farm girl, tender in spirit, untouched by the world. Yet bold enough to creep into a house of horrors and not crumble. Morticia had pounced on it naturally. The contract was proof of how far her mother was willing to push.

And yet, for all her disdain, Wednesday could not wholly dismiss it.

The image of Enid at her doorway rose again in her mind, the girl’s flushed cheeks, her trembling hand clutching her coat, but her eyes steady, luminous and refusing to look away. A naïve lamb walking into the wolf’s den not with ignorance, but with trembling defiance.

The memory twisted something deep in Wednesday’s chest. It wasn't tenderness, she was immune to that vulgarity. It was something close to hunger.

“Purity,” she muttered, almost to herself. “My mother sees a virtue. I see... a blank page.”

Her eyes flicked toward her typewriter, the unfinished line glaring back at her. For the first time in years, her words had fled her because a living and breathing enigma had knocked upon her door.

Thing tapped the page of her manuscript with a question: What will you do?

Wednesday’s gaze lifted slowly, her expression unreadable once again.

“I will do nothing,” she said flatly. “Nothing is more unnerving than restraint. Let Mother scheme, let the Sinclairs tremble and debate. Let Enid dream her bright dreams in the dark.”

She rose once more, her shadow stretching across the room.

“When the time comes, I will not need a contract to bind her. If she is to belong in my world, she will walk willingly into its abyss... as she already has.”

Her voice dropped, almost a whisper but sharp as a blade, “And if she cannot withstand me, she will flee. Just like the rest.”

Thing drummed his fingers nervously.

Wednesday extinguished the candle on her desk with a decisive pinch of her fingers. Darkness fell heavy across the room, leaving only the faint glow of the moon.

“She is not ready,” Wednesday murmured to the dark. “But she will return.”

Chapter Text

Enid had never seen parchment so thick, so yellowed at the edges, so heavy with ink. It wasn’t the kind of contract one read in a notary’s office or flipped through on a farm loan. This looked medieval. The black script curled across the page, the Addams crest pressed into the wax seemed to glower from the table.

Her mother’s voice was light, almost trembling with excitement.

“Enid, darling,” Esther said, smoothing a corner of the page. “This is everything Morticia spoke of. The future we could never dream of, laid out for you here.”

Murray stood a step behind with his arms folded. His brow was furrowed so deeply it cast half his face into shadow. He did not touch the paper.

Enid stared at the words as if they were snakes. Dowries. Holdings. Promises of land. An entire fortune. A security her family had never known, offered like a poisoned fruit.

“Read it aloud,” Murray said gruffly. “Every line. Don’t let the beauty of it fool you.”

Enid obeyed, though her throat was tight. She stumbled over phrases like lifelong binding and heirloom responsibilities and mutual benefit of the Sinclair and Addams houses.

Each word pressed down like a stone on her chest. When she finished, silence clung to the chamber.

Esther broke it first. “It’s perfect.”

Murray shot her a look. “Perfect? Or perfectly binding?”

Esther’s smile did not waver. “Do you not see, Murray? This is providence. For our daughter, for all of us. Morticia is no fool; she would never place such an offer without believing Enid was the right match.”

“She’s a girl,” Murray snapped. “Our girl. And you’d sell her future with a signature?”

Esther’s voice softened, but her eyes remained sharp. “I’d secure her future, Murray. You and I both know we cannot offer her what she deserves. This contract does.”

The words tangled inside Enid like threads pulled too tight. Her hands shook as she held the parchment. She could feel its weight seeping into her bones.

She remembered Bruno, his smile, his little cottage in San Francisco, the small garden he’d spoken of tending together. His dreams were simple, rooted and safe.

Then she remembered the hill. The looming citadel of Wednesday Addams. The candlelight on pale skin, braids tight and severe, eyes like wells that saw through every inch of her. Enid had been terrified. She had also been... alive.

Her breath trembled. “I don’t know what to do,” she whispered.

Esther placed a hand on hers. “Darling, you need not fear. This is your chance. You are chosen. Do you realize how rare that is?”

Murray shook his head, muttering, “Rare like a lamb walking into the slaughterhouse.”

The words cut sharper than he intended. Enid flinched.

The chamber door opened with a slow creak, and Morticia herself drifted inside. She wore black silk, her presence filling the room like perfume, like smoke. Her pale hands rested together, her long fingers poised as though already weaving fate.

“Ah,” she purred, “I see the contract has been delivered.”

Esther rose instantly, bowing her head with respect. “Yes, Morticia. It is—most generous.”

Murray did not bow. He simply eyed her like a man wary of a cobra.

Morticia’s gaze, however, bypassed them both and fixed on Enid. Her lips curved into that knowing smile that made Enid’s skin prickle.

“Well, child,” she said smoothly. “What do you think?”

Enid’s heart thundered. She stood, parchment still clutched in her hands. The candlelight caught her golden hair, casting it in contrast against Morticia’s raven-black. She felt small and weak, but something inside her stiffened.

“I...” she began, voice trembling. Then she steadied it. “I can’t sign this. Not yet.”

Esther gasped softly. Murray’s eyes sharpened with sudden pride. Morticia only tilted her head.

“And why not, my dear?” She asked gently.

Enid swallowed, then forced her chin high. “Because I don’t even know her. Not really. Your daughter. Wednesday.”

Morticia’s smile deepened. “Few ever truly do.”

Enid drew a breath, courage building. “Then I won’t let ink bind me to something I can’t understand. If this is real, if this is meant, then I need time. At least a week.”

The words left her lips like fire.

Esther clutched her pearls. “Enid!”

But Enid pressed on, voice firmer now. “One week. With her. In her world. No contracts, no dowries, no promises. Just time. To see if I can stand beside her, or if I’ll run like everyone else did.”

The chamber fell into silence.

Morticia’s eyes gleamed, darker than usual but glittering with satisfaction.

“A trial,” she murmured, savoring the word. “How deliciously bold.”

She stepped closer, her presence enveloping Enid. “Do you understand what you ask, child? My daughter is... not easily endured.”

Enid’s voice quavered, but she did not look away. “That’s why I need to try.”

Morticia studied her for a long, silent moment. Then she laughed softly, a sound like silk tearing. “Very well.”

Esther’s face was pale with shock. “Morticia, surely—”

Morticia raised a hand. “Peace, Esther. Your daughter has more sense than most who cross my threshold. She asks for trial, not escape. That alone tells me she may be worthy.”

Murray’s chest swelled. “At last, someone speaking with her own mind.”

Esther turned, desperate. “But—what if she fails? What if she—”

“Then she fails,” Morticia said simply, her smile never faltering. “And you will return to your farm with wealth untouched. But if she endures...” She let the thought trail off, curling into promise.

Gomez’s voice floated from the doorway where he had silently appeared, his grin wide. “Ah, my darling, this is magnificent! A test of love in its purest form! A duel not with swords, but with endurance.”

He swept into the room, kissing Morticia’s hand. “Our little viper may finally have met her match.”

Enid stood amidst them all, her hands trembling but her heart resolute. She did not know what one week in Wednesday’s world would do to her. Perhaps it would break her. Perhaps it would forge her into something else entirely.

But for the first time, she felt the choice was hers. And she would take it.

The fortress at the edge of the hill stood like a wound against the night, its jagged turrets clawing the sky. Few dared approach it. Even fewer crossed its threshold. Tonight, Morticia did.

The iron gates creaked open at her touch, as though the stones themselves recognized her authority. A mist clung low to the ground, stirred only by the sweep of her gown as she ascended the path. Owls stirred in the treetops and one raven perched upon a weathered gargoyle, tilted its head in silent witness.

Morticia did not hesitate. Inside, the air was cooler and heavier. Dust motes swirled like tiny spirits in the candlelight. Long corridors lined with cabinets of bones and pinned insects stretched into the shadows. In the distance, faint scratching could be heard, a quill dragging across parchment, relentless and rhythmic.

Wednesday was in her study.

She sat at her desk, hunched slightly forward, ink staining her fingertips. Her braids framed her pale face, her dark eyes fixed on the page with merciless concentration. Words spilled across the paper like incantations, neat and sharp. She did not look up when the door opened.

“I should have expected you,” she said flatly, her tone absent of welcome. “The only thing heavier than your perfume is your persistence.”

Morticia drifted into the room like smoke, unbothered. “My darling, persistence is the marrow of love.”

Wednesday set down her quill with surgical precision. At last, she lifted her gaze. The candlelight caught the faint shadow beneath her eyes, the sleepless devotion of her craft.

“Thing tells me you’ve been busy,” Wednesday said, voice sharp as glass. “Contracts. Promises. Schemes dressed as generosity.”

Morticia’s smile curved. “Schemes? No. Merely arrangements. For your benefit.”

Wednesday leaned back in her chair, steepling her fingers. “Your arrangements smell of desperation. How many victims have you tried to throw at me over the years? Six? Seven?”

“Eight,” Morticia corrected smoothly. “But you remember them, don’t you? All of them fled. But not this one.”

Wednesday’s eyes narrowed. She knew exactly whom Morticia meant, though she feigned indifference.

“Enid Sinclair,” Morticia said softly, savoring the name.

Wednesday’s expression did not flicker, though her pulse tightened, a small betrayal she buried instantly.

“She is still here,” Morticia continued. “Still curious. Still brave enough to climb this hill when every other prospect bolted at your shadow. And she made a demand of her own.”

Wednesday arched a brow. “A demand?”

Morticia stepped closer, her gown whispering across the stone floor. “She asked for a week. One week in your presence. A trial to see if she can endure you. Do you understand what that means?”

Wednesday tapped a finger on the desk, her face unreadable. “It means she has a death wish.”

Morticia’s smile deepened. “Or it means she is precisely what you need.”

The words burrowed into Wednesday’s mind like splinters. She remembered Enid standing small and trembling at her doorway, yet refusing to flee. She had seen the fear in her eyes, sharp, glittering and almost beautiful in its purity. But she had also seen something else. Fascination. A kind of fragile courage, clumsy but real.

No one else had ever looked at her like that.

Wednesday despised the thought. Attraction was a weakness. Fascination a distraction. She pushed the thought aside with a snap of will.

“So this is your great strategy?” she said dryly. “Throw a rainbow into a crypt and hope it doesn’t fade to gray?”

Morticia’s gaze did not falter. “It is not hope. It is recognition. You are iron, my darling. Cold and unbending. But even iron can be tempered. And perhaps... softened.”

“Softness is rot.”

“Softness is life.”

The silence between them was sharp, filled only by the faint crackle of candle wax.

Wednesday stood abruptly, the chair scraping back. Her boots clicked against the stone as she moved to the window. Beyond it, the Addams estate sprawled below like a dark jewel, and further still, she imagined the restless blonde girl in her chamber, tossing and turning, haunted by questions she could not silence.

A week.

The challenge curled in Wednesday’s chest. She had seen suitors faint at her words, scream at the sight of her taxidermy, collapse under her silences. None had lasted more than a single night.

But Enid asked for seven.

Her lips pressed into a line, not quite a smile but close to one.

“Very well,” she said at last, her voice low, dangerous and certain. “If she wants a week, she will have it. I will not coddle her. I will not spare her. Every ritual, every habit, every cruelty of my solitude will be hers to endure.”

She turned, her eyes dark flame. “And if she breaks, you will not meddle again.”

Morticia’s smile widened, triumphant. “Agreed.”

For a long moment they simply stared at one another. Mother and daughter, mirror and foil. Morticia in her elegance, her mastery of hearts, her velvet manipulation. Wednesday in her austerity, her raw defiance, her obsidian walls.

Yet in that stare lay an unspoken truth: Morticia had won something. She had drawn her daughter into the game.

Wednesday felt it like a blade at her throat, but instead of flinching she leaned into it.

When Morticia finally left, her gown whispering away into the shadows, Wednesday still stood by the window. Thing scuttled up onto the sill, signing quickly, eager for reaction.

Wednesday did not answer. She simply whispered to herself, voice barely audible, almost like a vow, “A week, little lamb. Let’s see how long before you bleed.

The announcement came with all the poise and certainty only Morticia could summon.

The Sinclairs were gathered once again in the dining hall, a room whose vaulted ceiling swallowed every whisper and every candle flame. The table was set though untouched, silver domes hiding delicacies beneath, as though mocking the human hunger no one felt.

Morticia sat at the head, her hands folded gracefully. Gomez at her side, his eyes glittering with good humor. Across from them, Esther, Murray and Enid sat as though awaiting judgment.

Morticia’s voice rang soft, “Wednesday has agreed.”

The air seemed to contract, as though the house itself leaned in to listen.

“She has accepted Enid’s condition. A week in her presence. A week to see if your daughter can endure her solitude, her eccentricities... her world. If she remains, then the bond shall be sealed. If she falters, then no pressure will remain. The choice, as always, is hers.”

Esther’s eyes glistened with a kind of relief, though she kept her composure. This was what she wanted, her daughter placed before opportunity, before something greater than the endless cycle of dust and toil in San Francisco. Her hands resting on her lap tightened together, prayerful and desperate.

Murray’s jaw worked, his expression a storm. He leaned forward slightly, his rough farmer’s hands folded on the table.

“And you’re certain...” he began, his voice low, “that she will be safe?”

Gomez laughed heartily, a sound like thunder bouncing off stone. “Safe? My good man, she’ll be with an Addams. There is no safer place!”

Morticia’s gaze silenced the room. “Safety is relative, Mr. Sinclair. But I assure you, Wednesday does not kill what she intends to keep.”

Murray swallowed hard, feeling unsettled.

Enid had barely breathed since Morticia spoke. Her mind reeled: A week. A whole week alone with her. She didn't felt as confident as before.

She saw again the pale face lit by candlelight, the braids, the eyes that had swallowed her like a pit. Her stomach turned, but beneath the nausea and the dread, there was a pull.

Bruno’s face flashed in her mind: soft brown curls, the shy grin when he handed her wildflowers, his hands rough from work. Safe and familiar.

Then Wednesday’s: sharp, terrifying, impossible. A face she could not look away from.

“I...” Enid began, but her voice failed her. She pressed her lips shut. Words seemed fragile things here.

Morticia smiled knowingly.

The following morning was one of quiet preparations. Esther and Murray packed their modest bags, their sons’ faces haunting them from afar. Esther kissed Enid’s hair, smoothing it as though she were still the little girl who clung to her skirts.

“My sweet one,” Esther whispered, “be brave. Remember, this is your choice. Yours alone.”

Murray stood stiff, his expression hard but his eyes betraying the weight in his chest. He drew Enid aside, lowering his voice.

“Listen to me, Enid. You’re walking into something none of us understand. If she hurts you, if you feel even a breath of danger, you run. Do you hear me?”

Enid nodded, though her heart knew: she wouldn’t run.

They left her there, on the steps of the mansion, Morticia’s hand resting lightly on her shoulder. Esther looked back once, tears glinting in her eyes. Murray did not look back at all.

The Addams family limousine bore them away, down the long road toward the airport. Enid stood watching until the mist swallowed them whole.

Up in her fortress, Wednesday had already begun. She moved through the citadel like a conductor, her every step purposeful. This was no simple hosting, this was a crucible, a test by ordeal. If Enid was to endure her world, she would see it unmasked.

The study was first. Wednesday arranged her manuscripts in neat stacks, her typewriter gleaming like an altar. She sharpened her quills until they could pierce flesh. She set out one chair opposite her desk, smaller and lower, forcing any guest to look up at her.

The library followed, a cathedral of books bound in leather and skin, their spines bearing titles of unspeakable weight: 'The Anatomy of Decay,' 'On the Preservation of Cadavers,' 'The Art of Poison.' Wednesday dusted none of them. She wanted Enid’s hands to trail the grime, to feel the centuries pressing close.

In the laboratory, she laid out her vials in precise rows: arsenic, belladonna, hemlock, nightshade. She stirred a cauldron of herbs until the fumes clawed at the throat. The taxidermy chamber was tidied, ravens posed on perches, glass eyes catching the candlelight. She polished the scalpel she would not use, placing it where Enid could see it gleam.

This was not cruelty. This was revelation.

If Enid was to tether herself to Wednesday, she must embrace the reality of her life. Its rigor, its morbidity, its endless ritual.

And beneath it all, a voice whispered inside her: If she endures, perhaps she belongs.

Wednesday silenced it, yet it returned with every thought of the golden-haired girl who had walked unbidden into her citadel.

In the mansion below, Enid paced her chamber, her heart hammering with each passing hour. She watched the hill through the window, the looming silhouette of Wednesday’s fortress cutting into the clouds.

By dusk, when Morticia came to her door with a smile, Enid already knew she would climb the hill.

As the first stars clawed through the night, Morticia stood at the window of her parlor, watching the small figure move across the mist toward the hill. Her lips curved, slow and satisfied.

“Ah, Wednesday,” she murmured to herself. “Even your shadows cannot resist the light forever.”

Up above in the fortress, Wednesday lit a single candle and waited at the gate. The ravens stirred. Thing tapped nervously at the sill.

Her face was calm, her eyes unreadable. But inside, something coiled. Not dread or joy, but anticipation sharp enough to bleed.

A week, she thought. Let the trial begin.

Chapter Text

The hill looked taller tonight. Enid stood at its base with her small bag gripped tight in her hand, staring up at the fortress. The air bit colder up here, the mist rolling low across the ground as though the earth itself sighed. Each step she took crunched against gravel, each breath visible in the pale light.

She told herself she was brave. She had to be. But her stomach twisted in knots, her chest felt tight.

What if she locks me in a dungeon? she thought. What if she really is planning to stuff me like one of those ravens?

Then she laughed nervously under her breath, shaking her head. “No… no. She wouldn’t. She’s… she’s just lonely, right? Eccentric. Weird. But not… bad.”

Her words vanished into the night without answer.

Halfway up the hill, the gates came into view: black iron, twisted into ornate designs. 

And there she was.

Wednesday stood with a single candle, its flame steady despite the wind. The light carved her features into pale stone, her braids falling dark ropes over her shoulders. She did not move, did not blink, simply watched as Enid climbed the last stretch toward her.

Enid’s heart stuttered. She looks like a ghost waiting at the edge of the world.

Still, she forced her usual brightness into her voice, because that was what she had, her only shield.

“Hi, Wednesday!” she said, her voice almost too loud in the heavy silence. “Um... it’s, uh... nice to see you again.”

Wednesday tilted her head slightly, as though examining a specimen that had spoken unexpectedly.

“You returned,” she said at last, her tone flat and unreadable.

“Yeah,” Enid replied, hugging her bag to her chest. “Guess that means I passed the first test?”

A shadow flickered in Wednesday’s eyes. Perhaps amusement, perhaps contempt. She stepped aside and opened the gate with a groan of iron.

“Enter. If you dare.” Wednesday said darkly.

The entry hall swallowed Enid whole. Its ceilings rose like the inside of a cathedral, its walls lined with portraits whose eyes seemed to follow her. Candles burned in wrought-iron sconces, their flames casting shadows that writhed like living things.

The air was cold, not unbearable, but insistent, like fingers trailing across her skin.

Enid shivered. “So... uh... you don’t have electricity or something?”

Wednesday turned slowly, the candle held before her face, making her eyes glimmer. “I have all the light I require.” She said simply.

Enid blinked. “Right. Of course. And... Wi-Fi?”

Silence.

Enid’s cheeks warmed. “I mean, not that I need Wi-Fi, I was just—”

Wednesday’s stare cut her off. She didn’t speak, didn’t frown, didn’t blink. Just looked. And somehow, that was worse than words.

Enid’s voice shrank to a nervous laugh. “Okay. No Wi-Fi. Got it.”

Inside, Wednesday’s thoughts stirred. This is the creature I’m to evaluate? She will crumble at the absence of wireless internet. Perhaps I need not design elaborate tests after all.

Still, the girl had climbed the hill again. Despite dread, despite reason, despite every chance to run. She had come, and more importantly, she chose to.

And that intrigued her more than she cared to admit.

Wednesday moved forward, her candle cutting a path through the dark. Enid followed close behind, clutching her bag, her eyes darting to the walls where mounted ravens stared back.

Wednesday’s voice broke the silence, low and cutting. “This citadel is a reflection of its master. Every stone, every shadow, every silence. If you wish to remain, you must accept it as it is.”

Enid nodded quickly. “I... I can do that. I think.”

“Thinking is not enduring.” Wednesday said sharply, not turning to look at the girl. 

Enid opened her mouth to respond, then shut it. There was no right answer.

They passed into a chamber lined with books. The smell of old leather and dust filled the air. Titles gleamed in candlelight: 'Diseases of the Flesh,' 'The Poetry of Plague,' 'Funeral Rites of Forgotten Cultures.'

Enid swallowed hard. “Wow. That’s... some library you’ve got.”

“Each volume is a friend. More reliable than flesh and blood.” 

Enid forced a smile. “Guess that makes me… the awkward guest crashing book club, huh?”

No reply.

The silence pressed down until Enid nearly laughed again just to break it. But she stopped herself. Something told her laughter would not serve her here.

As they walked, Wednesday watched Enid from the corner of her eye.

The girl’s movements were nervous, her steps hesitant, yet she kept going. Her words were clumsy and frivolous, but they were words nonetheless, not screams, not pleas for release.

Every previous “match” had fled before the second chamber, trembling and muttering excuses, their souls too brittle for the weight of her solitude.

But this one, this absurd, golden-haired farmer’s daughter was still here.

Wednesday hated the flicker of warmth that thought produced.

This is not affection, she reminded herself. This is observation. Nothing more.

Enid trailed behind Wednesday’s candle, her heart hammering. She should be terrified, she was terrified, but beneath it, something else burned.

She remembered Bruno’s safe embrace, his cottage dreams. Yet here she was, following this pale, severe girl into shadows and every step felt inevitable.

Wednesday paused at a door, turning just enough for the candlelight to catch her profile.

“This is where you will sleep,” she said.

Enid stepped inside. The chamber was vast, its bed draped in black, its windows narrow slits that let in no light. A single candlestick flickered at the bedside, casting the room in half-darkness.

It was cold. It was strange. It was utterly unlike anything she had known.

Enid hugged her bag and turned to Wednesday. “Thank you. Really. For... letting me stay.”

Wednesday’s expression did not change. But her eyes lingered, just a fraction longer than necessary. 

“Endure the night,” she said simply. “Then we will see.”

She turned to leave.

But for a moment, neither of them moved. The air stretched taut between them, silence heavy with something unnamed.

At last, Wednesday stepped away, her candle retreating down the hall. Enid stood in the dark chamber, her heart racing, feeling both more alive and more terrified than she ever had in her life.

Enid had never slept in a bed so large before. Back home, in the farmhouse that had cradled her entire childhood, her bed had been narrow and practical, tucked into a corner beneath a window that squeaked when it rained. Her room was small, cozy in its way, but filled with the noise of brothers thudding about in the hall and her mother’s voice calling through the thin walls.

Here, the bed was a continent. A monolith draped in black velvet, its carved frame like the ribs of some enormous fossilized beast. The room itself swallowed her whole. The ceilings lost in shadow, the windows that let no light in, the walls breathed with silence.

The air was cold.

Not the crisp chill of a San Francisco morning, but a deeper, more lingering cold that seemed woven into the very stones. Even beneath the heavy covers, Enid shivered. The house felt alive with absence, with secrets, with a solitude so complete it pressed on her chest.

She lay on her back, staring at the canopy above, its shadows shifting with the candlelight. Her mind turned in endless circles.

Bruno’s cottage dreams rose in one corner of her imagination, warm and familiar. Wednesday’s pale face, carved by candlelight, hovered in another, austere and magnetic.

What am I even doing here? she thought, her heart twisting. I should be home. I should be safe. I should be in bed, scrolling through my phone until I fall asleep... not in this—this cavern of a room where the dark feels heavier than the blankets.

She rolled to her side, but the bed creaked, vast and empty. She rolled again, tugging the covers to her chin, but the chill seeped in anyway.

Her eyes flicked to the bedside candle, its flame trembling.

With a sigh, she threw off the covers, slipped into her nightwear and took the candlestick in her hand. The flame lit her face, caught in her hair, and for the first time since she had entered the fortress, she felt a spark of courage.

The hall outside was colder still.

Enid padded barefoot down the long corridor, her candle a fragile bubble against the dark. The silence of the house was not complete; it pulsed with faint, rhythmic sound.

Click. Click. Click.

It was distant at first, then nearer as she followed it.

The noise was steady, like the beating of a mechanical heart. Enid’s own heart quickened, but she realized, after a moment, what it must be.

Wednesday was still awake. Still working.

Enid tightened her grip on the candlestick. She had thought the older girl would vanish into some shadowed chamber, leaving her alone to wrestle with the night. But no, Wednesday was somewhere nearby, tapping her keys with that relentless energy she seemed to radiate even in silence.

Enid hesitated outside the door she guessed was the study. The clicking continued inside, unbroken.

She raised her hand, swallowed her nerves, and knocked gently.

“...Wednesday?” she called, her voice soft and uncertain, yet strangely tender.

The clicking stopped.

The silence that followed was heavier than the walls.

Inside, Wednesday froze.

The voice had not been loud, but it reverberated through her bones all the same. She had not been summoned by name in such a tone in many years; soft, hesitant, not commanding or fearful. 

She set her hands on the desk, steadying herself. Her study lit by a single oil lamp at he very corner, smelled of ink and paper, dust and raven feathers. The interruption was unwelcome, it always was. 

Wednesday rose with a candle in hand, and moved to the door.

When she opened it, the hallway’s candlelight spilled over Enid’s face.

The girl stood in her nightdress, her hair slightly mussed from the bed, the candlestick trembling faintly in her grip. Her eyes looked larger in the dark, glimmering with both fear and something else, something Wednesday refused to name.

Wednesday’s gaze swept over her, clinical at first: pale skin prickled with cold, her breath misting faintly in the hall, her shoulders drawn in against the chill.

“You should be in bed,” Wednesday said flatly.

Enid shifted her weight. “I... I couldn’t sleep.”

“Insomnia is an admirable condition,” Wednesday replied. “It sharpens the mind.”

Enid gave a tiny laugh. “I don’t think my mind’s very sharp right now. Mostly just cold.”

There it was again, the softness in her tone unguarded. Wednesday felt something unfamiliar stir in her chest, an echo she tamped down with force.

