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The sound of Tyler’s bones rearranging themselves could have been beautiful.
It could have been glorious, even, had it not led to his grip becoming deadly, and his arm lifting Wednesday’s body like a rag doll. He raised her above his head, mouth made for ripping more than for words now, and watched her bleed.
Wednesday could feel the weight, slick, of blood moving down the side of her head. It stuck to her hair, her cheek, her throat, all the way to the collar of her shirt. Her clothes were no longer white. Her vision blurred before Tyler even moved to throw her. Lack of oxygen, she deduced somewhere in the part of her brain that could still connect thoughts.
He held her throat in one palm, fingers notched around it like dead branches. Cold. Rough skinned. His skin smelled like blood, too.
Wednesday caught a flash of him in the Hyde’s eyes. Something human, surfacing. Not regret, not hesitation, but a third more secretive thing shivering with awareness.
Curiosity.
She thought, maybe, that he was facing the reality of hurting someone he knew, someone he’d kissed, someone he’d at least pretended to like, and weighing it against a conscience that had been torn to shreds.
Then, he threw her against the tree.
Bark splintered across her body, catching in the seams of her clothes, in her hair, through her skin. Bleeding her more. Again. Hollow.
She’d died once already, the sensation of growing empty no stranger now. It didn’t make it any more welcome.
As much as death never scared her, she’d already gone through the process of coming to terms with not wanting to die. It wasn’t the dying that concerned her so much as all the things she hadn’t gotten done.
She hadn’t finished her novel, which meant it would not be published before her eighteenth birthday. Arguably, the unfinished manuscript might become infamous posthumously, as many works did… but she wanted to bask in the satisfaction of having surpassed Mary Shelley, and basking was not something the dead could do. She also hadn’t prevented the series of visions that had led them here. Rowan’s mother had been right — she would be the end of Nevermore. Crackstone would burn it to the ground, and Tyler would do the rest.
The list could likely have gone on much longer, but the thought that came next stopped all the others in their tracks.
In her arguably short life, Wednesday Addams had never, voluntarily, claimed to have friends.
Others had loved to claim her, for the simple shock value of the idea, but they had all been wrong. She would never debase herself so low as to claim attachment to fickle things such as friends. There had been no need. There had always been family, and she had lacked for nothing.
But now, with Tyler’s fist closing around her trachea, cartilage snapping underneath, Wednesday thought of her friends. When they’d gained the title, she could not be sure — but it was clear that they had.
Eugene’s body lying limp on a hospital bed, because he’d wanted to prove useful to her, earn her praise, had made her nauseous. To see him brittle, battered, ripped from her too much… nearly shattered the careful architecture of her.
While she wasn’t sure any of them were truly friends, the Nightshades had proved willing to trust her judgment… up to a point not many others would. A small, minimal part of her was grateful, though it was an admission she would take to the grave. Gratefulness was an emotion she only allowed in private, where no one could see, but it was no more pleasant for it. It still felt like a wound, leaking.
She struggled. Without air her lungs burned, and as they burned her thoughts fractured. She kicked, and scraped at Tyler’s thick skin until her nails bled, but it only made her chest constrict faster.
Tears welled in her eyes not from sadness, but from effort, and Enid’s crying face appeared, unbidden, in her mind. Red-eyed and pinched like she’d been made of clay and someone had pressed too hard between her brows. Fragile, open, and bleeding emotion in ways Wednesday had never witnessed. It was an unfamiliar display, and as such, she had not reacted in a way that was appropriate.
That night, Enid had left her. That night, she’d tried to find comfort in the silence, in the ache of loneliness, like she’d always done, and found it had grown teeth. She could still feel them, sinking in, leaving tender muscle under her skin. Enid had been a constant noise that had become a need. Part of the silence. Like a buzzing, the steady hum of TV static. Something that enhanced the quiet, rather than break it.
Silence was incomplete now, without Enid’s humming.
That was as far as she’d gotten.
In a corner of the darkness soaking into her vision, color burst. Not quite bright, but close enough to make a dent in the shadows.
On instinct, as if this exact thing had happened to her many times, Wednesday stayed very still. Power pressed into her space from the force of the impact, two predators colliding in one bone breaking blow, and what was left behind was not the mangled body of the Hyde but the sharp, furred shape of a wolf standing on its hind legs.
Eyes that shone.
Fragile, open, and bleeding emotion in a way Wednesday had now witnessed, just the once. A bare vulnerability that was not an offering, just impossible to hold back. Allowed to be, because there was nothing wrong with it.
That same vulnerability that hung, clinging to skin and breath, to Enid’s presence.
So it was not shock that slipped her name between Wednesday’s lips. It was recognition.
Relief.
