Chapter Text
When Wednesday was six years old, she learned her greatest weakness.
It ended, really, as it began – with Mother.
Though Father was the most egregious offender, it almost made him less odorous for it. He was wretched in his own way, inflicted with a cursed, horrible need to douse his affection on every person he holds dear. But it was inflicted in myriad ways and not so focused on her.
Mother folded her hands over Wednesday’s shoulders, swept her hair from her face, brushed her ruby red lips against the prickling skin of her face. Her affection was all-encompassing, all-consuming, and Wednesday, well.
Wednesday loved it.
It was the worst thing she could do.
It would be easier, so much easier if she detested the touch of others. It would be perfect and right and deserved but alas, such was not the case. Instead, she was cursed in a new way, a way that was so terrible, so cruel, that she couldn’t help but feel a sense of admiration about the whole thing. She loved to be touched, to be held, to be cared for, and it terrified her more than anything. It made her not herself. She whined to Mother for attention, juvenile and puny, upset if she couldn’t hold Father’s hand when they went places. She was weak. She was desperate. She was broken and warped and it made her so frightened sometimes that she thought she might actually have a heart attack and die at the tender age of six.
So, she ducked out of Mother’s hold, learned to braid her own hair, and jerked herself away from the tender kiss that made her feel warmth in her heart. She didn’t need the warmth. She didn’t. She was cold to the touch and cold in the heart and that was the best she could ever hope for. She was cruel and she wanted to be loved and that was unfair. She knew how people perceived her, and she was proud of it, because it was how she strived to be seen, but she couldn’t imagine forcing someone to be kind to her. It wouldn’t be right. She was not meant to receive it. There was a hearth in her chest that was made of weak, flickering kindles, but if she wasn't careful, that fire could burst to life and destroy anything in its way. She couldn’t trust it. Herself.
She had headaches at first. Her mood grew more sour, her skin always prickling and her heart squeezing hard in her chest when she saw Pugsley throwing his arms around Lurch’s leg in a giddy hug. The urge to sprint over and crash into them, too hard, even, was so intense that Wednesday had to bite on her tongue so hard that she bled. She turned away.
It was even easier in Nevermore. The adults would never touch a student even in a friendly manner, and the other students were all either terrified of her or sufficiently aware that she could destroy them and were rationally keeping their distance. Some had lessened the distance – Eugene and Bianca of all people especially, and a few others to a lesser degree. But the bubble around her remained.
Then, came the source of everything that was wrong with her.
Enid Sinclair had warm, callused hands. Some of the calluses were so intense, the rugged skin snagged on Wednesday's jacket when she touched her shoulder.
Because Enid did that. Touched.
It started even before Crackstone, pokes on the arm during class, nudges in the hallway, a gleeful arm thrown around her waist in the wake of the Poe Cup victory, where Wednesday had been so swept up in the delicious taste of Bianca’s humiliating defeat that she hadn’t protested the brief embrace.
The real trouble, though, started after the hug.
The hug.
When she had ached inside and out, her guts still throbbing and twisting like the blade remained, one of her arms half numb at the shoulder, her vision blurred from what most assuredly was a concussion, and spotted a glaring, heinous shade of pink moving towards her at a speed that should have been alarming but was relieving instead. Enid nearly sent both of them to the ground when she crashed into Wednesday, given that Wednesday could barely stand, but that werewolf strength came in handy, Enid righting them and letting Wednesday gather her feet under her again. She moved instinctively, pushing Enid back like she would, like she should , though she did it weakly.
Enid allowed her, though Wednesday knew that even if she were at full strength, there was no way she would be able to remove Enid by force. She was just too strong. But she allowed Wednesday to feebly handle her, her eyes glistening with tears, blood and dirt smeared across her face, and she could have died.
The thought struck some sort of death toll in Wednesday’s chest and without thinking, without the instincts she had mercilessly drilled into herself warning her off, she reached back out and clutched at Enid with more strength than she knew she could muster after losing several pints of blood. Enid snuffled and whimpered into their embrace and Wednesday had pressed her face into Enid’s shoulder and let her eyes slide closed.