“You came here for warmth,” she said, her voice cool but quieter now.

Enid nodded.

Wednesday hesitated. Obligation was not a word she often entertained, but in this moment, looking at the nineteen-year-old girl shivering in her nightdress, she felt precisely that: a strange sense of responsibility.

With a motion that was almost ritualistic, she stepped aside.

“Enter.”

Enid slipped inside, grateful as the warmer air embraced her. Wednesday’s study was vast, its walls lined with shelves that climbed toward the ceiling, sagging under the weight of books, jars, bones, and preserved specimens. A great desk dominated the center, strewn with papers and lit faintly by the oil lamp.

The room smelled of ink and something faintly metallic, just like the first time she saw it.

Enid pulled her arms tighter around herself and set her candle on a nearby table. Her eyes roamed wide, fascinated despite herself.

“This is where you write,” she murmured, mostly to herself.

Wednesday shut the door with care. “Among other things.”

Enid drifted toward the desk, not touching, only looking. “It’s... amazing. Kind of intimidating. I mean, back home my writing desk was... well, a kitchen table I had to share with my brothers’ homework.”

Her laugh was small and self-conscious.

Wednesday’s eyes lingered on her face in the lamplight. The contrast between this fragile, shivering girl and the oppressive solitude of her fortress was sharp, almost cruel.

She will not last, Wednesday thought. But she has come knocking in the night for a second time, unbidden and unafraid enough to stand here.

She moved to the hearth, a small, iron fireplace in the corner. With methodical precision, she lit a stack of wood. The flames licked upward, filling the study with a slow and growing warmth.

Enid’s shoulders eased, her cheeks coloring. She turned toward Wednesday, her gratitude plain though she didn’t voice it.

For a long moment, they stood in silence, the fire crackling between them.

Enid spoke first, her voice soft. “You didn’t have to do that.”

Wednesday’s expression did not change. “You would have returned otherwise. Your knocking would have continued until I relented. I value efficiency.”

Enid smiled, a little crookedly. “You always have an excuse, don’t you?”

Wednesday’s eyes narrowed, not in anger but in scrutiny. She was unused to being spoken to so casually, especially here, in her sanctum. But the words did not repel her. They... lingered.

Enid moved closer to the fire, hugging her arms around herself. The heat began to soak in, her shivering subsiding. Her eyes flicked again toward Wednesday, who stood straight as a statue.

She’s so... severe, Enid thought, her heart tugging in directions she couldn’t understand. But when she looks at me, I don’t feel like I should run. I feel like I should... stay.

She swallowed, cheeks warming. At nineteen, she had dreamed of cottages, not castles; of boys with sunburnt smiles, not women with eyes like obsidian. But here she was, heart racing at the sight of Wednesday’s stillness.

Wednesday turned her gaze away, back to the typewriter. Enid’s presence in this room unsettled her in ways she refused to articulate.

She should be a disruption, Wednesday thought. An intrusion into silence. However, she fits, somehow, like a misplaced candle that nonetheless burns evenly.

Her mother’s words returned, irritating as always: This is what you need, Wednesday.

No. She needed no one. But she did not ask Enid to leave.

The silence stretched, the fire crackling and the shadows flickering. Enid watched Wednesday from across the study, her heart thudding in her chest. She wanted to say something, anything, but words tangled on her tongue.

Wednesday, for her part, felt that unfamiliar stir again, not affection, but the ghost of it. Responsibility. Curiosity. The faintest trace of warmth, like the fire itself.

She extinguished her candle with a flick of her fingers.

“Sit,” she said at last, gesturing to a chair by the fire.

And Enid obeyed, her eyes bright, her heart whispering that something had shifted forever.

The fire crackled, soft and steady, filling Wednesday’s study with its flickering glow. Shadows stretched across the walls, bending over shelves crammed with relics and bones, jars glinting with formaldehyde, and books whose titles seemed to whisper from their spines.

Enid sank into the armchair near the hearth, her legs folded beneath her, her hands cupped together for warmth. The fire painted her face with a rosy tint, banishing the chill that had dogged her since she lay alone in that cavernous bedroom.

Wednesday returned to her desk, the typewriter waiting like a loyal beast, its keys gleaming. She sat, posture perfect, her fingers poised. For several moments, the only sound was the rhythmic click-clack of keys, the bell of the carriage, the rustle of paper.

Enid watched her.

There was something mesmerizing in the way Wednesday wrote: not frantic or halting, but relentless, as if every sentence had already been etched into her bones and the machine merely carved them free. Enid had never seen someone so... contained, yet so alive with purpose.

She let the silence linger, until curiosity tugged too strong.

“So,” Enid began carefully, “how many hours do you usually write in one sitting?”

Wednesday did not lift her eyes. “Until exhaustion dulls my ability to eviscerate.”

Enid blinked. “Eviscerate... words, you mean?”

Wednesday’s lips twitched, not quite a smile. “On the page. And occasionally in person.”

Enid hugged her knees. “Right. Totally normal hobby.”

The silence resumed, punctuated by the fire and the typewriter.

Enid tried again. “Do you ever... take breaks?”

Wednesday’s head tilted, raven-like. “Breaks are a bourgeois invention. The weak cling to them. The devoted have no need.”

Enid snorted before she could stop herself. “You sound like my mom when she’s talking about laundry.”

Wednesday paused mid-sentence. Her dark eyes flicked to Enid. “...You find me comparable to a laundress?”

Enid flushed. “N-no! I just meant—like—uh—you both sound super serious about your work.”

For the first time, Wednesday leaned back from the typewriter, considering her visitor. “You chatter when you are nervous.”

Enid bit her lip. “...Yeah. That’s fair.”

The fire popped, and Enid’s laugh bubbled out, soft and self-deprecating. To her surprise, Wednesday did not scowl. Instead, the older woman regarded her as one might study a specimen that behaved in an unexpected, almost endearing way.

Enid twirled a lock of hair, then blurted: “So... you’re twenty-nine, right?”

“Yes,” Wednesday answered flatly.

“I’m nineteen.” Enid said softer than intended. 

“I am aware.”

The bluntness made Enid laugh again, though there was a nervous edge to it. “It’s kind of a big gap, isn’t it?”

Wednesday’s gaze sharpened. “Time is a construct. Maturity an illusion. Mortality the only certainty. Whether one is nineteen or ninety, one is equally destined for rot.”

Enid wrinkled her nose. “That’s... one way to put it.”

Her voice softened. “I was just saying, you seem... older. Not just in years. In how you are.”

Wednesday studied her across the firelight. “And you seem younger than your years.”

Enid blinked. “Thanks?”

“It was not intended as praise.”

“Yeah, I figured.” Enid grinned, undeterred. “Still kind of sounds like one, though.”

Wednesday’s gaze wavered, not with amusement or irritation, but something quieter, almost thoughtful.

Enid leaned back in the chair, staring at the shelves. “You really don’t have Wi-Fi in this place? Like... not even for emergencies?”

Wednesday’s deadpan was immediate. “If death approaches, it will not email me in advance.”

Enid laughed so hard she had to cover her mouth, muffling the sound against her sleeve. The firelight danced in her eyes, and for a flicker of a second, Wednesday felt unsettled. Not by the laughter itself, but by the warmth it radiated, how it filled the study with a life foreign to her.

“You’re impossible,” Enid said between giggles.

“I have been called worse.”

“By who?” Enid asked curiously. 

“Most of humanity.”

Enid shook her head, still smiling. “I think they just don’t get you.”

The minutes turned into hours. Enid’s laughter softened into yawns, her shoulders drooping. Wednesday resumed typing, but her gaze drifted now and then to the armchair where Enid curled.

The younger girl’s eyes grew heavy. She fought it, blinking furiously, but eventually her head lolled against the chair’s back, her legs tucked beneath her, her breathing slow and steady.

The fire glowed, casting gold over her hair, her face softened in sleep.

Wednesday stopped typing. Her fingers rested motionless on the keys as she turned her full gaze toward Enid.

She did not understand why she looked.

There was nothing remarkable in the sight of someone asleep. She had witnessed countless corpses, faces slack and stilled. But this... this was not stillness.

This was softness.

The fire kissed Enid’s cheeks, her lashes casting faint shadows. Her lips curved slightly, as if dreaming something gentle. Her chest rose and fell with a rhythm at once fragile and infuriatingly alive.

Wednesday felt something she could not name. Not tenderness, but a pull. A reminder that she was no longer alone in her fortress, that some radiant thing had wandered into her dark and, inexplicably, remained.

Her mind supplied the obvious option: wake her, send her back to her bed, restore solitude. Order would return.

But Wednesday did not move.

She leaned back in her chair, watching, her candle guttering low. A thousand thoughts pressed at the edge of her mind; her mother’s schemes, the contract, the absurdity of it all. But here, in the quiet of the study, with the fire fading to embers and a girl asleep in the armchair, those thoughts felt distant.

Wednesday’s eyes softened, imperceptibly but undeniably.

She whispered, so low the fire nearly swallowed it: “Foolish girl.”

And yet, she allowed Enid to sleep.

Chapter Text

The first thing Enid noticed when her eyes blinked open was warmth. Not the thin, inadequate warmth of her own body under the covers in that vast, draughty guest bedroom, nor the faint illusion of warmth from the candle she had carried nervously down the corridor the night before. This was a more substantial embrace, a cocoon.

Her cheek was pressed against thick wool. A heavy, dark and faintly scratchy rug but not unpleasant. It was wrapped snugly around her shoulders, tucked as carefully as if by some unseen hand. She shifted, the weave rasping softly against her pajamas. For a disoriented moment she thought she was back on the farm, waking before dawn with her mother having laid a blanket over her when she had fallen asleep by the hearth.

But then the smell of old paper, candlewax and ink reached her nose.

And the fire was still burning in the grate.

Enid pushed herself upright slowly, her limbs stiff. The armchair creaked under her as she sat up, blinking at the flames that still licked the logs. The fire should have died hours ago, and yet it glowed faithfully, as though someone had kept feeding it through the night.

Her face heated.

Wednesday.

Or... no, not Wednesday. Wednesday wasn’t the sort to kneel by a hearth with a poker in hand, she was too statuesque for such menial gestures. But someone had been told to watch over her. Someone had wrapped her in this rug.

Enid glanced around the study, her heart thudding, though the room seemed empty, except for the shelves and the faint impression that she was not entirely alone. She rubbed her eyes, telling herself she was imagining it.

Still, her thoughts chased themselves in circles.

She noticed I was cold. She… did something about it, all night long.

The idea sat strange and bright in her chest.

She gathered the rug tighter around her shoulders and pressed her lips together, feeling mortified.

She had fallen asleep in Wednesday’s study. In front of her. Like a child at a sleepover who couldn’t keep her eyes open past midnight.

Enid groaned softly, burying her face into the folds of the rug. The heat wasn’t only from the fire; her cheeks burned as she remembered how desperately she had asked to sit by the flames, how awkward her chatter had been while Wednesday typed away at her typewriter.

Great first impression, Enid. Perfect way to prove you can handle her world: fall asleep like a kitten by the fireplace.

Her eyes darted to the desk. The typewriter sat silent now, its carriage pushed neatly to one side, a fresh sheet rolled in. The keys glimmered faintly in the dim morning light seeping through the tall windows, curtains drawn but not entirely shut.

Wednesday herself was absent.

Enid’s heart both sank and leapt at once; relief that she wasn’t being skewered by that unblinking stare the moment she woke, and disappointment that she couldn’t immediately gauge Wednesday’s reaction.

Had she thought Enid pathetic? Weak? Or had she thought anything at all? This possibility was even more dangerous.

Enid glanced at the watch on her wrist.

7:03 a.m.

Her natural rising hour. Years of farm life had drilled it into her bones: wake with the sun, no matter where you are. Sleep past dawn, and chores multiplied before you had rubbed the sleep from your eyes.

She stretched and stifled another groan.

What time does Wednesday wake up?

She hesitated, gnawing her lip. She had no clue. Did Wednesday sleep early, like her, and simply retreat after she’d left? Or did she burn the night away at her typewriter, scribbling until dawn?

Her eyes flicked to the fresh page still in the machine.

Maybe Wednesday was still asleep now, in some shadowed chamber upstairs. Enid tried to imagine her in bed: perfectly composed, her braids laid like black ribbons against white sheets, her hands folded as if in a coffin. The image made Enid shiver, though not entirely in fear.

Still, the question gnawed.

What if I go wandering and bump into her before she wants me to? What if she hates being seen in the morning? What if—

The thought cut off when she remembered something Morticia told her before going up here, in a voice both proud and conspiratorial: 𝙒𝙚𝙙𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙙𝙖𝙮 𝙣𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙧𝙞𝙨𝙚𝙨 𝙗𝙚𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙚 10:31. 𝙉𝙤𝙩 𝙩𝙚𝙣-𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙧𝙩𝙮. 𝙏𝙚𝙣-𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙧𝙩𝙮-𝙤𝙣𝙚. 𝙎𝙝𝙚 𝙨𝙖𝙮𝙨 𝙞𝙩 𝙞𝙨 𝙝𝙚𝙧 𝙡𝙞𝙛𝙚𝙡𝙤𝙣𝙜 𝙧𝙚𝙗𝙚𝙡𝙡𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙖𝙜𝙖𝙞𝙣𝙨𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙩𝙮𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙣𝙮 𝙤𝙛 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙢𝙞𝙩𝙮.

Enid’s lips parted, and despite herself, a small laugh puffed out.

Of course. That sounds exactly like her.

She hugged the rug tighter. That meant she had hours before Wednesday appeared. Hours to stew in her own embarrassment, and maybe... hours to think. Because that rug, this fire, this care, it wasn’t nothing even if it was discreet.

Enid knew herself well enough to recognize the truth: if Bruno had done something like this, wrapped her in warmth, she would have been touched, but unsurprised. Bruno was gentle, kind, sweet in the way of a boy raised to comfort, to help.

But Wednesday?

Wednesday was all sharp lines and blunt words. She was supposed to be terrifying, untouchable, too cold to notice such things. There was a difference between warmth freely given and warmth that escaped through the cracks in someone’s armor. The latter felt rarer and more precious.

She stood, clutching the rug around her shoulders, and paced before the fire. Every creak of the floorboards made her wince, as though she might be caught in the act of being awake too early.

What if Wednesday walked in now and saw her clumsy, wrapped like a burrito, with her hair mussed from sleep and eyes still heavy?

Enid groaned again and pressed her forehead against the cold glass of the window.

Why do I care so much? Why does it matter what she thinks?

Because it did. More than it should.

What Enid did not know was that she was not alone, not entirely.

In the corner, unseen, Thing had perched through the night, faithfully feeding the fire and adjusting the rug with a dexterity only he possessed. Wednesday had instructed him to be discreet, to make certain Enid never glimpsed his presence.

And so he remained hidden now, watching as Enid fumbled with her feelings, smiling (if a hand could smile) at the sight of her bewilderment.

He knew Wednesday better than most. And he knew this much already: the fire had not been ordered simply for comfort. The fire had been ordered because Wednesday, in her own unspoken and imperious way, could not stand the idea of Enid Sinclair shivering in her house.

Enid took a deep breath and forced herself back into the armchair.

She couldn’t undo the fact that she had slept here, nor the fact that someone, likely Wednesday, had taken care of her indirectly. She could only face it.

When Wednesday emerge at her sacred 10:31, Enid would act casual. She would thank her, maybe, or maybe not mention it at all. Pretend she hadn’t noticed the rug or the fire. Pretend it wasn’t enough to make her stomach twist with something that was not entirely dread.

And maybe, she would last this week.

For now, Enid had three hours to kill.

Three long, uncertain hours until Wednesday Addams would rise at her sacred time of 10:31 a.m. Not a moment earlier.

It left Enid in that limbo state she hated, too restless to sit still, too nervous to wander without purpose. Back on the farm in San Francisco, mornings were simple. There was always something to be done: feeding the chickens, collecting eggs, sweeping the porch, scrubbing the copper pans until they gleamed, helping her mother with the laundry. Chores had a rhythm, a familiarity, a comfort.

Here, in this vast mansion of stone and shadow, there was only silence.

Enid stood in the hallway, freshly dressed in one of the neat outfits she had folded into her bag before leaving home. She smoothed her hair, adjusted the hem and looked around helplessly. The house seemed to sprawl endlessly upward and outward, each staircase curling into darkness, each hallway lined with more doors than she could count. It felt alive, as though the walls leaned in to whisper their secrets.

Her instinct urged her to explore. But her dread stopped her cold.

Wednesday might not approve of curiosity that edged too close to intrusion. Enid could imagine that steady, unblinking stare turning sharper than a knife, the quiet rebuke: Why were you in there? Why did you touch that?

Better to stay in the safe zones.

The living room. The kitchen. Places meant to be occupied. So, she drifted toward the living room.

Her first thought upon stepping in was that the room was larger than her entire farmhouse.

Not just the kitchen or the parlor, not just the old barn... the entire structure of her childhood home could fit in here.

The ceiling soared into shadows, with a chandelier heavy as a gallows swinging faintly above. The walls were lined with bookshelves and portraits, some of which seemed to follow her with their painted eyes. A massive fireplace was against one wall, but unlike the one in the study, this one lay cold and abandoned, ashes long since greyed and stale.

It was beautiful in a way, but oppressive too. Gothic grandeur. The kind of beauty meant to impress strangers, not to comfort a resident.

Enid wrapped her arms around herself and turned slowly in place, the rug of Persian weave muffling her footsteps.

Her farmhouse had creaky floorboards and hand-stitched curtains that smelled of lavender. This place had velvet drapes thicker than her winter coats and tables that could seat an army.

The contrast made her dizzy.

But what struck her most was the stillness.

For a house this large, there should have been sound: footsteps, the clink of dishes, at least the faint hum of life. Instead, the air felt stale.

Enid wrinkled her nose and crossed to one of the towering windows. She grasped the heavy curtain and wrenched it open with both hands. The weight nearly toppled her, but she managed to pin it back.

The cloudy daylight poured in, gray and cold, illuminating the room in a way it clearly hadn’t seen in years.

Enid winced. Dust shimmered in the air like tiny spirits startled awake. It danced in the beam of light, revealing layers of neglect: on the tables, the shelves, even the chandelier above.

“Wow,” she muttered, almost laughing. “Guess no one’s dusted you in... centuries?”

The window creaked as she nudged it open an inch, letting in a breath of damp morning air. The breeze stirred the dust motes, scattering them into a golden storm. Enid inhaled deeply, it smelled like rain, like earth, like something alive.

She felt better at once. More herself.

Wednesday probably likes it stale and dim, she thought with a pang of guilt. She probably hates sunlight. I shouldn’t be messing with this place.

But another voice in her head, the stubborn and practical farm-girl answered: Too bad. You can’t sit still for three hours doing nothing. You’ll go crazy. So do what you do best: tidy up.

Her eyes scanned the room for possibilities.

The tables were smudged with dust thick enough to draw shapes into. The carved banister of the staircase gleamed faintly but had cobwebs tucked into its corners. The rug was heavy with grit, like no one had vacuumed in years.

Enid’s lips pressed into a determined line.

That was when she spotted the small door near the base of the staircase.

She approached it slowly, half expecting it to creak open to reveal a dungeon, or a hidden passageway lined with skeletons. Her fingers hesitated on the handle.

When she finally pulled it open, she nearly laughed out loud with relief.

A broom. A bucket. Cloths. A battered vacuum cleaner that looked like it had been salvaged from the seventies. A feather duster.

“Bingo,” Enid whispered as she rolled up her sleeves.

Soon she was moving about the living room with brisk energy, the broom sweeping across the vast expanse of rug, the duster dancing over the carved mantle and portraits. Each sweep of her hand sent a puff of dust into the air, making her cough and laugh at once.

“Should’ve brought a mask,” she muttered, dragging the vacuum into place and plugging it into an outlet that groaned to life with a low hum.

The machine struggled against the heavy carpet, but Enid leaned her weight into it, her muscles remembering the work of pushing wheelbarrows and hauling hay. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was familiar.

And with each stroke, the room felt less oppressive.

Daylight struck the polished wood. Cobwebs gave way to gleaming carvings. Even the cold fireplace seemed less lifeless when its edges were cleared of ash.

Her mind wandered as she worked, as it always did when her hands were busy. She imagined Wednesday walking in to find her cleaning. Would she be angry? Would she scoff? Would she accuse her of trespassing, or worse, pity her for being so simple as to find comfort in sweeping?

Enid flushed at the thought. She pictured those dark eyes watching her push the vacuum, and had to laugh nervously just to shake it off.

But another thought slipped in, quieter and warmer. Maybe she’ll be... impressed? Not by the cleaning, exactly, but by the fact that I’m trying. That I want to fit here, in her space. That I’m not afraid to do something instead of just sitting still.'

The idea gave her energy. She dusted higher, stretched farther, until sweat dampened her brow and her arms ached pleasantly.

There was something absurd about it too.

Here she was, nineteen-year-old Enid Sinclair, farm girl from San Francisco, vacuuming the gothic living room of Wednesday Addams, the most terrifying woman she had ever met.

“Maybe next I’ll be mopping the dungeon,” she whispered, giggling under her breath. “Or ironing her funeral shrouds.”

The vacuum roared, drowning out her laughter, and she worked harder.

By the time she set the vacuum aside and stood back to admire her work, the room looked transformed. Light from the tall windows bounced off the polished wood. The air smelled fresher.

It still looked gothic, still enormous and foreboding, but it was less suffocating.

And Enid felt, for the first time since arriving, that she had made her mark here.

Small, invisible maybe, but real.

Chapter Text

The clock above the silent hearth in the living room ticked solemnly toward half past nine.

The broom still leaning against the banister where Enid had left it as she wiped the last streak of sweat from her forehead. The living room gleamed in its own eerie way now, dust banished into the air, carpets cleaner than they had likely been in years. Sunlight had carved its way through the tall windows, transforming the shadows into something less menacing, almost playful.

Enid stood back and admired her work with a small smile.

Not bad, she thought. Not bad at all. You’d never survive here, Mom always said I can’t sit still. But hey, at least I’ve made one corner of this crypt livable.

Still, it was only 9:30 a.m. Wednesday wouldn’t wake until precisely 10:31. Enid wasn’t about to climb back upstairs and sit like a scolded child waiting for the headmistress to emerge.

Her stomach rumbled.

“Kitchen,” she whispered to herself. “Yeah. That’s safe.”

The kitchen was easy enough to find: a cavernous hall of black-and-white tiled floors and cabinets so dark. The ceiling arched high, lined with wooden beams, from which hung iron pans and utensils that looked more suited for battlefield surgery than frying eggs.

And yet, it was magnificent. Opulent countertops gleamed beneath a thin coat of dust. The stove was a hulking, old-fashioned monstrosity, but the switches on its side suggested someone, at some point, had updated it. A massive sink of hammered iron crouched beneath a narrow window, its glass warped and darkened by age.

Enid swallowed a lump in her throat. This kitchen is the size of our barn. She tugged the curtain open, flooding the space with the same gray daylight she had coaxed into the living room. A shiver of satisfaction raced through her at the thought: one more corner conquered.

But something near the doorway caught her eye. A small, unassuming switch plate.

She hesitated. Don’t. Knowing this house, it’ll probably summon ghosts or drop you into a snake pit.

Still, her fingers twitched toward it. Slowly, she flipped the switch. The kitchen lights blinked to life, warm and yellow, buzzing faintly with the hum of old wiring.

Enid exhaled a laugh she hadn’t realized she was holding in. “Oh, thank God. Lights. I was seriously starting to think this place runs on candle wax and blood sacrifices.”

She turned toward the looming refrigerator. It was black, with old-fashioned handles that squealed faintly as she pulled the door open. The cold air hit her nose, sharp and faintly metallic, like it hadn’t been opened in a while.

Inside was... sparse.

A dozen eggs stacked neatly in a wire holder. A bundle of vegetables, some fresh enough, others softened or suspiciously spotted. A wedge of hard cheese wrapped in wax paper. A small jar of black olives floating in their brine like marbles in ink.

On the counter beside the fridge sat a loaf of pumpernickel bread. Dark, dense, its crust so hard Enid wondered if it could double as a weapon.

She blinked. This is it? This is what she eats? What, does she survive on bitterness and literary acclaim the rest of the time?

Her stomach growled again.

“No bacon. No jam. No butter,” she murmured, cataloging the absences. “But eggs. Cheese. Veggies... Yeah, omelet. I can do omelet. Even in a haunted house.”

Enid rolled up her sleeves like she was about to wrestle the ingredients into submission.

She cracked the eggs into a heavy black skillet, whisking them with a fork she found in a drawer that smelled faintly of cloves and iron. The cheese grated down in sharp, salty curls. She chopped the vegetables quickly, tossing the questionable ones aside with a wrinkle of her nose.

The stove hissed to life when she turned the knob, gas flames licking blue beneath the pan. She let out a triumphant little laugh.

“See? Farm girl always finds a way.”

The sizzle of the eggs against the pan filled the cavernous room. The sound was comforting and grounding. The smell rose almost instantly; warm, savory and homely. It made the kitchen feel less like a set piece from a vampire movie and more like, well, a kitchen.

As she stirred and flipped, Enid hummed softly under her breath. A habit from the farm, little melodies her mother used to sing when kneading dough or hanging laundry. The notes sounded odd against the gothic backdrop, but she didn’t care.

Her mind, of course, wandered back to Wednesday. What would she think of this? Would she roll her eyes and deliver some cutting remark about "domestic frivolities"? Would she accuse Enid of trying to "brighten" what was meant to remain dim?

Enid bit her lip, stirring the eggs gently. She’ll probably hate it. She probably eats at noon, not at breakfast. Or maybe she doesn’t eat at all, just drinks ink and absorbs the souls of her readers.

The thought made her giggle, which made her flip the omelet too soon. It tore slightly, cheese oozing out one side.

“Oops,” she whispered, then laughed harder.

Still, there was something satisfying about it. Making something warm and nourishing in this space of cold and shadow. Leaving her mark not through sweeping this time, but through smell and taste.

She doesn’t have to like it. But maybe she’ll at least notice it. Notice me. The thought made her cheeks warm.

By the time she slid the omelet onto a plate, the whole kitchen smelled of melted cheese and sizzling vegetables.