Once more, Wednesday’s lungs filled. Held. When they released that breath, it was uneven. In the wolf’s eyes — Enid’s eyes — that same recognition, wet and wide with life.
Because she wasn’t sure, fully, entirely, that she’d said it loud enough, Wednesday said it again like a question. “Enid…?”
And the wolf — Enid — lowered itself, leveled itself. Looked Wednesday in the eyes from a fair distance to never threaten her, even though there was no distance from which Wednesday would feel threatened by this wolf. A sense of pride, unearned, bloomed at the flash of what was still so clearly human, entirely Enid, under the wolf’s surface. Different, more solid, than whatever pieces had tried to exist under the Hyde’s.
Enid was not consumed by this transformation, she had grown into it, fostered it until it was ready. She was still at the center of it. She was still kind, still full of life, still herself. She looked at Wednesday like she might say something, couldn’t, and instead was trying very hard to communicate it through intent.
Later, when Enid had gone back to human and was shivering from the cold, Wednesday held her against her chest and breathed in the scent of wildness still coating her skin.
***
She’d been buried alive, before. For play.
Pugsley had been six and developing a fascination for the burial process late in his years, for an Addams. He’d stared at an open grave longingly in the family cemetery until Gomez had suggested he try it for himself. Nothing quite like the embrace of the ground, he’d said.
Wednesday had insisted on being buried, too.
The embrace of the ground, as her father had claimed, was the kind of hug she’d always assumed was the only kind she tolerated. An enveloping, even pressure to every angle of her body. Humid, cold and warm at the same time, dirt took nothing and gave nothing back. It had no expectations. It was quiet. Neither kind nor violent. It had been soothing.
This grave had nothing of her first.
Dirt itched at her skin, greedy with Isaac’s demands. Branches with too many fingers dug into her joints, her spine, her mouth, and sat at an angle just between her ribs that kept her from breathing.
Never had the dirt from the Addams graveyard tried to suffocate her.
Roots from the Skull Tree encircled her wrists, vice-like, turned into shackles by a revenge-driven shell of a man. It must run in the family; Tyler’s grip had been just as angry.
Wednesday once more found herself having to make peace with mortality, lungs compressed under a weight she didn’t want; hadn’t asked for. A weight that was not entirely physical. Regret and guilt, though unnamed — denied, really — fueled more of the sensation than she was willing to admit.
It was her fault, this situation. She walked herself here, dragged Thing alongside her, and miscalculated every step along the way. She did not, could not, save Enid from her fate without endangering her own family, her own brother who depended on her out of sheer lack of survival instinct. There was something to be said about generational conflict breeding generational retribution Wednesday was growing bitter about. Isaac’s problem was with her parents, but she’d made it her own out of a need to prove… what, she wasn’t sure anymore, but something, for certain. Now, she was paying the price in oxygen and pressure.
Dirt carried Agnes’ voice, the desperation in it, as her little hands made no progress against the ground. She said Wednesday, the way others might say please.
Then she was gone.
At first, as the world was closing in, Wednesday assumed she’d given up, had chosen not to be present for a death she could not stomach. It became clear, some time later — seconds, or minutes, or days… time had started slipping into itself — that she had been wrong; hasty to make a judgment.
Agnes returned, and she was not alone.
Now, the dirt carried Agnes’ desperation, and the razor edged panic of Enid’s voice.
Enid’s voice…
She was supposed to be in the cages, waiting out the full moon. There was no reason for her presence. Agnes had gone to fetch her.
Light breached through to her, a pinprick barely wide enough to count.
Air came next, but it didn’t hurry. Her lungs were still compressed into uselessness.
“Wednesday!” Agnes’ voice again. Shrill.
Where had Enid gone?
When the rest of the weight atop her lifted, it took a beat for her chest to fill, and it did so at a glacial pace. Clouds had time to cover the moon and reveal it again, a perfect circle almost flat from its brightness against the night, before she could sit up.
The first thing she noticed, then, was silence.
Agnes was holding her breath.
Enid was…
“Enid.” When had her voice learned to be so delicate? No matter.
A flicker of awareness passed across the wolf’s features, pained, like it was embarrassed to simply exist. Wednesday couldn’t take her eyes away.
She repeated the facts she knew.
The moon was full. Enid was supposed to wait it out in the cages. She was supposed to be safe. Not here. She had no reason to be here. Why was she here?
“She…” Agnes started, but her words faded into the background as Wednesday continued to only look at Enid, at the wolf, in awe that quickly turned to horror.
Agnes might have said didn’t have a choice, or did it for you, or the devastating truth of she did it for you and this is all your fault that pressed into her bones like it had always been there. Leaking into her bloodstream. A heartbeat made of guilt, and guilt alone.