She'd woken up in the infirmary afterwards with Enid and her parents at her bedside.
Since then, Wednesday was…
Well, she didn’t know what she was. Brain damaged, possibly. Unspeakably, humiliatingly out of control of herself, definitely.
She wondered how different it all might be if Enid weren’t so goddamned respectful.
Because she knew, because Wednesday had told her and her parents told her because Wednesday told them, that she didn’t like to be touched. While Enid had, and continued, to toe that line, she never wanted to truly push and make Wednesday uncomfortable.
She didn’t hug Wednesday again.
If Wednesday weren’t a wretched little liar, that would have been an excellent outcome. But because she was, she thought she might start actually peeling off her own flesh soon if she had to catch herself thinking longingly about curling up in Enid’s strong arms again. Wednesday’s mind was a sacred place where she allowed herself to indulge in all manner of thought and schemes and desires, even ones as humiliating as that , so it wasn’t really the idea itself that bothered her.
Rather, the worst part of it all seemed to be that when she snapped back to reality, there was a special kind of ache that sat so deep in her chest, it felt like it was nearly behind her withered heart. She would struggle to breathe for just a few moments, and then her skin prickled with plain, uncomplicated want.
It was not unprecedented. When Wednesday had first identified her desperate desire for affection and had walled herself off to protect her foolish, misguided family, she had similar sorts of phantom pains. Like her body needed that contact or it would rent apart from the very core of her. All the discomfort Wednesday usually reveled in was distant and different. She enjoyed those sensations.
(At least, she had convinced herself as much. When the prickling ache of discomfort had grown too overwhelming and she needed something, anything , to distract her from it, even subjecting herself to pain and misery to achieve it. She enjoyed it. She enjoyed it. )
This time seemed different, though. The long gap between when Wednesday had last truly been embraced and the hug with Enid had left a lot of fuel building up and now that it’s caught a spark, Wednesday could readily admit that it was reaching the edges of her control.
She imagined herself, six years old, crying and whining and begging for a warm touch, and imagined grabbing that child too sharply by the shoulders, rattling her roughly, telling her, “You can’t have it. You’re a monster about it. You’re a broken sieve that just takes and takes from the people around you and you can never be sated. Do you want to consume Enid until there’s nothing left of her?”
Then, her younger self would crumple inwards, conceding the point. They weren’t meant for such things. But sometimes, rarely at first, then with increasing frequency, her younger self would set her chin, glare back and say, “Yes .”
She let Bianca knock her around in fencing a little too willingly after that. It only worked for a few days before Bianca noticed how suddenly easy it was and wouldn’t do it to her anymore, her unnerving eyes watching Wednesday with a scrutiny she loathed. What did Bianca know? What could Bianca know? She and Xavier hung off each other enough that she would never have the time to develop the deep, vast abyss of emptiness that threatened to gnaw right through Wednesday’s ribcage.
“Are you ever going to talk about it?” Bianca asked quietly at the end of practice. Quietly, but not softly. Wednesday appreciated the roughness. She felt so scrambled she might even have broken under Bianca’s tenderness if it was offered.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Wednesday replied, the lie sitting like ash in her mouth. She didn’t like to lie. She never had. Truth be told, she navigated around operating on blunt force and candor because she wasn’t quite capable of anything else. Her weaknesses abounded. If a conversation got too nuanced, too laced in layers of subterfuge and deception, she floundered. Better to cut right to the point, in her opinion, before her defective brain got lost in the shuffle.
Bianca folded her arms, looking deeply unimpressed. It was the eyebrows, Wednesday thought. She’d have to try it sometime.
“Not even with Enid?” Bianca countered.
Wednesday wanted to scoff, though it would give far too much away. Enid. The whole reason she was in this mess to begin with. She wanted nothing more than to go to her, talk to her, hold her. Which was precisely why she couldn’t.
“I suggest you watch your mouth,” Wednesday said, too exhausted to even come up with anything more imposing than that.
