Chapter Text
Her rest that morning was interrupted at the sound of the screen door creaking open.
Not that she’d been sleeping.
No, brooding into the cold bark of the shack as buzzing rang in her ears all night, along with past words blazing their path to her cranium. Circulating and twisting itself deep in her ears, past the drum and implanting itself in her hippocampus.
So, no…she supposed there wasn’t much to be interrupted after all.
Still, her hive-mate is slow to enter, making a noise of shrill surprise when he enters that morning. He drops a bucket that was in his hands, clanking metal not enough to make her move.
“Wednesday, is—“ Eugene is cautious as he approaches her, albeit befuddled in expression. “Is—is that you? Are you good?”
Wednesday offers but a meager grunt of life. Eugene hums, though he obviously doesn’t understand. She didn’t really need him to, just…there wasn’t much choice. Rather, choice to be made that wouldn’t ruin everything even more.
“I have been ousted from my quarters, so I’ve taken temporary residence here.” Wednesday offers after more silence. Lets Eugene flit around the small shack, turning on the lights and checking for anything out of place.
It makes him take pause again, to fix his glasses from where he’d been leaned over.
“So…you’re squatting in the hive, because of …because of what happened?” He asks slowly, likely fearing some kind of reaction. She doesn’t have gall or energy to be angry—not at him.
But Wednesday does glares sharply, deathly at the boy. Her self hate turned up twelve notches. To bring up what she’s spent the last 12 hours or so attempting to convince herself she doesn’t care about; unknowingly or not.
“Its of my own vocation.” Wednesday speaks clipped and leaving no room for question. “I couldn’t stand the sight of it much longer. It began to sicken me.”
To look at the empty side of the room. Smell pumpkin spice and perfume begin to fade with lacking proximity to the source. The absolute silence she had to write in…it was sickening.
Which, technically she enjoyed her quiet, but certain people had gotten her used to back ground noise. How is she expected to work under changing conditions? Its simple, its…its—
“Do you at least wanna borrow a blanket, or…oh! My moms packed me a sleeping bag that I keep in here—just in case.” Eugene began to rattle off the preparedness his guardians embedded in him.
It was nice to drown out the more unpleasant thoughts. The ache creeping up her shoulder, rather than clenching her chest. Like they were sharing pain inhibitors.
Chasing Tyler had been messy work.
/
Sometime Earlier, Back at the Fair
Wednesday huffs before she charges forward. She’s brisk in pace, briefly looking to the carousel and thinking of Enid.
So much for the plan…as if it was ever real to begin with.
She can’t even blame Thing for the mess she’s beginning to make of things. A conglomeration of the web of lies she’d been spinning. Fine silk that she hadn’t realized she’d woven until she witnessed how easily it ripped.
She waits until she’s broken through trees next, to start calling for him.
“Tyler!” She demands to nothing. A hoot of an owl amongst her own frustration. With a roll of her eyes she steps further. “I’m well aware you drove tonight!”
No answer, not even crickets.
“Well, this is incredibly inconvenient.” She mutters to herself, making use of her time to search with her other senses. Theres no way he could’ve tread far.
Nor would it be in his best interest to head back into town on foot.
She felt her nostrils still clogged with greasy fried fair food. The muggy scent of fall evening was a poor pallet cleanser. Mainly it had begun to chill into what would become morning perspiration.
She doesn’t hear anything out of place. Aside from a stray rabbit, or squirrel that she could account for in size alone. She’s about to cut her losses and make up a lie to tell Enid, when she gleams something of interest.
A nasty looking mark in a tree. It was bent awkwardly, looking otherwise inconspicuous in the dark. Stray leaves and fallen branches lay idle as she approached. She inhales deeply for any indication of foul play.
Especially from the side of the trunk…as if something had knocked into it, tornado striking in one place. Its strange (to her morbid delight) and concerning (for fact that she’s lost her very human manager.)
“Just what made you, mm?” Wednesday ponders, hand going to touch the point of action. Where the trunk was nearly split.
Then its like a second sense.
Not quite a vision, but…a feeling.
Of falling.
