master list part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 part 6 part 7 part 8 part 9 part 10 part 11 (you're here) ...
A/N: tbh this chapter is very strangely written, its on purpose, but its still weird. I'm sorry if that makes things confusing. (Y/N)'s sense of time is all messed up, which is why this chapter is so trippy. I was also lowkey inspired by the song ceilings by lizzy mcalpine for a specific scene
Obviously, spoiler warnings to those who have yet to finish the second season of Wednesday
warnings: angst, temporal perceptions fucked up, lowkey sadism
word count: 4.7 K
And just like that, he didn’t burn; he rotted.
Buried under that skull tree, because it was the only way to keep Augustus Stonehearst from throwing us all under the bus. Damn that heartless man— he let Isaac, his prized protégé, dissolve into nothing more than an urban legend.
His funeral was the first and last time I saw his father. Same sharp nose, same dark curls, same hollow look in his eyes—but heavier, older, weathered. He didn’t cry once during the service. Though I didn’t bother being upset about that, as I did not eat.
The years slipped by me without my noticing. Or maybe I just stopped counting. Dates, professors, names blurred until they all felt like chalk washed down a gutter. I went through the motions, occupied myself with this or that, mostly with her.
I had lost track of how many times I held Francoise while she sobbed, breath hitching against my shoulder, nights where she clutched my hand so tight it bruised. Even in her dreams, she refused to let go.
But she did slip, little by little. And as always, I could do nothing to stop it.
It was tissued back then, today it was lace. I adjusted her veil, smoothing it down with hands that felt borrowed, ghostlike. Standing behind her, where we should have been framed in the mirror, only she sat there. Pretty as a picture, and me, as if I was nothing more than air behind her that gently blew everything into place.
I took my first real look at her, and it struck me like it always did—only harder today. The softness in her cheeks was long gone, carved away by years I hadn’t felt passing. The girl I once knew had slipped quietly into a woman, lines forming around her eyes and at the corners of her smile, small traces of laughter and grief etched into her face. Time had been working on her all this while; I had tried my best not to notice until now. Seeing all those years I’d let blur together were suddenly staring back at me in her reflection just felt…
“You have changed so much, Francoise,” I said, arms circling her shoulders, resting my chin against her crown. My voice was flat, but I tried to press warmth into it. “All grown up now. You look perfect.”
She laughed, though it didn’t sound like it used to. “And you’ve changed too. I never thought I’d see the day you grew taller.”
“Have I now?” I glanced down at myself, and I still looked so small. “That hardly feels like an achievement.”
She didn’t say anything at first, her gaze drifting off to the side, her eyes falling to a specific frame off to the side. Seated gently on a table nearby. Isaac’s face stared back at us, unchanged, untouchable.
“Are you sure you’re okay with carrying that while you hand me off…?” She asked, voice wavering.
“Of course,” I said too quickly. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
It’s not as if I were a sentimental person.
Her hands fidgeted in her lap. “It just feels wrong somehow. You, in that dress, holding him instead of—” Her words broke into a sob. “I just wish he were here. I can’t stop thinking about it, about how unfair it is. Augustus making us cover it up, stealing Isaac’s ideas, erasing him like he was nothing—”
It was not as if I hadn’t noticed that development. Stonehearst had been taking credit for his old students' lesser-known projects, his old research, working off of what was already created and seemingly inventing wonders with a team and more modern technology, while Isaac had made such things from scraps. It was enraging to think about, so I simply didn’t. Not now anyhow.
Francoise’s shoulders shook. I reached for her, pressing my arms around her, smoothing her hair like I had a thousand times before. How quickly she could turn from a grown woman to the young girl I had taken care of for years. “Hey,” I said softly, “not today. This is your day, Francoise. He’d want you smiling, not unraveling. I’ll handle Stoneheart. Let me handle all of it. You just have to walk down that aisle.”
And leave all of this behind you, leave me here as fate often does.
She sniffled, but her sobs kept catching, “I just…it feels like I’m betraying him by being happy.”
“You’re not.” My voice came out steadier than I felt. As hopeful as my words were coming out, I found myself feeling as if I were lying straight through my teeth as I knelt down and took her shaking hands in mine, looking up at her. “You are honoring him by living. By finding joy, he would have wanted that. Francoise, look at you—you’ve come so far, grown into someone he’d be so proud of. And I’m proud of you, too. More than words could ever say. Don’t let grief steal this day from you.”
She breathed unevenly, clinging to my touch. Slowly, tremors eased. Her reflection in the mirror blurred as tears slipped down her cheeks. Meanwhile, I wiped at her tears quickly before they could ruin her beautiful makeup. Today wasn’t for tears.
I smiled up at her, or at least, I mimicked the shape of one with my lips. Inside, all I could think of was how wrong it felt—that time had carved her into someone new, while I stood still, untouched, as if time kept me frozen in that God awful tower. She was changing, moving forward, and I was only watching her disappear into the distance. I told myself it was a good thing. That moving on was a strength. That letting go was healing. But the words tasted like ash.
Francoise turned her head, eyes shining with fresh tears, but her voice gentled. She had that look that people only get with experience, a kind of wisdom I hadn’t recognized she had gained. She was my best friend as I was hers, as good as I was at hiding, only she had the vision to see into me. “You always try to be strong for me. Too strong. But you don’t have to be. Not today.” She pressed her forehead against mine. “Give yourself a moment, too. Today is a day meant to be sentimental, so indulge me, will you? Go a bit easier on yourself, even if it is for one night.”
I didn’t know how to feel when hearing her words. So I had done what I had done for all these years, and simply went through the motions. I squeezed her hand, nodding like it had meant something to me, like I’d take her advice later. But my chest was already heavy with the truth I kept swallowing.
Walking down the aisle, I clutched that framed photograph to my chest, its weight heavy. Every step felt like I was moving through a dream that wasn’t mine. I could hardly feel the ground beneath my feet, and I could hardly feel the air in my lungs. My body moved, but I felt like I was taking up the backseat in my own mind.
This hideous red dress clung to me; even in its simplicity, it felt gaudy and suffocating, as though mocking me with every fold of its fabric. The crowd blurred at the edges, faces smeared into nothing, yet I could feel their eyes. Morticia and Gomez, among them, are silent, watchful. Of course they were. She had invited them—why? A sign of good faith? They were part of the chain of events that led him to that grave. Their presence gnawed at me, a raw wound that time wouldn’t close. But what good was this anger? What good was blame? To point a finger at them, at anyone, I told myself it wouldn’t change the fact that he was gone. Just forget about it.
Still…having someone to blame would’ve been easier. Easier than sitting here now, sitting at that funeral with an empty casket, in this endless loop of if-onlys. Maybe it was my fault. Maybe if I had never suggested Gomez help at all, none of this would have happened, and it would be him sitting here instead of me.
I didn’t even know why I came, why Francoise even wanted me here; it was not as if I was really here. I didn’t speak to anyone, did not give a speech, and none of these pictures she would look back to would have me in them. Was there really a point in sticking around at all anymore?