It only seemed to make Bianca concerned. “That was a very tame threat,” she remarked.
Wednesday only scowled and sat too hard on the bench, her ramrod straight posture wavering until she was hunched over. Bianca looked downright alarmed at that.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Wednesday murmured again, resenting the tiredness that crept into her voice.
Bianca sat next to her, watching as everyone else finally left the practice room, leaving them alone. Wednesday stared at the hilt of her foil in her hand. She didn’t know why she hadn't gotten up and left. Maybe because, even with the foot of space between them, Wednesday felt the warmth of Bianca radiating out and she couldn’t drag herself away.
“You haven’t been sleeping,” Bianca said finally. It wasn’t a question and Wednesday, even in her ire, knew it was pointless to refute. Her characteristic dark under-eye bags were larger, darker, puffier, and her skin was more sallow than ever. She constantly felt colder, like her blood was half-frozen sludge, creeping slowly and ineffectually through her. Her spine folded in on itself too easily, her hands clumsy and fumbling.
She hadn’t been sleeping, as Bianca pointed out. How could she, when she ripped herself awake every night, beyond grateful that Enid was an even heavier sleeper than Pugsley. The knife, twisting – Weems, choking – the arrow, pulsing – Crackstone, crushing – Enid, bloody – Enid, weeping – Enid holding her –
She got a few hours every other night. It was enough. It wasn’t. But it was.
“How’s the arm?” Bianca asked, and Wednesday bristled.
“I don’t need your insipid coddling.”
“At this point, you need someone's coddling,” Bianca countered.
“I am not a helpless waif for you to rescue.”
Bianca blinked. “If you repeat this, I’ll deny it, but you’re probably the single most capable person I’ve ever met.”
Wednesday stared at her and Bianca stared back. It was easily the most flattering thing Wednesday had ever heard from Bianca directed at anyone, let alone herself. She blinked, and looked away first, the closest to accepting the compliment as she could get.
Bianca didn’t seem put off by that. “I just meant that, the whole thing with Crackstone, I don’t think a single person could shrug that off without a problem. You’re not weaker for it, or whatever you’ve got yourself all worked up over. I’m sure it pains you to acknowledge, but you are only human.”
It did pain her to acknowledge, actually, but it was the truth. She was not ignorant of the concept of trauma, and though she wished desperately that it weren’t true, she knew that at her core, she was a soft-shelled, spineless little cretin, susceptible to whims of her tumultuous emotions that she tried so desperately to hold down. She had nearly died, she was dying as she had snapped at Goody, and it had not helped her already feeble grasp.
As demonstrated when, quite without her input, her mouth decided to say, “I’m tired.” Her voice sounded reedy and thin and to her genuine horror, the backs of her eyes started to warm.
Bianca, brow furrowed, suggested a visit to the nurse for a sleep aid, and Wednesday detailed the many attempts she had made to do just that and how each and every option failed to help.
“That fucking sucks,” Bianca said, looking as annoyed as Wednesday had initially felt in that situation. She had long since lost the energy to maintain that irritation, all her focus on staying conscious and not flinging her arms around her roommate every time she got within a few feet.
“I don’t know what to do,” Wednesday admitted suddenly. She was too tired to think in terms of their rivalry, the slightly too aggressive companionship they usually dealt in. Bianca had helped with Crackstone, and she would help now. It was what friends did.
Bianca reached out and set a hand on Wednesday’s shoulder so abruptly that there was nothing she could do to avoid it. That’s what she’ll tell herself. And the only reason she leaned into the touch, listing towards Bianca like a sunflower into the sunshine, was because she was so addled and unwell. The warmth didn’t seep through her shirt into her very bones, tossing a fresh branch into that fire in her. She didn't manage a shuddering breath that seemed to actually fill her lungs for the first time in ages. She didn't.
“What about Enid?”
“What about her?” Wednesday sat up straighter, the vertebrae of her spine protesting, weak and grinding under the weight of her desolation. She didn’t shrug the hand off. She didn’t think she could even if she wanted to.