/
Present, Back at the Hive
“You should have someone check that again.” Eugene mentions softly. Nods his head in direction of where she’s subtly favoring one side of her body.
He’s joined her, sitting criss cross in the floor beside her. He looks sympathetic, but Wednesday’s not one to say thanks, or even appreciate it. Had no need, especially when she wants to suffer.
Revels in the burn of her limbs in comparison to having to think…or remember.
Oh, Lucifer the absolute carnage.
“It was just a mild contusion…nothing to bother the morgue with.” She shrugs one shoulder, though that probably proved his point.
Her right side still felt so stiff.
Begrudgingly, she had allowed her shoulder to be bandaged, but she didn’t feel like following orders. Having people dote over such rudimentary injury was childish. No matter how well meaning.
And she certainly couldn’t stand the prying. She just wanted to let it hurt. She felt like a failure.
“Are you serious? Wednesday you literally had a whole freaking tree fall on you, like…” His voice raises shrill, just to quiet once he mentions the incident.
Though it’s far from any secret at this point. Not with the stares following the abrupt closing of the fair, along with the plethora of consequences.
Principal Weems had been livid. She had simply wanted to go back to her typewriter—write down her findings and figure this out herself.
Wednesday just lets the buzzing from the hives outside crowd her senses. Lets Eugene stare at her, lets the silence become absolutely unbearable.
“Perhaps it was karmic.” Wednesday murmurs, head turning to actually face him proper. It hurts a bit, grown used to being in place against harsh surface.
On top of her lack of tending to any of her bruised and sore muscles. She preferred it.
“Something was out there…wasn’t it?” Eugene asks next, leaning forward a bit. He seems more fascinated than afraid, however.
And while she’s devoid of much, it does give her intrigue enough to rise. Its slow and with harbored grunts of pain, but she’s able to sit up and lean her back against the wall. Its nothing to soothe the ache in her shoulder and back, but it serves to support her.
Eugene looks like he wants to help, but he knows better. Or, maybe Wednesday was scarier to him than anything else.
“You believe so?” She asks as a litmus test. See if he’s a pace away from calling her batty or asking for entirely too much.
“Only something really heinous could take you down, Wednesday.”
He sounds so sure of her.
/
After the Woods…in Nevermore’s Infirmary
She’s up with a gasp.
Heaving breaths, gulping down oxygen as if she’s only just freed herself from under the massive trunk. Nearly crushed by solid wood.
She watched it happen out of body—she had seen something. She racks her brain through her classmates…could it have been a fur?
But there was no full moon.
It thrashed its massive body, toppling the tree into her like nothing. And then—
Her chest hurts the worst and first. Like those meat hooks had gouged themselves down the wrong pipe. Much different than the sickly sweet feelings she’d been used to swallowing.
She’s hot, immediately engulfed in flames—
“Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, Wedn—omg, omg, holy—“ Frantic chants of her name mixed with much dreaded slang.
Theres no mistaking it.
The only touch that doesn’t send electric current like ick up her back. The arms that know exactly how much pressure she needs, body that holds temperature in spite of her shaking to her bones. She thinks she must have died out there, engulfed with that fresh cut grass scent like purgatorial calm.
The voice that lulls her quiet, as she desperately chokes out the name she thought she’d never get to utter again.
“Enid…” She murmurs, feeling soft hair against her mouth. Her arms tended to cross naturally, but they were so stiff.
And her right was undoubtedly in a sling of all things…
“Shh, don’t speak too much,” Enid murmurs in her ear. Her grasp around Wednesday was so careful—like she knew how much it would overwhelm her so soon. Tenderness in her sighs, “You’re hurt…you scared the hell out of me Wednesday.”
Or maybe thats why she was being handled like thinning, cracked glass.
Enid backs away, hands going to simply hold her hand. The one closest to the bed she’d been placed in. Wednesday gets a good look around.
No one else was there, other than Thing curled up in a seat against the wall. Near an empty chair that held Enid’s bag and some stray snack items.
She’s in the infirmary, though her tour of the school and time on campus hadn’t ever led her here. Aside from anecdotes about past injury or fever from Enid if ever they were in the vicinity.