Enid stood there for a moment, spatula still in hand, surveying her work. The gothic cabinets. The iron pans. The warped windows. And in the middle of it, a steaming omelet, golden and bright.

She snorted. 

“This is insane. I’m making breakfast for Wednesday Addams in her vampire kitchen. She’s gonna murder me.”

But she couldn’t stop smiling.

She sat down at the heavy wooden table with a fork in hand, and took her first bite. Warmth spread instantly through her chest. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until now.

For a moment, it felt like being back home. A simple meal, morning light slanting through the window, her body relaxing after work well done.

And beneath it all, the thrill lingered: she was here, in Wednesday’s world, leaving her fingerprints on it in ways small but impossible to erase.

Precisely at 10:31 a.m., Wednesday stirred from her bed. It was not sloth or indulgence. It was ritual and order. A decision made years ago, one minute past the tyranny of the half-hour, her own rebellion against conformity’s clock.

She rose with the same gravity she applied to all things. Today, however, her hand did not reach for the stiff collars or tightly laced corsetry that usually armoured her against the world. Instead, she tugged on a pair of black trousers, soft and loose, a tie cinched at the waist. Her shirt was black, striped in white, casual almost to the point of impropriety.

Her hair, however, was immaculate: twin braids sharp as blades, tied so neatly one might believe she braided them against a ruler.

She did not ask herself why she had chosen comfort today. Wednesday never asked why. That path led to weakness, to sentiment. She dismissed it as expedience, Enid would be here another six days and discomfort was an unnecessary hindrance to endurance.

And with that unconvincing explanation settled, she descended the staircase.

The moment she stepped into the living room, her eyes narrowed like shutters against a sudden blaze.

The curtains had been drawn open. The windows cracked to invite in a damp, fresh morning air. Sunlight muted though it was by thick clouds slanted across the floorboards, illuminating dust motes she had never permitted to be seen.

Wednesday halted at the foot of the stairs. Her lips pressed into a thin line. Her gaze swept the room, cataloging each betrayal: surfaces wiped, furniture gleaming faintly, the oppressive gloom of her sanctuary diluted by domestic meddling.

The air no longer smelled of parchment and age. It smelled of outside. Of wet earth. Of air that belonged to other people.

Her brow twitched, barely, but enough.

Then the second assault struck. This one through her nose.

It wafted from the kitchen in warm, greedy waves: eggs frying in butter, vegetables softened into sweetness, cheese melting with sinful abandon. The smell was so homey, so aggressively alive that it reached into Wednesday’s chest like an unwelcome hand.

It wasn’t unpleasant and that was the problem. It was intrusive in its comfort, like laughter in a mausoleum. Wednesday’s expression remained still, masklike, but inside her composure shifted an inch. Only an inch.

She followed the smell, her steps soundless.

The kitchen door loomed before her like the entrance to a crime scene. She paused on its threshold, shadowed by the frame.

There, at the massive table, sat Enid Sinclair. She was eating. Fork in hand, posture bright, as though she had no comprehension of the desecration she had wrought. Her hair tumbled golden around her face, catching what light dared slip through the window.

On the table before her: a plate with an omelet, half gone. Opposite it: another plate, identical and untouched.

Waiting... for her.

Wednesday did not move. Did not blink. The sight was absurd. Sacrilegious. An omelet, steaming in the heart of her ancestral kitchen, offered to her like some truce between light and dark.

Enid, sensing eyes on her, looked up. Her face brightened instantly. “Morning, Wednesday! You’re just in time.”

Wednesday’s voice, when it came, was steady as a guillotine. “You have defiled my home.”

Enid blinked, fork halfway to her lips. “...With breakfast?”

“With light,” Wednesday corrected. Her gaze flicked toward the traitorous curtains, then back. “And now with... this.”

She tilted her head toward the plate as though it might leap up and explain itself.

Enid’s grin widened, undeterred. “You’re welcome.”

Wednesday stepped into the kitchen slowly. She did not sit. “Hospitality is not your burden here,” she said. “This is not your farmhouse. My walls are not to be brightened. My air not to be tamed. And certainly...” She stopped, nostrils flaring faintly at the aroma. “Certainly not through eggs.”

Enid giggled. Not the nervous kind, but genuine amusement, warm and bubbling. “Wow. Only you could make breakfast sound like a felony.”

“It is worse than a felony,” Wednesday replied. “It is cheerful.” 

She advanced to the table at last, her eyes on the untouched omelet.

It was golden, steaming, bright against the black plate. Its scent mingled with the faint brine of olives left nearby, the whole thing smelling unnervingly... edible.

Enid leaned forward on her elbows, studying Wednesday’s face with transparent hope. “I made you one. Thought you might be hungry.”

Wednesday regarded the offering as one might a trap baited with cheese. “Hunger is for the weak,” she said flatly. But she did not look away from the plate.

Enid’s smile softened, her tone gentler now. “You didn’t have much in the fridge. Just eggs, veggies, cheese. I figured this was the best I could do. It’s not much, but...”

She shrugged, the motion light, almost shy. “...It’s something.”

The silence that followed was thick.

Wednesday stood there, the black-and-white stripes of her shirt cutting harsh lines against the gloom, her braids sharp over her shoulders. Enid sat opposite, glowing with domestic triumph, oblivious to the sacrilege she had committed.

And for the first time in longer than she cared to admit, Wednesday felt… outflanked. Not defeated, but infiltrated. The cracks Enid was sweeping past were no longer cracks, they were openings. Doors she hadn’t realized could be forced ajar, and she felt no urge to slam them shut.

“You are a contagion, Enid Sinclair. Infectious, persistent, immune to reason. You are light, and you have no right to exist here.” Her voice was calm. Too calm.

Enid tilted her head, smile mischievous now. “But you haven’t left yet.”

Wednesday’s lips pressed thinner. “Neither have you.”

The tension between them thickened, invisible but undeniable.

Enid, in her bright night-and-morning self, her farmhouse manners, her omelet of peace.

Wednesday, in her austere dark casualness, her disdain sharpened like a knife that against all laws of logic, hovered over the plate as though considering.

It was absurd, terrifying and inevitable.

The untouched plate sat between them like a gauntlet thrown.

Wednesday stood for another long moment, severe and still, weighing whether indulging this bright intrusion would shatter the scaffolding of her carefully curated existence. She could already hear her mother’s triumphant voice should she capitulate: See, darling. Even shadows cannot resist light.

And yet, she sat. It was a movement against her principles, her routines, her very identity, but she pulled the chair back with deliberate slowness, the scrape of wood against stone echoing in the gothic kitchen.

Enid’s face lit up like the window she had dared to open earlier. “I knew you wouldn’t let it go to waste,” she said, as though this moment was inevitable, not treasonous.

Wednesday did not respond. She reached for the fork as though it were a weapon, not a utensil. She speared the edge of the omelet with soldierly precision, lifted it, and regarded it with suspicion.

The scent rose in her face: warm, savory, indecently wholesome. And then, against the dictates of every instinct she had cultivated, Wednesday Addams tasted Enid Sinclair’s omelet.

The bite was... soft. Cheese stretched faintly against her teeth. Vegetables, sautéed into obedience, yielded bursts of flavor. Egg bound it all together in an unholy unity.

It was the opposite of her black coffee, her hardened bread, her ritual austerity. This was comfort disguised as sustenance. It was warmth when she had armored herself in cold.

Her expression did not change. Her fork lowered back to the plate, her eyes unreadable.

Enid leaned forward, watching her with a nervous brightness, like a child presenting her first harvest. “So?”

Wednesday chewed, precisely thirteen times, as always. She swallowed.

Then, after a pause: “It is edible.”

Enid burst into laughter, relief and delight mingling. “Edible? That’s it?”

Wednesday’s eyes flicked to her. “A higher compliment than you realize. My standards are not of this earth.”

Enid giggled, shaking her head. “Well, I’ll take ‘edible.’ That’s better than ‘contaminated’ or ‘felony,’ right?”

Wednesday’s lips twitched, just slightly, not enough to be called a smile, but enough to betray a ripple. “Barely.”

They ate in silence for a few minutes, Enid with genuine appetite, Wednesday with practiced control, her fork moving in precise motions as though the act of eating required ceremony.

At last, Enid spoke again, her tone curious. “So... what do you usually eat?”

Wednesday did not hesitate. Her voice was flat, matter-of-fact, as though reciting an execution schedule. “For breakfast, one slice of pumpernickel bread, hardened overnight and black coffee brewed until it resembles scorched earth. Each bite chewed thirteen times. Lunch, when acknowledged, consists of raw vegetables, carrots, radishes and celery sliced with my dagger and sprinkled with salt. Occasionally, if warranted, a boiled egg. Dinner is often forgone. When taken, it is bread again, olives, and hard cheese.”

Enid froze, fork halfway to her mouth. “That’s... it?”

Wednesday arched a brow. “Food is fuel. Pleasure is irrelevant.”

Enid set her fork down slowly, staring at her with horror thinly veiled by a nervous laugh. “Wednesday, no offense, but that’s not a diet. That’s, like... prison.”

“Exactly,” Wednesday replied without missing a beat.

Enid rubbed her forehead. “No wonder you’re so pale. You’re practically starving yourself.”

Wednesday tilted her head, regarding her with clinical detachment. “My pallor is ancestral, not nutritional. The Addams blood runs cold.”

Still, Enid looked unconvinced. Her voice softened, almost pleading. “But don’t you ever get... I don’t know, cravings? For something warm, something sweet? Something that actually makes you happy?”

Wednesday’s eyes narrowed slightly at the word. “Happiness is a distraction. Discipline is an art.”

“But—” Enid leaned forward, earnest, her golden hair falling over her shoulders. “You can’t just live on stale bread and olives forever. You’ll waste away. Someone has to keep you alive, Wednesday.”

The last words slipped out before she could stop them, and the moment they did, Enid’s face flushed scarlet.

Wednesday’s fork paused over the plate. Her gaze sharpened, those ink-black eyes locking onto Enid’s with unnerving stillness.

The silence that followed was suffocating, broken only by the faint crackle of the cooling omelet.

“And you would volunteer for this post?” Wednesday questioned with a raised eyebrow.

Enid stammered, trying to backpedal, but her voice trembled. “I—I just mean, you need to eat better, that’s all. You’re not... you’re not a ghost. You’re human, and humans need proper meals.”

Wednesday studied her, unblinking, as though dissecting a butterfly. However, her mind betrayed her with uncharacteristic thoughts. The earnestness in Enid’s voice, the blush staining her cheeks, the way she framed her concern, it was... disarming. No one had ever spoken to her like that.

Most people ran. Most people avoided her shadow. But this girl sat across from her, offering omelets and indignation at her diet, declaring that someone had to "keep her alive."

It was both ridiculous and... strangely inevitable.

At last, Wednesday set down her fork. Her plate was empty. “I have consumed your omelet,” she said evenly. “You may consider your duty fulfilled for the morning.”

Enid grinned, triumphant. “See? That wasn’t so bad.”

Wednesday’s gaze lingered on her, unreadable. “Do not mistake this for precedent.”

But when Enid laughed, the sound echoing through the gothic kitchen like sunlight in a crypt, Wednesday felt no urge to correct her further.

The omelet had been more than edible. It had been intrusive. It had been the beginning of something she could neither forbid nor ignore.

Chapter Text

The hill seemed steeper than usual, but perhaps it was only the weight of Enid’s thoughts. After breakfast, if one could call two omelets “breakfast” when Wednesday treated it as though she were swallowing cyanide pills, Enid had made up her mind.

This week of trial, her week, was not going to be just about enduring Wednesday’s eccentricities. It was also going to be about protecting her. About proving, both to herself and to Wednesday, that she was not another fragile interloper destined to run shrieking back to safety.

That meant food. That meant warmth.

It meant Morticia.

She wrapped her coat tighter around her shoulders as she descended the winding path that connected Wednesday’s fortress-like mansion on the hill to the Addamses’ primary estate below. The air was still damp and chill, and the sky hung low with gray clouds, the kind that threatened rain but never delivered quickly.

The main Addams mansion, sprawling and elegant in its gothic decay, seemed almost welcoming compared to the fortress Enid had just left. Windows glowed faintly, smoke curled from the chimneys, and somewhere inside she imagined Gomez laughing and Morticia moving with that gliding grace of hers, as though she were too regal to disturb the air.

Enid’s boots squelched slightly in the wet grass as she crossed the final stretch, and her heart hammered faster the closer she drew to the door. Asking Morticia Addams for anything felt like approaching royalty. Or worse, like approaching royalty who already knew exactly what you wanted and had judged you for it.

The door opened before she could knock.

Lurch stood there, his towering frame bending slightly to see her. His pale face was as unreadable as always, but his deep, resonant voice rumbled: “You rang?”

Enid gave a small jump. Then she realized he was joking. Or... perhaps not. She smiled nervously anyway. “Uh... hi. I was hoping to see Mrs. Addams, if she’s not too busy.”

Lurch gave a slow blink. Then, without a word, he stepped aside and gestured her in.

The parlor was its usual cathedral of shadow. Candles burned even in daylight, and a vase of black roses stood proud upon the mantel.

Morticia herself drifted into the room a moment later, as though summoned not by Lurch but by inevitability. She was all in black, of course, but today it was a gown of fluid silk that whispered as she moved, her long hair dark as a raven’s wing cascading down her back.

“Enid,” she greeted, her voice a melody that somehow carried steel beneath its sweetness. “You’ve come so early. I trust the night did not frighten you too much?”

Enid flushed and she straightened her shoulders. “No, ma’am. I, um... actually came because I need your help.”

Morticia’s dark eyes warmed with a quiet amusement. “My help? That is a rarity, and therefore already delightful. Tell me, child.”

Enid swallowed. “It’s about Wednesday.”

That alone was enough to make Morticia’s expression sharpen. Not unfriendly but keen, like a hawk spotting prey.

“I want to... well, during this week, I want to take care of her.”

Morticia tilted her head. “Elaborate.”

“She eats like... like she’s punishing herself,” Enid blurted, her cheeks burning. “Stale bread, olives, raw vegetables... Mrs. Addams, it’s not healthy. I cooked her an omelet this morning, and I think she actually liked it. Well, she said it was ‘edible,’ which I’m taking as a win.”

Morticia’s lips curved. “For Wednesday, that is practically a declaration of devotion.”

Encouraged, Enid went on. “So, I was wondering if... maybe... we could stock her mansion with ingredients? Real food. Eggs, vegetables, fruit, meat. Things I could cook for her. And... ” She hesitated, biting her lip. “Heating. Is there any? Because it’s freezing up there, and she acts like it’s normal, but I couldn’t even sleep without a rug and the fire. I don’t think she’ll use it herself, but maybe if I know how to... ”

Her words trailed off as Morticia’s dark eyes glimmered with something like triumph.

Morticia moved closer, folding her hands gracefully before her. “My darling Wednesday has always despised the luxuries the rest of us tolerate. She considers modern comforts an affront to her sense of purity. But you are correct, the house is not as archaic as she would like others to believe. My husband insisted on certain accommodations when she first took residence there. Hidden, of course, but present.”

Enid blinked. “So... there is heating?”

Morticia’s smile was slow, indulgent. “Yes. The system is controlled from the basement. Ancient-looking valves, but they power a modern furnace. As for lighting in the parlor, if you press the right switches, which are hidden behind certain portraits, you will find the house is not nearly as dark as she pretends. Wednesday prefers to live as though it were perpetually midnight, but the electricity hums beneath her silence, waiting to be used.”

Enid let out a nervous laugh. “That’s... honestly a relief. I thought she’d really committed to the whole candle-and-fire-only thing.”

“She has,” Morticia said serenely. “But now, so have you. And you may choose differently.”

Before Enid could say more, Morticia glided toward the doorway and called, “Lurch.”

The butler appeared silently, massive as ever.

“Go into town. Stock Wednesday’s kitchen with the finest provisions. Meats, fishes, fruits—everything. And bread that has not been left to harden for a week. Enid will provide you with a list.”

Lurch gave a solemn nod. “Yesss...”

Morticia turned back to Enid, her gaze sharp but kind. “You see, child, this is what pleases me most. Not your fear or your hesitation, but this instinct to nurture what others find terrifying. To feed what others would starve. That is rare.”

Enid blushed furiously. “I just... I just don’t want her to waste away.”

Morticia’s smile deepened. “And so you cook for her. You keep her warm. You uncover secrets in her house she has refused to touch. Enid, you are already slipping into the role far faster than she realizes.”

The words made Enid’s chest tighten in a way she couldn’t explain. For the first time, she caught a glimpse of what life in this world might mean. 

Money wasn’t an issue, Morticia sent Lurch to fetch delicacies without blinking. Comfort wasn’t an issue either, every modern convenience hid beneath the gothic facade. The Addams family lived with immense wealth and power, even if they cloaked it in shadows.

But Wednesday? Wednesday rejected all of it.

Enid’s thoughts swirled as she left the mansion, her bag of requests already being fulfilled by the giant butler who loomed like a silent promise.

The climb back up the hill was no easier, though Enid had less fear and more determination humming in her chest. The clouds had thickened overhead, a swollen curtain of gray pressing down upon the dark, slanted roofs of Wednesday’s mansion. Its silhouette rose from the hill like a black crown, and even in daylight, it looked ready to repel her.

But Enid had her orders. More than that, she had a mission.

Morticia’s words still echoed in her ears: You cook for her. You keep her warm.

It sounded simple. It wasn’t. Not when the very person she was trying to help took her pride in surviving as though she were a Victorian ghost who needed nothing but dust, silence and stale bread.

Enid trudged up the last slope, her boots wet with dew. When she reached the mansion, she slipped inside, closing the heavy door behind her with a soft thud. She held her phone in one hand, her flashlight already turned on.

Because she knew where she was going.

The basement.

The staircase groaned under her steps. Dust hung in the air, disturbed by her intrusion, and her phone’s narrow beam sliced through the thick dark. Enid swallowed hard, trying not to let her imagination take over. If Wednesday had skeletons anywhere, this was the place. Literal skeletons.

The deeper she went, the colder it became, as though she were descending into the belly of the earth itself. The walls glistened with damp patches, and the stone floor smelled faintly of mold. At one point, she thought she saw something move in the corner of her light, but when she whipped her phone toward it, there was nothing.

“Don’t think about it,” she whispered to herself. “Don’t think about it.”

She found the utility board tucked against one wall, looking like it hadn’t been touched in decades. The heating system was marked out in black lettering, the levers corroded and stiff. She placed both hands on the largest valve and twisted.

It resisted at first, groaning like some ancient beast woken from slumber. Then, with a loud clang, it gave.

The pipes above rattled and groaned in protest, and from somewhere deeper in the basement came a low rumble, as though a furnace had stirred awake. Enid jumped back, clutching her phone.

For a moment, she thought the whole place would collapse around her. But then, slowly, the air shifted. The oppressive cold began to loosen its grip.

She grinned. Heating: accomplished.

Back upstairs, emboldened by her victory, Enid turned to the second task.

She remembered Morticia’s advice. Behind the portraits.

The hallway was lined with grim ancestors, their oil-painted faces forever locked in frowns or smirks that suggested mischief or murder. Enid hesitated at first, half afraid one of the portraits would speak, or worse blink if she touched it. But when she lifted the frame of a particularly stern-looking great-uncle, her fingers brushed a switch.

Click.

The chandeliers above flickered, then bloomed into life. The bulbs glowed in a soft, golden light, not bright like the farmhouse kitchen, but warm. A gothic warmth. The kind of light that cast shadows long and deep, but took away the threat of stubbing your toes on the furniture.

Enid’s chest swelled with pride.

She went from room to room, lifting portraits and clicking switches. The living room, vast and cathedral-like, glowed faintly golden. The main hall filled with a low radiance, candles no longer the only defiance against shadow.

When she finished, she stood in the middle of the hall with her arms crossed satisfied. “This is how a house should feel,” she said aloud.

Wednesday noticed immediately.

In her study, where she had been hunched over her typewriter, the rhythm of the keys faltered. She paused mid-sentence, her fingers hovering over the black letters. Something was wrong and different.

The air was no longer the brittle chill she had lived with so long it had become part of her bones. Instead, there was warmth. A treacherous, creeping warmth, flowing through the walls like an infection. Her candle, once the only point of light, seemed... diminished.

Her brows drew together. Her head lifted and then she saw it. Light was spilling beneath the crack of her study door. But it wasn't candlelight or firelight. It was definitely electric.

Her face became a mask of suspicion. She rose from her chair, took a candle in her hand and stepped into the hall.

The sight was worse than she had imagined.

Her once-shadowed halls were bathed in that low golden glow, warm and gentle, like something from a parody of domestic bliss. The kind of light that invited laughter and comfort, two things she had outlawed within these walls.

And the air. The air itself betrayed her. No longer sharp enough to sting her lungs, no longer cold enough to make breath fog in the silence. It was warmer and gentler.

Wednesday’s face did not change, but inside her chest, something cracked. She followed the trail of treason, the faint scuff of footsteps on the floor. There, standing in the hall with her head tilted proudly, was Enid.

Enid turned at the sound of footsteps. Her cheeks flushed with triumph. “Oh! Hi, Wednesday.” She beamed, lifting her hands as though to display her work. “Surprise.”

Wednesday’s eyes narrowed, black as midnight. “What,” she said flatly, “have you done?”

Enid’s smile faltered slightly, but she straightened her shoulders. “I just... made it livable. You’ve been living like it’s the 1500s, Wednesday. No heat, no lights... it’s miserable! I nearly froze last night. And don’t even get me started on trying to walk these halls with only one candle. It’s a miracle I didn’t break my neck.”

“This house,” Wednesday said, her voice low and even, “is not meant to be livable. It is meant to be endured.”

Enid blinked. “Endured? That’s not a house. That’s a prison.”

“A home is what you make of it.” Wednesday stepped closer, her candle flickering in the golden light. “I made mine inhospitable, because I have no interest in being hospitable.”

Enid crossed her arms. “Well, tough luck. Because you’ve got me here now, and I’m not living in an icebox. Or a dungeon.”

Their eyes locked, the silence crackling with more heat than the furnace had produced.

Wednesday’s candlelight wavered, catching on Enid’s flushed face, her stubborn chin, her bright hair. Wednesday’s chest twisted into anger.

“You presume much,” she said at last.

“And you brood too much,” Enid shot back. “So maybe we balance each other out.”

She should have snuffed it out then. The warmth. The light. The girl. She should have dragged Enid to the basement, forced her to reverse every switch, every valve, until the house was once more the tomb it was meant to be.

And yet, Wednesday hesitated.

Because the warmth in the air pressed against her skin in a way she had never known. Because the golden light caught the dust motes like fireflies, softening her beloved shadows. Because Enid stood there, so young, so bright, so alive, and in some twisted way, the house did not reject her. It bent. It bent around her.

Wednesday hated it. But she hated more how her own pulse had quickened at the sight.

She was standing in the betrayal of her own house and realized she could not decide whether she wanted to extinguish Enid’s light, or guard it. Her home had been compromised. Not by thieves, or flames, or decay, but by the brightness of one single girl with the audacity to claim space where shadows reigned supreme.

Wednesday’s hand shot out before Enid could slip away. Her pale fingers closed firmly around Enid’s wrist, not painful but unyielding. The candle in her other hand swayed dangerously, dripping wax that fell in white beads on the wooden floor.

Enid blinked up at her, startled. “Uh... Wednesday?”

“Come with me,” Wednesday said. Her voice was steady, but beneath its flat cadence pulsed a current of urgency, of suspicion.

Without another word, she tugged Enid down the hall. Enid stumbled once before catching stride, trailing behind Wednesday as she led her back to the sanctuary of her study.

Wednesday pushed the heavy door open with her shoulder, ushered Enid inside, and shut it with a definitive click.

The study was as it had always been—ink-stained, dim, alive with the faint echo of typewriter keys and the scent of wax and paper. Even here, the faint warmth had crept in, a betrayal Enid had engineered. Wednesday could feel it in her lungs, in her skin, softening edges that were never meant to be softened.

She set her candle down, its flame competing feebly against the stubborn glow that bled through the door cracks from the hall. Then she turned her attention fully onto Enid.

Enid stood there uncertainly, her hands fidgeting in front of her. The pride that had lit her features downstairs faltered under the weight of Wednesday’s scrutiny.

Wednesday crossed the room and sat at her desk, her posture impeccable and her eyes sharp. She gestured to the chair opposite. “Sit,” she ordered.

Enid sat.

Wednesday leaned forward, folding her hands atop the desk. “Why are you here?”

Enid blinked. “Um... because Morticia agreed I could spend the week—”

“Not here in the mansion. Here in my life.” Wednesday’s eyes bored into hers, unblinking. “Do not insult me with vague pleasantries. Why have you not fled?”

Enid shifted in the chair, her bright energy dimming under the deadpan weight of the interrogation. “Because… I don’t want to?”

“Everyone wants to.” Wednesday’s tone was clinical, as though delivering an autopsy report. “They take one look at me, at this place, and they run. They scramble back to their safe, sanitized worlds, grateful to have escaped. You are still here. Why?”

Enid licked her lips nervously. “Maybe I don’t scare as easily?”

Wednesday’s head tilted, her braids swaying. “Everyone scares. The question is what you do with it.”

Wednesday tapped one finger against the desk, a faint rhythm of suspicion. “Perhaps your farmhouse was intolerable. Oppressive. A cage you needed to escape.”

Enid’s eyes widened. “No! My farmhouse wasn’t oppressive. It was home. Simple, sure. A little dull, maybe. But it was warm and it was mine.”

“Then why abandon it so quickly for this?” Wednesday’s gaze sharpened. “A week among cobwebs and cold stone is hardly an improvement.”

Enid hesitated, chewing on her lip. “Because it’s not dull here.”

The silence that followed was thick, punctuated only by the faint ticking of a clock.

Wednesday’s eyes narrowed, but something flickered beneath the scrutiny, a crack in her clinical detachment.

She pressed on, her tone hardening. “Or perhaps my mother bribed you. Paid you some ridiculous sum to suffer my presence. A companion purchased like a particularly cheerful piece of furniture.”

Enid frowned. “That’s not fair.”

“Life isn’t fair. Truth less so. Answer the question.”