“She’s been worried about you,” Bianca said, and though it wasn’t intended that way, it dug at her cruelly. “And I know you and her – well, I just think she would help you.”
“I can’t be helped,” Wednesday muttered.
“Give me a fucking break,” Bianca snaps, and Wednesday wants to sink into the ground when her hand falls away, ears ringing strangely. She barely hears Bianca go on. “I know you’re having a hard time, but this pity-party you’re throwing is insanely depressing.”
“That’s my brand.”
“No, morbid is your brand. You’re a freak, not a sad loser,” Bianca countered.
Wednesday had been a sad loser since she was small. She knew that extensively about herself, but Bianca seemed upset at the idea. It was strangely affirming.
“Your empathy is astounding,” Wednesday said. “Have you considered a career in psychiatry?”
The snark seemed to settle Bianca a little, an almost cheerful sneer making its way across her face. “I’d diagnose you as terminally socially inept.”
“They already told me I'm autistic,” Wednesday replied, and felt just a little less miserable when Bianca actually laughed aloud at that.
“I didn’t actually know that,” she said after, her voice lacking that egregious tone people sometimes got if she ever dropped the dreaded autism bomb.
Wednesday didn’t look at her. “I don’t tell people. Sometimes when they find out…”
“You’ve got another thing coming if you think I would ever hold back on you,” Bianca said.
“You can’t beat me as it is.”
Bianca snorted. “So, does she know?”
Enid, obviously, was who she meant. Wednesday nodded. It had happened on a Sunday evening, Enid frazzled and stressed over a test, unable to focus and tapping anxiously at her desk, chewing at a claw. Wednesday had dropped her noise-canceling headphones on Enid’s desk and stalked away without looking back, though when the tapping noises faded, she chanced a glance and saw them on Enid’s head.
“ADHD,” Enid had said sheepishly when she gave them back a few hours later.
Wednesday had nodded, ready to accept the answer and not contribute, but Enid was looking at her, smiling at her, leaning closer, and she replied, “Autism,” without thinking. It was fine. It only put them on even footing, anyway.
“Why don’t you let her help you out then?” Bianca probed, and Wednesday felt like she was back with Dr. Kinbott.
“I trained myself out of needing such a thing a long time ago,” she dismissed, frustrated with herself for still sitting here. Why hadn’t she left? Why was she answering anything? What was wrong with her?
“Of all the fucked up things I’ve heard you say, somehow that was, like, the most fucked up one of all.” Bianca shook her head. “Holy shit, I am not qualified for this.”
“I didn’t ask for your help,” Wednesday snapped.
“I’ve waited around long enough waiting for you to pull yourself together, and it hasn’t happened,” Bianca deadpanned. “Consider this an intervention if you’d like.”
“I was really hoping I’d just keel over and die before I had to deal with this,” Wednesday replied, which only made any levity leave Bianca’s face.
“Wednesday,” she began uncertainly. “You’re not going to… do something. Are you?”
She did scoff this time. “Are you inept? I said keel over and die. Does that sound like I’m interested in doing it myself? Let that wretched God fellow take care of all that. I’m just living as I always do.”
Bianca let out a long sigh, pressing a hand to her forehead in what might have been relief and muttering more to herself than Wednesday, “I don’t know how Enid puts up with you.”
“Me neither,” Wednesday said without thinking, ignoring the way Bianca snapped her head around to look at her.
“Jesus, can you just go fucking talk to her?” Bianca demanded. “I swear that at least a handful of your problems can be rectified. At the very least it would make her stop moping.”
“Enid isn’t moping ,” Wednesday said sharply, more energy filling her at the slight. “She went through a very difficult ordeal and a delicate person like her requires time to recover from it. Do not speak about her like she’s a sullen child.”
Bianca turned to look at the far wall. “Jesus,” she said again. “You two really are a fucking pair.”
“Don’t.”
It came out more pointed than anything Wednesday had said so far. A hiss, a desperate attempt to ward Bianca off, forbid her from ever equating someone as good as Enid with someone as woeful as Wednesday. Enid deserved better.