Time slipped strangely after seeing old friends again. I couldn’t tell if minutes passed or hours. One moment I was watching Francoise’s vows—her lips moving, her voice catching, though I could barely hear it past the ringing in my ears—and then suddenly the music started, and it was the first dance. Everything felt staged, placed like props before me, hollow and unreal.
I sat stiff, my hands still locked around the frame, as thought letting go of it would erase what little tether I had left. Isaac was gone, nothing but a body rotting beneath the dirt now. This picture—this was all that remained, just ink on paper. It wasn’t him, never would be.
The bouquet in Francoise’s hands, bright and fragile, mocked me most of all. A handful of blossoms, destined to wither in days, yet we clung to them, pretending they symbolized something eternal. We all dressed in what was to decay in lace and ribbons, told ourselves it meant love, meant forever. But, of course, it didn’t. It couldn’t.
Life itself was nothing but the cruelest joke. Meaningless, fleeting, a carousel of worthless sentiments that I was eternally stuck on to experience over and over again. We walked in circles, desperate to pretend our kindness mattered, when in truth, there was nothing. Just the inevitable rot.
I don’t remember leaving the venue. One moment, I was a body in the wedding crowd—plastic smiles, polite claps—the next, I was staggering across the lawn, the reception music a distant thread tugging me along. Lantern light pooled on the grass; the air smelled of spilled wine and crushed flowers. I still had the photograph in my hands, the glass cloud against my chest. His face looked absurdly small, held like this—an inch of printed shadow and ink that could not possibly hope to contain him.
I’m not a sentimental person.
And yet there I was, close enough to the speakers that the violins reached me in long, aching sighs, and I began to move.
It started as the faintest sway–one foot, then the other—like testing a seam. Then, stupidly, I let sentiment take the lead. In my head, his hand was at my waist, that ridiculous, arrogant confidence in the way he would guide me, like he owned the floor because he was someone who could draw nothing into being. He would have teased me about dancing alone like this—call it theatrical, call me dramatic. But then he would have laughed and spun me anyway, and the laugh ignited a light that only he ever could.
I let myself be ridiculous. I held that frame to my chest and moved with the music, slow and careful at first, then with more abandon. The red fabric clung to me—the dress I had tried in that boutique—brushed against moonlit grass, a color that felt like a dare. I pressed my temple into the outer frame as if the weight of that photograph could close the distance that had opened between us. I listened for the tick—of his clockwork heart, that steady little punctuation I’d come to learn—and absurdly, I imagined it beating beneath the paper. For a breath, the sound steadied something inside me.
He had twirled me in my mind’s play; from that impossible vantage, the world had seemed less sharp, as if the edges dulled as he held me. The truth was that life doesn’t have a set meaning in it. For a moment, I had grasped onto something real, something that once filled me with hope. That left me raw and in pieces, but I had it for that moment; one reckless boy had found a way to sweep me off my feet. And the view from where he lifted me was beautiful, and I feel selfish for being angry at the world. For tricking me into thinking for a moment that whatever that was could have been mine.
When the song stuttered to the end—one last tremulous chord—the illusion broke. My legs folded beneath me before I could think, and I landed on the damp grass, the hem of my dress soaking up in the dew and dirt. The picture slipped from my fingers and hit the soil with a soft, obscene thud. I pressed my hands to my mouth. The sound that came next was not quiet grief but raw, a sound I have never let myself make ever since that night: a shriek that started in my ribs and tore at my throat until it burned.
I had promised Francoise I’d let myself feel, and like any promise to her, I honored it. The sobs came in rolling waves, loud and ugly—silenced by my hands to hide away from the reception. My shoulders heaved. My chest felt as if someone had hammered it thin and left it exposed. Tears blurred everything; mascara streaked black down my cheeks and mixed with the salt and dirt. I clutched the photograph and pressed it against my face, as if paper and glass could somehow stop the leak of everything that had been dammed up inside me for years.
Incandescent and doomed, loving an Icarus meant watching him burn out at dawn. I should have known this was how it was to be.
I still hadn’t the slightest clue of how long it had been, minutes blurred into a smear of cold air and the distant murmur of the party. I hiccuped into silence, the aftershocks small and ridiculous. My sobs turned to shaky breaths, breaths that I wanted to be silenced so badly I bit my own tongue to keep them in. I sat there until the rawness in my eyes turned into an ache and my shoulders no longer convulsed with every intake.
When I could move, I wiped the tracks on my face, blotting away the evidence until my skin felt too exposed for touch. I flipped the photograph face down so I no longer had to look at him, taking the frame in my arms once more and forcing myself upright. Standing up felt foreign in this moment. I smoothed out the dress as if I could iron out the grief and did what I could to pull myself together.
Francoise would be waiting. She would think I’d been gone for only a moment. She would smile that small, fragile smile that crumples my resolve in the best and worst of ways, and she would need me to be strong, not the puddle I’d just been. The thought steadied me more than anything left in this world could. For her, I would put the face on. For her, I would sew myself back together. I would hold it together, regardless of whatever time we had left.
Everything has felt blurry. As I marched through the years, there was no point in fighting, as it dragged you forward. Looking up, suddenly you realize you’ve been carried a decade away from the last place you bothered to think about it.
One moment, it was Francoise in white, a bouquet thrown over her head, carried by music and champagne. And then, somehow, without my noticing the passing of years, she was gone. Buried in that same earth that claimed Isaac, the same earth that swallows all eventually.
What lingers of her now is not her laughter, but her baby.
I remember the first day, the hospital room thick with antiseptic and sweat, when she pressed him into my arms. So small, so impossibly breakable, the weight of him was less than any stone I had ever carried, and yet he felt heavier than the world. Francoise had looked at me then with tired, luminous eyes and said, You’re his godmother. If anything happens…
And something did.
Now, there was no fragile child swaddled in blankets. No softness, no gentle hope. Only chains. Iron biting into his wrists as he shifts in the restraints, the dull light of Willow Hill making his skin look sallow. His eyes—Francoise’s eyes, but sharpened, twisted into something dark—following me like a predator testing the cage.
It was impossible to reconcile the memory of that delicate boy in my arms with the teenager crouched in the corner now. Tyler is dangerous, the doctor had said. Manipulative. Unpredictable. A Hyde. His presence hums with caged violence that unsettles even the guards behind iron doors. It made me wonder what keeps the roof above our heads from splintering apart.
This place…these halls…they are cursed. The same halls where Francoise took her last breath now hold her baby in chains. History repeats itself, crueler this time, and I find myself whispering silently to her ghost: What would you think of me now? Would you be furious that I let it come to this? That I didn’t protect him? That I didn’t protect you?
“Tyler…” My voice scraped against my throat, gentler than I had allowed myself to be. Softness never came naturally to me, not even after all those years of practice with Francoise. “It’s me again.”
Predictably, he didn’t answer. He rarely did. That silence of his was louder than words—deliberate, suffocating, as if he wanted me to feel small for even daring to speak. Perhaps I should have been frightened. Anyone else would have been.