“No! She didn’t bribe me. I mean, yeah, she’s helping my family... kind of. She made some offers to my parents, but this—” Enid gestured between them, her cheeks flushing. “—this is me. I chose to be here. No one bought me.”

Wednesday’s fingers stilled their tapping. Her eyes studied Enid’s face, searching for cracks, lies, anything that would prove this bright girl was just another mercenary dressed in kindness. But Enid’s expression was open, almost too open.

“You expect me to believe you’re here of your own volition,” Wednesday said slowly, “knowing precisely what I am?”

“Yes.”

“Foolish.”

“Maybe. But it’s the truth.”

Enid leaned forward now, emboldened. “You think I’m here for money? Or because I was desperate to escape? No. I’m here because... you’re interesting.”

Wednesday’s brow arched. “Interesting. Like a moth to a flame?”

Enid smirked weakly. “More like a sunflower to a thunderstorm.”

“That is biologically inaccurate.”

“It’s a metaphor.”

“I despise metaphors.”

Enid crossed her arms. “Of course you do.”

For a moment, the two sat in silence, glaring at each other across the desk. But beneath the glare, a strange current swelled, half irritation and half secret fascination.

Inside, Wednesday’s thoughts churned with a rare violence.

Why hadn’t Enid run? Why had she willingly stepped into this mausoleum of a life? She had seen the shadows, the rituals, the austerity. She had tasted the edges of Wednesday’s darkness and had not recoiled.

Why stay?

The question was more dangerous than any blade.

Wednesday wanted answers, but more than that, she wanted control. Control over this intrusion, over the warmth and the light that had infected her sanctuary. Control over the way her chest tightened when Enid’s voice softened, when her stubbornness flared like a torch against the gloom.

At last, Wednesday spoke again, her tone lower, edged with something that almost resembled caution. “You should leave while you still can.”

Enid’s eyes widened, but she did not move. “Do you want me to?”

Wednesday’s jaw tightened. She did not answer.

Enid leaned forward, her voice soft but steady. “Because if you really want me to leave, Wednesday, I will. But I don’t think you do.”

The words hung in the air like smoke, clinging, refusing to dissipate.

Wednesday’s fingers twitched against the desk, her deadpan mask faltering by the barest degree.

“You presume too much,” she said flatly.

“And you hide too much,” Enid countered again.

Their gazes locked again and this time, neither looked away.

The silence stretched between them like a taut rope, ready to snap. Wednesday sat with her hands folded like a judge presiding over a grim trial, her expression still unreadable. Enid shifted in her seat, but her posture betrayed stubbornness more than fear.

Wednesday’s voice cut through the stillness. “You turned on the lights.”

Enid blinked. “Yes…?”

“You lit this house as if it were some suburban dwelling, shattering its intended gloom with artificial radiance. You warmed its bones with heat it was never meant to feel. And then you cooked. You took ingredients I would never consider combining and made... omelets.” She said the word as though it were poison on her tongue. “That is not living alongside me, Enid. That is attempting to change me.”

Enid’s mouth fell open, incredulous. “Wait. you think cooking breakfast and turning on a heater is changing you?”

“It is altering the fabric of my existence,” Wednesday replied flatly.

Enid gaped for a second, then let out a half-laugh, half-sputter. “No, that’s called living like a normal human being, Wednesday. Eating real food. Staying warm. Seeing where you’re walking without needing a candle like it’s 1823.”

“Normality,” Wednesday said, her voice as sharp as broken glass, “is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”

“And hypothermia is the last refuge of the stubborn,” Enid shot back, crossing her arms.

Wednesday’s eyes narrowed. Few people dared speak to her this way. Fewer still survived it with composure intact. But the bright, colorful, absurdly alive Enid sat there defiantly, with her cheeks flushed and her eyes blazing.

“You presume to know what I require,” Wednesday said, each word sharp. “Food, heat, light... these are trivial distractions. I function without them. I thrive without them.”

Enid leaned forward, her hands gripping the armrests. “No, you survive without them. Surviving isn’t the same as thriving, Wednesday. You’re pale. You’re tired. You drink coffee like it’s water and nibble on bread so stale it could be used as a murder weapon.”

“I chew it precisely thirteen times,” Wednesday corrected her unbothered. “For luck.”

Enid threw her hands up. “That’s not luck, that’s a weird superstition!”

“It is ritual. Ritual gives structure to chaos.”

Enid met her gaze with a sharpness that surprised even herself. “Or maybe it’s just a wall. A wall you hide behind so nobody can touch you. So nobody can care for you.”

The words hit the air like a challenge.

Wednesday stilled, her expression blanker than ever, but her pulse quickened. Enid had not merely defied her, she had turned the blade back.

She spoke with careful slowness. “You believe yourself insightful. You assume my austerity is artifice, a mask. Tell me, Enid, are you so desperate to justify your intrusion that you must invent frailties where none exist?”

Enid leaned back, unflinching. “I don’t need to invent anything. I see you. You act like you don’t need anyone, but if that were true, why did you escort me to the gates the first night I came up here instead of letting me stumble down alone? Why put a blanket on me when I fell asleep here by the fire last night?”

Wednesday’s brow twitched almost imperceptibly. “Thing was responsible for the blanket.”

“Sure,” Enid said, smiling faintly. “But you told him to.”

A silence fell heavier this time.

“You’re insufferable,” Wednesday said at last, her tone utterly flat.

“And you’re impossible,” Enid shot back, lips curling.

“Impossibility is a virtue. It weeds out the weak.”

“Or maybe it just keeps you lonely.”

Wednesday’s eyes narrowed, but her mouth betrayed her by twitching at the corner.

“You speak boldly for someone so fragile,” she murmured.

“And you hide carefully for someone so strong.”

The words slipped from Enid without hesitation, and they hung in the air, soft and daring all at once.

Inside, Wednesday’s mind was a battlefield. This was supposed to be interrogation, dissection, a way to expose Enid’s weaknesses and catalog them for eventual dismissal. Instead, Enid was pushing back, drawing lines of her own, forcing Wednesday to look in mirrors she had long since smashed.

She should fear me. She should falter. Why doesn’t she?

It wasn’t defiance born of ignorance. Enid truly saw her and instead of running, she argued. Instead of fleeing, she cooked. Instead of recoiling, she leaned closer.

The intrigue was dangerous. It gnawed at the walls Wednesday had fortified for years.

At last, Wednesday stood, her chair scraping softly against the floor. She paced once, her candlelight throwing her shadow tall across the wall.

“You will continue your... domestic incursions,” she said cooly, “if only so I may observe their inevitable failure. But do not mistake this for approval. And do not think I will bend to your sunflower sensibilities.”

Enid grinned, triumphant in her own small way. “That’s fine. I wasn’t asking you to bend.”

Wednesday turned back, her dark eyes locking on Enid’s bright ones. “Then what are you asking?”

Enid swallowed, her heart hammering but her voice steady. “Just... don’t push me away before I’ve had the chance to prove I can stay.”

The study fell silent again, but this silence was different. Not taut with accusation, but thick with something unnamed, an unspoken truce or perhaps the first step into war.

Wednesday’s lips pressed into their familiar line, but deep inside, a spark of amusement. Fascination. The faintest stirrings of... possibility.

For the first time in her life, Wednesday Addams was not entirely certain she wanted someone to leave.

Chapter Text

The echo of Wednesday’s words lingered in Enid’s chest long after she left the study. 

Don’t push me away before I’ve had the chance to prove I can stay.

She hadn’t meant for them to sound so raw, or maybe she had. Maybe some stubborn part of her had wanted Wednesday to hear it aloud, to make her admit that she hadn’t been entirely unwelcome. If not with words, then with the stillness in her dark eyes. The push and pull between them wasn’t just verbal sparring; it was a strange tether, tugging them closer even as Wednesday fought to sever it.

Enid had no illusions: she was in over her head. But she wasn’t backing out.

It was just past noon when a shadow fell across the stained glass of the front door, followed by a knock so deep it rattled the very bones of the mansion.

Enid froze halfway down the hall. Then the door opened itself. Not by magic, but by a giant.

Lurch stepped inside, ducking his head so it wouldn’t scrape the arch. He carried grocery bags, mountains of them. Not flimsy little sacks, but fourteen heavy bundles bulging with produce, flour, butter, meats, even a bag of sugar that looked like it could outlive the century. His enormous arms barely strained under the weight.

Enid’s jaw nearly hit the floor. “Holy... did you just carry all that at once?”

Lurch gave a slow blink. “Mmmhh.” His monotone rumble was all the answer she got. He set the bags down on the counter and the long oak kitchen table with such gentleness it almost looked absurd. Then, with a low groan, he straightened up, shuffled to the door and let himself out.

The door closed behind him with a heavy thud. No goodbye or a glance back.

Enid stood in the middle of the kitchen, blinking like she’d just witnessed some cryptid. “...Okay. That was impressive. And a little scary. Mostly impressive.”

She turned back to the bounty of groceries, her head spinning.

As she unpacked one bag, arranging apples into a black ceramic bowl that seemed more suited for holding bones, her mind wandered back to her conversation with Wednesday.

The accusations. The cold logic. The way Wednesday had accused her of trying to change her when all Enid wanted was to make sure she didn’t starve or freeze.

And that word, Thing. Enid’s fingers stilled on a carton of eggs.

Wednesday had tossed it out casually, like a detail that needed no explanation: Thing was responsible for the blanket.

Enid had smiled, assuming it was some creepy metaphor or one of Wednesday’s dramatic flourishes. But Wednesday never wasted words on lies, only barbs and truths sharpened to points.

Thing.

What, or who was that supposed to be? A servant? Some secret retainer in the mansion? Something worse?

Her imagination spun out. She pictured a faceless butler dressed in cobwebs, lurking in the walls. Or maybe an actual ghost. Wednesday didn’t strike her as someone who exaggerated, so Enid was left with possibilities that were all equally unnerving.

She shivered trying to shake it off, and muttered under her breath as she dragged another grocery bag toward her. “Ugh, I could use a hand with all this.”

The words had barely left her lips before something thumped softly on the counter.

Enid’s head whipped around.

There it was.

A disembodied hand. Pale as candle wax, the wrist neatly severed as though it had never been attached to a body. Its fingers flexed and curled with impossible liveliness, tendons rippling under skin. It drummed its index finger twice against the wood, like a person clearing their throat.

Enid screamed. A sharp, startled sound that echoed up the staircase. She stumbled back, tripped on her own shoelace and nearly toppled into a chair. Her hands flailed uselessly in front of her.

“WHAT THE—what is that?!”

The hand ignored her horror. It waved cheerfully, wiggling all five fingers in a mockery of friendliness.

Enid pressed a hand to her pounding chest. “You’re—you’re a hand. Just a hand. Oh my god. Oh my actual god.”

The hand cocked its wrist at her as if to say, Well, obviously.

Her jaw dropped. “Wait. You understand me?!”

The hand’s middle finger shot up without hesitation.

Enid gasped. “Rude!”

The hand scuttled across the counter on its fingers like a spider, landing beside a bag of groceries. It tapped the bag, then pointed at her, then tapped the bag again.

“You want to help?”

The hand spread its fingers proudly, a pantomime of exactly.

Enid swallowed. She wasn’t sure whether to laugh, faint, or run screaming out of the mansion. “Oh my god. You’re Thing, aren’t you? Wednesday’s... whatever you are.”

Thing gave a little bow, fingers folding into his palm. Then he snatched the bag of flour, hefted it like it weighed nothing and scuttled toward the pantry.

Enid blinked. “Okay. This is officially the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me. And I grew up on a farm with a goat that thought it was a dog.”

Despite her nerves, Enid found herself laughing. A light, incredulous laughter that bubbled out of her chest as Thing zipped around the kitchen with remarkable efficiency. He moved like a silent butler, stacking jars, arranging produce, tapping on her shoulder when she put something in the “wrong” cupboard.

“You’re bossy, you know that?” she teased as she shoved a carton of milk into the refrigerator.

Thing responded by snapping his fingers sharply, like a disapproving teacher.

Enid put her hands up in mock surrender. “Alright, alright, you win.”

She caught herself staring at him more than once, trying to wrap her head around the sheer impossibility of his existence. He wasn’t grotesque, not once she got past the shock, but he was undeniably eerie. His nails were neatly trimmed, his movements precise, as though he’d been at this for years.

“So...” she ventured at one point, setting down a block of cheese, “are you, like... her pet?”

Thing froze. His fingers slowly curled into a fist. Then, with great emphasis, he extended only his middle finger again.

Enid snorted, covering her mouth with her hand. “Okay, okay, message received. Definitely not a pet. More like... a roommate?”

Thing wiggled his fingers in a gesture that might’ve been approval.

Enid found herself smiling as they worked side by side. The absurdity of it all should’ve terrified her, but instead it warmed her. For the first time since she’d entered the looming mansion on the hill, she didn’t feel entirely alone.

As she slid one more jar into the pantry, she leaned her hip against the counter, catching her breath.

Her thoughts drifted again to Wednesday’s accusations, that Enid was trying to change her. That feeding her, warming her, lighting her home was somehow an act of invasion.

Thing scuttled up beside her, resting his fingers gently on her wrist. She jumped slightly, but his touch wasn’t cold or menacing. It was steady.

“You know she thinks I’m crazy for doing all this, right?” Enid whispered. “That I’m... interfering.”

Thing tapped her wrist twice, firm and certain, then gave her a thumbs up.

Enid’s throat tightened unexpectedly.

“Thanks,” she murmured, blinking hard. “At least somebody’s on my side.”

Thing patted her once more before skittering off to rearrange the fruit bowl.

By the time the groceries were slowly put away bag by bag, the kitchen looked transformed. Fresh bread sat on the counter, apples gleamed in their bowl, jars lined the shelves like soldiers. The gothic arches and black cabinetry still loomed overhead, but the air felt warmer and less sterile.

Enid stood in the center, dusting flour off her hands, and whispered to herself, “Okay. Maybe I can actually do this. Maybe I can make this place... livable.”

From the hall above, she swore she heard faint footsteps. Slow, like a predator deciding whether to pounce. Her heart skipped. Wednesday must’ve heard her scream earlier. Or maybe she’d simply felt the disturbance.

The scream rang out like a sudden crack of thunder in the distance.

Wednesday, seated at her desk with a half-finished page still trapped in her typewriter, did not so much as flinch. However, she paused. Her fingers hovered above the keys, listening. The sound carried down the dark halls of the mansion like an errant ghost who had taken a wrong turn.

It was unmistakably Enid.

Wednesday closed her eyes briefly, inhaled once through her nose, and exhaled a quiet sigh.

So soon and already she was shattering the sepulchral stillness Wednesday had cultivated for years. For the Addams heir, silence was not merely an absence of sound; it was a living companion, a cloak draped over her shoulders, a cocoon in which her work thrived. Now it was fractured by footsteps, muffled chatter and screams.

Yet she did not storm down the stairs at once. She was not a woman who leapt at the call of noise. She sat very still for several minutes, her head tilted like a raven studying the horizon, weighing whether the sound demanded her attention.

If Enid had uncovered something in the forbidden rooms, like the taxidermy gallery, the oubliette, the hall of failed experiments, then perhaps it was warranted. But if the scream was born of something mundane, like a spider dangling from a chandelier, or the oppressive atmosphere finally pressing down on her, Wednesday would not forgive the intrusion.

Finally, she rose. Her chair creaked as she pushed it back. She took her candle, even though the house no longer required it. The hallways glowed faintly. 

Her lips pressed into a thin line. Her boots clicked on the wooden floor as she moved through the corridor. The glow from below grew brighter, punctuated by faint noises: the scrape of jars, a clink of glass against wood, and laughter.

Wednesday slowed. Her expression remained flat, but something unfamiliar twisted beneath it. The mansion had never known such sounds. It unsettled her, like a discordant note struck in the middle of a requiem. But there was also a pulse to it, a faint reminder of something living pressing against the edges of her carefully embalmed solitude.

She descended the stairs with measured steps. The air was warmer than she preferred, rising from vents she had sworn never to open. A muscle in her jaw tightened.

And then, at last, she reached the threshold of the kitchen.

Enid stood in the middle of the room, her cheeks flushed, one hand pressed to her chest. Grocery bags were strewn open, jars and fruit spilling across the counters. Thing was perched on the edge of the table, flexing its fingers in what could only be described as smug pride.

Enid looked alive in a way Wednesday found both irritating and oddly magnetic. Her hair, loose from its ponytail, caught the dim kitchen light; her eyes were wide, still shining with the aftershocks of terror.

Wednesday leaned against the doorframe, the candlelight carving sharp shadows across her face. She spoke in her even, unhurried tone, the one that could turn the most harmless words into a knife’s edge.

“I should have known it was you.”

Enid startled again, nearly dropping the bag she held. “Oh my gosh, Wednesday! Don’t sneak up on people like that.”

“I wasn’t sneaking,” Wednesday replied, stepping forward. “This is my natural gait. The fact that you were too busy screaming to notice my approach is not my fault.”

Enid swallowed. “Okay, but in my defense, you could’ve warned me about this.” She jabbed a finger at Thing. “I thought some monster had crawled out of your basement!”

Thing bristled, tapping his fingers indignantly against the wood.

Wednesday’s dark eyes flicked toward him. “Monster? She flatters you, Thing. You should be honored.”

Thing spun around and tapped out a rapid pattern of knocks on the table, too fast for Enid to follow but Wednesday understood at once.

Her lips curved, almost imperceptibly. “Ah. You claim she insulted you. Curious, because from where I stand, her screams were a perfectly natural reaction.”

Thing froze. Then, very slowly, he raised his hand and extended his middle finger, not at Enid but at Wednesday this time.

Enid’s jaw dropped. “Wait... you’re... defending me?”

The hand gave her a jaunty little wave.

Wednesday stepped further into the kitchen, the heels of her boots tapping softly. The candle flame fluttered, but her eyes remained steady on Enid.

“You screamed as though you had been cornered by a serial killer,” she said. “Over Thing. He has been in my family for generations. His loyalty is absolute, his usefulness unmatched. And you...” her gaze sharpened, “you treated him like a common horror prop.”

Enid flushed crimson. “I didn’t know! You can’t just spring a severed hand on someone without context. That’s, like, basic decency.”

Wednesday tilted her head, considering. “Decency is a concept I rarely concern myself with. It breeds mediocrity. But your complaint is noted.”

Thing drummed his fingers again, and this time the rhythm ended with a sharp snap.

“Yes,” Wednesday said flatly, “I am aware that you sided with her.”

Enid blinked between them. “Wait, are you two... arguing about me? Like, right now?”

“Thing has a misplaced sense of pity,” Wednesday said. “He believes your fragile constitution requires protection.” Her voice dropped, softer, though no less cutting. “He forgets that pity is a form of disrespect.”

Enid’s hands tightened on the bag as she clutched the remainings. “I’m not fragile.”

Wednesday arched a brow. “You screamed. Loudly.”

“That was...” Enid searched for words, heat rising in her chest, “...a normal reaction! Anyone would scream if a disembodied hand popped out of nowhere!”

Wednesday’s expression remained unreadable, but something flickered at the corner of her mouth. Not quite amusement or disdain. Somewhere in the strange void between.

For a moment, silence fell. Enid stood clutching the groceries, her heart racing; Thing tapped idly on the counter; Wednesday’s gaze bored into her intensely.

The warmth Enid had brought into the house still lingered. Physical warmth from the heating system and emotional warmth from her laughter. Now all of it clashed with Wednesday’s presence. The air felt charged, like a storm building over the hilltop.

“You have a talent,” Wednesday said at last, her voice low, “for disturbing the order of my home. The walls echo with your voice. The air itself has changed. Even Thing, who has never questioned me, now looks at me as though I am the unreasonable one.”

Enid’s throat tightened. She should have felt chastised, maybe even afraid. But beneath Wednesday’s calm scorn was something else, something she couldn’t name but felt all the same. A pull, like a string tied tight between them, thrumming with unspoken things.

She set the bag gently on the counter, squared her shoulders and forced herself to meet those midnight eyes. “Maybe your house needed disturbing.”

The words fell into the silence like a spark into dry wood.

Thing froze, as if even he was unsure how Wednesday would respond.

Wednesday’s stare deepened, her lips twitched in the barest curve, but she quickly suppressed that. She stepped closer, her candle casting Enid’s reflection in the black sheen of her eyes.

“Careful, Sinclair,” she murmured. “You’re beginning to sound like a challenge.”

Enid swallowed, pulse hammering. “Maybe I am.”

For a long moment, they simply stood there, the domestic scene transformed into something far sharper. A bag of groceries between them, Thing frozen mid-gesture, the air thick with tension that was neither fully hostile nor entirely safe.

Wednesday broke it first, extinguishing her candle with a sharp puff of breath. The kitchen light glowed golden, courtesy of the switches Enid had uncovered.

She turned on her heel, her braids swinging with the motion. “Enjoy your alliance with Thing while it lasts. He will not always choose your side.”

Enid exhaled, realizing only then that she’d been holding her breath.

Thing gave her a conspiratorial thumbs-up before scuttling after his mistress.

Enid leaned against the counter, her chest still tight, her cheeks still hot. She had no idea what kind of trial week she had walked into.

But one thing was certain.

Wednesday Addams was terrifying.

And Enid Sinclair couldn’t stay away.

Chapter Text

The week had moved with the strange rhythm of a pendulum swinging between extremes.

From the very first morning, when Enid had dared to open the curtains and disturb the dust-thick air, to the midnight moments when she wandered into Wednesday’s study with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, the days had been marked by arguments sharp as broken glass, followed by silences thick with unspoken pull.

There had been quarrels over food, over warmth, over light itself. Enid cooked. Wednesday refused, then relented. Enid teased. Wednesday cut her down with words honed to the sharpness of a guillotine, only for the edges to dull at the sight of the girl returning the next morning undeterred.

Yet, alongside the sparring came domestic moments neither could have predicted. Enid folding one of Wednesday’s stiff black shirts and laying it carefully on the desk. Wednesday wordlessly pouring Enid a second cup of coffee, though she herself never drank it sweetened. Enid laughing when Thing scuttled into the kitchen with a spoon in his grasp, Wednesday staring silently but not stopping him.

It was, in every sense, a glimpse of what could be.

And now the week had come to its close.

The contract Morticia had handed Esther still laid in Enid’s bag, folded crisp, its ink binding like a spell. The Sinclairs had returned into their usual life to San Francisco, waiting for news. Morticia, patient only in appearance, surely anticipated the word of assent or refusal. The Addams estate itself seemed to hold its breath, its shadows quieter, its halls poised, as though the walls too wished to know whether the girl of color and light would remain in their gothic folds.

Enid herself was torn in ways she could not confess to anyone, not even to herself without trembling.

Enid woke early again, as she always did. Her body remembered the rhythm of the farm: dawn rising and chores waiting. The Addams mansion on the hill offered no chickens to feed, no goats to herd, no baskets of vegetables to haul. Yet she rose anyway, her muscles restless, her mind too tangled for more sleep.

The air was a lot warmer now, thanks to the heating she had dared to turn on. The golden glow from the portraits she’d unveiled gave the mansion an almost human warmth, though Wednesday would never admit it.

She wrapped herself in a shawl and padded to the kitchen. The fridge was fuller now, Morticia’s subtle hand ensuring that every request Enid had made was met. She set about making breakfast, this time with bacon and eggs and toast, something more familiar than the spartan bread-and-black-coffee ritual Wednesday had lived by, but she seemed to let go this week under her care.

The sizzle of the pan echoed in the cavernous kitchen. Enid cracked eggs, watching the yolks bloom golden in the skillet.

And as she cooked, her thoughts tangled and tightened.

What was she doing here?

Bruno’s face came to her mind soft, gentle, the boy from her hometown who dreamed of cottages and gardens and quiet. She had once thought her path lay with him, safe and predictable.

But then there was Wednesday. Pale, unyielding, eyes like onyx that saw too much. A girl who moved like the slow arc of a blade and whose silences could swallow the air itself. Enid had thought she would flee at the sight of her. Instead she had walked willingly into her lair, not once but again and again.

And here she was, cooking breakfast for her.

At precisely 10:31, Wednesday descended from her bedroom.

Her casual outfits she had been indulged the past days had been exchanged for her customary severity: black dress, white collar, her braids tied flawlessly. However, Her expression betrayed something she would never admit aloud. The faint crease between her brows had not left her all week.

The trial had not gone as she expected. She had thought Enid would flinch, flee, be broken by the weight of her eccentricities. Instead, Enid had argued, laughed, and most unnervingly, persisted.

And now Wednesday, who prided herself on clarity, found herself uncertain.

When she reached the kitchen, she found Enid again at the stove. The smell of bacon rose in the air, warm and greasy, completely out of place in the Addams household.

Wednesday stopped at the threshold, as she always did, her eyes cool.

“Your persistence borders on pathology,” she said evenly.

Enid turned with a spatula in hand and that sunshine smile that seemed almost mocking in this house. “Good morning to you too. Breakfast’s almost ready.”

Wednesday stepped inside, her face still unreadable. She sat at the table without comment. Thing scuttled in after her, hopping onto the counter with enthusiasm.

The domesticity of it was disconcerting, and Wednesday hated how easily it was beginning to feel routine.

Enid placed a plate in front of her. Bacon, eggs, toast. The smell filled the air. Wednesday stared at it with a look one might reserve for a dissected corpse. “You know I still prefer bread left to harden overnight,” she said.

“And coffee black enough to kill a horse, yeah, I know,” Enid said, plopping into the chair across from her. “But you ate the omelets I made for you. You can eat this too. It won’t kill you.”

Wednesday’s gaze lingered on her. “That remains to be seen.”

Enid’s fork scraped against her plate. “You can keep scowling at me all you want, but you’ve actually been eating better this week. Don’t deny it.”

A silence fell. Wednesday’s lips pressed together, but she did not deny it. She picked up her fork and cut into the egg with slow precision, chewing exactly thirteen times before swallowing.

Enid smiled triumphantly.

“Do not mistake tolerance for surrender,” Wednesday said.

But there was no real venom in it.

After breakfast, they moved to the living room, where the light filtered dimly through the heavy windows. Enid sat with her shawl pulled tight around her shoulders. Wednesday stood with her hands folded behind her back, her silhouette stark against the light.

The air between them felt heavier than usual.