Bianca looked almost startled by it, an intensity smashing out of Wednesday that she normally kept locked up with all the other inconvenient feelings that threatened to make her tear apart the people around her. She breathed slowly, reining it back in through sheer willpower.
“I’m just saying that the two of you–” Bianca pushed, and Wednesday stood abruptly, turning and walking away, shoving into the empty locker room as Bianca called after her. Still, Bianca didn’t enter the room in the sparse few minutes it took Wednesday to change and start walking back to her dorm.
Even though she was angry, exhausted, nearing open distress, her thoughts lingered on Bianca’s words. Enid was worried about her. And it wasn’t that the idea had never occurred to Wednesday – Enid was an almost too open book, every thought and every feeling she experienced written into every part of her face and body, and Wednesday had seen it directed at her before. But, for some reason, the idea that Enid experienced that kind of high-intensity emotion about Wednesday even when Wednesday wasn’t around?
It rankled, if she was being honest.
She spotted Thing scuttling down the hall to her and scooped him up thoughtlessly, his cold, rough skin pressing into her fingers.
“Howdy,” she greeted absentmindedly, as Enid jokingly did when she and Thing met up.
She wouldn’t look at him, so he scrambled up her arm and started tapping his words out on her shoulder instead.
You were late, he said.
“Practice,” she replied.
Practice ended a while ago, he said.
She hesitated for only a moment. Thing was her closest confidant. He probably knew her better than anyone else in the family. “I spoke to Bianca. Admitted some… things. I’m sure I’ll rouse my own ire about it when I’m more than half-dead.”
What kind of things?
She glanced around and ducked into an alcove, making sure she wasn’t overheard, though the corridor was desolate. “Sleeping troubles,” she murmured.
Thing gave her shoulder a sympathetic pat that tamped down the embers in her chest. Thing got to touch her more than anyone else, though his form of just a dead hand didn’t really provide the kind of sensation she craved. And she didn’t like to rely on it too hard. One could grow dependent
Talk to Enid? he suggested.
She scowled. “That’s what Bianca said.”
Wellllllllll, he continued tapping out L’s until Wednesday slapped at him and he scampered to her other shoulder. Then maybe you should try it .
Wednesday let her head rest on the cool stone of the pillar next to her. Her head hurt. It was always hurting lately. “It’s better for her if I keep my distance.”
You haven’t even asked her, Thing accused.
“She’s good ,” Wednesday spits the word out like it’s vile. “She’s good and she would want to help and she would let me tear her apart.”
She didn’t last time, he pointed out.
Wednesday faltered. “What?”
Last time, when you were treating her badly, he reminded. She left you until you did better. What makes you think she won’t stand up to you?
“It’s not that,” Wednesday defended, feeling annoyingly on her back foot. “I don’t – she’s brave, even if she’s naïve and bumbling. I don’t think she’s afraid of me. But she should be.”
She knows you.
Like that wasn’t the most terrifying part of all.
And you can’t decide for her.
“I could,” Wednesday muttered. “I do.”
If Enid was hurting, would you want her to hide it from you?
“It’s different for me,” Wednesday said. “I can take it. She could, but not like me. I’m made to suffer.”
Thing stayed so still on her shoulder for a long stretch of time that she glanced down to make sure he was still there.
We both know that’s not what you are made for, Thing signed, which felt like a cruel slap to the face. He knew, obviously, of her weakness. He’d known her all her life, had seen her make that decision all those years ago, and now he was rubbing that in her face. It was vicious. Cutthroat. Probably exactly what she needed to hear.
Again, for the second time that day, Wednesday heard herself admit, “I don’t know what to do.”
Thing gave her shoulder another squeeze. Talk to Enid.
Wednesday very suddenly didn’t want to do it anymore.
Any of it. She was tired, her head hurt, her skin ached, and her bloodless, black heart was threatening to lunge out of her and set itself ablaze.
She wanted to see Enid.
And with that thought, she set off to her dorm again.