Enid’s eyes filled with fear. Wednesday knew the shape of fear in Enid’s eyes like she knew her own reflection. She knew the shape of many things in Enid better than she knew them in herself. When Enid turned and ran, Wednesday’s heart lurched after her.
She snapped to Agnes. “Go after her.”
For her, it was the equivalent of a scream. Agnes understood immediately that this wasn’t something she had time to consider, or argue, and scrambled after the looming form of the wolf as fast as she could.
And Wednesday…
Wednesday made a promise to herself, right then.
***
Seven months, two weeks, four days, and eleven hours.
Give or take.
Wednesday had stopped counting a couple hours early, when the only part of her brain left was the one who couldn’t tell time. The part that hid, at the very bottom of her, empty of notions such as control, or calculation, or even limits. That part, raw and sharp and still new, alive only when Enid was near, rushed to the surface. A tidal wave of emotions she had no practice dealing with, overtook her completely. Conquest without warning. Defeat without the slightest amount of resistance, because she had none left.
The beast stood tall on its back legs, towering over her, all violence and death. Made to kill. Made to destroy. A beast without a shred of awareness other than its own hunger. Wide shouldered, sharp jawed and sharper teethed, the wolf curled above Wednesday’s small, vulnerable form as it met the ground. She’d stopped running too fast. Exhaustion had turned her limbs to lead. One bite, one swipe of either of those gigantic paws — sharp claws, stained red, ready — and it would be over. There was a part of her almost eager to be punctured, because it would be as close to tender as Enid could be in this moment, and this raw, sharp, still new part of Wednesday’s brain craved Enid’s tenderness the way some vegetation grew towards the sun.
Once more, recognition coiled in Wednesday’s lungs, hot and heavy with its own hunger to be acknowledged.
When she let go, and her breath shaped itself around Enid’s name, she didn’t recognize her voice.
But something in the wolf shivered, cracking the opaque layer of animal consciousness and replacing it with something familiar. With something soft.
It was then, unhurried, in the decaying cloud of Wednesday’s breath, that Enid reconstructed herself piece by piece. Whatever memory had escaped with the name took root and skittered across every leathered muscle of the wolf’s form until they shrunk, like leaking, steaming against crisp air.
First, always, Wednesday saw the wolf’s eyes go from feral to terrified. Without second guessing — without even thinking, for once — she pressed a trembling hand to the shape of the wolf’s cheekbone and could feel under her palm as it searched for another shape. A shape it once had been, one it had forgotten because it was taken away.
Second…
Second, Wednesday had to breathe through her own terror, her own memory of a moment almost like this that had in the end nothing to do with now.
The sound of Enid’s bones rearranging themselves was a beautiful thing. A glorious thing.
Through pain, a voice that was not a voice slowly morphing back into human sound, Enid reclaimed her own body limb by limb. Each new break was proof she remembered who she was, proof she could be herself once more.
Wednesday’s hand never left her face, thumb soothing over tears. Too tender, too sweet, not remotely enough of either.
Slowly, Enid’s body slumped against hers. Tired, sore, but above all — most important and most precious of all — deliberate. Seeking warmth. Seeking anchor from something solid; something missed. Her hands clung to the back of Wednesday’s coat, claws cutting through the fabric, as her legs gathered underneath her body. She made herself small, and only kept shrinking as she sobbed to the point of heaving into Wednesday’s neck. Wednesday only held her tighter.
When, between hiccups, Enid whispered, You came, cracked and wet and breathless, Wednesday didn’t try to be strong. She buried her face in the warmth of Enid’s skin, and breathed in as the last of the distance melted away.
“Your absence became an obstacle I could not ignore,” Wednesday said, taking her coat off to put it over Enid’s shoulders. It earned her a squint — she couldn’t see it, with Enid’s face against her throat, but she knew it was there. Felt it on her skin. “And I made a promise.”
Another, more fragile admission weaseled out from her chest. She swallowed it back once, twice, bit her tongue on the third time, before allowing it to exist if only to see the shape it would take.
“Enid.”
“Hm.”
“Thank you for coming back.”
Her hand drifted, with a confidence born of mental habits more than reality, to hold the back of Enid’s head and keep her from peeling from their embrace. Surprise snapped through her whole body, but she allowed Wednesday to keep her there.
There was no need to take the statement apart just yet. They had plenty of time to dissect it elsewhere, in clean clothes, with clean hair, between four walls and without the looming uncertainty of what else could be out at night in back alleys. Right now, they were both content just feeling the shape of it in the space between them, beating with life, finally real. Finally its own thing, rather than hiding underneath the shape of Enid’s name. A new thing, made from residual feeling that had never dissolved and never had to heal. So close to the underlying truth neither had the strength to put into the exact words just yet.
But they would.
They already knew as much.