Enid’s heart thumped. She reached into her bag and pulled out the folded contract. “I need to talk to you,” she said softly.

Wednesday’s eyes flicked down to the paper, then back up. Her expression didn’t change, but something sharper glinted in her gaze.

“About that,” Enid continued, holding it in her lap. “About... us.”

Wednesday did not move. “Us is a dangerous word.”

“It’s the only one that fits,” Enid said. Her throat was dry, but she forced the words out. “This whole week... this was supposed to be a trial. A glimpse of the future, right? And I’ve seen it. The arguments, the silences, the... whatever this is between us. I’ve seen it.”

Wednesday said nothing.

Enid drew a shaky breath. “But it can’t just be my decision. If I sign this, then our lives are tied together. Forever. I can’t do that without knowing if you even want me here.”

The silence stretched long. Enid’s fingers clenched the paper until it crumpled.

Finally, Wednesday spoke. Her voice was quiet, but it carried through the room like the toll of a bell. 

“I do not want you here.”

Enid’s chest tightened.

“But,” Wednesday continued, “I do not want you gone either.”

Her eyes locked onto Enid’s, steady, unblinking. “Your presence unsettles me. You fracture the silence I have cultivated. You pry into things best left untouched. And yet... you remain.”

She took one step closer. Then another.

“You should have run screaming, like all the others. But you did not. And that is... troublesome.”

Her gaze darkened. “You asked if I wish to bind my life with yours. I cannot answer with yes. I cannot answer with no. What I can say is this: you have invaded the order of my world. And I find myself unwilling to cast you out.”

The words struck through Enid like lightning. She should have been afraid. She should have packed her bag and fled. But instead she sat there trembling, not with fear but with the strange certainty that this dark, twisted pull was what she had been waiting for all along.

Her hands tightened around the contract.

“I don’t know if that’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard,” she whispered, “or the scariest.”

“Why must it be one or the other?” Wednesday said.

The paper crinkled in Enid’s hands. Her heart beat fast. Her life, Bruno, the farm, the quiet safety of San Francisco waited in one direction. This house, this family, this girl with eyes like black fire waited in the other.

She stood, slowly, and crossed the space between them.

“I’ll sign,” she said. Her voice shook, but her eyes did not. “But not because of the money, or the comfort, or what Morticia wants. I’ll sign because...” She swallowed. “Because I want to see where this goes. Even if it terrifies me.”

Wednesday’s eyes lingered on her, unreadable.

The contract lay between them like an ancient relic, fragile as though it had been unearthed from some crypt rather than handed over by Morticia Addams in a neat folio. The words carried not only legality but ritual, as though to sign it was to enter into something older and more binding than any courthouse could imagine.

It demanded not just Enid’s signature, but Wednesday’s as well. Without the second, it was only a shadow of a promise.

Wednesday picked it up, folding it once more with care, then turned and walked toward her study. She did not invite Enid to follow. She expected it.

Enid did.

The walk to Wednesday’s study felt longer than usual. The mansion seemed quieter and colder, though the heating still murmured through its hidden pipes. The golden lights Enid had uncovered flickered faintly, as though uncertain whether they were welcome. Each step echoed against stone and wood, the silence between them thick enough to choke.

When they entered the study, the air shifted.

Wednesday placed the contract on the desk. She stood behind it, her hands resting lightly on the wood, her braids falling forward. Enid hovered near the chair opposite, suddenly aware of how small and out of place she looked in this fortress of shadows.

“Sit,” Wednesday commanded, not looking up.

Enid sat.

Wednesday pulled open a drawer and withdrew a fountain pen. Not a simple ballpoint, but a weapon in its own right: black, heavy, with a nib of silver that gleamed in the candlelight. She held it with two fingers, turning it once as though considering whether this was the proper instrument for binding a life.

Enid’s throat tightened. “Do you always keep something like that around?”

Wednesday’s gaze flicked up, her expression unreadable. “Every word worth writing should be carved into permanence. Disposable pens are for disposable promises.”

Neither spoke for several moments. Wednesday dipped the nib into a small inkwell she had fetched from the corner of the desk, though Enid knew perfectly well the fountain pen carried its own supply. This was no accident. Wednesday was ritualizing the moment, weaving gravity into the mundane.

Finally, Wednesday looked at her. “You understand what this means.”

It wasn’t a question.

Enid swallowed. “I think so.”

“No,” Wednesday said sharply. “Think is insufficient. To sign this is to bind. Not merely by law, or by contract. By my family. By me. It is not undone easily. To walk away afterward would not be without consequence.”

Enid forced herself to hold her gaze. “You’re making it sound like a curse.”

“It is,” Wednesday replied, her lips barely curving. “All true unions are.”

Enid’s heart thudded, but she nodded. “Then... I accept it.”

A silence followed, so heavy it seemed to press down on Enid’s shoulders. Wednesday studied her, searching for weakness, hesitation, or fear.

There was fear, but not the kind that made one flee. It was the fear of falling into something vast and unknown and never coming back out.

Wednesday found no denial there. Slowly, she turned the contract so it faced Enid.

The words on the page blurred for a moment as Enid leaned forward. Her hand trembled, though she tried to still it. She picked up the pen, heavier than she expected, its weight pulling down on her wrist as though the ink within already knew what it demanded.

She placed the nib to the line.

Her name looked strange there, almost alien. The curls of her letters, the brightness of her hand, stood in stark contrast to the blackness of the page around them. Yet when she finished, something in her chest loosened.

She had done it. She had chosen.

The pen lay heavy in her hand when she set it back on the desk.

Wednesday lifted the pen without hesitation. She dipped it once more into the inkwell, as if to claim the moment fully.

She did not sit. She wrote standing, her posture perfect and her strokes deliberate. Where Enid’s signature curled with life, Wednesday’s cut like a blade, sharp and precise, a mark that could not be mistaken or undone.

The two names now lay side by side. One light, one dark. One round, one severe. Both bound together by the same black ink, the same parchment, the same candlelight that flickered across the surface like fire over a tombstone.

When she set the pen down, Wednesday closed the inkwell with a click. The sound echoed too loudly in the room.

Enid stared at the paper. “So... that’s it? We’re... married?”

Wednesday tilted her head. “By the standards that matter, yes.”

Enid’s lips parted, but no words came. She felt both dizzy and anchored, as though the world had shifted beneath her but at the same time locked her in place.

Wednesday leaned back slightly, her eyes narrowing as she studied Enid’s face. “You are pale.”

“You’re one to talk,” Enid muttered, though her voice shook.

“You have chosen,” Wednesday said simply. “And so have I.”

Enid exhaled, clutching her shawl tighter around herself. “So what happens now?”

Wednesday glanced toward a candle, watching the flame bend. “Now, the walls will remember. The family will know. And you, Enid Addams-Sinclair, will discover precisely what you have invited into your life.”

Her gaze returned burning and unreadable. “And whether you regret it... will be fascinating to watch.”

Chapter Text

The morning air hung damp and gray as the two of them descended the hill. Wednesday walked with her candle unlit, the signed contract tucked beneath her arm as if it were a weapon she had forged herself. Enid followed at her side, her shawl drawn close, her steps quick but careful. The mansion loomed at the bottom of the slope, its towers piercing the clouds. For Enid, it was both sanctuary and trial. For Wednesday, it was merely home.

They crossed the gates in silence. The great iron doors creaked open before them, as though the house itself had anticipated their return. Lurch stood there, massive and silent, his brow lifting ever so slightly when his gaze dropped to the folio clutched in Wednesday’s hand. Without a word, he stepped aside to let them through.

The foyer was warm, lit with the glow of candelabras. Morticia awaited them at the foot of the grand staircase, her tall figure poised in grace, her black gown trailing like liquid shadow across the marble. Gomez stood beside her with a cigar in hand.

Wednesday held the contract out without ceremony. “It is done.”

For a moment, silence. Then Morticia’s lips curved into a slow, serpentine smile. She extended her hand, and Wednesday placed the folio into her grasp. Morticia opened it delicately, her long nails clicking faintly against the vellum as she examined the signatures. Her eyes lingered on the ink, and then she looked up.

“Perfect,” she said, her voice smooth as dark wine. “Enid Sinclair—no, Enid Addams now. Welcome.”

Enid flushed, her hands tightening on her shawl. “Thank you, Mrs. Addams, uh, Morticia.”

Gomez’s mustache twitched as he burst into applause. “Bravo! Magnificent! My little death blossom has found her match!” He swept Wednesday into an exuberant embrace, though she barely moved, tolerating the display with her usual glacial stillness. “Oh, cara mia, what a day! I can hardly contain myself!”

Morticia placed a hand on his arm, stilling him with a glance. Then she turned back to the girls.

“Gomez,” she said softly, “perhaps you might wish to speak to our daughter privately. A father’s wisdom, after all.”

Gomez’s eyes gleamed. “Ah, yes! A husband must be prepared to guide his bride... but a wife, ah, she is the axis of all things! Come, Wednesday.” He gestured toward the corridor, his energy crackling.

Wednesday followed, silent as ever.

Morticia’s gaze turned to Enid. “And you, dear,” she said, “will come with me.”

The family split in two currents: Wednesday drawn down the west hall with Gomez, Enid led up the staircase with Morticia.

The symmetry of it struck Enid. Both she and Wednesday were being schooled separately, counseled not as children but as partners about to embark upon a union that was, in every sense, irrevocable.

Gomez closed the door behind them, ushering Wednesday into the smoking room. It was richly decorated with dark wood paneling, velvet drapes, swords and rapiers mounted on the walls. He poured himself a glass of brandy, then gestured at Wednesday, who declined with a look.

He sat across from her, his energy barely contained. “My little viper,” he said warmly, “marriage is not a duel to the death. It is a duel of another kind, one where the goal is not victory, but eternity.”

Wednesday arched a brow. “If this is meant to be sentimental—”

“No, no!” Gomez leaned forward, his eyes flashing. “Practical, my dear. Let me tell you something important: passion and discipline must go hand in hand. You must court the differences between you as you would a worthy adversary. Enid is light, warmth, the domestic sunbeam. You are shadow, ice, the midnight flame. Perfect opposites, destined if handled properly, never to dull one another, but to sharpen!”

Wednesday said nothing, her black eyes steady on him.

Gomez raised his finger dramatically. “In our family, marriage is not a prison. It is a battlefield, a cathedral, a crypt! It is where two souls bleed together, and the wounds become bonds. Your mother and I, for instance. Ah, every morning when I wake, I wonder if she will kiss me or kill me. And both prospects thrill me beyond measure.”

Wednesday stared, impassive. “That hardly sounds reassuring.”

“You mistake me.” Gomez leaned close, eyes gleaming. “It is vital. Passion without peril is pale. You, my precious scorpion, will find Enid’s brightness unbearable at times. Her chatter, her laughter, her constant attempts to feed you. Yes, even her scrambled eggs. You will feel the urge to silence her. To shut her down with a glance, or worse.”

Wednesday’s lips pressed together, because it was true.

Gomez continued, swirling his glass. “She will want to cook for you, clean, perhaps even fuss over you. Let her. It is her way of staking a claim, of caring. But you must not let it soften you into contempt. To scorn her efforts is to wound her. Accept them, even if you secretly despise eggs and toast and whatever else she conjures. And when the differences feel unbearable, remember: love is not sameness. It is the dance of contradictions.”

Wednesday tilted her head. “And what if I grow tired of the dance?”

Gomez laughed, sharp and loud. “Then you make the dance bloodier! Disrupt it, challenge it, but never abandon it. If Enid endures you, she has already proven herself extraordinary. It would be dishonorable not to meet her endurance with your own.”

Wednesday’s lips curved the faintest fraction, a shadow of a smile. “You make it sound like warfare.”

“Marriage is warfare, my little calamity. But it is the only war where both sides can win. You will duel her daily, my daughter. Her vitality against your austerity, her noise against your silence. If you endure, if you respect the duel, you will never know boredom. And boredom is the true death.” Gomez said as he sealed his words with a sip from his brandy.

Meanwhile, Morticia guided Enid into her private sitting room, a chamber draped in velvet and lace, the air heavy with roses and candlewax. She gestured to a fainting couch, and Enid sat, feeling awkward in her plain dress amid the opulence.

Morticia settled opposite, her posture regal, her expression calm. “Enid,” she began, her voice a low purr, “I imagine this week has been... an education.”

Enid nodded. “That’s one way of putting it.”

“You have glimpsed my daughter as few are allowed to,” Morticia said. “Her solitude, her severity, her rituals. And yet you remain. That speaks to a strength not unlike her own.”

Enid fidgeted. “I don’t know about strength. I just—well, I didn’t want to give up before I understood her. She’s... she’s not easy.”

Morticia leaned closer, her gaze deep and soft. “My daughter’s heart is not cold, it is cloaked. She has endured solitude so long it has become her armor. If you wish to walk beside her, you must not pry that armor off. Stand with her in it. March with her into her battles, even when they are fought in silence, even when the war is only in her mind.”

Enid nodded slowly. “I… I think I can do that.”

Morticia’s lips curved in approval. “And in return, you must never extinguish your own flame. You must be light not in opposition, but in parallel. If she sinks into her darkest days, stand beside her, not above or beneath. Beside. Even if she pushes, even if she snarls. Stand. Do you understand?”

Enid’s eyes stung, but she straightened, nodding. “Yes. I’ll try.”

“That is why balance is everything. You bring warmth where she brings cold. You bring life where she brings silence. But take care, your task is not to change her. If you attempt to mold her into something she is not, she will recoil. To truly last, you must embrace her in her entirety. The sharpness, the cruelty, the stillness. As she, in time, must learn to embrace your brightness, your chatter, your hunger for touch.” Morticia said smoothly.

Enid’s cheeks flushed. “That sounds… hard.”

“All things worth binding are,” Morticia replied. Her voice softened, almost maternal. “But you are not alone. This family accepts you now, as one of our own. Do not fear the shadows, Enid. Walk within them. They will not consume you, if you hold fast to your own light.”

Enid blinked hard, her chest tight. Something in Morticia’s calm, elegant, but genuinely supportive tone made her want to cry, though she held it back.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

Morticia leaned forward, her eyes gleaming. “Remember this, child: Wednesday does not need rescuing. But she does need witnessing. And you, perhaps more than any, are suited to see her as she is. Do not squander that gift.”

When at last Wednesday and Enid were reunited in the grand foyer, both carried something new in their eyes. Wednesday’s gaze was sharper, yet steadier, as though tempered by her father’s fervent counsel. Enid’s cheeks were still pink, but her posture straighter, her shoulders set with quiet resolve.

Morticia and Gomez rejoined them, their hands brushing together like the eternal lovers they were.

Morticia’s smile was thin, but triumphant. “The contract is signed. The family is whole.”

Gomez’s eyes shone as he lit another cigar to celebrate the day. “To eternity!”

Enid glanced at Wednesday, and she thought she saw not only the abyss staring back at her, but the abyss waiting for her to step in, side by side.

The path from the main Addams mansion up the hill to the looming silhouette of Wednesday’s sanctuary was steeper than it looked from afar. The grass was long, heavy with dew, and each step seemed to echo a ritual significance, two figures walking side by side, the ink of night still clinging to the edges of day.

The signed contract was behind them now, lodged in Morticia’s keeping like some relic in a family crypt. The signatures were still drying, the ink binding more than paper, it bound two futures, starkly contrasted into one long experiment in coexistence.

Enid walked quietly beside Wednesday, her bag pressed against her shoulder, her shoes already damp from the climb. She dared to glance sideways at the dark figure beside her. Wednesday’s braids swung neatly with her step, the candle she carried steady despite the wind, its flame refusing to waver in defiance of the elements.

Enid’s voice, when it finally broke the silence, was soft. Almost apologetic.

“I should… write to my parents,” she murmured. “Just to tell them I’m safe. That I’m… with you.”

Wednesday didn’t answer immediately. Her eyes remained fixed on the looming mansion, its windows like hollow eyes watching their approach.

Enid bit her lip and pressed on. “And—um—I know it’s probably a bad time to ask, since we just...” Her voice trailed off, as though the word married stuck in her throat like something foreign. “but... maybe we could have Wi-Fi? Or at least phone signal?”

The candle flame flickered in Wednesday’s hand, though not from wind. She stopped walking, turning her head fractionally toward Enid. The pale planes of her face were illuminated by the small circle of light, and her dark eyes were unblinking.

“Wi-Fi,” Wednesday repeated, her tone flat as slate.

Enid nodded, cheeks heating. “I mean it doesn’t have to be now, but... if I’m going to live here, it might be... nice. Just so I can stay in touch with my family. And my friends.” She hesitated, lowering her gaze to the wet grass beneath her feet. “And... Bruno.”

That name cracked the silence like a dropped plate.

Wednesday’s eyes narrowed.

Enid felt it, like the temperature around them dropped, though the first whispers of warmth from the mansion’s modern but hidden heating system pulsed faintly ahead. She swallowed hard and forced herself to continue.

“I should tell you,” she said softly. “Bruno is someone I’ve been close to back home. He’s kind, and he brought me flowers every morning.” She gave a nervous laugh, small and thin in the damp air. “It’s sweet, in a simple way. But I never promised him anything. Not like this.”

Wednesday’s candle flame guttered, stretched, then righted itself again. Her lips pressed into a thin line.

“Flowers,” she said at last, her voice cutting through the gloom like a razor. “The corpses of plants severed for temporary pleasure.”

Enid winced. “When you say it like that...”

“I say it precisely as it is,” Wednesday replied, resuming her steps with crisp finality. “Bruno sounds insufferable.”

Enid hurried to catch up, tugging her bag higher. “He’s not insufferable. He’s normal.”

Wednesday shot her a sidelong glance, the faintest hint of disdain in her expression. “That word disgusts me.”

Enid let out a nervous laugh again, but it faltered quickly. She rubbed her arms through her jacket, both from the chill and from the prickle in Wednesday’s tone.

“Look,” Enid said softly, “I just thought, if we’re really going to do this... if we’re going to be together, then we should be honest with each other. Transparent, right? Bruno’s part of my life back home. Or... he was. I don’t know what he’ll think now. I owe him honesty, too.”

Wednesday stopped again, this time turning fully toward Enid. The candlelight painted her features stark. Sharp cheekbones, pale skin, eyes dark and fathomless. “You owe me honesty above all else. Whatever trivial courtesies you extend to San Francisco boys are irrelevant. You have signed. You are bound. His flowers wilt.”

Enid’s breath caught. There was no raising of voice or dramatic flourish, just the flat certainty in Wednesday’s tone that carried a weight heavier than any shout.

For a long moment, they stood there in the damp silence, the gothic mansion looming closer, shadows lengthening around them.

Then Enid took a small, brave step closer.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said softly. “I just want you to know all of me. Even the parts you think are trivial.”

Wednesday’s gaze held hers, unreadable, her eyes reflecting the candle flame like obsidian mirrors. Something passed there, something sharp, something possessive, something like the ghost of a claim staked in the marrow.

At last, she turned back toward the mansion. “Very well. But do not speak his name again in my presence. It offends me.”

Enid nodded quickly, her heart hammering. “Okay. I won’t.”

As they resumed their climb, Gomez’s words echoed in Wednesday’s mind, unbidden and unwelcome. Endure her brightness. It pressed against the walls of her solitude already, cracking her routines. And she despised the thought that Enid’s light might illuminate corners Wednesday had kept hidden even from herself.

But when she glanced at the girl beside her, the damp curls clinging to her cheek, the nervous courage in her posture, the faint smile she offered despite everything... Wednesday felt that she did not despise it entirely.

Chapter Text

The door of the hilltop mansion groaned shut behind them, the sound echoing like a vault sealing. Inside, the air was no longer biting with cold; the warmth Enid had coaxed from the hidden system now lingered in the walls, wrapping itself around the rooms like a reluctant embrace. Shadows clung in corners, but there was a softness to them that hadn’t existed before, a difference Wednesday registered with a faint twitch of her lips that wasn’t quite a frown.

She lit another candle with the one she still held and placed it on the desk in her study, the flame spilling amber over parchment, books and the dark gleam of her inkstand. Then she turned toward Enid, who hovered uncertainly near the doorway with her bag still slung over her shoulder, her curls damp from the climb.

“You require correspondence,” Wednesday said flatly. “Then you shall have it.”

From the top drawer of her desk she produced heavy paper, thick as pressed leaves, and a fountain pen with a nib sharp enough to cut. She laid them down with precision, then gestured to the chair opposite her own.

Enid slid into the seat carefully, as though approaching an altar. She brushed her fingers over the paper, startled at its weight and texture. “This isn’t exactly a lined notebook paper.”

“This paper was handmade in Ravenna by a blind monk who only worked by candlelight,” Wednesday replied, her tone absent of irony.

Enid blinked. “Uh... wow.”

She uncapped the pen with equal parts awe and trepidation, testing the weight of it in her hand. It was different than the one they used earlier to sign the contract, but no less heavy and extravagant. Wednesday folded her arms and leaned back in her own chair, her gaze steady and unblinking, watching with the same seriousness she would give to an interrogation or autopsy.

Enid shifted under it. “You don’t... have to watch me write, you know.”

Wednesday’s eyebrow arched almost imperceptibly. “If you are to send words into the world that reference me, I will oversee their creation.”

Enid bit her lip but didn’t argue. She bent over the page, the candlelight catching the curve of her cheek as she began to write. The pen scratched haltingly at first, then smoother, her handwriting looping and round, spilling into words that carried the warmth of the farm, the sunshine of her voice.

Dear Mom, Dad, Brothers and Bruno—

She stopped, immediately scratching out Bruno’s name with a hasty line, cheeks burning. “Okay, maybe not that honest.”

Wednesday’s lips twitched, but her expression did not change. “Wise,” she said dryly.

Enid tried again. 

Dear Mom, Dad, and Brothers

The silence stretched around her as she wrote. She could feel Wednesday’s gaze on her like a weight across her shoulders. It wasn’t distracting, it was consuming. As though every word she committed to ink was being judged, measured and perhaps dissected for hidden meanings.

She wrote about the mansion. How it were gothic, spooky, drafty, but kind of beautiful in its own way. She wrote about the Addams family, about Morticia’s elegance, Gomez’s warmth, Lurch’s quiet strength. She omitted the parts about interrogation and Thing. She wrote about Wednesday, how she is intimidating, serious, not very talkative, but... there’s something about her.

Enid paused, tapping the pen nervously against her lip. “Do you want me to say anything particular about you?” she asked, glancing up.

Wednesday’s gaze was dark, unreadable. “Tell them nothing that might suggest I am ordinary. Tell them nothing that might invite pity. If they must know me at all, let them know me as inevitable.”

Enid blinked, then let out a small laugh, nerves easing. “Okay... inevitable it is.”

She bent back over the page.

Meanwhile, Wednesday sat in stillness, though her mind did not match her posture. She watched Enid’s hand move, watched the curve of her letters, the faint pink in her cheeks, the way her curls dipped forward when she bent too close to the paper. Something about it unsettled her, not in the way that horror unsettled, but in the way warmth did. It seeped under doors, through cracks, uninvited.

Her thoughts drifted against her will to the drawer in her chamber upstairs. Beneath folded black garments and pressed notes sat a small velvet box. The ring.

Morticia had given it to her after the first arranged match years ago. It was a disaster, as most of Morticia’s arrangements had been. "One day, cara mia," Morticia had said with velvet certainty, "this ring will rest on the hand of your eternal companion."

At the time, Wednesday had dismissed it as sentimental folly, an heirloom better left to dust. Yet she had kept it tucked away, as though some part of her hidden even from herself, recognized the inevitability Morticia spoke of.

Now, watching Enid write a letter in her study with stubborn warmth, Wednesday felt that drawer tugging at her mind like a whisper. The weight of tradition pressed faintly at her chest.

Enid finished her letter with a flourish, signed her name, then leaned back with a sigh. “There. Done.”

She held it up for Wednesday, who extended her hand without a word. She scanned the lines with the intensity of a judge reviewing a confession. Her eyes flicked, absorbing each word.

At last, she lowered the page. “Adequate,” she pronounced.

Enid groaned. “Adequate? That’s it?”

Wednesday’s mouth quirked the tiniest fraction. “Perhaps tolerable.”

Enid snorted, shaking her head, “I’ll take it.”

Wednesday set the letter aside, her fingers brushing briefly against Enid’s where the paper changed hands. It was the lightest of touches, but it lingered in the air between them like static.

The candle flickered. The shadows shifted. And in the quiet, Wednesday thought of the ring again, the cold metal hidden upstairs, waiting.

The ink on her first letter had barely dried when Enid reached for another sheet of Mortician-grade paper. Her fingers hovered over it in hesitation, her teeth grazing her lower lip, before she finally bent forward, pen poised.

Dear Bruno—

The first name glistened across the ivory surface in her cheerful cursive, so bright and full of life that it looked almost out of place against the candlelit gloom of Wednesday’s study.

Wednesday’s jaw tightened. She didn’t move or speak, but the movement of her throat betrayed the swallow of something sharp and acrid. Her eyes dropped to the single word, Bruno, like a drop of blood marring snow.

The muscles in her hands flexed.

Without a word, she stood. Her chair scraped back in a sound like a blade drawn. Enid startled slightly, glancing up with wide eyes. “Uh, Wednesday?”

“I will return.”

And that was all. She slipped out the door, footsteps as silent as the grave, leaving Enid in a wash of confusion.

Wednesday ascended the staircase. She knew precisely where she was going. Past the ancestral portraits glaring down, past the tapestries that hung like shrouds, until she reached her chamber.

Inside, the room breathed with shadows and the faint scent of dried herbs and ink. She crossed to the wardrobe with delicate steps, opened the heavy drawer and slid aside neatly folded garments. Beneath them, as she always knew, waited the velvet box. Black, smooth and cold.

She lifted it and inside rested the ring, silver as moonlight, carved with an intricacy that spoke of centuries, not years. A black diamond glimmered at its center, cut into a shape that suggested both a heart and a blade.

Her fingers curled around the box.

Morticia’s voice whispered through her memory: "One day, this ring will find its rightful hand."

It had always seemed like an inevitability she could delay forever. Until now.

Enid.

The name alone was enough to tighten her grip on the box. The girl downstairs, all brightness and curls and stubborn cheer, had dared write Bruno with ink meant for vows. Wednesday would not permit it. She would not permit him; a ghost, a farmer boy with calloused hands and soft laughter to intrude on what was now bound, written and sealed.