Francoise had once called me here to help her through her own Hyde spirals—those awful nights of postpartum madness when she’d claw at her own skin, eyes empty but burning, begging me to hold her steady while doctors strapped her down. That had been horror enough. But Tyler…Tyler had already spilled blood. Real blood. There was no denying that.
“It’s cold in here,” I tried again, pulled at the silence like it was a stubborn thread. My eyes slid to his arms, the gooseflesh, the way his wrists trembled faintly against the chains. “And I don’t know why they won’t bother clothing you properly…” Though I did know, of course. They didn’t want to make him comfortable, not when comfort meant strength. He’d probably tried too many times to force the Hyde out, to rip his way out of this place.
I reached into my bag and pulled out a folded blanket, worn soft with age, though I’d washed it carefully just this morning. It smelled faintly of lavender detergent, and underneath, still, the ghost of something floral and old. “But,” I said, crouching to the little metal slot meant for his food trays, “I brought something. Found it at the back of my closet. Your mothers. She used to bring it over during sleepovers. I guess I forgot to return it…”
For a moment, nothing. He didn’t move. He didn’t even blink. Just sat there, heavy shadows casting over into something feral. Then, slow as if he wanted to stretch the moment thin and unbearable, he rose. The chains rattled behind him, a low drag of iron against stone, before he crouched by the blanket.
He tilted his head, studying it. His fingers brushed across the fabric as though teasing its reality. Then he lifted it, pressing it briefly to his face.
That look that crossed him wasn’t softness—it was too sharp for that—but something almost vulnerable crept in for a heartbeat. And then it was gone.
I glanced, unwillingly, at the shock collar clamped around his throat. Brutal thing. His arms were slick with sweat, thin scars scrawling like tally marks on his chest and face. I wondered if they ever even tried to treat him, or if he was simply the institution’s caged animal now.
“I don’t remember much from her,” he said. “My dad never wanted to talk about her. He’d change the subject, slam a door. Said her world wasn’t for me.” His lip curled. “He hasn’t even visited me once.”
“Your father,” I said, letting the words drag, “is an ass. Always has been—he thought the only way to keep you normal was to keep everything away from you. And from me.”
“So you tried?” His eyes flicked up, sharp, too calculating for his years.
“Of course I tried. I brought toys, letters, and showed up at the door. He probably threw most of it away, stood at the doorway once, and told me if I came back again, he’d file a restraining order.” I gave a mirthless little shrug. “I called bullshit, he never let me in through, though.”
Tyler laughed, but it was hollow. He held the blanket at his side, jaw tense. “Figures.”
Ah, so daddy issues? Donvan was a piece of shit, in my opinion, anyhow, I never liked him, but Francoise was too head over heels to ever notice that. I didn’t think it mattered; if she was happy, then whatever—once again, I proved to be a fool.
There was a silence after that, thick and sticky. I let it sit until he finally said, too casually, “You could help me out of here, you know. You’re old, seem clever…and stronger than you look. They wouldn’t expect it from you. You could cut the power, find the keys. Get me out.”
I stared at him, blinking once, slowly. “Oh, of course. Let me just pick the locks, throw you over my shoulder, and march us right out of the front gate. I’m sure the armed guards won’t mind at all. We’ll get milkshakes once we are out, too, shall we?”
His jaw tightened. “I’m serious.”
“So am I.” I learned forward, lowering my voice. “Tyler, I wish I could hand you a better life. I wish there was something beyond these walls for you right now that didn’t end in blood. But the truth? Letting you out would just mean a trail of bodies until they brought you back in—if they didn’t try to kill you first.”
He leaned closer too, chains clinking as he gripped the bars between us. His smile was wrong—too sharp, too much like a knife. “So you’ll just sit there, pretend you care, bring me a blanket, and wall away while I rot?”
I arched a brow, feigning nonchalance, though my stomach knotted. “Well, when you put it like that, you sound almost ungrateful.”
Looking up, I tilted my chin just slightly toward the corner of the room, letting Tyler follow my gaze. A camera sat there, its tiny red light pulsing like a heartbeat. Beside it, a speaker—one of many—where the staff could speak and listen through, waiting for him to slip. One wrong word, one twitch too sharp, and they’d shock him, drug him, break him all over.
I hated this place. I hated that Donovan had chosen this solution, locking Tyler inside these walls, chaining him like a dog. But I couldn’t argue the practicality—Willow Hill was one of the only outcast institutions in the country with even a whisper of experience handling Hydes. And yet, the air here always tasted like faulture
“Look, Tyler,” I said, my voice lighter than I felt, trying to sound almost conversational, as if we weren’t standing in a concrete tomb. “After this year, I’ll have taken every class Nevermore has to offer. I’ll be gone—new job, new place, far from here. You’ll be a legal adult once the courts say you don’t need all of this anymore.” I gestured toward the collar, the chains, the suffocating weight of the room. “If you don’t want your father in the picture—and I wouldn’t blame you—I’ll let you stay with me. A place to stay. Food. Someone in your corner.”
I couldn’t say the truth: that breaking him out wasn’t even an option. I’d be hunted to the ends of the earth for even showing I was genuinely entertaining it; it wasn’t as if I had anything to lose anymore. But I couldn’t risk letting him loose when he still bent his ear, willingly or not, to a murderous master. Tyler would destroy himself. I couldn’t risk letting Francoise’s baby out into a world that still had it out for him.
He didn’t respond, not right away. His expression was unreadable, his sharp features betraying nothing but a glimmer of thought. But I could see it—the faintest flicker of consideration. That was enough. Enough to plant the seed. Perhaps it was futile, perhaps his bloodline really did curse him to a tragic end…I hope this time I can do one thing right, and at least do right by him.
A guard appeared at the door, keys jangling as though punctuating the end of our visit. Beside him stood Dr. Fairburn, the ever-polite shepherd of these halls, ready to guide me out.
I gave Tyler a lazy wave, masking the weight of everything with a crooked half-smile. “I’ll see you next time, kid. Maybe by then you’ll have cooked up a proper escape plan.”
As the heavy door closed behind me, my smile fell like a mask dropping. The corridors stretched on ahead, endless rows of cells echoing with screams, sobs, and animalistic growls. The stench of disinfectant fought to disguise the rot of despair, and it never worked. Willow Hill could paint over the walls as often as it liked, but nothing could mask the inhumanity festering inside.
And then, as if summoned by my thoughts, came a sight that I hadn’t expected—hadn’t wanted.
A nurse wheeled out an old man. His body sagged against the seat, a wasted husk of skin and bones. Hollow cheeks, parchment skin stretched too thin, eyes fogged and distant like windows into a house long abandoned. Augustus Stonehearst.
My stomach turned at the sight of him, but not out of pity. No, it was something far darker, sharper. A curl of pride wormed its way through my chest. Once, this man had been brilliant. Once, he had been untouchable—my professor, a normie that fooled everyone into whispering about him in awe. And now? Now he was drooling into his lap, a shell of himself, in the very institution he used to run.
