Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The afternoon they'd found Enid Sinclair's body had been comfortable. The warm, floral winds of a new springtime settling across the courtyard of the Academy. Students laughing, a certain laziness in their steps as could only come with such pleasant Friday afternoons—the weekend imminent, and nothing to do but bask in circles in the sun, swapping stories from the week of hard school work behind them.

In the spare classroom—one of the oldest in Nevermore, and least used—lined with creaky writing tables and frosted windows, caked in the grime of neglect and shrouded in the depths of ancient, purple velvet. Shoved behind the dusty breakfront bookcase, pressed deep into the stone wall. Still in uniform.

It had been Bianca Barclay's birthday. The Sirens had put on a real show that morning, singing in rounds and intricate runs, washing the halls with a gleeful spirit that lulled and excited both, as everyone drifted about to their various lessons, giving giggling greetings if they passed her on their ways—hopeful, perhaps, that they'd gain some social credit with the it-crowd, Bianca at its head.

A teacher had found it, which everyone said was fortunate. Better a teacher, grown and capable. They wouldn't say exactly who. They wouldn't say a lot of things. Was a matter of privacy, you see. There ought be a healthy distance between the happenings of that day and the general public—best respect the wishes of the family, is what they said. Wouldn't want word reaching Jericho. Optics.

Seventy-three percent. That was the last grade she ever received. Botany. Not bad, but not particularly notable either. Unremarkable. Ordinary. She likely hadn't even studied for it. Her handwriting was font-like. Round and looped. I's dotted with little up-ticked dashes. Nothing else was on her desk, just that botany paper—she'd cleared it all out days before. She'd been meaning to redecorate.

There wasn't a mention of it in the news. Nevermore staff had their lips sealed on the matter. But those who'd walked by in the halls had seen. They'd brought a stretcher out, white sheets obscuring the form beneath. Police had been in and out within the hour. A few hushed conversations intoned over breathy, static calls at the front desk. Curfew called early, and that was that.

Life had simply resumed. The hallways a little quieter, maybe. Curfew tightened up, for the time being. Nothing else different. Nothing.

Wednesday put the paper down. Stepped away from the desk. Went back to her side of the room. Everything in stunted increments. This thing, and then that thing, and then the next. Stilted. Cut up. Just barely strung together.

It had been two days since it was found. Two days of…this. The first day, they'd taken her to the guest cottage, sat her down in the living room, tried talking her into just eating. Wednesday hardly remembered it. "You're in shock, dear," her Mother had said, so softly. "We will be right here whenever you are ready to talk about it."

"Take your time, my little poison drop," her father had agreed, tussling her hair. She had hardly felt it, not even when her mother had held her by the shoulders and kissed her forehead. It was like she was a piece of paper taken underwater, and their affection was ink in a ball-point pen. It pressed upon her, but left no impression whatsoever as she slowly flaked away with the tide.

The second day, they'd sent Pugsley to visit her in her room. He'd given her food, said something about a new iron maiden their Father had had shipped in. When she didn’t speak, he threatened to zap her with his electricity, but one look at her eyes and Pugsley knew it wasn't the time for it. He'd left her there with Thing and the promise of future violence, which might have been a genuine comfort to Wednesday, had she registered at all that he had spoken.

It was now the morning of the third day since. Wednesday sat with her knees pulled up to her chest, turned to stare unblinkingly at Enid's side of the room. A soft nudge touched her foot—Thing, the severed and sentient hand who had long been an Addams family mystery, rolling her the apple Pugsley had brought up the day before. But she didn’t so much as shift upon her mattress. Her gaze intensified, and everything but her heart stilled. There was something there, in Enid's bed. Just under the covers, by the footboard; the subtlest of protrusions.

Wednesday lowered her feet to the cool ground, padding through the lightly settled sheet of white dust which had taken up residence in that half of the room. So quick to move in…Wednesday could've sneered at the thought. Gently, she lifted the mattress with one hand, tunnelling the other through the sheets towards the protrusion, till it caught. Hard, rectangular. She pulled it from beneath the covers and brought it into the light: it was a book. Bound in a rich red leather, embossed with intricate floral designs that curled like dancers and weaved over and under the cover—a secret procession to the pages beyond. Wednesday flipped it open. On a marbled title page, in that perfectly round writing, Enid Sinclair. And just beneath, as if an after-thought, Keep out of my stuff or I'll slash you.

