Note:
Truly, I am a slave to angst.
Does anyone here use AO3? The people there are genuinely insane— some modern Jane Austen level of angst.
If Jane Austen is a girl today, she'd write fanfics too. If you think about it hard enough, her works ARE fanfictions. Although that's doing her literary genius dirty.
I need a break from this. Think of it as workshop. I wish I was a girl writing angsty stories.
Damn.
—-
Gray ceiling, white walls and floors. The smell of sterilized equipment, ethyl alcohol— winced and grunts of pain from Xavier, sat on a bed as Ms. Thornhill nursed his wounded forearm. Rows upon rows of bed lay across the room. Clean, some with curtains and beside a metal tray.
Enid and Ajax held each other's hands adjacent to the grunting man, comforting each other like love birds. Watching— worried and tired, exhausted even from the events of the night.
Ms. Thornhill wrapped a layer of bandage on Xavier's sewn wound. He grimaced, his face furrowing deeper and deeper as the woman tightened the ends. He breath a sigh of relief the moment she was done.
"Principal Weems will be with you guys soon." She said, cleaning the bloodied cottons and tweezers.
The room faded to silence when she left for the storage room. The suffocating, confused, and terrified kind. 3 pair of eyes landed on one, sat on a chair of her own, gaze ahead to nowhere.
"Are you gonna let us in your little secret?" Xavier said exasperated, igniting the brewing tension in the air. His eyes bore a certain intensity as it looked upon her, Wednesday.
"Great." He scoffed as he rolled his eyes, "You're gonna trick us, lead us in some… monster's den and, when all is said and done you're not even going to explain what the hell just happened?"
Lightning flashed outside the palladium-styled window, Nevermore's gothic towards casting a shadow contrasting the hospital-white of the clinic. Thunder followed shortly after.
Enid's eyes landed on Wednesday's hands, her lips pressed together, her hand curled on Ajax'. "Wednesday, what happened to Adam? Where did he… and it, go?" Her voice was a murmur, a faint whisper.
Ajax gulped. "Hey, is it possible that…" he looked at Xavier's bandaged wound, "is it possible that he's…—"
"Dead?" Xavier finished his sentence.
"Don't say that!" Enid snapped.
"God, Enid! Be realistic for once!" Xavier ran a hand through his disheveled hair. "We left him there! Alone! For all we know, he's already floating in that thing's stomach in pieces."
He flopped his head down the bed, carefully placing his wounded hand above his stomach. "I knew it," Xavier muttered, "I knew when I saw that gate we should've turned back. That fucking monster…"
"You knew it? What do you mean 'knew it'?" Ajax asked.
Silence crept like an uninvited guest. The drops of rain intensified, the sky lit up with rage, Xavier stared at the ceiling. "I saw that thing… in my dreams… and the Gates mansion too. I should've asked you to turn back, I knew where we were going, I jog that path."
A distant hum of thunder rumbled, as if echoing Xavier's words. The room seemed to shrink, the white walls and beds pressing in around them. "Was he apart of this, Wednesday? Was sacrificing him in your big plans too?"
"No," Enid answered for her, she watched Thing moved, signing. "Adam came because of Thing. He said… he had a bad premonition so he called for help."
The clinic's door swung open and Principal Weems entered. Her eyes swept over their battered, exhausted figures before finally stopping at Wednesday. "You will all tell me everything. Now."
Principal Weems' commanding presence did very well to squeeze the truth out of the 3 students. Xavier relayed the events of some few hours ago, Ajax added details while Enid said enough to contribute, but not enough to pin it all on Wednesday.
Enid observed the principal's face, how she composed herself with every word that left their mouths. Her facade, her mask hid what her eyes could not but every-time lightning struck and flashed through the window behind, she saw it. In her eyes, in the crevices of her face that could not lie.
The senses of a werewolf goes beyond what vision could comprehend.
Their accounts neared its end, with one testimony left to fit the jigsaw altogether. They waited, gazes on Wednesday's perpetually still figure.
Principal Weems sighed. "I'm sure you're all but exhausted. I will request a meeting with you four at my office as soon as your schedules are finished. For now, please let Wednesday and I talk while you go to your respective rooms."
It was final. They glanced at one another before nodding. Enid took one last look at her… friend before the door fully closed.
Ms. Thornhill came back not so long as they were recounting the events. She sat beside Principal Weems, looking worried at the silent Wednesday.
She leaned to the taller woman's ears. "I believe… that the shock may have done something in her psyche. I've never seen her this, I don't know, rattled?"
Weems' hands, she gripped tighter, between her knuckles as she composed herself. "I see that," she replied, "Marilyn, can you please make sure that Enid and the others made their way to their halls? We wouldn't want another… break-out to happen."
"Oh," Ms. Thornhill said, forcing a strained smile as she nodded, "Of course, I'll be right back."
Only two were left.
There was silence at first, broken only by the rain and ramble. The flashes of light did not heed as single blink from Wednesday's void, no flinch at the sound of God's wrath on earth.
"What happened to Adam?"
Her words fell like a blade on an executioner's block. Wednesday finally moved, faintly, breaking the statue of her stillness. Not so still, either.
Weems commented, "You will speak now or never be able to at all. With your offenses, I ought to expel all four of you."
"No. They have noth—"
"Then tell me!" Weems snapped, an urge, a crack. She inhaled. "Where is he?"
Wednesday's eyes darted the room. The window, the sterile beds and curtains, the door, and finally, Larissa Weems' blue eyes.