He once prided himself on knowing things other people couldn’t see. He collected brilliance the way some people collected coins. He hoarded minds and called it teaching. Letting that mind rust in a place like this felt less like mercy and more like justice. For a man who wanted to measure the world, to dissect it down to its last honest nerve, the cruelest reward is to be left with nothing but your own unbearable knowledge as company.
“You know Gus?” Dr. Fairburn asked idly, oblivious to the way my gaze lingered on him like a dagger.
“Gus?” I echoed, letting out a soft laugh. “What a cute nickname. He and I go way back. He used to be my professor.” I let my smile sharpen, fangs flashing. “Of course, I know him.”
As I passed by, his cloudly eyes flickered, just faintly, with recognition. His body twitched and jerked away; he began to scream. Wailing like a little bitch, so much so that a few nurses rushed over to hold him down. And in that instant, I knew he remembered me.
Good, I thought. Good to know some things were still under control.
You could call it vengeance if you’d like, but I call it accountability. He begged for a mind half as bright as Isaacs's; he got what he deserved. His mind was broken, yes, but he remembers enough to have rotted with it for the last few cruel years. There is dark poetry in that torture I know too well, the curse of knowing yet never dying.
I walked on, leaving him back to he was left to decay in here. It was a satisfaction that always surprised me with its feeling every time I saw the fear in his eyes. I told Francoise I would handle him, so I had.
And with that reassurance, I return to the march of time.
master list part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 part 6 part 7 part 8 part 9 part 10 (you're here) part 11 ...
A/N: this took longer than usual, i was still recovering from whatever was wrong with my stomach. But I had this idea mostly thought out already, but it was just a matter of beefing it up and making sure it didn't get too long, also shoutout to my friends who proofread this chapter to make sure it sounded right
Obviously, spoiler warnings to those who have yet to finish the second season of Wednesday
warnings: swearing, gore, overall graphic descriptions, major angst, im sorry guys
word count: 4.3 K
I hadn’t wanted to come. At least, that’s what I had told myself. Francoise and Morticia had insisted—practically marched me here after class—while I trudged along behind them, arms crossed, muttering things like “it’s just a school dance” and “I don’t need a new dress.”
I didn’t tell them anything, only that I would be attending. I thought I was convincing.
Morticia, of course, never broke stride; her serene smile was her silent way to say she saw straight through me. Francoise only hummed cheerfully at my side, her knowing grin far too smug for someone who hadn’t even spoken yet.
By the time the bell above the shop door chimed, I had perfected my poker face. Or so I thought.
The boutique’s warmth swallowed me whole the moment we stepped in. Chandeliers dripped in a soft gold light across rows of silks and satins, shadows shifting against the velvet curtains, fabrics whispering as they brushed together on their racks. The air smelled faintly of lavender and sut, the kind of cozy but luxurious atmosphere that made it impossible not to feel…enchanted.
Because the truth was, standing among all these gowns, it hit me: I was going to the Rave’N. With Isaac. And for all my stubbornness, the thought made something in me fizz like champagne. He asked me. The memory of his voice still echoed in my mind, made me giddy, how smooth and certain he sounded: Go with me. Wear red.
And just like that, my carefully cultivated indifference cracked. My lips twitched before I could stop them, the corner of a smile betraying me.
Francoise caught it instantly, her eyes lighting up like she’d just won a bet. “Aha! There it is,” she announced, pointing to me like a victorious lawyer presenting evidence. “I knew you were excited!”
“I’m not,” I said too quickly, tugging my coat tighter around me as if that could smother the warmth building in my chest.
Morticia gilded past us, her fingers trailing over a rack of gowns, her midnight hair falling around the tilt of her head like a curtain. “You’re glowing. It’s charming.”
“I am not,” I muttered, ducking behind a rack of dark lace like it was a shield. “This lighting just must be…flattering.”
Francoise popped out from behind another display, arms full of sequined horrors that could probably blind onlookers if they caught the moonlight wrong. Since when did she get there?
“Don’t even bother denying it,” she sang, her grin wide enough to make my ears burn. “You were literally humming when I caught you after class. You never hum. You’re practically floating. Isaac insisted I’d bring you out tonight; he wouldn’t tell me more, but the fact he mentioned dress shopping mixed with you being giddy…it’s all very suspect. ”
“He did—? I mean—I’m just tired,” I tried, deadpan. “Sleep deprivation does strange things to people.”
Morticia’s red lips curled into the faintest smirks. “Strange indeed. Like working up the nerve to say yes to the boy who’s been painting you for weeks?”
I froze. “...Excuse me?”
Her expression didn’t change. If anything, it softened, the kind of smile that felt both comforting and unnerving. “I’m glad he finally gave you the gift. And that Gomez and I were able to get him to ask you. I was beginning to wonder how long he’d stall, for all his expertise, he is bad with affairs of the heart.”
I stared at her, dumbfounded. “You knew?”
“A dove always knows when romance is in the air,” she said simply, her voice lilting like a melody. “Though it was sweet to watch the two of you stumble around each other as if no one else could see the truth.”
“Truth?” I sputtered. “There is not— it’s not—”
“Future sister-in-law,” Francoise gasped, her hands flying to her mouth with exaggerated drama. “Oh my God, you were really going to keep this from me? From me?”
“It just happened!” I protested, though my ears felt hot enough to combust.. “And it’s not what you think—”
“It’s exactly what I think.” Francoise dumped the sequined pile onto the nearest chaise and bounced up to me, clutching my arm and shaking me rather violently for a girl her size. “You’re going to the Rave’N with my brother. My brother. And he made you a painting to ask you? Do you know how many lifetimes I’ve been waiting for this moment? I always knew you would end up in my family—”
“You’re delusional,” I said, but it came out weak, more of a pout than a proper retort.
I had no idea why I was denying it so much. I was fighting not to bounce off the walls, but the whole situation left me feeling shy if I was honest. This was new territory for me. I was not used to this classic high-school romance stuff, let alone sharing my business with girls, relative to my technical age group. For so long a shadow in my own life, watching things pass me by. Now here I was, letting Francoise and Morticia tug me towards rows of silk and velvet like a reluctant doll.
Morticia’s laugh was soft, almost like a sigh toward the end, and she plucked a black gown from the rack. “Delusion, intuition— it hardly matters when the outcome is the same.” She’d held the dress out to me with a graceful flick of her wrist. “Try this one. Isaac will forget how to breathe. Oh, and this one as well.”
Francoise gasped, as though the universe had just presented her with a divine prophecy, throwing a different dress at me for catch, “Yes, yes, this one too! Oh, these are all just perfect.”
“Will you two stop—” I tried, but another hanger was shoved into my hands.
Francoise leaned close, whispering like she couldn’t contain herself. “Why don’t you just admit it already? He asked you, didn’t he?”
I bit the inside of my cheek, clutching the fabric tighter. “...He told me to wear something red.” The words slipped out before I could stop them.
Both girls froze for a beat, then squealed in a perfect, terrifying harmony. Francoise clutched her chest dramatically. “I knew it! My future sister-in-law, keeping secrets from me—shame on you!”