Wednesday flipped through the pages, and nearly dropped the book as a dim scent that was so very vague, and yet so distinctly Enid, breathed from the paper—soft and almost laughing at the look that now scored her face. Wednesday at once willed herself to numbness, as if to silence some spirit, or memory of the girl whose book she now clutched. Not just any book, though. Wednesday flattened the upper corner of the open leaf, and under her fingertips, a date. This was Enid's diary.

Sharply aware of what vital information this artefact may hold as to the circumstance of Enid's murder, Wednesday flicked to the very last entry. Dated to the night before the murder. She held her breath as she read.

I've just now learnt something really special. Can't tell you what. Won't post this anywhere, either.
Secret is safe.

Yours probingly,
Sinclair.

Secret is safe. This had to be related, but it was so bereft of detail… Wednesday traced the indents of the penned words with her fingers, shut her eyes. Reached out and backwards, emptying everything but the texture of those words under her thumb from her consciousness, just as she had learned to do from Goody's book. Clawing for anything. A flash bright as sun, and blankness. Wednesday opened her eyes, blinking away at the thin, black liquid she had become so unwillingly familiar with, ever since that vision. Her useless powers, a waste of time to even attempt at gleaning anything from that Plain maybe, but how could she not try?

If no spiritual context would make itself known, she still had other routes available to her. Wednesday paged backwards a few entries.

Wednesday left just now. Investigating, or something. But we know who that little stalker was now, so I don't see why she's still so obsessed with this case. To be honest, I thought we would've seen more of each other this year. Well, she can do whatever she wants. I'll just be here.

Yours resignedly,
Sinclair.

At the mention of her own name, Wednesday paused a moment, recalling the way Enid would say it, always heavy and dripping with some feeling she had never understood. Could never understand, now.

The next page.

That little creep Agnes has been haunting her like a bad smell. I can't get a single moment where it's just us anymore. Wednesday barged in on me and Bruno the other day and the psycho was already in here, invisible. Who knows how long she'd been watching us!!!

I feel like she's taking her away from me. I want to take something from her.

Yours spitefully,
Sinclair.

The next.

Me again. Lol. It's just been so… frustrating. She's definitely avoiding me. Did I do something wrong? Is it because I'm no help in her new investigations? But it's not like she's even asked me. Probably thinks I'd just get in her way, not like I was totally instrumental in her finding Crackstone's hideout last year or anything but whatever. She's probably right, right? Like, even if I did try, if I was just on my own, not with her… would I even find anything?

Yours wonderingly,
Sinclair.

The next entry was the last again. It had registered to Wednesday while reading these final, most private thoughts of her roommate, that almost all of them pertained to herself. Particularly, to her recent penchant for evasion when it came to Enid. Wednesday had thought it best. Her vision… Enid had had no idea about it. Wednesday took in a sharp breath, an attempt at forcing back the images that now were scraping and screaming through the plastered walls of the box she had shoved them all inside when that comfortable afternoon had twisted with her knowledge of its reality. She wouldn't let them out—the details of that vision—though distantly, some echo of it whispered itself through a minute, flaking crack in the plaster. That grave, carved with her name. It's your fault I'm dead, Wednesday. Your fault. Flake, flake, flake. The tiny crack spidered out with the whispers of it. She stuffed it back inside.

Wednesday shivered and swallowed away the sour taste that had risen to the back of her tongue. None of that mattered now. What mattered was right in front of her, penned in the very hand of the departed herself. A potential reason. In the lead up to that day, Enid had been wanting for Wednesday's attention, and she'd even thought of helping on her own. And then, in that final entry…Secret is safe.

Enid had found something. And whatever it was, it had been her undoing. And if that thing was at all related to Wednesday's own investigation—It must be connected: Bradbury, Galpin…and now Enid.