She’s in a clean shirt at least. Even with Enid looking at her like she’s still face first in the mud. Something deeply vexed in those eyes that Wednesday notices are glowing as she keeps flitting them over her weakened body.
To her untouched arm, especially. Its unnerving…a reminder of her miscalculations.
“We found you in the woods unconscious and…God, Wednesday,” Enid holds her hand taut, words battling with sniffles. Sharp talons unsheathing as her eyes seem to replay the memory.
Her own throat is dry as black ice. Her shoulder screams minutely at her, her back stiff and bruised, but she felt otherwise unscathed. She softly takes her own hand to touch, humming at the tenderness in her shoulder blades.
Enid growls as she prods at the wound, to her surprise and wonder.
“I smelled blood—luckily most of it wasn’t yours.”
Most of it?
That has the seer trying to move again, but much too quickly. Even with Enid’s narrowing eyes and stern hands the second she winces.
“Tyler?” Wednesday husks, swallowing with a grunt. Enid quickly grabs a cup to the side, placing a straw in her mouth. Tenderly tipping her head forward, and cooing at her to drink.
“Is fine, but someone…someone else was found dead out there, Wednesday.” Enid says as she swallows, greedily drinking down the water offered. Then, those blue eyes harden to Wednesday’s surprise. “Why the hell were you guys in the woods? W-Why would you run off without telling anyone, like—“
She pauses only at Wednesday’s deeply heaved sigh. Its followed by taut pain throughout her body, that has her preemptively hissing.
“I may have unintentionally provoked some particularly…unwelcome feelings in speaking with Tyler,” Wednesday muttered, feeling the ache in her throat ease with the ice water. Enid leans a bit forward, grasping the cup of water in her hands, drumming her fingers in an act of attempted patience. The seer continues, “He attempted an early escape, so I had to intercept him.”
Enid’s no less strung up about it. An adorable crease to her forehead, that Wednesday wishes she could soothe away. She’s being vague and she knows it.
They both do.
“How did you find me?” She asks Enid a question in place, to fill in her own blanks. Keeps her expression still, even as the wolf looks absolutely broken.
Her eyes water and Wednesday notes how exhausted she looks. How red they are around the edges, like the tears were trailing a path recently paved.
“You left Mr. Pickles on the ground…alone.” She states grimly, not wavering her eye contact. Wednesday’s breath pauses at mention of the toy, or the double meaning in it—either or it just made it difficult.
Made a strange thing seize in her chest, even though she didn’t think she acted unaccordingly. She often hypothesized, albeit quickly, before she stepped forward.
Granted, the vision in tandem with Tyler’s bitter emotion and escape hadn’t given her much time.
“I apologize you had to find me that way. I wanted to right my wrongs and bring Tyler back to the fair,” Wednesday’s not a rambler. She’s not often unsure, but she finds her fingers straining against the bed sheets as she speaks. Has to over compensate, “Thats all it was.”
As always, Enid doesn’t adhere to anything she holds in place. In this way she can’t fight off, nor does she entirely want to (to which she blames her father’s genes.) Her own boundaries begin to crumble at her feet.
When those colored nails dig into her purple, uniform skirt and likely pierce her thighs. Hands trembling and the wolf pleading with everything but her mouth.
“Thats all fine and dandy, but you’re in the freakin nurses office and our classmate is literally dead!” Enid grits through her teeth and shrill anxiety.
The smell of grass sours into something just as familiar—like the poisonous section of her mother’s greenhouse. Like its oozing pollen from Enid’s pores the more she seethes.
It rattles Thing from his sleep, the limb looking simultaneously pleased to see her awake and bemused at Enid’s frantic body. Wednesday gives the hand a look of acknowledgement, before pain shoots back up her spine.
It has her face contorting, though it displeases her to show it. Enid’s back to acting as her personal nurse, adjusting her pillow and murmuring scolds at her. The scent from a moment before folding back into pretty petals like chrysanthemums.
Wednesday doesn’t even have the energy, or blood to be flustered. Though her dreary heart certainly throbs as Enid’s weight is over her.
For some reason other than her injury it feels bittersweet. With so much still unsolved.