Wednesday did not share. Not her ink, not her shadows, not her chosen companion.

Certainly not her wife.

She slipped the box into the pocket of her dress, the weight against her hip like a promise. Then she turned and descended the staircase once more.

Enid had written more in the time Wednesday was gone. The second letter sprawled across the page in her warm, earnest script: little pieces of the farm, notes about how much she missed Bruno, her desire for him to understand why she left without saying goodbye and lied about where she went. Her words trembled on the edge of confession, though she couldn’t quite bring herself to spell out everything about contracts and gothic trials.

When Wednesday entered the study again, Enid straightened instantly and stood up. “You scared me,” she said, her voice light but nervous. “You just walked out like... like some Dracula who got bored mid-monologue.”

Wednesday’s face was a mask of deadpan severity, though her jaw remained tight. She extended her hand across the desk. “Show me.”

Enid hesitated, hugging the page slightly to her chest. “This one’s... private. It’s for Bruno. You don’t need to read it.”

“On the contrary,” Wednesday said with a low, almost soft voice. “If it passes through my house, if it carries your name, which is now bound to mine, then I will read it.”

Her tone left little room for argument. Slowly and reluctantly, Enid handed it over, her cheeks flushed with defensiveness.

Wednesday’s eyes moved over the page, consuming the words with sharp precision. Every affectionate line, every echo of Bruno’s name, every memory of sunlight and fields and laughter.

Her lips curved into something like disdain. “Bruno.” She said the name like it was ash in her mouth. “A boy of dirt and daylight. And yet you waste ink on him.”

Enid shifted, guilt and stubbornness tangling in her chest. “He’s my friend, Wednesday. I—I owe him at least an explanation. He deserves that.”

“You are mine,” Wednesday said as she walked closer to her. “Not his. Not anymore. And I will not see your ink, your hours, or your tears squandered on a ghost of a life you’ve already abandoned.”

Enid’s eyes widened, her heart skipping at the raw possessiveness lacing those words. For a moment she didn’t know whether to be terrified or thrilled.

“I—I didn’t mean it like that,” she stammered. “I just... I don’t want to erase everything. I can’t just pretend he never mattered.”

Wednesday’s hand slipped into her pocket. The velvet box pressed into her palm, steady and inevitable. She drew it out and placed it on the desk beside them, the candlelight catching on the edge.

Enid froze. “What is that?”

Wednesday pushed it closer, her black gaze never leaving Enid’s face. “Open it.”

With trembling fingers, Enid lifted the lid. Inside, the black diamond gleamed like a shard of night, cold fire burning within. The silver band curled around it in intricate gothic patterns like serpents, thorns, eternity symbols woven together.

Enid gasped softly. Her eyes filled before she could stop them. “Wednesday... it’s beautiful.” Her voice cracked, tears slipping free. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Wednesday’s face remained unreadable, though something flickered in her eyes. She lifted the ring from its bed and held it delicately between two fingers, the way one might hold a blade.

“This was given to me with the promise it would bind me to my eternal companion,” she said, voice low, solemn. “I considered it a burden. Until now.”

She leaned closer, shadows spilling across her face. Her words unfurled like vows in the dark: “I do not promise you warmth. I do not promise you laughter. I do not promise you safety, or sweetness, or peace. What I promise you is truth. What I promise you is loyalty. What I promise you is eternity. With me, you will never be ordinary. With me, you will never be free. You are bound. As am I.”

Her hand extended, the ring poised between her fingers and her eyes boring into Enid’s soul. “Do you accept?”

Enid’s tears fell freely now, her chest trembling, her nineteen-year-old heart caught in something vast and terrible and irresistible. She swallowed, her lips curling into a shaky, radiant smile.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I accept.”

Wednesday slid the ring onto her finger with deliberate slowness. The black diamond glinted, catching firelight, catching shadows. Enid stared at it, breathless, her heart pounding like wings trapped in her ribcage.

She was swooning, utterly and helplessly swooning. And yet, she felt stronger than she ever had.

Wednesday leaned back, her eyes gleaming like dark glass, her face unreadable but her hand lingering a fraction too long over Enid’s, touching it ever so slightly.

The ink on the letters might fade, the contracts might gather dust. But the ring, this vow, was iron.

It was final and it was forever.

The weight of the ring on Enid’s finger was disproportionate to its size. It wasn’t merely silver, stone and shadow. It was history pressing down on her skin, lineage curling around her knuckle, eternity glittering against her pulse. The band felt cold at first, almost startling, but then it seemed to warm as though it had been waiting for her all along.

She lifted her hand, trembling, watching the black diamond catch the firelight. In it, she saw both beauty and menace, like staring into Wednesday herself. The sight made her chest ache, as though some invisible thread had pulled tight around her heart.

She laughed weakly through tears, wiping at her eyes with the back of her free hand. “It’s... it’s too much. It’s gorgeous. I—” She hiccuped, a nervous bubble of joy escaping her. “Oh God, is this the part where we kiss?”

The words slipped out before she could stop them. She clapped her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide and her cheeks burning crimson.

Wednesday blinked once. Slowly. Deadpan. Silent.

The silence stretched, filling every crevice of the study like a living thing.

Enid’s stomach flipped. “I mean—uh—not that I expect that, I just thought maybe it’s, like, tradition? Or—or etiquette? Or—oh my gosh, I sound ridiculous right now.” She groaned, burying her face in her hands. “Forget I said anything.”

But Wednesday hadn’t moved. She only regarded Enid with those dark, unblinking eyes that seemed to peel back skin and peer directly into marrow. There was no judgment there, but something stranger, more dangerous... A thought.

Wednesday Addams was thinking.

And that was worse.

Inside her skull, her mind felt like a library fire, every thought burning, pages curling, order breaking. She loathed disorder. She loathed the way Enid’s words had loosened something in her chest, something uncomfortably alive.

Kiss her?

It was absurd. A kiss was an exchange of germs, a biological inefficiency, a weakness disguised as ritual. She had mocked it many times before, declaring it unnecessary sentimentality invented by poets with too much time and too little spine.

And yet, when Enid had said it with her cheeks pink, her eyes wide and her voice trembling with both fear and giddy boldness, Wednesday’s jaw had clenched against something she couldn’t name.

It wasn’t revulsion.

It wasn’t disdain.

It was irritation. Irritation at the spark. That infernal spark.

The very thing her mother had called love. The very thing Gomez had romanticized as adoration. Wednesday had vowed never to succumb to it. To be her own citadel. To remain untouchable.

But now, looking at Enid teary, smiling through her clumsy confession, trembling with joy and terror beneath the black diamond she had just bestowed, Wednesday felt claimed too.

Her pulse betrayed her, racing against the tempo she dictated. Her breath caught in her throat when she should have remained composed.

She despised it.

And yet, she could not deny it.

Enid peeked at her through her fingers, mortified. “You’re just staring like a gargoyle. Please say something.”

Wednesday tilted her head. “Something.”

Enid groaned, dragging her hands down her face. “You’re impossible.”

“Accurate.”

Despite her embarrassment, a laugh bubbled out of Enid. It sounded fragile and alive, filling the gothic chamber with a sound it had never held before. She looked at Wednesday again, her curls wild from her fluster, her eyes glistening from tears, her chest rising quickly from nerves.

And there it was, that strange push-pull between them, as if the air itself tightened, as if gravity had restructured itself in this mansion to pull them closer, no matter how violently they resisted.

Wednesday broke the silence first, though her voice was quieter than Enid had ever heard it. “You speak of kissing as though it were inevitable.”

Enid fidgeted, her fingers twisting against the heavy ring. “Well... isn’t it? I mean, we signed the contract. You gave me this.” She lifted her hand slightly. “That feels kind of inevitable.”

“Death is inevitable,” Wednesday replied flatly. “Taxes are inevitable. Pestilence, famine, the gradual heat death of the universe... those are inevitable. A kiss, however, is optional.”

Enid giggled despite herself. “That’s the most Wednesday Addams answer I could have expected.”

But then her giggle softened, her voice lowering. “Still... you looked at me like it wasn’t optional. Just for a second.”

Wednesday’s lips parted. She had no retort ready. That alone unsettled her more than the suggestion of a kiss.

She turned her face slightly, staring instead at the candle flame dancing on her desk. “You presume too much.”

“Do I?” Enid said softly.

The question lingered unanswered.

Enid's emotions were a whirlwind. Fear of being consumed, joy of being chosen, awe of the ring, dread of her own feelings growing faster than she could manage.

It was too much.

And yet, it was exactly what she wanted.

Her heart thudded in her chest as she stole another glance at Wednesday, who stood in silence, every line of her pale face sharp with thought, her braids perfect, her posture rigid. But Enid knew better now.

Beneath her coldness, something was alive. Irritated mf reluctant, but alive.

Enid smiled through her tears. “You’re stuck with me now, Wednesday.”

Wednesday looked at her straight in the eye and for a split second, just long enough for Enid to catch it, the corner of her lips twitched upward. Not quite a smile, but a crack in the stone.

“I am aware,” she said.

Enid sighed, her ring hand still raised to admire the glint of shadowed diamond. “It’s scary, you know? Being claimed like this. But it’s kind of amazing, too.”

Wednesday’s voice cam, low and firm, as if spoken more to herself than to Enid: “I never thought I would be territorial over anyone. I never thought I would care. My parents call it love. I call it a spark. And it is irritating. But it is mine.”

Enid looked at her, stunned by the admission. Her lips parted, her breath caught, her eyes brightened. She didn't knew what to say, she was glad to hear Wednesday opening up to her like this.

Maybe this marriage will work better than she thought.

Chapter Text

The study had gone quiet again, except for the faint hiss of the fireplace and the whisper of ink drying on the parchment of Enid’s half-finished letters. The silence wasn’t the same as before. Not heavy with interrogation, suspicion, or tension. This silence was stranger, softer and edged with something unspoken.

Enid twisted the ring on her finger absentmindedly, marveling at it all over again. The weight still hadn’t settled in. Neither had the fact that she’d cried in front of Wednesday. Or that she’d clumsily asked about kissing, only to be answered with a stare sharp enough to cut marble. She should have felt mortified still, and part of her did, but there was another part deep down, that hummed with a sort of fragile joy.

Wednesday had not laughed at her. She had not dismissed her. She had merely... thought.

And for Wednesday Addams, thought was never empty.

Enid was still trying to decide if that terrified her or thrilled her when Wednesday finally moved.

“Enid,” Wednesday said, her tone flat as ever, though her eyes were fixed on her with unsettling weight.

“Y-yeah?” Enid squeaked, quickly lowering her hand from where she’d been waving the diamond at the firelight again like some dazzled magpie.

Wednesday’s braids swayed slightly as she tilted her head. Her lips curved into the faintest shadow of something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Now that we are wives...”

Enid froze. Her pulse skipped. Wives. The word sounded surreal, heavy and bizarrely beautiful all at once when spoken in Wednesday’s voice.

“...we will share a chamber,” Wednesday finished, her tone clipped, matter-of-fact, as though she were announcing the time of day.

Enid blinked. “A... a chamber?”

“My bedroom,” Wednesday clarified.

The room seemed to tilt. Heat shot straight up Enid’s neck, flushing her cheeks crimson. “Wait, what—your—your room?!”

“Yes,” Wednesday said simply. “The bed is large enough to accommodate us both. Efficiency is preferable. It would be redundant for us to keep two chambers in this house when one will suffice.”

Enid sputtered, words tripping over themselves before they even reached her tongue. “B-but—that—that’s—Wednesday, I’ve never—I mean—sharing a bed? With—with you?”

Wednesday arched a brow, unimpressed. “You say it as though it were a harbinger of doom. Beds are designed for sleep. Nothing more.”

Enid’s blush deepened. “Y-you say that like it’s… nothing. But it’s not nothing! I’ve never slept beside anyone before!”

Something flickered in Wednesday’s eyes then, just faint enough that Enid almost missed it. A flash of acknowledgment. A mirror.

“Nor have I,” Wednesday admitted.

The words settled between them like a delicate shard of glass, fragile and cutting at once.

Enid’s lips parted. The blush in her cheeks softened into something else, something tender. “Really?”

Wednesday inclined her head once. “I do not share space. Not with anyone. Not even Thing. My chamber is sacrosanct. Private.” She paused, letting the gravity of her words sharpen the air. “But you are no longer anyone. You are... my wife.”

The way she said it, should have made Enid laugh nervously again. Instead, it made her throat tighten and her chest ache in the strangest way. It was so purely Wednesday. No flowers, no honeyed phrasing, just stark truth delivered like a blade.

And somehow, it was more intimate than any sweet words could have been.

The walk to the chamber was not long, but to Enid it felt like a procession. They did a stop on the room where Enid spend the trial week, to collect her belongings. Then, Wednesday led the way to her own personal bedroom with a candle in hand. Her posture rigid, as if she too were concealing nerves beneath her armor of composure.

The shadows flickered against the stone walls, the flames catching portraits of long-dead Addams ancestors whose eyes seemed to follow them with grim approval.

Enid’s heart hammered the whole way.

This wasn’t just a room. This was Wednesday’s room. The sanctum no one entered. The fortress she guarded. And now it would be their space.

She swallowed hard, her fingers brushing the ring again for courage.

The chamber door creaked as Wednesday pushed it open.

Enid’s breath caught.

The room was gothic perfection. Dark wood, high vaulted ceiling, heavy velvet curtains, a massive four-poster bed draped in black. A raven perched atop a stand near the window, tilting its head at her with knowing eyes. The scent of candle wax and faint smoke lingered in the air, mingling with something sharper, distinctly Wednesday. 

It was overwhelming and intimate all at once.

Wednesday set the candle on the bedside table and turned to her. “This is where we will sleep.”

Enid stared at the bed. It was enormous, the kind of bed designed for ghosts to linger at the edges of. She had never seen something so intimidating in her life. And it wasn’t the size that scared her, it was what it meant.

She flushed red again, clutching her elbows. “It’s... big.”

Wednesday’s expression was unreadable. “That is the point.”

Enid nodded dumbly, then blurted, “What if I kick in my sleep?”

“Then I will break your ankle,” Wednesday replied smoothly.

Enid gawked at her. Then she saw the glimmer in Wednesday’s eyes, just subtle enough. “You’re joking.”

“Am I?” Wednesday arched an eyebrow.

Enid groaned, burying her face in her hands again. “You’re going to be the death of me.”

“That is the traditional role of a wife,” Wednesday deadpanned.

Despite herself, Enid laughed. It broke some of the tension, but not all. Her heart was still racing as she sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, her fingers tracing the smooth velvet. It was softer than she expected.

Wednesday watched her closely, her pale hands clasped in front of her, her braids still perfect despite the late hour. She was the picture of control, except for the faint stiffness in her shoulders, the way her gaze lingered on Enid as though measuring every breath.

Enid looked up at her. “Are you nervous too?”

Wednesday didn’t answer immediately. She walked to the window, pulling the curtain aside just enough to let the moonlight spill in. Her voice came low and even. “Nervousness implies weakness. I am adjusting.”

Enid tilted her head. “Adjusting?”

Wednesday turned back to her with her eyes gleaming in the candlelight. “I have never shared my space. Never permitted intrusion. And now, I have invited you in. Permanently.”

Enid’s heart softened again. She could see it under the composure, under the iron walls, Wednesday was nervous. Just as nervous as she was.

The difference was that Enid let it spill out in blushes and stammers, while Wednesday locked hers in iron and shadow.

And yet, at the core, it was the same.

They were both afraid.

They were both vulnerable.

They were both about to share something new.

Enid shifted, pulling her legs up onto the bed, sitting cross-legged as she looked at Wednesday with a small, trembling smile. “Well... we’ll figure it out. Together.”

Wednesday regarded her for a long, heavy moment. Then, she moved to the bed gracefully. She sat on the other side, her back straight, her hands folded in her lap. The mattress dipped slightly under her weight, bringing them closer.

The silence stretched.

Enid giggled nervously. “So... do we just lie down now?”

Wednesday’s expression didn’t change. “That is generally the function of a bed.”

Enid groaned. “Why do you make everything sound like a courtroom?”

“Because marriage is legally binding,” Wednesday replied without missing a beat.

Enid collapsed back onto the pillows, laughing helplessly. “You’re impossible.”

Wednesday turned her head slightly, her braids falling over her shoulder and looked at her. “And yet, you signed.”

Enid’s laughter softened into a smile. She turned her hand, the ring gleaming faintly in the candlelight. “Yeah,” she whispered. “I did.”

Wednesday took some moments too think, it's like she forgot her night routine. They couldn't lay down with the day's clothes. She stood up and moved with her usual precision, guiding Enid with no more than a flick of her hand toward the adjoining bathroom. “Change. I expect you don’t wish for me to witness the ceremony of pastel cloth.”

Enid blinked, “Ceremony? They’re just pajamas.”

Wednesday’s lips twitched, the smallest ghost of mockery. “Pastel is a ritual of denial. Its worshippers insist the world is soft when in truth it is made of bone and rot. That you wear pink while knowing this only makes you more paradoxical.”

Enid’s cheeks flared red. She muttered something about her pajamas being comfortable and scurried into the bathroom, grateful for the heavy oak door between them.

Inside, the bathroom was predictably gothic: claw-foot tub, dark marble, black towels folded with military precision. Enid felt like an invader as she changed quickly, slipping into her cotton-pink pajamas dotted with tiny white bows. They were soft, warm and comfortingly familiar. Yet as she stared at her reflection in the ornate, bone-carved mirror, she felt like a child dressing for a slumber party, not a wife about to share a bed with Wednesday.

Her nineteen years pressed against her like a reminder: she was young, naïve and unpolished.

And Wednesday was... not. The ten years stretched like a gulf in the mirror’s glass.

When Enid finally emerged, she carried herself with forced cheer. “Okay, all set.” Her voice trailed off the instant her eyes landed on Wednesday.

She froze.

Wednesday had changed, too. The stiff collars and austere black frocks were gone. In their place, she wore a black silk nightgown that skimmed over her form with unnerving elegance. The straps were thin, the neckline low enough to reveal pale shoulders and the sharp line of her collarbone. It shimmered faintly in the candlelight, flowing like ink made liquid.

Enid’s throat went dry.

She’d never seen Wednesday like this. Vulnerable, almost intimate.

She looked away too quickly, cheeks flaming. “W-wow. Um. You.... you actually own silk?”

Wednesday arched a brow unfazed. “Do you find it remarkable that I prefer fabric woven by worms that devour themselves?”

Enid squeaked a laugh. “That sounds like you, yeah.” But her heart was pounding so hard she could barely hear herself.

The bed loomed like a cathedral at midnight, its black drapery drawn back as if inviting them into shadow. Enid perched on her side gingerly, clutching at the blankets. Wednesday moved with calm, sliding into her place as though the bed belonged to her by right, as though it were a throne and she, the sovereign.

They lay side by side.

And yet, there was nothing restful about it.

Enid pulled the blanket up to her chin and stared at the ceiling, willing herself to breathe normally. Every nerve screamed that she was too close. The warmth of Wednesday’s body was only inches away, but it radiated into her like fire.

She risked a glance sideways. Wednesday was on her back, her arms folded neatly over her abdomen, her braids draped across the pillow like strands of night. Her profile was sharp against the candlelight, still, composed and terrifyingly beautiful.

Enid swallowed. “So, this is... nice?”

Wednesday turned her head slowly, those black eyes locking onto her. “Nice is a word for pastries, Enid. Not for this.”

Enid blushed scarlet. “Okay—um—then what would you call it?”

A pause. The faintest twitch of Wednesday’s lips. “Unorthodox.”

Enid giggled nervously. “That’s not wrong.”

The minutes stretched.

Enid fidgeted, tangling her fingers in the blanket. “Do you… usually lie this stiff? You look like…”

“A corpse,” Wednesday supplied helpfully.

Enid groaned. “You said it, not me.”

Wednesday’s gaze lingered on her. “You are restless.”

“Of course I am!” Enid whispered fiercely, her curls bouncing as she turned toward her. “This is the first time I’ve ever shared a bed with anyone. And it’s you. You’re not just anyone. You’re Wednesday Addams. And now you’re my...” Her voice caught. “my wife.”

The word hovered in the air, too big for her tongue, too heavy for the fragile hush of the chamber.

Something unreadable flickered in Wednesday’s eyes. Her voice came low, and almost gentle. “Precisely. Which is why you need no fear.”

Enid blinked at her. “No fear?”

“You are here because you chose it. You signed. You wear my ring. Whatever you imagine in your restless mind, banish it. I will not harm you.” A pause, sharp as a dagger’s point. “Unless you kick me in your sleep.”

Enid’s laugh broke through the tension again, though her heart still ached with the intensity of it all.

The restlessness didn’t fade easily. Enid shifted on her side, curling toward Wednesday, though not too close. She bit her lip, her voice small in the dark. “Do you mind that I’m younger? That I don’t... know much about anything like this?”

Wednesday was quiet for a long moment. Too long. “You are nineteen. Inexperience is not a flaw, it is a state. And it will pass.” Her voice dipped, lower, almost intimate. “What matters is not the years between us, but the will to endure them together.”

Enid stared, her chest tight. That was oddly romantic. In a way only Wednesday could be.

She whispered, “Sometimes you sound like my doom and my hope at the same time.”

Wednesday turned her head fully then, fixing her with that consuming gaze. “That is exactly what I intend to be.”

Enid’s breath caught. Her blush deepened until she thought her skin might ignite.

The silence after was unbearable, full of tension that hummed through the air like a bowstring pulled taut.

Enid’s mind whirled with nerves, with the heat of the ring on her finger, with the shocking sight of Wednesday in silk. Wednesday’s thoughts were no less tumultuous. An iron storm of possessiveness, calculation and something new, something that tasted like longing but burned hotter.

And so they lay side by side in restless silence.

Each pretending calm. Each betraying themselves with every quickened breath.

The bed was vast. But somehow, it felt too small.

The hours stretched. The great clock in the hall below marked each passing quarter with a solemn chime that seemed to rattle through the bones of the house. In the bedchamber, beneath heavy velvet curtains and shadows, time had dissolved.

Neither girl slept.

Enid lay curled on her side, facing the dark silhouette of Wednesday. She could not stop looking at her, her stillness, her composure, her inhuman calm. Wednesday might have been carved from alabaster, her profile as sharp and untouched as a statue’s.

Enid’s curls tumbled over her pillow in untamed waves, her soft cotton pajamas wrinkled, a soft pink contrast against the black sheets. She chewed on her lip, fidgeting with the edge of the blanket. Sleep eluded her, driven away by nerves that made her chest tight and her thoughts louder than the storm outside.

It was unbearable. This silence, this closeness.

Enid shifted again, the mattress creaking faintly beneath her. Wednesday’s dark eyes opened instantly, glinting in the dim light.

“You are still restless,” Wednesday murmured.

Enid flinched. She hadn’t meant to disturb her. “Sorry. I didn’t... I thought you were asleep.”

Wednesday rolled her head slightly toward her, her braids sliding against the pillow. “I do not sleep lightly when there is motion beside me.”

Her tone was flat and factual. But there was an undercurrent, something taut and electric, something that made Enid’s heart pound.

Enid swallowed hard. She whispered, “I... I can’t stop thinking.”

“About what?”

Enid hesitated, biting her lip. “About you.”

There it was the confession, fragile and trembling in the air.

Wednesday did not blink. Did not breathe for a moment too long. Her eyes were dark and steady, fixed on Enid as though she were a puzzle box with one secret yet to be solved.

“Then think,” Wednesday said finally. “But do it silently.”

Enid flushed red again. She turned her face toward the pillow, feeling embarrassed, but the truth had already escaped. And once loosed, it could not be pulled back.

Her eyes stung. She hadn’t meant to sound so vulnerable. But she couldn’t help it. Wednesday wasn’t just anyone. Wednesday was a force impossible to ignore, impossible to resist.

And the more she lay there, the more she longed to be nearer.

Tentatively and timidly, Enid reached out beneath the blanket. Her hand hovered close enough to feel the coldness radiating from Wednesday’s side, contrasting with her warmth. Her fingers trembled with the effort of not pulling back.

Wednesday’s body went utterly still, as though her very blood had frozen. Her breathing remained measured, but inside, something she had no practice in suppressing sparked.

Enid dared another inch closer, her pink sleeve brushing at Wednesday’s arm.

A jolt shot through both of them.

Enid gasped softly, her cheeks flaming. “S-sorry. I didn’t mean—”

But she did.

She wanted.

And Wednesday knew it.

Wednesday’s mind raced in its own quiet way. She had endured interrogations, trials and the suffocating schemes of her mother, but never this: a girl, younger and softer, trembling beside her with a yearning that was almost innocent.

She should have recoiled. She should have cut through it with words sharp enough to sever the tension.

But she didn’t.

Instead, she studied Enid in the dim light. The way her hair fell across her forehead. The way her lips parted just slightly, breath shallow. The way her nineteen years showed in her every clumsy, earnest movement.

Wednesday’s pulse betrayed her, quickening. Her palms prickled with heat.

It unsettled her more than she could say.

Enid’s voice broke the silence again, small and shaky. “You’re... so calm. Like nothing shakes you. But I’m over here freaking out because I can’t stop thinking about how close you are.”

Wednesday’s brow twitched, the faintest crack in her deadpan mask.

“You are discovering proximity,” she said evenly. “It is not a unique phenomenon.”

Enid giggled nervously. “Leave it to you to make it sound like science. But it’s not just anyone. It’s you. And I...” She trailed off, her courage faltering.

Wednesday tilted her head slightly, watching her. “And you?”

Enid’s throat bobbed. She whispered it, barely audible. “I like that you’re older. It… it feels like you know things I don’t. Things I want to learn. It makes me feel safe. And… scared too. In a good way.”

Wednesday’s composure faltered for the briefest heartbeat.

Safe.

Scared.

Both at once.

The words struck deep, because they mirrored her own contradictions. She had never wished to be safe for anyone. Never desired to terrify and soothe in equal measure. And yet, here was this girl, this bride who had chosen her willingly, naming aloud the very balance that twisted inside her.

Wednesday’s jaw clenched. She turned her gaze to the ceiling, afraid of what might be visible in her eyes. “Do not mistake age for certainty. Experience is a prison as much as it is a guide.”