As if privy to her very thoughts, a scraping at the window made known the presence of a once quietly watching raven. The haggard creature let out a rasped cackle before it shot off into the overcast sky, jet wings cloaked by cloud till it was visible no more. She wondered dimly if it were one of the birds that had plunged beak-first through the throbbing neck of the old Sheriff. If it were the same beast to have plucked his eyes. If it had witnessed the death of the girl who should have been standing in that room right before her. Wednesday looked up. The air waved, an outline she couldn't touch. But it had left such a mark upon her that—she knew—it would never leave.

A pressure at her ankle, and Wednesday found Thing tapping away in a barely coherent, seemingly disparaging cluster of signs.

"Yes, it's private. But she would have wanted me to figure this out." Thing slumped, flicking his index dejectedly. "It seems like she was trying to get me alone to tell me something, Thing," her voice felt strange in her own throat, rough from days of disuse, perhaps. "The answers we need are within reach."

"I could help you find them."

Wednesday's head snapped towards the new voice that had entered the room as if popped into existence from nothing. Indeed, at first nothing was there at all that could have produced the voice—just the empty, too-quiet dorm room with its sighing, panelled walls and the damp smell that always came in with the rain. But then from the air, she materialised.

Agnes, a first year at Nevermore. The little psycho Enid had complained about in the final pages of her diary. Something stabbed deep inside Wednesday's stomach at the sight of her…such an uncomfortable feeling. Painful.

"What are you doing in here." Flat. A statement.

"I want to help you, Wednesday. Actually, no one has seen you since—"

Wednesday cut her off, "I don't require your assistance, Agnes. I am perfectly capable."

"Of course…I'm sorry," she lowered her glassy, green eyes. "I just thought that maybe you'd be trying to get information on what happened and I could help. You know…about Enid."

Slicing, gashing. Spilling out across the floor. Deep red and black and with the stench of rot.

"Get out." Through her teeth, and so quiet it was barely a breath. But Agnes understood. In the next moment, she wasn't there, and the door swung open and shut on its hinge as if of its own accord, leaving Wednesday alone but for Thing, to recover from that searing, tunnelling pain that she knew not the name for, but was surely what we call guilt.

It was only then, with her eyes still lingering upon the door as Agnes had left, that she noticed the item somebody had slipped beneath it. Wednesday crouched by the door and picked it up, smoothing the cool paper between her fingers. A dark envelope. Unaddressed.

Everything was a sharp pin poked into cork, tacked up clues from one string to the next. Rising, Wednesday took in a deep breath, nose twitching with the newly disturbed dust that drifted down like snow.

She would see this to its end.

Chapter Text

Wednesday sliced the envelope open with the little silver knife she kept in the left drawer of her desk, and pulled from it a single sheet of tan paper. The page was entirely blank, save 3 lines printed in black ink at the very centre, which read:

Library
9:30pm
Vigil for the wolf.

Wednesday ran her palm over the page, finding a series of depressions beneath the writing. Holding the page at an angle, to the light, she could make out the imprint of a skull with the petals of a flower radiating behind it—the sigil of the Nightshade Society.

Principal Dort had abolished the once proud brotherhood which had in times past, sought to protect Outcasts from harm in a society which labelled difference as demonic. But of course, that useless headmaster's decrees wouldn't stop Nevermore's elite from frequenting their favourite secret hideout to play insufferable hazing rituals and host trivial parties the likes of which would have brought a tear of emulsified shame to Goody Addam's eye.

But this…vigil for the wolf… what were they playing at? Funerals may have been a fond pastime of Wednesday's, but the image of her classmates masked in those ridiculous eyepieces and hidden beneath moth-eaten cloaks in some cult-like circle, lighting candles in her memory with finnicky Bic starters…she gritted her teeth. Was there really no better way to…to honour…

Wednesday tossed the invitation in with the piles of screwed up, trashed drafts of her novel, which she hadn't touched for a while now. Honour. Commemoration. None of these things would do anything for Enid. Nothing could help her. All that could be done, was to bring to justice whoever was at fault. And god knows the police would be doing a right proper job of it.