“Who…which one of our peers was it?” Another question posed as not only distraction from her pain, but a fill in during her unconscious absence.
With Enid so close…she had been so close—it very easily could’ve gone differently. And Wednesday wouldn’t have been there to stop it.
“Rowan,” Enid mumbled sadly and Wednesday inhales sharply. She recalls the scrawny boy, the one Bianca had bested in seconds.
She bunches her hands up in the blankets. She looks down at her arms, noting the bruising that crept up her skin on the side Enid wouldn’t touch.
“Tyler…where is he?” Wednesday asks next, rather than addressing her injury. Enid gets a strange look—displeased and something like aghast.
“You’re really worried about him right now?” The wolf asks with a lifted brow. Wednesday’s unsure of the underlying animosity in it, staring back indifferently. Enid clicks her teeth, like she’s decided something out of nothing, “He’s fine, I guess. In hella trouble with his dad from what Ajax was telling me.”
Enid mumbles the last part, shrugging her shoulders up and looking off to the side table. She places the water cup down as Wednesday lays back with a deep sigh.
“Of course.” She breathes, memory of the man’s regret still hot in her brain.
The photo she wasn’t quite able to make out. The nerve pinched at mention of something amiss. Another person dead (she no longer had any delusion in thinking those individuals missing).
Thing crawls into her bed as she sits uselessly beneath thin blankets. He taps a few messages about her health and the scene of the crime.
‘Very, very worried I would have to tell your parents to ready your casket early. Oh, what dreadfully exciting news it’d have been to deliver so soon.’
Wednesday offers a hum and nothing else in regards to expression. Thing continues his chatter, to which the seer can’t help but notice the hand is the most talkative in the room currently. Enid had taken to tapping away at her phone, looking no more entertained than if she’d been droning on.
She just squints when the wolf never so much as peeks in her direction for a solid ten minutes.
Thing pointedly taps at her leg atop the blanket.
‘One track minded. Enid was very very worried. We both were. Could have crushed your lungs.’
With Enid looking and behaving this way…she wished it had.
/
Present Day…Somewhere in the Halls of Nevermore
And it had been fine. It should have been fine.
Even now, as she stubbornly hobbles ahead it vexes her. Eugene’s on her tail, looking as worried as ever. Still, he’s eager and takes directions without question. Exactly what she needs.
“I need to figure out what happened in the woods.” She bites the inside of her cheeks when they hit the steps going up to the hall of their room. Her body screams at her the second she lifts up to the first step.
“Same, cause Weems has been talking about a curfew for us now too.” Thankfully Eugene doesn’t question her, or offer assistance.
Still, she could do without those looks he tosses her every time she stumbles. Bringing attention to more of her mistakes in this case. Regretfully, she does have to take pause at top of the steps.
She holds her hand to her side to try to soothe her aching back.
“Firstly, I need to get back into town so I can get to the Weathervane.” She huffs, eyes sharp as knives in Eugene’s direction.
The boy frowns at her, going to hold out his hand as if assuaging her before dropping a bomb.
“Its uh, kinda been closed…indefinitely.” He revealed sheepishly, “I tried to deliver honey and was told Tyler hadn’t been in to open and you’re injured, so they’re looking for more employees.”
Wednesday’s hand comes down hard on top of the stairs railing in her frustration. Eugene doesn’t flinch, but he looks so sorry for her, she can no longer look at head him on.
She just pinched the bridge of her nose. That meant Tyler was really MIA.
And with no method of contact aside from an email address that would likely go unanswered all things considered. However, she does know the source of any and all updates she is privy too.
Unfortunately…
“There’s another way to get what I need, but I fear it will be…treacherous.” Wednesday frowns, making a noise of her own disgust. Eugene doesn’t look to understand, but she’s beyond trying. She sighs as if in deep anguish, “Desperate times call for desperate measures, I suppose.”
/
Back in the Infirmary, Somewhere Inbetween
She had fallen asleep again not long after waking. After sitting in heavy silence with Enid that weighed her down like rocks to a disposed body.
She had given Wednesday some pain medicine that the seer refused up until that tired, sad sigh. The brunette had taken it with a defeated huff that didn’t feel worth it until Enid smiled at her again.