Enid blinked confused but fascinated. “So... what are you saying?”

“That I am not the lantern you believe me to be.” Her voice softened, reluctant. “I am a match. Quick to strike. Quick to burn. Dangerous in careless hands.”

Enid’s heart ached. She shifted closer, her hand trembling until it finally brushed Wednesday’s wrist. Cold skin against warm skin.

“You don’t scare me,” she whispered.

Wednesday’s breath caught. And for the first time in her whole life, Wednesday Addams felt nervous. Truly and physically nervous. 

The silence that followed was unbearable.

Enid curled closer, almost pressing against her now, her breath warm against Wednesday’s shoulder. She tucked her hand back beneath the blanket, but the contact still lingered, seared into Wednesday’s skin like a brand.

Neither spoke. Neither dared break the fragile thread woven between them.

The clock downstairs struck another quarter-hour.

Wednesday closed her eyes, not to rest, but to contain herself. To smother the storm within. Because restraint felt less like power and more like agony. And beside her, Enid finally relaxed into a drowsy half-sleep, herbody curved toward Wednesday as if drawn by gravity.

But Wednesday remained wide awake.

Her heart beat an unfamiliar rhythm, too quick, too human. Her thoughts circled the girl beside her, the girl who had confessed to liking the very gap between them, the girl who leaned closer rather than recoiled.

Safe and scared. 

That was what she made Enid feel. And though she would never say it aloud, it was precisely what Enid made her feel as well.

The warmth of Enid’s body radiated toward her. Wednesday could feel it, subtle but insistent, seeping into her skin through the shared mattress, through the blanket they barely touched. It gnawed at her composure.

Her mind, ordinarily sharp and cruelly efficient, felt scattered.

Push her away.

The command pulsed like a blade pressed against her ribs. It was logical, necessary, the only way to preserve the detachment she had built for years. Enid was younger, soft in every way Wednesday was not. She was brightness, noise, vulnerability, a mirror held up to everything Wednesday scorned. Allowing this closeness was reckless. Allowing this marriage to become anything more than contractual would be catastrophic.

Wednesday’s hand twitched beneath the covers, traitorous in its yearning. She could feel the ghost of Enid’s touch from earlier still burning at her wrist. Her pulse, usually steady, betrayed her with every insistent beat.

Do it now. Move. Sever this thread before it strangles you.

Her muscles refused to obey.

Enid stirred softly, adjusting her pillow, her hair spilling over her face. She was close enough now that her knee brushed lightly against Wednesday’s beneath the blanket. Just a graze, unintentional and innocent.

Wednesday’s breath hitched.

The reaction was humiliating. She clenched her jaw, furious at her own body for betraying the discipline she prided herself on. But beneath that fury, another current ran darker and heavier. A sense she had only ever seen in her father when he hovered near her mother: a weight of protectiveness, sharp and unyielding.

She did not want Enid touched by anyone else. She did not want Enid harmed, frightened, diminished. She wanted her preserved, yet not preserved in the fragile, breakable way a porcelain doll was preserved. Preserved in the way a flame was protected from wind.

It was unbearable. It was irrational. And still, it rooted itself in her chest.

Her eyes slid toward Enid again. The younger girl’s face was faintly illuminated by the ember’s glow, softening her features. She had fallen quiet, though Wednesday could tell she was not asleep. Her lashes fluttered too often, her breathing too uneven. She was pretending.

The realization sent a thrill through Wednesday’s veins that she despised.

“Stop fidgeting,” she murmured finally, her tone low but edged with the precision of a knife.

Enid startled faintly, caught, then whispered back, “Sorry. I’m just... it’s hard to be still when you’re this close.”

Her honesty was disarming. Most people concealed themselves under masks, bargains and lies. But Enid said the words no one else dared to speak aloud.

It made Wednesday’s throat feel too tight.

She turned her gaze to the ceiling, resisting. “You will grow accustomed to proximity in time. Humans are malleable. You adapt.”

Enid’s voice wavered, but there was stubbornness in it. “It’s not about getting used to it. It’s about wanting it. Wanting you close.”

The silence after that statement was so heavy it might have cracked stone.

Wednesday shut her eyes briefly, her nails digging into her palm beneath the blankets. Her every instinct screamed to cut through this tension with words, with cruelty if necessary. But for once, the blade of her tongue dulled before it reached her lips.

She could not summon dismissal. Not when part of her reveled in the fact that Enid wanted.

Her thoughts grew darker the longer she lay there. What if someone else had won Enid’s attention first? That farmer boy, Bruno. Even the memory of his name made her jaw clench. He might have kissed her, held her, touched her with the thoughtless ease of boys too unworthy to understand the weight of what they touched.

The idea sickened her.

No. Enid was hers now. Bound by contract, bound by ring, bound by this impossible nearness.

The possessiveness coiled inside her like a serpent, unfamiliar yet intoxicating.

And still, she hesitated.

Because possession was one thing. Protection, another. What if her own nature poisoned what Enid had so willingly stepped into? What if her darkness extinguished that unflinching brightness?

Enid shifted again, curling tighter toward her until her forehead almost brushed Wednesday’s shoulder. She whispered, barely audible: “You’re so still. Like a statue. But I can feel you’re not calm. Why do you always act like nothing touches you?”

Wednesday opened her eyes slowly, turning her head to study the girl at her side. Their faces were closer than they had any right to be.

“Because stillness,” Wednesday said quietly, “is the only thing that keeps me from shattering.”

Enid’s lips parted at that, her eyes wide and glistening. She looked as though she wanted to reach out again, to touch her face, to bridge the unbearable inch between them.

Wednesday felt it before she saw it, the faint shift of Enid’s hand beneath the blanket, tentative, trembling and inching closer to hers.

Wednesday did not move away. The fragile brush of fingers was enough to unravel her composure entirely. Her chest constricted, her pulse roaring louder than the storm outside. Every instinct urged her to retreat, to cut off this thread before it became a chain. But she remained still, allowing the warmth of Enid’s hand to rest against hers in the dark.

And in that unbearable closeness, she felt the spark of something she could no longer deny: protectiveness, desire, fear and a twisted devotion that felt far too much like her parents’ warnings.

Wednesday Addams who feared nothing, now feared only this girl, this closeness, this unbearable tenderness that threatened to dismantle everything she had built of herself.

And still she could not let go.

The night stretched endlessly, sleepless and heavy. Enid eventually drifted into a fragile doze, her hand still touching Wednesday’s, her body curved toward her like a secret offered freely.

But Wednesday remained awake, her dark eyes open to the ceiling, her mind consumed by contradictions.

Push her away.

Keep her close.

Break her.

Protect her.

And in the center of it all, the truth she could not yet bring herself to speak:

Enid Sinclair had already begun to unmake her.

Chapter Text

The first light of morning seeped reluctantly through the curtains, though here on the hilltop it was less light than a muted pall, gray and pale, caught beneath the weight of clouds.

Enid opened her eyes slowly. It was the stillness beside her that struck her first, heavier even than the silence of the chamber.

Wednesday lay exactly where she had been when sleep took her, flat on her back, her arms at her sides, the folds of her black nightgown undisturbed. She could have been carved from marble, the only sign of life the faint rise and fall of her chest. Her braids spilled like two dark rivers over the pillow, framing her pale, sharp face. She looked both unearthly and painfully real.

Enid rolled slightly onto her side, careful not to stir the mattress too much. She tucked her chin into her pillow and simply looked.

Her heart thumped with that strange, conflicting warmth she hadn’t been able to shake since the ring slid onto her finger. There was fear, how could there not be with Wednesday’s eyes that saw through bone and marrow, with her voice that sliced through pretense like a blade? But there was admiration too, and an odd kind of joy that felt like standing barefoot in the soil back home, like watching her mother knead dough in the farmhouse kitchen.

The girl who had spent her life rising with the sun, learning chores by repetition, tending animals and earth, was now lying beside Wednesday Addams in a chamber vast and cold as a cathedral. The contrast nearly stole her breath.

She lingered longer than she meant to, tracing the sharp line of Wednesday’s profile with her eyes. The still brow, the slope of her nose, the lips that had cut her with words sharper than knives.

She thought of the closeness from last night, the brush of fingers under the blanket, the almost unbearable thread of tension. Her cheeks warmed, and she hid her face against the pillow for a moment, letting herself breathe it out.

But she was Enid Sinclair, raised by work and habit. She could not lie here idle all morning. She knew when Wednesday would wake and that gave her hours.

Enid slid carefully from the bed, her bare feet brushing the cold floor. She padded across the chamber, hugging her arms against the chill and slipped into the bathroom to dress.

Her clothes felt plain in comparison to the gothic drapery of the mansion: jeans worn at the knees, a sweater in pale yellow that her mother had insisted was “cheerful” for city wear. But she slipped it on anyway, brushing her curls until they bounced freely around her shoulders.

When she looked in the tall mirror she saw herself, the farm girl awkwardly misplaced in a gothic mansion, and for once, she did not wince. She looked necessary. Like her brightness had a place here, if only to soften the shadows.

The house greeted her with silence when she opened the door of their chamber. Enid padded through the hall, down the broad staircase, her footsteps muffled by the thick rugs that looked older than her whole family.

The living room was tidy still from her dusting days earlier, the golden lamps low and soft. She smiled faintly at the sight, her work visible. It grounded her, reminded her she could carve little pockets of livability into this cavernous place.

She fetched the cleaning supplies again, not because Wednesday asked for it. Wednesday would never ask for that.

She did it because the instinct lived in her bones. A cloth for the surfaces, a sweep across the entryway where wind brought in dust. She hummed softly as she worked, the farmhouse melodies that carried her through mornings back home.

By the time the clocks chimed eight, the mansion smelled faintly fresher.

Her letters still weighed on her mind. She had tucked them into her sweater pocket the night before: the neat one for her family with simple and factual words, careful not to frighten them. And the second, for Bruno. Shorter, shakier and written in guilt more than clarity.

Enid knew if she didn’t send them now, she might never find the courage again.

So she walked down the hill. The path was damp with last night’s mist, the grass bending under her boots. The main Addams mansion loomed below, its spires cutting into the clouds.

And there, as though waiting, Lurch stood by the hearse, polishing it with slow strokes. His hulking figure was bent just slightly, the rag in his massive hand looking like a child’s toy.

Enid approached cautiously, her two letters in hand. “Um, hi. Morning.”

Lurch lifted his head. His deep-set eyes blinked once, impassive.

She extended the letters with both hands, her voice soft. “Could you... please deliver these? To San Francisco. To my parents.”

Lurch studied her for a moment. Then, without a word, he reached out his enormous hand and plucked the letters delicately from her grasp. He tucked them inside his jacket, straightened and turned toward the hearse.

Before Enid could say more, he had opened the driver’s door, slid in, and the engine growled to life with a sound like a beast awakening. The car rumbled down the path, leaving Enid standing in the mist, a little stunned.

She let out a soft laugh despite herself. “Well... guess that’s that.”

The climb back up the hill felt lighter somehow, though her chest still twisted with the thought of Bruno’s name on a page that Wednesday might one day demand to see.

When she reached the mansion again, she shook off her boots at the threshold, tucked her hair behind her ear and headed straight for the kitchen.

The groceries were neatly arranged now with constant stocking from Morticia, and thanks to Thing’s help. Enid paused a moment, smiling faintly at the memory of his wiggling fingers and his unexpected helpfulness.

She set about planning breakfast. Eggs, cheese, vegetables that looked fresher now in the new light. She could make omelets again, or something different like scrambled eggs, maybe toast with melted cheese.

The mere thought of setting a plate in front of Wednesday made her chest warm.

Cooking was not a chore for Enid. It was an offering, a way of saying: I see you, I want you cared for without words. 

Back home, she cooked for her parents, for Bruno, for her siblings, the routine part of love itself.

Now, here in this mansion where dust and silence reigned, she cooked for Wednesday, her wife.

She whisked eggs in a heavy gothic bowl, her curls bouncing as she leaned into the rhythm. She chopped vegetables carefully, her farmhouse skills precise, and tossed them into the pan with cheese. The sound of sizzling filled the kitchen, cutting through the heavy quiet of the house.

Enid hummed softly again, the tune of a lullaby her mother used to sing while kneading dough. The warmth of the pan and the smell of food anchored her.

And as she worked, her thoughts wandered back upstairs, to Wednesday sleeping like a marble statue in their shared bed. To the way her fingers had not let go last night. To the way her ring felt heavy but secure on her hand.

She stirred the pan and smiled faintly to herself.

“I’ll take care of you,” she whispered to the pan, though the words were meant for someone far upstairs.

By the time the clock neared ten, the kitchen was filled with the warm scent of eggs and cheese, softened vegetables folded into golden layers. Two plates sat on the table, one for her and one for Wednesday, waiting.

Enid poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down, but her eyes kept flicking toward the doorway. She knew that Wednesday would appear at 10:31.

She glanced at the clock. 10:23. Not yet.

The breakfast had been perfect when she plated it. It would be warm still, but she couldn’t help thinking she should have timed it to finish exactly when Wednesday descended the staircase. Everything with Wednesday seemed to demand precision, as though even eggs had to align with an exact moment in the day.

She tried not to fidget, but her hands itched for something to do. Finally, she pulled her phone from her pocket.

The black screen reflected her own face back at her, her cheeks flushed from the kitchen’s warmth. She unlocked it automatically, scrolling through apps and conversations that had been left to rot since she arrived here.

Nothing worked. No calls, no texts, no signal bars. She tried opening a photo, one of Bruno, grinning with hay stuck in his hair, but shut it quickly, biting her lip.

Don’t.

She set the phone face-down on the table.

Still, the thought pressed in. Internet. She needed it, not to sneak behind Wednesday’s back or to cling to the farm life she had chosen to leave behind, but simply because her friends, her family, her whole life outside this hilltop deserved at least a word from her now and then. And she couldn’t bear the idea of being cut off completely.

But how to explain that to Wednesday without it sounding like betrayal? Wednesday, who had looked at Bruno’s name with a chill fury, whose hands had tightened as though the mere thought of him was a poison.

If I wanted Bruno, I wouldn’t have chosen you. Enid thought, pressing her lips together, but she didn’t know how to say it out loud yet.

The kitchen ticked with the sound of the clock. 10:28. 10:29.

Her heart beat harder as the minutes wound closer.

10:31.

Wednesday’s footsteps were not loud, but Enid knew them instantly. The doorway darkened, and there she was, clad in black trousers and a striped shirt, her braids perfect, her pale face unreadable.

Her eyes fell first on the breakfast steaming at her place. Then on Enid, waiting with nervous brightness at the table.

“Good morning,” Enid said quickly, almost too quickly, her voice too cheerful.

Wednesday did not answer immediately. She crossed the threshold in silence, her gaze scanning the kitchen like a detective walking into a crime scene. The faintest wrinkle touched her brow at the open window, the smell of eggs, the very domesticity of it all. Then, she sat.

Enid forced herself to keep talking, to fill the silence before it swallowed her whole.

“I, um... I kept myself busy this morning. Tidied the living room, swept a little, just to make the place feel warmer.” She smiled tentatively. “Oh, and I gave my letters to Lurch. He said, well, he didn’t say anything, but he took them. They’re on their way to San Francisco now.”

She stopped, waiting. Wednesday stared at her like someone considering a riddle.

“And I thought maybe,” Enid pressed on, her hands folding and unfolding in her lap, “if it’s not too much... we could think about WiFi. Just so I can, you know, stay in touch with people. I mean, there’s no signal up here, not even for calls, so...”

Her voice trailed.

The silence thickened.

When Wednesday finally spoke, her voice was cool, measured and it slid beneath Enid’s skin like ice.

“WiFi.” She repeated the word as though it were foreign, distasteful. “You require the electronic tether of civilization to feel secure.”

Enid bristled faintly, though she forced herself to smile. “I mean... it’s just normal. Everyone has it.”

“Everyone.” Wednesday’s eyes narrowed slightly, and her tone sharpened. “Does everyone include Bruno?”

The name landed like a stone between them.

Enid blinked, her heart dropping. “Wednesday...”

“Tell me,” Wednesday continued, her expression never shifting, “is this sudden craving for invisible signals merely the first step in reestablishing contact with him? Did you imagine yourself maintaining a quaint, secret correspondence with your farmer boy while playing the dutiful Addams wife?”

Her words struck like whips and Enid’s cheeks flushed hot.

“No!” She sat straighter, almost offended. “That’s not... why would you even think that? If I wanted Bruno, I’d still be on the farm. I wouldn’t be here, sitting across from you.”

Wednesday’s gaze remained sharp, but Enid’s voice trembled with earnestness, her curls bouncing as she shook her head.

“You think I’m the kind of person who would betray you?” she asked softly, her throat tight. “I’ve been here, cooking for you, trying to make this place livable, trying to meet you halfway. If you really think I’d use internet just to sneak around with Bruno, then you don’t know me at all.”

The words hung there. For once, Enid’s tone carried steel.

Wednesday didn’t move. Her expression was still, marble-like, but beneath the surface a fissure cracked open. She despised betrayal, she had been raised in a family where loyalty was not optional but sacred. She had spoken out of instinct, a preemptive strike before her own possessiveness could be wounded.

But Enid’s defiance, her outrage, her hurt... was real.

Wednesday studied her, the flush in her cheeks, the way her eyes glistened but did not fall. She had expected tears and capitulation, but instead Enid met her stare head-on, refusing to shrink.

And to her own irritation, Wednesday felt something stir in her chest. Amusement. Admiration. Desire.

This nineteen-year-old farm girl, this bright-eyed creature, was not cowering. She was standing... against her.

“You are unusually defensive,” Wednesday said at last, her voice flat, but her fingers tightening around her fork betrayed the tremor beneath.

“And you’re unusually paranoid,” Enid shot back, her lips trembling but her voice steady. “You can accuse me all you want, but I know the truth. I chose you. I signed that paper. I put on this ring. If I wanted Bruno, I wouldn’t have done any of it.”

The air between them burned.

Wednesday’s jaw clenched, then loosened. She set her fork down, the untouched omelet steaming faintly at her place.

“Betrayal,” she said finally, her tone low, “is unacceptable in my family. Its consequences are... considerable.”

Enid held her gaze, her pulse hammering in her throat. “Then maybe you should stop accusing me of it when I haven’t even thought about betraying you.”

The silence after was heavier than stone.

Wednesday leaned back slightly, her dark eyes never leaving Enid.

“I despise your brightness,” she said evenly. “And yet without it, this house would remain nothing but shadows. Perhaps that is what unsettles me most.”

Enid blinked, her breath catching.

It was not an apology. It was not forgiveness. But it was something, something raw and strange, and it made her heart twist.

She looked down at her plate, then back up, her voice quieter now. “Then maybe let me keep some of it. Even if it’s just WiFi.”

Wednesday did not answer. But her gaze lingered, sharp and unreadable, as though measuring whether this concession could exist without breaking her principles.

The meal cooled between them, but neither moved. The kitchen was thick with silence, suspicion, and something impossible to name or to deny.

Chapter Text

The storm outside had rolled in before sunset. Heavy clouds hung low over the hill, cloaking the spires of the mansion in mist. Thunder rumbled at intervals, echoing like distant drums, while rain hissed against the windows and slid down in distorted rivulets.

Inside, the fire roared in the hearth of the vast living room, its flames licking at blackened logs. Shadows played across the carved walls and grotesque portraits of Addams ancestors, their eyes gleaming with approval or menace, depending on where one stood.

Wednesday sat in her usual armchair, high-backed and severe, its upholstery a shade darker than her braided hair. She was perfectly still, her pale hands folded over her knees, a faint reflection of firelight caught in her onyx eyes.

Enid sat opposite her, perched on the edge of a smaller chair. Her hair glowed like gold in the firelight, contrasting starkly with the somber tones of the room. She held two envelopes in her hands, sealed with ink smudges and the faint scent of travel still clinging to them. Her heart beat fast. Curiosity, dread and anticipation all mingled as her thumbs brushed over the rough edges.

It had been three days since she had given her letters to Lurch. This evening, he had appeared at the door, silent as always, handing her the responses without a word. Then he disappeared again into the rain, the hearse rolling down the hill, leaving Enid standing in the doorway with her breath caught and her palms sweating.

Now she sat with the letters, the fire cracking and Wednesday watching her with the patience of a hawk observing prey.

Enid shifted in her seat, glancing from the envelopes to Wednesday. “They came,” she said softly. “From San Francisco.”

Wednesday inclined her head by a fraction, the tiniest acknowledgment, but did not speak.

“I thought...” Enid swallowed, her fingers tightening around the paper. “I thought we should read them together. Since... since everything that’s mine is yours now, right? No secrets.”

A flicker passed through Wednesday’s gaze, something sharp and unreadable, but she said nothing. Her stillness was unnerving, as though she had no need for breath or motion.

Enid set the letters on her lap. One bore her mother’s tidy handwriting, Esther’s script slanted but graceful. The other was scrawled in a less careful hand, Bruno’s. She recognized the uneven loops instantly, and her stomach twisted.

She reached first for her mother’s.

Her voice trembled slightly as she unfolded it, smoothing out the creases. Wednesday’s gaze followed her hands with raptor-like attention. Enid began to read aloud.

My dearest Enid,

I was surprised, but not displeased to receive your letter. You have always been impulsive, but I see now that your impulses are guided by wisdom as well as heart. To accept Morticia Addams’ offer was the right decision. You have secured not only your future but ours as well. The dowry has been delivered, the debts erased and already your father seems less anxious. He will never admit it, but I see relief in his shoulders.

The Addams family is not ordinary, of course. You must learn to live among them, to accept their eccentricities as part of their greatness. If Morticia has chosen you as suitable for her daughter, then it means she saw something of strength in you. Remember, you are not a guest there. You are a wife now; with obligations, but also with protections.

Your brothers were surprised. They ask endless questions. Why you didn’t tell them sooner, who this Wednesday is, whether you will ever return to visit. I told them you belong where you are now. They will adjust.

As for Bruno, I will not interfere. But he has been restless, asking after you, wondering why you did not confide in him. You must do what you feel is right with him. My advice: let go of the past, and embrace your future. The Addams are powerful allies and if you commit yourself, you will not regret it.

With love,

Mother.

Enid’s voice faltered on the last line. She lowered the paper, staring at the floor. The words were not cruel, but they were heavy. Her mother’s approval came not from understanding, but from calculation. The dowry, the protection, the relief of debts.

Wednesday broke the silence first. “Pragmatic,” she observed. “Your mother would survive well among us.”

Enid laughed weakly, though her eyes were damp. “She always wanted me to do something bigger than the farm. Guess this qualifies.”

“She is correct.” Wednesday’s tone was flat, almost judicial. “You are no longer a guest. You are my wife.”

The words fell like a brand against Enid’s skin. She shifted uncomfortably, twisting the letter in her hands. Her gaze slid toward the second envelope, the one she dreaded more.

Bruno’s.

Enid’s hands shook slightly as she opened it. The handwriting leapt at her, uneven and boyish. She drew a breath, then began to read aloud.

Enid,

I don’t understand. I thought you were just in Jersey visiting some family friends. Why didn’t you tell me the truth? Why didn’t you say anything?

You wrote that you married someone. Married. Just like that. And not just anyone, but that author Wednesday Addams. I don’t even know what to say to that. Do you love her? Did you choose her, or did they choose for you?

I don’t care about the dowry or debts or whatever your parents wanted. I care about you. I thought we had something. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe you never felt what I did.

If this is what you really want, then I won’t stand in your way. But I need to hear it from you. Was I just a distraction until something better came along? Or do you still think about me?

Please be honest.

Bruno.

Enid’s throat closed as she read the last line. She folded the letter carefully, placing it on her lap, her hands pressed tightly over it.

Silence thickened. The fire crackled. Outside, thunder growled again.

When Enid finally lifted her gaze, Wednesday’s eyes were fixed on her, dark and unyielding.

“Well?” Wednesday asked, her voice low.

Enid blinked. “Well what?”

“You insisted on reading them together. You’ve done so. Now, what is your answer to him?”

Enid opened her mouth, then closed it again. She looked back at the folded letter. “I... I don’t know what to say.”

“Then allow me.” Wednesday leaned forward slightly, her braids falling over her shoulders. “You tell him nothing. You consign his letter to the flames, as we consign all that is useless. You are not his distraction. You are mine.”

The possessiveness in her tone sent a shiver down Enid’s spine.

“Wednesday...”

“You hesitate.” Wednesday’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“Because he deserves honesty,” Enid whispered, her voice trembling. “He doesn’t deserve to be left in the dark and wondering.”

“He deserves nothing,” Wednesday said coldly. “He squandered his claim the moment you chose me.”

Enid flinched, her curls bouncing as she shook her head. “It’s not about claims. It’s about closure.”

Wednesday’s silence was razor sharp. Then she rose from her chair, crossed the room with slow precision and took the folded letter from Enid’s lap. Without breaking eye contact, she dropped it into the fire.

Enid gasped half-rising, but the flames had already licked at the edges. The ink curled, the paper blackened, Bruno’s words turning to ash within seconds.

“Wednesday!”

The Addams girl stood over the fire, her face bathed in orange glow, her expression unreadable. “Closure is overrated. Finality is better.”

Enid stared at the burning scraps, her chest heaving. A mixture of anger and relief tangled inside her, leaving her dizzy.

Wednesday turned back, stepping closer until she loomed over Enid’s chair. Her hand reached out, not unkindly but firmly, tilting Enid’s chin upward until their eyes locked.

“You will not waste your tears on him,” Wednesday said lowly, almost tenderly, though steel lay beneath. “You belong here. With me. Bound. That is the only truth that matters.”

Enid’s throat tightened. She could smell Wednesday’s nightshade perfume, subtle and sharp, the faintest hint of smoke clinging to her skin from the fire. Her lashes fluttered, but she could not look away.

Wednesday’s voice was low, cutting into the silence.

“He lingers in your mind like mildew,” she said. “Damp, unpleasant and inevitable unless scrubbed away.” Her thumb ghosted against Enid’s jaw. “But I will not allow him to rot the foundation of what is mine.”

Enid swallowed hard. “Wednesday...”