Morticia only hummed, but her head tilted in that strange way of hers, like she was listening to something beyond us. She set the dress she was holding aside, stepping lightly down the aisle. Her long fingers trailed over silks, velvets, and chiffons, pausing every so often, until finally she stilled. Her expression shifted, distant, like she’d caught a whisper in the air.
“Morticia?” Francoise asked, brows rising.
“Shh…” Morticia’s eyes fluttered closed for just a moment. Then she turned sharply, gliding toward the back of the shop. She reached into a hidden rack, parting gowns like curtains until her hand landed on something deep, scarlet, and sleek. She drew it out, holding it carefully by the hanger as if it might shatter.
When she turned back, her dark gaze pinned me with the weight of inevitability. “This one,” she said simply. “It carries…a signature. An importance. It belongs to you.”
The dress itself was breathtaking, but it was cut with such precision that it seemed sculpted. Satin pooled in rich folds, smooth as spilled wine, the neckline was elegant without being garish, the silhouette clean and sharp.
I swallowed, throat tight, unable to look away. Would I even be able to do a dress like this justice?
Francoise shoved me gently toward the dressing room, eyes glittering. “Go. Try it on. Now.”
Morticia’s smile curved, secret and knowing. “Let’s see if fate agrees.”
With both of them staring me down, resistance was useless. I grumbled under my breath as I disappeared behind the curtain. The fabric slid on like second skin— sleek, smooth, and heavier than it looked. Brushing out the dress, I couldn’t help but be in awe and how perfectly it seemed to have fit me. It was waiting for me.
Always trust a psychic to tell you what to wear.
I stepped out before I could lose my nerve. Francoise clapped both of her hands over her mouth and squealed. Moritcia only smiled, but the weight of her gaze was heavier than applause.
“Red really is your color—you look…” Francoise fanned herself dramatically. “...like you’re going to kill him. In the best way.”
“She won’t need to,” Morticia murmured. “I know the look of a whipped man. He’s already undone.”
I flushed so hard I had to look away, pretending to adjust the folds.
Maybe, for once, I wouldn’t mind being seen.
The three of us lingered there, laughter spilling easily, their excitement wrapping around me until my nerves loosened. Morticia’s calm certainty, Francoise’s uncontainable joy—it was contagious. For the first time, I let myself admit it. I wanted this. The dance. The dress. Isaac. All of it.
—-
The shop had long emptied of its noisy bustle. Francoise had eventually declared she had “Urgent matters of her own” —though the dramatic wink she tossed over her shoulder as she left told me perhaps it had less to do with errands. I loved that she had come out from her shell, but at the same time, I didn’t know what to do with this girl.
But that left just Morticia and me, walking back slowly through the winding corridors of Ophelia Hall. Red dress boxed and tucked beneath my arm like a secret I could hardly believe belonged to me.
Morticia’s side dormitory was draped in velvet shadows, while her roommate's side was classy but admittedly rather blinding to look at, with how bright it was. But perhaps the most gorgeous part of the room was the soft glow illuminating the great rose window that crowned the room. Moriticia led me wordlessly up through one of the panes that could be pushed aside like a door, her movements always deliberate as he black outfit swept behind her like a shadow come to life.
We slipped outside onto the balcony, and the night air kissed my face with a cool, almost metallic bite. Below us sprawled the forest, black and endless, and above, the stars strained to pierce the heavy shroud of clouds. Behind us, the rose window glowed faintly, bleeding its jeweled light across the stone floor. It separated us—Moritica on the bright side of its shadowed pattern, myself on the darker half—like some sort of unspoken barrier, a presage neither of us called aloud.
I set the box aside and leaned against the stone railing, feeling suddenly smaller than I wanted to admit. “Could I ask a kind of strange question?”
She glanced over for a mere moment before nodding and looking back into the darkness below. “Of course, I live for them.”
“Morticia, I—” I started, voice thin, “what if I don’t know what to do?”
Her dark eyes shifted towards me once more, patient, the corners of her lips lifting as though she’d expected the question all along.
“I mean…” My throat tightened. “I’ve never had this. Any of this. I don’t know how I’m supposed to act, what it should feel like. I know it’s just a school romance, and I shouldn’t be reading too much into it. I don’t even know where this whole thing is supposed to go, I mean, I–” I let a brittle laugh that clung to the night air. Taking a moment before I spoke again. “What if I…keep going and he…doesn’t?”
Saying the quiet part out loud was always hard. It’s the first romance I had in my life, and I didn’t know how to bear it. Falling in love was scary, but I wasn’t so stupid as to say I wasn’t ensnared. All things end; that was enviable, so many firsts for me. I am happy, but I could not help but question how long that would last.
The silence after was almost unbearable. The moonlight stretched across the floor like fractured glass, highlighting every sharp edge of my fear.
Morticia turned her head, her profile cutting against the glow of the rose window. Her voice came quietly but resonantly, each word unfurling with gravity. “You fear the future because, for once, you see the possibility of someone else in it. That is the nature of attachment. But love, my dear, does not promise permanence. It never has. It promises intensity.”
I swallowed, blinking against the sting in my eyes. “That all sounds…terrifying.”
Her lips curved, faintly amused, faintly sad. “Yes. And rewarding. To be loved is to risk devastation. To love is to risk being undone. But to refuse it altogether?” She tilted her head, her gaze pinning me like a specimen under glass. “That is the greater tragedy.”
I shifted my weight, arms folding across myself as if I could hide behind my own skin. “I’m not afraid of being hurt. Not really, that part is inevitable, I suppose. I’m afraid of it being a waste. Of waking one day and realizing it was nothing more than a spark—that it meant more to me than it did him. That I’ll remember every heartbeat, and it all means nothing in the end.”
Morticia let the words linger. Then she drifted closer, her presence like smoke—soft enveloping, inevitable. “If he forgets, then he was never worthy. But…” Her hand brushed lightly across mine, cool and steady. “From what I see, he is not the sort who’d just forget. He clings. He devours. He would etch you into his bones if you’d let him.”
A reluctant, shaky smile tugged at my lips. “You make it sound like a curse.”
Her dark eyes glittered. “It is. A beautiful one. The kind you’ll crave even as it burns you.”
I looked down, my voice small. “And if it ends anyway?”
“Then you will have lived,” Morticia said simply. “Loved. Tasted what most go their entire lives without daring. That is worth the risk, is it not?”
Bullshit. I wanted to say. I wanted to argue. To fold myself back into my doubts and let them shield me. But the way she said it—like it as a face, like it was inevitable—it left me speechless.
I let her words linger, rolling them in my mind like stones in a tide pool. Somehow, they cut and smoothed all at once. But curiosity got the better of me, as it often did when Morticia spoke of him.
“You make it sound so effortless,” I murmured, glancing sideways at her. “You and Gomez, I don’t think I’ve ever seen two people so…certain. Don’t you ever worry about the future? About…if, God forbid, time pulls you apart?”
At that, Morticia’s lips curved into something softer than her usual composure allowed. She tilted her head toward the moonlight, as if basking in memory. “There is no apart from Gomez. He is…my everything. My mirror, my flame, my fiercest admirer and advocate. I’ve never once had to ask for his devotion; it is simply there, constant as night is day. If the ground were to crumble beneath us, I know he would still find a way to reach me.”