She couldn’t enjoy it for long. Could never enjoy this purgatory of her own honesty or lack there of.
She’s out like a light
~
“You’re a fickle thing.”
Wednesday blinks a few times. She’s not quite sure where she is, truly—it looks to be foggy. Dark, castle grounds near a gate during the dead of night. The moon above full as light could give.
She wonders how it looks…through different eyes. Through softer blues, that knew the luminary more than Wednesday ever could.
“Bound by mortal whims, though I suppose that to be thy name.” Yes, someone was speaking to her.
The voice familiar, in fact the face was too. Aside from the blonde hair, hay shades from root to tip. Her eyes narrow and she tests her ability to speak.
“An ancestor?” She inquires, not out of the realm of possibility. Though, this wasn’t anyone she’s seen before. She knows her bloodline goes back centuries, regardless.
The girl looks to be amused by her conclusion.
“A fellow raven. Omen of discord, predecessor to chaos…” She lists casually, before humming. “My given name was Goody.”
The girl has a twinkle in her eye, one that marked her truth. The mischief of an Addams—there was no smirk quite as unsettling.
“How poetic.” Wednesday replies, noting her hand that clutched her own side in reflex. She didn’t feel much of anything, though.
As if she’d dreamed the accident in the woods and subsequent hospital stay after. That somehow made more sense than wherever she is right now. Her back felt light as a feather. She thinks her soprano could break through bullet proof glass, with the way air slid through her diaphragm.
Goody takes a big gulp of it in, before she chuckles.
“Good humor is needed in times like these I suppose.” She shrugs, her dress moving minutely with her shoulders. Certainly the most frilly Addams she’d seen thus far. To be a spawn and not married in. Pigtails blonde and dawned in pale blue, “It also acts as a cloak that shields my life.”
Goody adds casually, but foreboding enough to have her clenching her arm in phantom pain. Like remembering her injury brought on the feeling that had been repressed.
Wednesday can’t help but hiss—her throat dries more by the second, like a nasty case of bronchitis.
“I must make haste, as the time runs away from me. These remnants of my spirit—they signal great unrest.” Goody speaks solemnly, full of unsaid regrets.
She strides closer to Wednesday, leveling her with twin tar black pupils. Black holes of the vastness of time. Not uncommon to view in apparitions that grew legs to haunt.
A lot of spirits tended to grow more restless with time. Forgetting where they are and where they’ve been. Not even aware of what they’re reckoning for any longer.
If her ancestor—an Addams, was not thriving, not glowing in the cold arms of death, then…
“Where…?” Wednesday croaks out, eyes frantic and fearful.
Goody gets that grin again and for the first time Wednesday thinks she understands how her family must look to an outsider.
Demonic.
“Where would you best assume?” Goody’s cryptic as she’d been all along—
~
The dream is heavy on her mind that morning.
Wednesday had been allowed to leave after 24 grueling hours in the infirmary.
Useless, time wasting hours that did not much other than lose daylight. What lurked out there could be haunting the grounds, while she’s in bed like some hospice patient. And for a minor nuisance in her muscles—absolute nonsense.
She’s already refusing the sling. She felt an urgency inherently crooning, as if mocking her every ache and pain. The white of her cast even—like a symbol of her ancestor with snowy hair.
She keeps it all to herself, even when she awakes with a cold sweat. She’s gasping and closed mouth composing herself—Enid at her bedside once again and so worried. She had been adamant about not leaving the raven alone.
Had argued her case for a lot of the night, before Wednesday had finally fallen asleep under her eery gaze. The lulling smell of florals, blanketing her in petals that sent her off to dream of her.
For some reason, her discharge became a new point of contention. Because—
“You should be resting for longer.” Enid had mentioned, but the way she muttered it was like a slight. Likely irked with the way Wednesday refused her help.
It was all the same and she was meant to be distracting herself from Enid as well. Not enveloping herself in the wolf’s kind arms, even if they were dangerously willing. Bringing her food and drink, or asking if she needs things periodically.