They'd barely held an investigation at all—if anything, they'd acted more in the part of clean-up duty. Once the body had been removed, they'd taped off the entire hallway and been on their way. Not so much as a question to any students who had been nearby. Not of Wednesday, Enid's roommate. Not of Ajax, her ex-boyfriend, nor of Bruno, who had been her current lover. None of that made any sense, and the whole thing reeked of a cover-up. In a statement sent out to all the students and parents directly following the discovery of the body, Dort had claimed the police were not treating the death as suspicious, said there was, "No evidence of any previous or continuing danger at the school." Bull. If Wednesday could get her hands on the case files and coroner's reports down at Jericho police station, she might have something to go off, some irrefutable evidence that could point to the falsehoods that festered so blatantly. That could point to someone to blame.

~

Wednesday ducked her head as fat droplets pummelled her face, boots splashing through murky puddles across the courtyard. Black clouds crowded the stars out, obscuring the grinning moon so that it radiated dimly in a translucent sort of glow. Curfew had no doubt been tightened to give parents a sense of security for their children after what had happened, but Wednesday found that it made sneaking out of school much easier, seeing as there were far less eyes to spy as she crept through the dark. Whichever teachers had been meant to go patrolling that night, Wednesday was yet to encounter them.

Thing clung to her left shoulder, fingertips gripping the fabric of Wednesday's coat with the force to squash a small creature, as he shivered. But Wednesday suspected his crushing hold was less to do with his coldness and more to do with his disapproval. They'd argued just now. Thing signing so frantically Wednesday had thought his hand could've fallen right off, if it hadn't already. There's a murderer out there. They could be after you. But of course, that was no deterrent for Wednesday Addams, and she'd sidled right on out of her dorm with a notebook in her pocket and a renewed purpose to her step—Thing scuttling behind her, determined to at least bear witness to the untimely demise he seemed so sure she'd meet. But Wednesday was dead set on this outing, whatever the personal cost. She'd sneak out of Nevermore. Catch a cab down to Jericho proper, steal a vehicle, or walk if she had to, even if it was nearly light out by the time she made it there. She'd get to that pathetic little police station, and she'd find something. Anything. She would.

"And where are you going?"

Wednesday halted, rain soaking through her hood, "I expect it's none of your concern, Ajax." She didn't bother to turn around, she could recognise him from his shaky, underdeveloped way of speaking.

"You're breaking curfew, if Dort finds you—"

"I could say the same to you. Besides, don't you have somewhere to be?" Wednesday clicked her fingers twice, in imitation of the passcode that gave entry to the Nightshade's secret library.

When Ajax didn't respond, Wednesday finally turned around. He stood just beneath the under croft, sheltering from the rain, though one foot was placed just beyond the threshold as if he were of two minds as to whether he should go after her or leave her there in the rain. But what stood out to Wednesday wasn't this uncertain stance; rather, it was the unwavering fury etched into his face. His hands shook under damp sleeves, his jaw was clenched so tight she thought she could hear his teeth creak even through the rainfall, and his eyes were set on her with the intent of a predator.

The next cynical jab died on Wednesday's tongue. She'd never seen him like this before. Ajax—as annoying of a presence as he had been in Wednesday's life as a by-product of her roommate's inexplicable obsession with him the year prior—was a sweet and amiable boy who was eager to please and quicker to apologise. Such dark expressions seemed incongruous with the boy Wednesday had known… but perhaps he had more secrets hidden beneath that woollen beanie than just the petrifying snakes of his gorgon heritage.

"How can you keep up that act when—when she's—" Ajax shook his head, a sneer of disgust twisting his features, "Just, whatever. Why aren't you coming?"

"Though an invite to a gathering of potential suspects was tempting, I think my time would be more effectively spent if I avoided such games of Clue." Wednesday glanced behind her, down the dark, pebbled path leading to the black iron gates which whined softly in the distance. Speaking of time, she didn't have much of it.

"Potential suspects?"

"Female murder victims are five times more likely to have been killed by a previous intimate partner than male victims," Wednesday peered right into Ajax's furious eyes, "I'm sure you can ascertain the significance of that statistic." His fury then morphed into an incredulousness so pure and without logic that Wednesday could feel in the air the change which brought with it a dramatic increase in the likelihood of a stoning taking place that night in the courtyard. Without another word, she turned her back to Ajax to set off for the town.

"You're a real peace of work, Wednesday. You know that?"