There was little room for doubt; maybe that’s what proved to her it was real.
Her voice warmed, smoky with affection. “That is what I love most about him—his immediacy. Gomez never hesitates. When someone needs him, he is already moving, as though fate tugs the strings of his heart and he obeys without question. He helps even without being asked, and he looks out for everyone. That’s someone to look for in a partner, to start something serious, a family with.”
I smiled faintly despite myself. I could never say before someone's joy could bring about my own, but to hear her devotion. Even as he wasn’t here, that proved to me it was real, too. “That sounds…unreal.”
“Oh, it is very real,” she replied with a quiet laugh. “Even tonight, he left me only an hour ago when word reached him. Something about Isaac needing his help tonight with one of his projects, I believe.”
I blinked, the smile dying on my lips. “...What did you say?”
She hummed, entirely unbothered, brushing a strand of raven hair from her face. “Yes, he said Isaac requested his assistance in Iago Tower. You know how Gomez is—ever the helpful soul, especially with his closest friend.”
My chest tightened sharply, my breath catching before I even realized I’d stopped breathing. Isaac hadn’t mentioned anyone coming over. Not Gomez, not anyone. He told me he was still working to fix the machine's power system. He told me nothing.
I turned instinctively toward the gothic skyline, my eyes climbing up the stone outline of Iago Tower. And then I saw it— sparks dancing across the clockface, white-blue streaks of electricity cracking against the night. Not subtle. Not harmless.
Something was wrong.
“...No.” The word tore from my throat, thin and strained. My heart pounded so loud it drowned out the rest of the courtyard, every instinct in me screaming.
Without another thought, I pushed away from the balcony, nearly stumbling as my legs carried me forward. “Something's wrong—I have to go!”
“Wait—!” Morticia’s voice followed after me, calm but edged with surprise.
I didn’t wait. My shoes struck stone, too loud, too fast, as I tore through the halls and out into the open grounds, my eyes never leaving the crackling silhouette of the tower above. Panic clawed at my ribs. Isaac was up there. And if he hadn’t told someone would be there, then that could mean—
Morticia’s shoes clicked behind me, steady and unhurried compared to the frantic slap of my own steps. “Darling, slow down. What’s happened?”
I barely heard her. My mind was racing too fast, snapping pieces into place like jagged glass slamming into a twisted mosaic. Isaac hadn’t told me. He hadn’t told me when Gomez would help him. He hadn’t told me anything at all. And if he’d hidden it…if he’d been so quick to insist I go out tonight…
The truth lodged itself like a splinter in my throat. He knew whatever he was doing, I’d try to stop it.
I shook my head violently, hair whipping my face, as if I could fling the thought away. But the crackle of lightning crowning Iago Tower was undeniable, spreading across the night sky in bursts of blue-white arcs.
“I don’t—” my voice cracked, breaking with the air rushing out of me, “—I don’t know exactly. But if Isaac didn’t tell me…then something's wrong. If he’s hiding it. He—”
My throat locked again. Morticia, for once, said nothing. She only followed, her pale face settling into a look of pure panic.
By the time we managed to make our way up the twisting stairs and burst through the warped doors of the tower, the air inside was thick with smoke and the scent of scorched metal. The tang of ozone burned my nose, stinging sharply.
Gomez was bound to a grotesque chair up on the upper level— its shape sickeningly close to an electric chair, restraints biting into his wrists and ankles. His body was shaking violently, his face grimacing every time arcs of power rippled through the machine; he looked both painfully aware of all that was around him yet also completely out of it. His body jerked against the bindings with each surge, but the leather and steel held fast.
Across from him, Francoise lay down on the laboratory’s operating table, her body rigid as bolts of energy crawled over her skin. She was screaming through clenched teeth, the sound raw and ragged, as the machine poured its fury into her. Sparks raced up and down her frail body. The Hyde gene— Isaac had said he wanted to kill it. But not like this. Not like this.
“No…no, no, no—” My chest tightened so violently I thought it would cave. My eyes whipped around, desperate. “Isaac?!”
But there was no sign of him. The only answer was the groan of the machine. He wasn’t here—not in any spot I could see. He was probably buried in its guts, controlling it from the shadows.
“Help me get him out!”
Morticia had moved faster than me, darting for him, her movements sharp, sure—but the instant her fingers brushed one of the buckles, a violent shock crackled up her arm. She hissed, recoiling, smoke curling faintly from her sleeve.
“It’s too much,” she snapped, shaking out her hand. “I can’t tell it—”
I paused for a moment, stopping her before she could try again.
Before she could stop me, I threw my arms towards it, hands clawing at the leather straps. Electricity surged instantly through my arms, biting deep, searing across every nerve. My body convulsed, pain bloomed like molten fire, but I forced my hands to move. Immortal or not, it still hurt. It was unbearable. My skin blistered, my muscles screamed as if they’d fall right off the bone, but I didn’t let go.”
Hold still—dammit—hold still!” I gritted, fighting the metal locks on the bindings as Gomez’s weight thrashed beneath the jolts.
“S-Stop—” Gomez rasped weakly, his eyes glassy. “You’ll kill yourself.”
“Shut it!” I snapped, my voice cracking into desperation. “I don’t die that easily—”
Leather strained beneath my grip, my fingers slipping on the slick of my own blood as the currents tore through me. One strap undone—then another. I cried out, half in pain and the other in victory. Grabbing the boy's arm, I pulled him completely off the sparking seat.
And then—
A sound split the tower. A scream—Isaac’s voice, ragged and sharp, echoing deeper within the machine. I froze. Morticia. She wasn’t beside me anymore. She must’ve found him.
“Morticia—?!”
Before I could see, before I could turn, the world exploded.
Lights swallowed everything—blinding, searing. A detonation tore through the tower, hurling bodies and metal alike. I slammed into the steel floor, air wrenched from my lungs as the machine howled and died. The smell of burning wires and charred flesh filled the lab.
My ears rang. A shrill, endless wail, as though the world itself had ruptured. My vision doubled, blurred, fractured into useless pieces. I couldn’t feel my legs at all–only the numb throb of something ruined. Every sound reached me through a veil of water and smoke, muffled, unreal.
And then— nothing but the fight to stay awake, consciousness slipping like sand through my bloodied fingers.
Tick…tick…tick.
I heard it. The sound that had always soothed me, no matter the storm—Isaac’s heart, steady, stubborn, artificial. Only now it grew fainter, sputtering like a dying ember.
My body begged me to stop, to collapse. My legs were basically gone, charred to the bone, scorched meat fused with fabric. The smell of myself burning clung to the air, nauseating, but still I dragged forward. Nails tearing, skin shredding, I crawled across shards of glass and twisted metal, pushing past pain that no longer had a name.
Through the haze, I caught a glint of silver light. That damned ring he always wore—his vanity, his crest. My hand shot out, trembling, desperate, and I seized it, squeezing tight. I’m here. I’ve got you.
But when I pulled, there was nothing attached. Just his hand. Severed, clean through.