But still…
She can’t help imagining if Enid had been with her. If her attempt to allow the wolf so close in her investigation had ended with both of them hospitalized, or worse.
Its a sickening feeling, the way her heart constricted like someone squeezed it into a choke. At just the thought of Enid on a stretcher…
“Its not going to solve itself.” Wednesday defiantly huffs, taking a moment to breath in and out as her limb throbs.
She’d requested (threatened) Thing to bring her, her journal in lieu of her type writer. She had to write down her progress, the monster, the dream that slowly dwindles in comprehensiveness the longer she goes.
Even if her hand is shaking.
“You won’t either if you work your arm off.” Enid, to whom she’d been defying stood with hands fiddling behind her back. “Ok, I’m being dramatic—whatever, I care about you. You already know I love you Weds.”
It shouldn’t feel the way an insult would. It shouldn’t hurt so much, but it sounds awfully preluding.
Because Wednesday cares so damn much its insulting to even imply otherwise. Its exactly why she keeps her findings trapped to paper.
“You’ve clawed out a place in my chest cavity and spewed the end of your rainbow into the open wound.” Wednesday responds eventually, going to grab said notebook from bedside. She looks at Enid and prays to whatever feels merciful that she’ll understand, “And Thing adores you of course.”
Enid’s smile is barely there, like a whisper of hesitant truth that was first awaiting her cue. Her foot shuffles, eyes going to the toe of her pink sneakers.
“What did you and Tyler fight about?” Wednesday’s eyes widen a tad at the question, but its subtle. Not many would have caught it, but now the wolf is looking back her pointedly.
Its certainly not what she’s expecting to be asked. Wednesday clears her throat, shifting in bed before addressing it.
“You haven’t hounded Ajax for more details I take it, then?” Its a terrible way of avoidance, to play coy after being so ready to plunge herself into something far more harrowing.
And it shows in the way Enid’s already barely there smile disappears entirely. She looks eerily serious, shoulders shrugging up.
“Maybe I wanna hear it from the horses mouth…or whatever.” Her tone is one she’s not heard from the wolf. One of expectation—Enid wasn’t usually one to test her boundaries in such ways.
But she’s always been the only one brave enough to pry.
“And what difference would that make?” Wednesday replies back just as hard headed. Ignores Thing looking indignant at the beginnings of what seemed to be an encroaching disagreement.
“Well, I’d know the truth for one.” Enid’s voice is laced with uncharacteristic sarcasm. “And second…I don’t know, shouldn’t I be able to ask you directly instead of going through other people? We’re supposed to be friends, Wednesday.”
Wednesday winces minutely, because she doesn’t like to beg, but please.
Suplico, mi corazon…
“I’ve shared far more with you than anyone else.” More than she ever would with anyone else.
Enid doesn’t look to hear, or perhaps she doesn’t care. She just grows more weary.
“I respect your privacy, Wednesday, I really do…but, its pulling teeth just to get your coffee order.”
Its said with bass in her voice that Wednesday’s not foreign. No, she’s watched Enid snap on rare occasion, with her white knuckled fists and baby fangs poking through her frown. And its painfully endearing—even now.
The wolf looks disappointed. Wednesday can’t grasp why when all she wants to do is keep her safe. This would be better for both of them in the end.
For everyone.
“You’re well aware I drink a quad shot everyday.” Wednesday deflects, because if asinine fun facts about her life will keep her satisfied then she can give it.
Her coffee order, how she likes her eggs, the preferred type of knife—
“But I barely know you, Wednesday!” Enid recoils a bit at her own volume and even she has sense to pause with baited breath. The blonde trembles, looking down to the linoleum, “A-And like…I mean—I don’t even know what you are other than something not human.”
If only all the questions could be so simple. So mundane, like her favorite blood type.
Her visions were something that still vexed her, full of macabre ends and pitfalls she can barely foresee. She couldn’t live with herself if she couldn’t…
If Enid had been in the woods.
If Enid had been the student found torn to shreds.
She’s already much too close. Wednesday had let her get far too close.
“I’m an Addams.” She states evenly, as fact. Because she is and Enid is not. She hugs her arms close, defiantly holding Enid’s rabid blue eyes, “As above, so below.”