Wednesday didn't stop, and let his words trail away with the trickling rain on the pavement as she went. But something in the tone of his voice as he called after her through the dark sent that pain splintering like expanding snowflakes up through Wednesday's lungs, as a memory from the year before twisted into consciousness.

"I've tried. Really, really, really hard to be your friend."

Her cheeks tinged pink. Voice raised, arms out, and stance firm, legs planted.

"If you want to be alone, Wednesday…"

Until they weren't.

"…Be alone."

Bags packed, empty room. Just that big, half-rainbow window left winking through the rain, whispering of moments taken for granted which trailed down cold glass in drops before they vanished at the rim.

"Little night stroll?"

For the second time that day, the unexpected presence of a new voice snapped Wednesday from a sea of crashing thoughts into her stagnant reality. A man stood before her on the path towards the gate. His shoes were freshly polished and seemed hardly touched by the rain, indicating a careful step which avoided at all costs the dirtier patches and deeper puddles of the road. His pants were specked with rain, but had been neatly starched and pressed with hard vertical creases leading upwards to a smart blazer so purple it almost completely blended in with the night and gave the odd impression that his grinning head was somehow floating there in the air, disembodied. Principal Dort. He winked with eyes as shiny as his freshly polished shoes.

"Given the circumstances my dear girl, I can hardly blame you for it…though I hope you can forgive me for reminding you rather gently that this new curfew applies to everyone." Though he wasn't a particularly tall man, he somehow stretched outwards as he spoke, looming over Wednesday more and more with each damning word which stood in the way of her and the investigation at Jericho, before it came to a complete end with the final, " That includes you, Miss Addams."

Wednesday dodged Dort's hand as he attempted to take her by the shoulder which Thing had vacated moments earlier, opting to cling instead to the front of her left shoe.

"I understand," she tried to say it cordially, but it came out like a hiss through her teeth. Dort pulled back his hand as if it had touched a hot stove, but quickly folded it neatly across his chest as that relentless smile drew itself back upon his inscrutably contented face.

"I know you and Enid were very close," So out of nowhere, so completely unpreparable…Wednesday's heart dropped and she dug her nails into her palms, flailing for a place to hold, to steady. To regain control. A flurry of black wings burst from a tree in the distance and red eyes flashed in time with the stabbing pang inside her chest. Her eyes latched onto Dort's, which were fluttering like butterflies as he went on, a show of obliviousness that was so plainly counterfeit it was insulting. "As your principal, I feel a great degree of responsibility towards your wellbeing, so I wish you to know, Wednesday, that if you need help, I will always be here… to direct you towards the front desk, at which you can find a telephone to call Jericho psychiatry and get in touch with a councillor best equipped to deal with you."

A statement so ridiculous, the ache in Wednesday's diaphragm was nearly possible to ignore for a moment. She just glared into his shining eyes, unblinkingly, until that pasty smile of his wavered some, and he dropped the topic, instead holding a hand out in the direction of the school.

"Lead the way," is all he said, falling into step behind her, more jailor than Principal then. He followed a little too closely as they re-entered the courtyard—the tips of his shoes almost grazing the backs of Wednesday's as she went, and she could have sworn she could smell his hot breath tickling the hairs at the back of her neck. Sterile, but in the artificial way of a cheap mouth wash. Wednesday paused before they entered the main building, squinting through the blackness. Ajax was nowhere to be seen.

The entry hall was the oldest building of the school—vast and echoey, their steps amplified by the cobbled floors, glancing off gothic flourishes carved into the walls, past arched balustrades lining cloistered galleries, all the way up into the vaulted ceiling above. Candles still flickered in brackets, but not at the front of the room where the reception and office sat quiet and locked. The soft, yellow light instead crawled past it, up the stairs to the right—pinpricks dotting round a corner and out of sight into a hall awash with light.

"I'll leave you here. I trust you know the way to your dormitory." Dort edged around her towards the base of the stairs, resting his hand upon the rail. That easy smile of his then at once sunk into something darker, and his eyes dropped right into hers as they glinted with flame. "Oh and, Miss Addams? If one of the patrolling teachers reports to me that you are not in your room for whatever reason, please know that the blind eye I turned today will have expired." The candles behind him seemed to flare, but a slight movement by Thing had distracted her in that moment, so Wednesday couldn't be certain.