"I don't know." She hesitated.
"You don't know?" Weems spat the words in disbelief. "Everybody said you were the first back on the scene."
"He disappeared." Wednesday stammered. "He— they, were gone."
Weems stood up and scoffed. She pranced back and forth, her fingers on her jaw. "People and monsters do not just disappear, Wednesday, and I'm sure gates don't just fix themselves on their own."
"It is what happened." Wednesday insisted. For a flicker of a moment, clarity came back in her mind. "While we were there, we saw jars of human remains— the same ones missing on the monster's victims. They're planning something, a ritual maybe, if we go back now we can stop it and save Adam!"
"He's not there." Weems muttered.
Wednesday felt the air in her lungs get pulled out.
"What?"
"I called the Sheriff." Weems answered, "When I got the notice from Ms. Thornhill about the situation, I immediately contacted the sheriff's office to conduct a search. They found nothing."
"But that's impossible. It's there! Every one of us saw it." She insisted.
"It may have been but it's not anymore. They found no signs of a clean-up nor signs of someone living there as you've all said."
A series of conspiracies ran through her head, theories on what may have happened. Wednesday pondered and thought and something came to mind. She rummaged her bag before her hands touched a large, wooden box.
The music box.
"Enid found it in Laurel Gates' room. Cleaned."
Weems eyed it, opening the lid carefully as the sound of a soft lullaby filled the room. The ballerina danced, its body tilted slightly as if aging with time.
"You're saying that a woman who died 3 decades ago came back to haunt her family mansion?" Weems incredulously asked.
"Not the house. Jericho itself." The inclination of her statement sent a chill down Weems' spine. Wednesday stepped forward. "Why are you pretending not to know? I'm sure Adam has told you, the monster isn't alone."
"He hasn't told me much," Weems said, "Not since you've been his friend."
It twisted something in her stomach, an uncomfortable feeling unfamiliar to her. She tried to ignore it, Wednesday pulled out her card— Rowan's prophecy. "Whatever they're planning, it has something to with this."
Weems' eyes lingered on the folded prophecy, tracing the jagged sketches with a visible tightness in her jaw. She accepted the paper slowly.
"This…" Weems muttered, "this was why Rowan tried to kill you?"
"Yes," Wednesday said flatly. "It was sketched by his mother, it's what drove both of them insane."
Weems' lips parted, her voice softer now but heavy with the weight of responsibility. "Why are you telling me this? Why now? Why only when he's gone?"
Wednesday's black braids fell on her face, her bangs a mixture of dust and dirt. She met Weems' eyes, an intensity now burning within. "Because I need to be here. I need to see the last of this case."
Silence stretched like a rubber band threatening to snap. Weems' scrutinizing eyes gazed upon Wednesday like blade, sharp and unsheathed. "Or, perhaps, you are guilty." An unintended grunt left Wednesday's throat.
"We both know his nature." Weems said, folding the paper again. "How he is… I'm sure Laurel Gates' ghost knows now too."
Wednesday's eyes narrowed, her jaw tightening as she took a step back. "I am not guilty of anything except surviving what she planned for us."
"You're just like your mother, and me, maybe." Weems' posture straightened. "Your hands have been trembling from the very moment I entered this room."
Wednesday looked down, she's right. She's… trembling. Why?
"You may deny it with your sharp words, or your glare and your apathetic lenses, but you and I know Adam is not a stranger to you." Weems paused, she patted her suit, the wrinkles fading with the glitter. "Give me his mask."
The storm outside howled louder, as if echoing the tension between the two. Wednesday's fingers found itself in her pockets. Weems caressed the dirtied surface of the mask, as if scrubbing the blood on the side.
"In cases such as this, the school issues a missing person report. Plastering their face on every nook and cranny of the town." She let out a depressing chuckle, "I can't even do that for him."
Weems turned to leave, stopping before she opened the door. "I'll do everything in my power to help. And I will do what I must on my side." She half-turned. "The answer you seek should be in Nathaniel Faulkner's diary. This is your last chance, Ms. Addams."
The door's heavy click left Wednesday alone with the rain, the music box, and her spiraling thoughts. There is an undeniable rot inside her, a bitter taste of nothing she's ever had. Not misery, not despair — but a sense of helplessness differed from death.
Wednesday Addams is a woman of absolute certainty. Ruled by evidence, trialed not by a court of man, but by the higher belief in truth. That it will persist, that it is greater than anything in the world. That every step she takes, no matter the depth of the puddle and the sharpness of the knife, is worth.
A torturer could try everything yet it will not destroy her determination. The chopping blade may fall but her body would still move to vanquish the lies. But what of others? When her desire, her path, and all that she represented seeks to trample everyone beside her— what weighs heavier than the truth if not life?
She's never desired to choose a side, never chose once ever. Wednesday treaded justice in the middle of a wall separating good and evil. Her side is her own, and only her own. Not for her father whom she freed, not for the victims of the murders whom she tracked— not, never for anyone.
Yet she could not say the same now.
Wednesday clenched her fist as lightning struck down. She felt enveloped by this feeling, but more so of another. Her teeth rattled with a certain rage that her porcelain face did not show, she felt her gums bleed slightly from the pressure. She felt all the clarity fade, replaced by a boiling sensation in her head.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned— hell hath no fury like an Addams.
When another opportunity arises, the knife won't just go in Tyler's jaw. She'd drive it in his heart and twist it until the last beat stops.
For now, however, she has to own up to everything.
—-