They flicker like fresh mined stone catching sunlight—Enid’s eyes when she’s worked up. Different than watery pearls of tears that added polish and glaze of emotion. This was intense…Wednesday couldn’t look away.
She doesn’t know if she should. Even if she wanted.
“Not what I meant.” Enid mumbles, soft and dampened with emotion that sat overtly in back of her throat. Because Enid never hid her feelings.
She shows it very clearly, when she starts packing up her things. After days being in the infirmary with her, she’s begun to take her own residency.
Her laptop had still been plugged in near the door. A spare blanket folded in a chair. Not for much longer, however.
Wednesday feels a new scrap of metal caught in her windpipe. Not just meat hook like feelings stabbing into her clavicle and climbing up. This kept her from even speaking—added weight that had her planted back in bed while Enid kept removing things.
“I’m…gonna go.” Enid mentions, after filling her backpack to the brim. Her eyes are down cast and she doesn’t know if thats for the best. “Yoko’s been looking for me.”
/
Present Day…Wednesday’s (and Enid’s) Dorm
When she enters her room with Eugene, they’re met with an unnecessarily worried Thing. She had seperated from him at some point yesterday, after the quiet became too much. When she could no longer write.
Other than that the room was empty.
Aside from belongings. Material items that don’t do much to ease the imaginary void.
The silence.
“Where’s Enid?”
An innocent question. A logical question, in fact. Nothing of which that should garner any particular reaction from her.
She shoots a blank, but telling look to Thing. The hand had looked poised to speak on matters she had yet to sort out. A sore spot, still blotchy, purple and bruised.
Makes her shoulder ache anew.
She pulls the seat of her desk out with a sickening creek. Drags wood against the floor at frequency that makes Eugene cringe. She plops herself into the seat with not much other than a shrug of her shoulders.
“Likely busying herself with one of her many club engagements.” She’s not going to pout and cry to Eugene about it.
The untimely departure.
She’s a weakling—she can’t even bare to think about it. To remember why Enid’s bed is made and her pillows are cold. Her plushies left alone. Speaker absent of blaring pop songs.
Being alone was easy. She often preferred in—was hell bent on finding this monster and whatever is tethering her ancestor with as little hands as possible. She’s further reminded, when the suns long gone down.
No one enters or exits and thankfully Eugene doesn’t comment why. Its nearing midnight and there’s been quiet on the other side of her room. Even Thing, though he wearily sits on Enid’s bed to flip through a magazine he had borrowed.
”Its getting really late, Wednesday can we call it night?” Eugene whines, but it isn’t the first time. Earlier she had let him out for dinner, but forced him to eat it in her room.
She’s hellbent on solving the murders anew, but a smaller part of her—devoid of ego and vice griped by needy things like emotion—didn’t want him to leave.
Because when he does she has to acknowledge the mess on the floor. Clean up the newspaper clippings, move her white board from the middle of the room and get ready for her own rest. Rest that would likely never come. As it hadn’t since…
She bares her teeth and grumbles, when she crossed the threshold. Like an imaginary line drawn between their sides, separated by her own loss of breath the second she comes to terms with it all. That she’s free to roam this space, because no one is coming back tonight.
Just a silly plushie staring back at her. A black cat with kind eyes that she doesn’t know how to compare. Except for the fact that Enid left it here alone too…
No. This is whats best.
She couldn’t live with herself, if Enid was hurt during this investigation.
Despite herself, like a reflex or prior routine—she grabs the plushie. She holds it like a piece of trash, with one hand to inspect it. Her eyes harshly trace the seams, the cotton stuffing and black faux fur.
’She gave it to you. Keep it.’ She hears Thing tap, albeit its quiet against Enid’s duvet. She sharply looks to him, almost forgetting she’s not entirely alone.
(Though the void inside certainly left enough room.)
Wednesday can’t muster up a threat, or some unkind aside about catching her in the act. She’s exhausted and her arm is on fire from jostling around tools and researching for hours. She just wants to rest.
But, as she predicted, it doesn’t come. Not really.
Even as she lays, begrudgingly holding Mr. Pickles to her chest.