"Of course," she said, twisting on her heel in the direction of the dormitory wing—and despite herself, a coldness washed down her back at the thought of that blazing look. But as she left the vast entry hall, she only made it just past the threshold of the hallway before she turned right around again, ducking her head as she snuck a look back towards the staircase. Dort was at the top, fumbling around at the inner pockets of his blazer as he disappeared into the light emanating from the hall beyond—no doubt originating from the giant fireplace inside his personal office, fashioned in the shape of a large, opened mouth.

"What's he looking for…" Wednesday mumbled, half to Thing, half to herself. Thing tapped a finger against her shoe, impatiently. "You're right," she whispered, holding out her hand so that he could skip back up to her shoulder.

She glanced around. Nobody in sight. Off she went.

She kept her feet at the edges of the stairs, as close to the wall as possible to minimise any creaking from the aged wood, and she ducked down close to the floor, keeping her centre of gravity well contained so as to prevent any unnecessary noise from adjusting her weight. Peeking around the wall at the top of the stairs, there was Dort, not yet through the doors. Wednesday yanked herself back from the corner, pressing her back against the wall as her heart rate tacked on a few zeros. The light of the fireplace danced across the floors beside her, but they all at once extinguished with the reverberant thud of the heavy doors of Dort's office. Thing was deadly still.

Wednesday made herself count to five, slowly, before she crept along an enormous, tasselled rug, filled with fading patterns and the dust of centuries past—stopping only as she came before the largest set of doors in the hallway. Wooden and unpainted, decorated with countless carvings of various plant-like designs and scored at the edges and where the handles were with the etchings of time. She pressed her head against the wood which felt cool on her earlobe, and held her breath.

"…I'm telling you, it's best this way. As much as I disagree with the way Weems ran things, she had one thing right and that's keeping the good name of our school. I won't have normies mixing with outcast affairs, even with—no, especially with what has happened…" Dort. He sounded harried, and he spoke with a harshness in his voice as if he were supposed to be whispering but had gotten so worked up that that whisper had morphed into a hissing sort of yell instead.

Wednesday shifted around, pressing an eye up to the crack between the doors, hoping to catch a glimpse at whomever he was speaking with. He was facing with his back towards her, leaning with his arms spread at two points at the ends of his desk, his head tilted at a sharp angle. There didn't appear to be anyone else in the room and Wednesday thought for a moment that maybe the man had simply taken one more step towards insanity, but he soon pushed out of that stiff stance to begin pacing in front of the fireplace, and she saw he had a phone sandwiched between his shoulder and his ear.

"…Yes. Well listen, Santiago, I can't stop you from speaking with her again if you must but she is needed here during the week and now especially, she's helping the Sirens and Vampires with their new ensemble... Finding such a thing, it wouldn't be easy for anyone…and it’s for a fundraising event so don't even think about it until Saturday—yes… Good night." His phone crackled as the other end hung the call.

Santiago. Dort was just speaking with the head of Jericho police, and from the sounds of it, she was wanting to interview a Nevermore teacher. As Wednesday padded back to her room in the ghostly quiet Ophelia Hall, she carefully went over what she had overheard. Especially with what has happened… that had to be about Enid. Finding such a thing… could it be that this teacher was the one who had come upon the body? And if that were the case, Wednesday had her first real suspect. Because who could be more suspicious than the first person at the scene of the crime?

Thing made a few jabbing motions in the corner of her eye…she's helping the Sirens…There could only be one such person. And Wednesday had seen her that very morning, laughing along with the Sirens as they serenaded Bianca for her special day. Applauding them for their perfect seven part harmonies. Telling them she'd see them later for class, where they could show her how they'd arranged it. Her red hair bobbing like apples in water for that cruel bonfire game of which there is very little purpose and even less to gain, save for maybe a painful jaw and a soaking face. Putrid water gluing eyes shut with the saliva of children lost in a competitive blur. A sour taste coating their teeth as they rise from the barrel, and the apple slips loose from their mouths, and they plunge right back in again anyway, over and over again. Because maybe this time, they'll catch it. Because maybe this time, they'll win.

Only one teacher.

Capri.