No scream came. My lungs filled with blood when I tried, choking me silent. I gagged, coughing up thick clots, and forced myself to move forward anyway, leaving streaks of myself on the floor.
And then—I found him.
His body was twisted wrong, sprawled amongst wires and sparks. His chest barely rose, shallow, fluttering. His face pale, drenched in crimson. He didn’t even stir when I collapsed against him, pressing my ear to his chest. I begged for the beat of his heart, straining myself to hear it through the chaos, but there was almost nothing. A ghost of a rhythm.
Tears blurred what little sight I had left, spilling hot down my ruined face. I wanted to scream at him, to grab him by the collar and shake him back into himself. To hurl words like knives— You bastard, how could you hide this? How could you do this to me? How dare you try and leave me like this?
But when I held him, all of it dissolved. His fragility gutted me. Isaac, who burned me so violently, was just flesh and bone. Flesh that tore. Bones that snapped.
He was covered in red. It painted me too, soaking into my skin, my hair, against my face. The only warmth left in him was the blood spilling out onto me, seeping between us.
I opened my mouth, but the words curdled before they formed. What was there to say? Nothing could change it. Nothing could pull him back.
And then—his remaining hand twitched. Fingers smeared in blood, trembling as they reached for me. Somehow, impossibly, he pushed a strand of hair from my face. His touch left a streak of red against my cheek, tender and grotesque.
“You…” His voice was shredded, cracked, but still his. “...really do look so pretty in red.”
The sound of him, broken and fading, split me open.
I gasped, blood and air mixing in my lungs, and when I finally forced words past my throat, they dissolved into the night. Because then I heard it—the click of his clockwork heart faltering. Stopping.
Everything inside me shattered. I didn’t even realize I was screaming until my own voice tore through the smoke, raw and guttural. It ripped out of me like my body was trying to force my soul from me; it felt like it could shake the walls, shake the stars. A sound so full of grief, so inhuman, I couldn’t recongize it as myself.
I clutched him tighter anyway, even as the lift was already drained out of him in my arms; I couldn’t let go. Not of him. Not of the Icarus I’d fallen in love with—the boy who had always burned too bright, who now lay burned out before my eyes.
master list part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 part 6 part 7 part 8 part 9 (you're here) ...
A/N: yes, I got sick halfway through writing this, but there is no rest for the wicked. I blame all of this on the mf stealing my work for ao3 claiming my soul.
Obviously spoiler warnings to those who have yet to finish the second season of Wednesday
warnings: swearing, crashing the fuck out, Isaac being possessive but also rude, manipulation, friendly reminder hes not a good person
word count: 4.2 K
And now, the so-called “day of testing” had arrived.
Well—testing is the loosest sense of the word. No living subjects (thank God I had to fight him on animal testing), just a simple power run. Isaac insisted this was only a “troubleshoot,” making sure the machine could even turn on without melting into a heap of charred metal.
I had complained—maybe too much— about all the heavy lifting I’d been talked into. But truthfully, most of this was Isaac’s design, his impossible calculations, his endless tinkering. Everyone called him the brightest mind to ever walk the halls of Nevermore, and while I never disagreed, it’s different seeing it happen. Watching brilliance gather momentum. What we had cobbled together in a few months would’ve taken a team of scientists decades. That thought alone made my heart sing. I was proud of him.
“You ready?” I asked, tugging on the oversized lab coat he’d given me. It had once fit him, apparently, back when he was younger. On me, it hung a bit like a child playing dress-up, sleeves slipping past my hands.
He said it served a function; I think he just wanted us to match.
Isaac adjusted his gloves with the meticulous precision of a surgeon. “As I’ll ever be.”
I hesitated, looking at the monstrous machine we had pieced together out of wires, metal, and—let’s be honest— a lot of prayers. “And you’re certain you don’t want to test if it’s safe on me first?”
His head snapped towards me so sharply I flinched. “Absolutely not. That’s out of the question.” His voice was clipped, sharp, final. “Every test run has its bumps in the road. I will not put you at risk, especially if I don’t have to.”
The vehemence should’ve frightened me, but instead it tugged the corner of my mouth upward. For once, his sharpness didn’t feel like it was aimed at me—it felt protective.
He turned back to the console, grabbed the switch, he slowly pushed it up, and the machine rumbled awake. A low hum at first, then louder, vibrating the metal floorboards. Sparks jumped across the wires, lighting the tower in flickers of blue and white. The sound was deafening, like a storm was trapped in the room with us.
Then came the sulfurous tang in the air—burnt and acrid—and suddenly, a violent crack of sparks erupted. An explosion burst from the core at the bottom level, loud and big enough to make us both move back. My heart clawed at my ribs.
Smoke. The hiss of broken wiring.
Neither of us seemed to breathe for a moment, just huddling together in the corner by the controls while we watched the machine powering itself down.
Isaac moved first. He always did. He stormed down the steps of the ladder, waving the smoke from his face, muttering calculations under his breath like a string of curses.
“D-Did it overheat?” I asked, creeping close behind him, covering my nose as I coughed a bit. It took me a moment to join him at the bottom level, and a good thing I didn’t join him immediately.
He didn’t answer. Not at first. He yanked open the power housing, twisted something loose until it came free with a snap, then held the smoking component in his hand. His face hardened, fury boiling over. In one violent motion, he hurled the spherical core across the room. It shattered against the floor in a shower of metal shards. Wires followed, ripped out viciously, tossed aside like entrails.
“Fuck!” The word thundered from him, so raw it startled me backwards.
“Isaac—what happened?”
“I thought I could use the same power core I used for Orloff and myself— it was stable, efficient!” His voice was venom, his hands were shaking. Then, with another wave of his hand, the machine’s power source was ripped from the ground and crashed into the wall, sparking and sending metal parts all over the ground. “But it’s not enough for this! It needs something stronger!”
“We’ll…we’ll find something,” I tried, though I found my voice wavering.
“Don’t patronize me!” he snapped, his voice so loud it cut the air. He rounded on me, eyes alight with something manic, teeth bared like a predator’s. “Set back after set back—because the world is too primitive for me! I need more power, or else this whole project collapses! Do you understand? How much brilliance I’ve wasted on scraps and stone-age circuits of this era that can’t keep up with my designs?! We’ll have to rebuild everything from the ground up!”
The words lashed out like blows. He was pacing now, back and forth, the metal floorboards groaning beneath his boots. His voice grew louder with each turn, his gestures sharper.
For the first time in weeks, his mask slipped. His rage filled the room; to me, it sounded louder than the storming machine had been. The charming, arrogant genius I had grown accustomed to was gone—what stood in front of me was raw, terrifying. His eyes burned with something almost feral, his hands curled into fists, his words edged with mania.
My instinct screamed at me to keep a distance. To retreat. To stay quiet until the storm burned itself out.
But instead—I stepped closer.
“Issac,” I said carefully, voice softer than I meant it to be. “Calm down. We won’t get anywhere if you burn yourself out like this.”
He froze mid-step, chest heaving, eyes wild. For a heartbeat, I thought he might snap again—might turn that fury on me.