“You do not understand the severity.” Wednesday’s gaze darkened, threatening to swallow her whole. “Addams unions are not frivolous. We do not treat them as arrangements of convenience or experiments of affection. We bind for eternity. There is no space in eternity for ghosts of farmers with ink-stained hands.”

Enid blinked fast, her eyes stinging. “He wasn’t—”

“Do not defend him.” The command was sharp, though her touch remained almost tender at Enid’s chin. “Every word in his letter was a grasping hand trying to tug you back into mediocrity. You are above that now. You are mine.”

The word mine struck Enid like lightning. She felt heat rising up her neck, blooming in her cheeks. It should have frightened her more and it did frighten her, but beneath the shiver of fear there was something else. Something that made her pulse race in ways she dared not name.

Her lips parted. “You don’t... you don’t have to erase him. I can—”

But Wednesday cut her off, her voice silken and cold. “I must. If I allow even the ghost of him to linger, it becomes a crack. Cracks widen. They invite betrayal, and betrayal...” Her fingers tightened faintly at Enid’s chin. “...betrayal earns a swift end in my family.”

Enid’s breath hitched. “You think I’d betray you?”

Wednesday tilted her head, her expression unreadable but her eyes searing. “I think you are soft. You confuse pity with duty, nostalgia with affection. Those weaknesses must be... corrected.”

Enid’s eyes watered. Not entirely from hurt even though her chest ached, but from the strange weight of being seen so completely, dissected without mercy. No one had ever studied her like this. No one had dared to claim her so fully.

Her voice came out small. “You scare me sometimes.”

“Good.” Wednesday’s tone did not soften. “Fear roots loyalty deeper than affection ever could. And yet,” For the first time her gaze flickered, just slightly, as though some inner admission pressed against her ribs. “with you, it is not only fear. That irritates me.”

Enid blinked. “Irritates?”

“I find myself unwilling to imagine your absence. It is inconvenient.”

The honesty landed like a blow and a caress at once. Enid’s heart hammered. She leaned fractionally into Wednesday’s hold, her hair brushing against pale fingers.

“You don’t have to erase him,” Enid whispered, trembling. “Because I chose you. I keep choosing you. Doesn’t that matter?”

“You say it matters. Then prove it.” Wednesday challenged her.

“How?”

“Forget him. Tonight. Forever. I will carve him out of your memory if I must.” Her voice dropped, dark and intimate, like a vow whispered against skin. “I will replace every thought of him with myself until you cannot recall his face.”

Enid’s breath came fast. The way Wednesday spoke, like she was a spell, a storm, a verdict, made her feel small and claimed all at once. A shiver ran down her spine, part terror, part girlish thrill.

“You’re...” Enid faltered, her voice cracking into a nervous laugh. “You’re kind of terrifying right now, you know that?”

Wednesday’s thumb brushed along her jaw again, the faintest echo of tenderness hidden in the gesture. “You find it frightening. Yet you do not pull away.”

Enid swallowed. “Maybe I don’t want to.”

The fire hissed. The rain hammered harder.

For a long and heavy moment, they stayed like that, Wednesday looming with possession burning in her gaze, Enid trembling under it, torn between fright and swooning surrender.

Finally, Wednesday released her chin, stepping back with her usual eerie composure. She turned toward the fire, watching the last ash collapse into nothing.

“Good,” she murmured, almost to herself. “He is gone. He will not haunt us again.”

Enid’s hand drifted unconsciously to the ring on her finger, its weight a reminder. She looked at Wednesday’s sharp, flawless and merciless profile. Her heart ached with confusion and awe.

Terrifying. Beautiful. Hers.

The storm had not passed by the time Wednesday and Enid retreated to their shared chamber. Rain drummed steadily against the high arched windows, the sound like a thousand skeletal fingers rapping the glass. Lightning flared once, throwing the carved gargoyle bedposts into sharp relief, their grimacing mouths frozen in silent warning.

The bed loomed at the center of the room, vast and austere, draped in black silk. Its very presence suggested finality, as though anyone who lay upon it was bound not merely to sleep but to eternity.

Enid stood by the door for a long moment, her fingers tangled nervously in the hem of her pale pink pajama top. Her curls frizzed slightly from the damp and she tucked them behind her ear with a distracted motion. She could feel the pull of the room, the hush, the weight, the silent claim of it. And at its heart was Wednesday.

Wednesday moved with her usual composed gravity, her nightgown whispering around her ankles as she crossed the chamber. She did not bother with a candle tonight; the storm itself provided its own illumination, intermittent and theatrical. She paused by the window, her silhouette sharp against the flash of lightning.

Enid’s breath caught. She had never met anyone who could command a room without speaking, but Wednesday did so effortlessly. She didn’t need to raise her voice or exaggerate her gestures. Her stillness was enough. It made Enid’s nerves skitter, yet it also drew her like a moth.

Finally, Wednesday turned, her gaze sliding toward Enid. “You are restless,” she said flatly, though her eyes betrayed a flicker of knowing.

Enid’s lips parted, then pressed together. She crossed to her side of the bed, careful and awkward, her slippers scuffing against the rug. When she sat, the mattress dipped beneath her light weight, and she clasped her hands in her lap.

“Maybe a little,” she admitted softly. Her voice was almost swallowed by the storm.

Wednesday joined her with slow grace, slipping beneath the coverlet as though she were descending into ritual rather than simple rest. Her pale hands lay upon the black sheets like ivory carvings.

The silence stretched, and Enid shifted, fidgeting as though her body held too much energy. She curled toward Wednesday instinctively, her knees bent, her shoulder brushing faintly against the elder woman’s arm.

“Does my presence unsettle you?” Wednesday asked, her voice low almost clinical.

Enid shook her head quickly. “No. I mean—yes. But not in a bad way. It’s just...” She trailed off, struggling.

“Just what?”

Enid bit her lip, then forced the words out. “You scare me sometimes. But it also makes me feel like I matter. Like I’m not invisible. Like someone actually—” She faltered again, cheeks flushing. “...cares.”

Wednesday’s gaze fixed on her, intense enough to pin her in place. For a long moment, she said nothing. Then she shifted, turning fully onto her side, facing Enid. Their eyes locked in the dimness.

“You confuse fear with affection,” Wednesday murmured.

“Maybe.” Enid’s voice trembled. “But maybe it’s both.”

Wednesday’s lips curved, not in a smile but in something sharper, something edged with satisfaction. She lifted a hand, resting it against Enid’s shoulder, then sliding down slowly along her arm until she found Enid’s hand beneath the coverlet. Her fingers laced through Enid’s, the gesture both intimate and proprietary.

“You belong to me now,” she said simply, her voice the weight of an oath. “Not in half measures. Not with caveats. Entirely.”

Enid shivered. The words should have alarmed her more deeply than they did. And yet there was a strange warmth in them, a certainty she had never known before.

Her lips curved in a shy, almost trembling smile. “You really mean that, don’t you?”

Wednesday’s eyes narrowed faintly. “Do you doubt my sincerity?”

“No,” Enid whispered quickly. “It’s just... I’ve never had someone claim me like that. Not even Bruno. He just... liked me. Wanted me. But this—” She swallowed. “This feels bigger.”

Wednesday’s thumb brushed once across the back of her hand, almost absent-minded, but the gesture sent Enid’s heart racing.

“It is bigger,” Wednesday said. “It is forever. You are mine. And I am yours.”

Lightning flared again, illuminating her profile, her sharp nose, unyielding mouth, dark eyes that seemed to swallow the world. Enid stared, her chest aching with something she didn’t know how to name.

She leaned closer, hesitantly curling into Wednesday’s side as though pulled by gravity itself. Her cheek brushed against the silk of Wednesday’s nightgown and she inhaled her strange, dark scent. Her body buzzed with nerves, but she did not move away.

Wednesday, to her own faint surprise, did not push her back. Instead, she let her stay. She shifted her hand, threading her fingers more securely through Enid’s.

For a long time, neither spoke. The storm raged, the fire hissed faintly in the hearth, and their breathing slowly fell into a rhythm.

Enid’s thoughts spun wildly. She knew this was dangerous. Wednesday’s love, if that was what it was, was sharp-edged and consuming. But she could not deny how it made her feel: seen, wanted, bound.

Her voice broke the silence at last, small and trembling. “Wednesday, is this what forever feels like?”

Wednesday’s gaze softened, not much, but enough for Enid to catch it.

“Yes,” she murmured. “And you will learn to endure it.”

Enid smiled faintly against her shoulder, tears pricking her eyes. She didn’t know if she was terrified or elated, or both. But she knew one thing: she did not want to be anywhere else.

The storm outside softened into a cold, steady rain. In the chamber, the only sound that lingered was the quiet rhythm of their breathing. Enid and Wednesday still laid side by side, their faces turned toward each other, so close that each exhale mingled in the scant inches between them.

Neither of them spoke. Words felt clumsy now, too bright, too mortal for what hovered in the air between them. The faint firelight gilded the edges of Wednesday’s dark hair, catching on her lashes.

Enid watched her, her heart hammering with a kind of reverence that frightened her. She could see every line of Wednesday’s expression, the stillness carved there, the faint tension in her throat as though she were trying not to move, not to feel.

Enid’s hand twitched once against the coverlet, then stilled. She didn’t know why it felt suddenly impossible to breathe unless she closed the space between them. It wasn’t boldness; it was quiet and inevitable instinct, like rain seeking the earth.

She shifted closer until the faintest brush of her nose touched Wednesday’s. That single touch broke the stasis.

Wednesday’s breath caught. Her eyes widened a fraction, the smallest betrayal of surprise she had allowed in years. Her mind recoiled and leaned forward all at once. Every rule of restraint she had ever built within herself rattled against the bars.

Enid could see it: the battle playing out behind those black eyes, the question of whether to flee or to surrender.

The distance disappeared.

Their foreheads touched first, a fragile contact, light as dust. Then their lips met, no heat or haste, just the tremor of two worlds grazing for the first time. The touch was brief, a second drawn out by the thunder’s echo. But it was enough to tilt the axis of the room.

When it ended, Wednesday didn’t move for a moment. Then, as if realizing the enormity of what she had allowed, she turned sharply away. Her braid slid over her shoulder, like black ribbon against the white of her throat. She pressed her face into the pillow, the gesture startlingly human, almost childlike in its avoidance.

Enid blinked, startled by the swiftness of the retreat. The silence that followed was thick with confusion, hers and Wednesday’s both.

“Hey,” Enid whispered after a moment, her voice shaky but tender. She reached out, her fingertips brushing Wednesday’s shoulder. The silk of the nightgown was cool beneath her skin. “It’s okay. Really.”

Wednesday didn’t answer. Her shoulders were rigid, her hand clenched in the sheet. She hated the trembling in her pulse, the loss of composure. It wasn’t supposed to happen. She wasn’t supposed to lose control, least of all because of someone who smiled in pink pajamas and believed in morning sunlight.

Enid, however, didn’t withdraw. She shifted closer again, gently prying at the barriers that Wednesday had pulled so tightly around herself. Her hands came to rest on either side of Wednesday’s face, coaxing her to turn back. Her thumbs hovered near Wednesday’s temples, not forcing just simply waiting.

Wednesday’s breath faltered. Slowly and almost imperceptibly, she allowed herself to be turned.

When their eyes met again, something had changed. The look in Enid’s face was not triumph or teasing, but calm compassion, a steadiness that disarmed the older woman more than any argument could. Enid’s eyes glistened faintly, a mixture of awe and gentleness.

“You don’t have to hide,” Enid murmured. “Not from me.”

The words sank into the quiet like ink into water.

Wednesday’s throat tightened. For a moment, she could not find her usual reserve. All the strange, disciplined architecture of her mind, her categories of logic, her contempt for sentiment tilted beneath the weight of that simple statement.

“I do not hide,” she said finally, though her voice lacked conviction.

Enid smiled faintly. “Then don’t look away.”

Her hands stayed where they were, warm against Wednesday’s cool skin. She didn’t lean in again, didn’t chase another touch. She only held her there, steady, until the rigidity in Wednesday’s posture softened by slow degrees.

Wednesday’s lashes lowered, her breath evening out. When she finally spoke again, her voice was quiet, honest in a way that cost her something. “I have never shared space this close with anyone,” she admitted. “It feels… intrusive.”

Enid nodded slowly. “I know. And it’s okay. I can keep to my side if you want.”

“No,” Wednesday said at once, then seemed startled by her own speed. She exhaled, slower now. “Stay where you are.”

The command was gentler than usual, almost tentative. Enid’s heart fluttered at it. She gave a small, tired smile and lowered her head to the pillow again, facing her wife. The space between them felt different now: charged, but calmer.

They watched each other in the half-dark. Wednesday’s eyes, unblinking as ever, held something new, a study not of prey or puzzle, but of presence. Enid’s breath smoothed into rhythm, her earlier nervousness mellowed by the warmth of connection.

And when sleep finally began to claim them, they stayed as they were: close, but not touching, bound not by force or possession, but by a quiet promise neither quite knew how to name.

Chapter Text

Morning crept into the mansion like a ghost reluctant to intrude. The rain had stopped sometime before dawn, leaving the world washed clean and still. The faintest line of gray light filtered through the tall windows, illuminating dust motes that moved lazily through the chilled air.

Wednesday awoke as she always did, precisely at 10:31. But for the first time in years, she didn’t open her eyes immediately. She felt warmth beside her. Not the oppressive heat of sunlight, but the quiet, steady emanation of another human presence.

Enid was still asleep. Wednesday turned her head minutely. The girl which is her wife now as her mind insisted on reminding her, was curled up on her side, her golden hair disheveled from sleep, one hand tucked under her cheek. Her breathing was soft and unguarded. The sight should have irritated Wednesday; instead, it fascinated her.

There was a new and unsettling comfort in seeing someone so near and even more in realizing she didn’t wish them gone.

Something had indeed changed between them.

The memory of last night flickered through Wednesday’s mind, the moment of nearness, the contact, the immediate retreat. She remembered the warmth of Enid’s hand against her face, the way she’d said, You don’t have to hide. The words reverberated still, like the final note of a requiem echoing in an empty hall.

It had been disarming. And Wednesday detested being disarmed. She sat up soundlessly, drawing the covers aside, her dark braids falling down her shoulders. Her nightgown, black as ink and edged with silver thread, caught the morning’s faint light in a dull shimmer. She dressed quickly in her usual black attire, an austere dress with a high collar and long sleeves, fastened with silver buttons. The familiar ritual steadied her.

When she glanced back, Enid was stirring.

A soft groan escaped her as she blinked awake, disoriented for a moment by the expanse of the bed and the gothic ceiling above her. Then her eyes found Wednesday and her expression softened into something that resembled awe.

“Morning,” she said, voice still thick with sleep.

Wednesday inclined her head slightly. “You survived another night. Congratulations.”

Enid let out a sleepy laugh, rubbing her eyes. “You make it sound like that’s an accomplishment.”

“In this house,” Wednesday replied, “it often is.”

The exchange was small, but it lingered in the room like a spark.

They descended to breakfast together. The great hall of the mansion was dim and echoing, the chandeliers still lit despite the morning.

The smell of coffee, strong and bitter hung in the air. Enid had made it herself, as she had begun to every morning now, learning which blend Wednesday tolerated and which she preferred.

Wednesday took her seat at the long table, her movements graceful, almost ritualistic. Enid watched her for a moment before placing a plate before her, perfectly toasted bread, butter in the shape of a skull and blackberries arranged into a neat pattern.

“You’re becoming alarmingly domestic,” Wednesday remarked.

“Someone has to keep the house from turning into a crypt,” Enid replied, smiling as she poured herself coffee. “Besides, I like taking care of things.”

Wednesday’s gaze lingered on her a moment longer than usual. “You appear to take care of everyone except yourself.”

The words were more observation than criticism, but they made Enid pause. There was something unexpectedly tender buried in them, a flicker of concern that Wednesday herself didn’t fully understand.

“Maybe I just need someone to remind me sometimes,” Enid said softly.

Wednesday looked away then, hiding the faintest quirk at the corner of her lips. “Duly noted.”

The morning passed in quiet routines. Wednesday disappeared into her study for some hours, supposedly to write but in truth to think. Her mind was restless, circling the edges of something she could not quite name. It wasn’t merely affection, it was something deeper and darker, threaded with the same inevitability that drew ravens to stormlight.

When Enid appeared at her door around noon, Wednesday looked up from her desk, one brow arched.

“Do you have a moment?” Enid asked, holding something behind her back.

“Assuming it’s not another attempt to redecorate the house with sunlight and optimism.” Wednesday said flatly, pretending to be her usual detached self.

Enid grinned. “Promise it’s nothing so scandalous.” She stepped forward and placed the object on the desk, a small list written in neat handwriting. “Just a few things that might make living here a little easier. For both of us.”

Wednesday took the list, her eyes scanning it. Among the items were mundane requests: an additional mirror in the guest bathroom, an electric kettle, a new broom for the hallway… and at the very bottom, almost apologetically written, Wi-Fi router and signal extender.

Wednesday’s expression remained unreadable.

Enid braced herself. “I know what you’re going to say. That technology is a soulless plague on human interaction or something like that. But I, well, my phone’s basically a paperweight here, and I’d like to keep in touch with my family and my friends... I’ll even make sure everything stays hidden so it doesn’t mess with the whole gothic vibe, I promise.”

The silence stretched.

Finally, Wednesday folded the list neatly and placed it on the desk. “Fine.”

Enid blinked. “Fine?”

“Yes. I will permit your... technological intrusion. On one condition.”

“What’s that?” Enid said as she clapped excitedly.

“That it be done discreetly. No blinking lights, no devices that hum, and no cheerful alerts. The house’s aesthetic integrity must remain uncompromised.” Wednesday said, her tone suggesting that she really won't step back on this.

Enid laughed, the sound bright and surprised. “Deal.”

Wednesday looked faintly disturbed by how easily she had agreed, as though some hidden impulse had betrayed her usual severity.

As Enid turned to leave, she hesitated. “Thank you, Wednesday. Really. You didn’t have to say yes.”

Wednesday’s gaze softened almost imperceptibly. “I am aware.”

Enid smiled again and slipped from the study, leaving the faint scent of lavender and warmth in her wake. Wednesday watched the door long after it closed, her mind a tangle of contradiction.

She had told herself that her indulgence was purely practical, accommodating her wife to prevent discord. But even she didn’t fully believe that. The truth was more troubling: she wanted to see Enid content. She wanted the girl’s laughter in her halls, the golden spark of her presence to fill the empty corners that had long gone untouched.

And that, for Wednesday Addams, was the most dangerous confession of all.

Later that day, as the sky dimmed again to the color of slate, they sat together in the library before the great fireplace. Enid was reading a modern novel she brought with her from home; Wednesday with her notebook balanced on her knees pretended to annotate but found her attention drifting. The quiet between them was no longer strained, it was companionable and alive.

At one point, Enid glanced up and caught Wednesday watching her. Their eyes met and held and something unspoken passed between them.

It wasn’t passion, yet. It was the recognition of something taking root. A shared understanding that whatever had begun between them, hesitant and strange, it wasn't a fleeting anomaly. It was the start of something permanent, unsettling and precious.

Enid smiled first, soft and knowing. “You’re staring again.”

Wednesday didn’t look away. “Perhaps.”

“Why?”

Wednesday closed her notebook. “Because, Mrs. Addams, you are unexpectedly... tolerable.”

Enid laughed, shaking her head. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“You should.” Wednesday deadpan.

The fire cracked softly. Outside, the storm returned, whispering against the windows. Inside, the world seemed smaller, drawn into the glow of the hearth, the faint rustle of turning pages, and the quiet certainty that love, in its strangest form, had begun to bloom beneath the gothic roof of the Addams estate.

And though Wednesday would never say it aloud, she knew: the girl with the sunlight in her hair had already become her favorite kind of haunting.

The next morning began with rain. It wasn’t the dramatic, thunder-filled kind that Wednesday favored, but a soft, steady drizzle that veiled the hill in mist. The gray clouds pressed low over the Addams estate, the world reduced to shades of silver and shadow.

Wednesday stood at one of the upper windows of her mansion, her pale hands clasped behind her back. The landscape below blurred in the damp haze. She felt the quiet of contented disarray, her household had changed, subtly but undeniably.

She had allowed electricity to hum behind the walls again.

When she’d written to her mother the previous evening, asking her to send for a technician, she’d worded it as efficiently as possible. 

> Mother, please arrange for the installation of a modern wireless network at the hill mansion. My wife has requested it for communicative convenience. I will tolerate no decorative vulgarity in the process. No blue lights, no cheerful tones. Silent efficiency only.

Morticia had replied the this morning, her letter sent back with Thing.

> How thrilling, my dear death blossom! Love is nothing if not compromise. I shall send someone discreet, an expert familiar with our aesthetic sensibilities. Kiss Enid for me, metaphorically, unless you’re ready for the literal sort.

—Mother.

Wednesday had folded the letter without expression, though her ears had burned faintly at the closing remark.

Now, as she watched from her window, a black van made its slow, careful way up the hill. The vehicle bore no company name; Morticia would never allow something so gauche.

From the passenger side stepped a pale man in a long coat, his eyes hidden behind round glasses that glinted in the dim light. He carried a toolkit that looked like something out of a mad scientist’s laboratory rather than an electronics repairman’s.

Enid was already at the door to greet him, bright as dawn against the gloom. Wednesday could see her through the rippled glass talking and smiling as she guided the man inside. She’d even tied her hair back with a black ribbon, a gesture of concession to the house’s palette that made Wednesday’s chest ache in a way she didn’t care to name.

The next few hours were, to Wednesday’s mind, chaos incarnate.

Cables ran discreetly behind heavy furniture; the technician vanished at intervals into the basement, muttering incantations of technology. The sound of faint drilling echoed through the old walls. It was an invasion, a disruption of the still, tomb-like sanctity that Wednesday had always maintained.

And yet, she allowed it.

From the corner of her study, she watched Enid oversee the process with infectious energy, her excitement softening the edges of the intrusion. Each time the technician reported progress, Enid beamed like a child on her birthday.

Finally, the man straightened, dusted his gloves and nodded. “It is done. The house is now fully connected. Signal strength: excellent.”

Enid nearly squealed. “Really? Oh my God, thank you!”

Wednesday winced faintly at the God part, but said nothing. She followed as Enid tested the connection on her phone, watching the device light up with little bars that indicated the house’s invisible network.

“It works!” Enid announced, almost giddy. She turned toward Wednesday, her phone in one hand and a grin that could rival sunlight on her face.

Wednesday blinked at her, maintaining her usual composure. “Congratulations. You have successfully tethered our home to the endless abyss of digital chatter.”

“You mean the internet?” Enid teased. “You make it sound like I just summoned demons.”

“Have you not?” Wednesday arched a brow again.

Enid laughed, a sound so alive it filled the dusty corners of the mansion. “Maybe a few friendly ones.”

The technician departed silently, his task complete. When the door closed behind him, the house seemed to exhale, adjusting to its new pulse. The air was subtly warmer, the silence now humming faintly with unseen energy.

Wednesday turned toward Enid, ready to deliver a remark about preserving the mansion’s dignity. But before she could, Enid crossed the space between them with quick, impulsive steps. “Wednesday, thank you.”

“For what?” Wednesday asked, almost confused.

“For letting me do this. For trusting me.” Enid said was lower now, only meant for Wednesday's ears.

Wednesday opened her mouth to respond, to say that it was merely practical, that she was not and would never be sentimental, but she didn’t get the chance.

Enid leaned in and kissed her cheek. It was not a long kiss, nor even a particularly daring one. It was so sudden, so utterly sincere that Wednesday froze. Her eyes widened a fraction. She could feel the ghost of warmth where Enid’s lips had brushed her skin.

Wednesday felt the blood rush to her face. It started as a faint heat creeping up her neck, then bloomed fully across her pale cheeks. She looked away immediately, the gesture sharp and awkward, as if trying to conceal a fatal wound.

Enid drew back, instantly contrite. “Oh, sorry! I didn’t mean to... I was just—”

“Do not apologize,” Wednesday interrupted, voice lower than usual. “Just refrain from doing that in front of others.”

Enid blinked. “So... it’s okay in private?”

Wednesday’s lips twitched, betraying a smirk she tried to suppress. “I didn’t say that.”

“But you didn’t not say it either.” The glint of mischief in Enid’s eyes was both infuriating and oddly endearing. Wednesday exhaled slowly, regaining her composure. “You are alarmingly bold for someone with such poor survival instincts.”

“Guess you bring out the brave in me,” Enid said softly.

The words hit like a pulse. Wednesday’s heart, usually a quiet and controlled metronome gave a single, unexpected lurch.

She turned away, walking toward the window. “You attribute too much influence to me.”

“Maybe,” Enid said, following her gaze to the rain-streaked glass. “But isn’t that what love is, kind of? Being influenced by someone? Changing, even a little?”

The silence that followed was heavy, but not cold.

Wednesday’s reflection in the glass was faint, her dark figure beside Enid’s bright one, a study in contrast. She considered her mother’s words from the letter. Love is nothing if not compromise. She had dismissed them at first, but now now they lingered with uncomfortable truth.

“Do not presume I am capable of such... feelings,” Wednesday said finally, though her tone lacked conviction.

Enid smiled faintly. “Too late.”

Wednesday glanced at her. “You are infuriatingly perceptive.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Enid said, echoing their earlier exchange.

Wednesday allowed herself the faintest sigh, the kind that might have been mistaken for contentment if anyone else heard it. “Very well. You may keep your wireless demons. But if they ever disrupt my writing, I will personally dismantle every cable in this house.”

Enid saluted playfully. “Understood, Mrs. Addams.”

Something flickered in Wednesday’s gaze at that, an almost imperceptible softening at the edges of her stern expression. She did not correct the title.

The rest of the day unfolded with quiet domestic rhythm. Enid spent hours on the couch, reconnecting with the outside world, answering messages, smiling at photos. Wednesday pretended to be absorbed in her work but found herself glancing up more often than necessary, her eyes following the lines of light that played over Enid’s hair.

And when the evening came and the mansion settled into its familiar shadows once more, Wednesday found herself standing at the threshold of the living room, watching Enid from afar.

Her mother had been right: love was compromise, but for Wednesday it was also war. A quiet, consuming battle fought between control and surrender.

And, against all odds, she found herself losing beautifully.