“Then what else do you suggest I do?” He snapped.
I swallowed, desperate for something, anything to soothe him. “I don’t know…maybe we could ask Gomez for help?”
The name hung in the air.
Isaac’s whole body went still.
I rushed on, trying to explain, to justify, hoping it would calm him. “He has the Spark, right? If he could power it—even just temporarily— it could give us what we need.”
Silence stressed. Something shifted in his face. The wild rage cooled, honed into something colder, sharper. His expression smoothed, his breathing slowed.
“Yes…” His voice was low, almost a growl, but calmer than before. “Yes, that could work.”
I blinked, relieved, mistaking his sudden composure for comfort. “I just don’t know if he can handle it, though. I mean…that’s a lot of energy, Isaac.”
How long would it take to make another core? Isaac had spent a long time on that power sphere, whatever it was. Maybe his roommate could boost it so it’s a safer amount of power output for him?
Isaac’s lips curved, the faintest suggestion of a smile. To me, it looked like hope. To him, perhaps more akin to hunger. “Don’t worry. Leave Gomez to me.”
Before I could question him, he caught me by the waist, lifting me clean off the ground, and spun me in a sudden, dizzying arc. I yelped, laughing despite myself, his gloves cool against my sides. When he set me down, I hadn’t noticed the crunch under my boots from his earlier rage; his expression was brighter, almost triumphant— like I had handed him salvation.
“You’re brilliant,” he said, brushing a lock of hair from my face with a strange, almost tender amount of precision.
I smiled, still a little breathless, not realizing what piece had been set in place for him.
—-
The next day had been a drag like silver on my shoulders. Between the sparks, smoke, and Isaac’s near meltdown the night before, I’d imagined both of us hadn’t gotten much sleep when we dragged ourselves back to our dorms. I’m sure standing side by side, people would see the matched bruised eye bags—souvenirs of our so-called brilliance. Advanced Biology had been a blur. I dozed through half the lecture, my head propped on my palm, praying Isaac would be merciful enough to let me copy his notes later. He hadn’t woken me up, at least. That had to count for something.
When the class had finally been dismissed, we spilled out into the hall with the rest of the chattering herd. Sunlight slanted through the windows at an angle that forced me to walk like I was dodging invisible lasers just to avoid being burned. My bag felt unusually heavy, which I realized had less to do with my textbooks and more with Isaac slipping half of his own books into it “by accident.”
I sighed. I loved being his pet. Wait— that didn’t sound right. Maybe sleep deprivation really was killing me; I can’t even be sarcastic correctly.
Fate, apparently, wasn’t done mocking me. Just a few steps into freedom, Gomez and Morticia swept directly into our path like they’d been conjured there. They were impossible to miss—an orbit of their own, tethered by something unholy. His arm was looped elegantly around her waist, his every step angled toward her as though gravity itself bent in her favor. Morticia’s hair fell in a raven-dark curtain, framing her pale, otherworldly beauty, while Gomez glowed beside her like a man who had swallowed the sun and decided never to share. They were…easy together. Seamless. Natural.
I would’ve called it endearing if my own crankiness hadn’t made my eye twitch at how dazzling they were. Too bright for my tired eyes.
“Ah—Isaac, my boy!” Gomez slapped him on the shoulder with his usual exuberance, jolting the tall boy beside me fully awake. Isaac’s books nearly tumbled from his hands, and he grimaced. “Just the genius I was hoping to see.”
Isaac managed a polite smile, though I caught the twitch of his jawline. “Convenient. I was hoping to see you as well.”
Morticia tilted her head, sharp eyes glinting. “That sounds ominous.”
Isaac ignored her quip and pivoted to Gomez. His voice slipped into its smooth, persuasive register that always worked wonders on me. “I’ve been running tests on that project I mentioned to you before. The design is sound, but the power supply…”His hand curled into a fist briefly, the faintest shadow of last night’s temper, before he smoothed it away. “It’s inadequate. I thought perhaps you could lend me some assistance, old friend.”
“Me?” Gomez’s face lit up instantly, as if Isaac had offered him front-row tickets to an execution. And honestly, knowing the Addams family, that probably was considered a good time. “You need a spark?”
“Exactly.” Isaac’s smile sharpened. “Your gift might be precisely the key to stabilizing the system— just a few bursts of current, nothing too taxing.”
Morticia arched an eyebrow, voice lilting with sly humor. “Will there be an electric chair? If so, I’d love to attend.”
I froze. Excuse me, what?
Isaac and I both gave her deadpan stares. My dumbfounded expression was probably less dignified, but I wasn’t exactly used to this level of eccentricity. Isaac, however, recovered first. “If that’s what he wants,” he said smoothly. “But I’d prefer to keep attendance at a minimum, in case the machine doesn’t perform.”
“My love,” Gomez said, pressing a dramatic kiss on the back of her hand. “What greater honor than to power a wicked masterpiece?”
He turned back to Isaac, chest swelling with pride. Happy that his best friend trusted him with such a big part in his experiment. “Of course I’ll help, Isaac. Anything for you, my dearest friend.”
I felt Isaac relax beside me, the faintest hum of satisfaction radiating from him. He clasped Gomez’s hand like the perfect picture of gratitude, though I caught the flicker in his eyes. That charm cracked just enough for me to see the glimpse of mischief beneath. Calculation.
My brows furrowed, before I could dwell long on it, Morticia’s voice broke through the moment. “Speaking of masterpieces, Gomez and I wanted to ask if you two were attending the Rave’N?”
“Pardon?” I asked, confused about why they would even ask.
Gomez beamed. “Tish and I have already chosen our ensemble. Midnight silk and raven feathers to match, a symphony of shadows.”
“Of course you have,” Isaac muttered, rolling his eyes. I elbowed him, shooting a glare that said play nice. If we wanted his friend on our side, we couldn’t have this boy's attitude compromise that.
Then Gomez turned his warm, unrelenting gaze on Isaac and me. “And I trust you two will be attending together?”
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
Isaac, on the other hand, stiffened. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Gomez’s grin widened, far too pleased. “Come now, I watch you two whispering and conspiring all the time. I have good ears; I hear this boy sneak out every night.”
“Francoise said the same thing. Apparently, the two of you had gotten close, so I only assumed the inevitable had already happened.” Morticia’s smile was sly, cutting in like a dagger. “A dove can sense these things.”
Heat flushed up my neck. Great. I knew enough about her psychic practices to understand exactly what she meant. Isaac, however, didn’t. He just looked…cornered.
“Absolutely not,” he snapped. The words came too fast, too sharp. “That’s absurd.”
The denial stung more than it should have. I swallowed, forcing a smile that wobbled at the edges. “Well, I’ve never been to any of the dances here anyway,” I said, a little too casually. “Didn’t ever want to. Until maybe this year.”
Isaac’s head turned toward me, quick, suspicious. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
I shrugged, feigning indifference as I looked off to the side, though my heart pounded. “Just that I might be waiting for someone to ask.”
Gomez and Morticia exchanged a look so loaded with knowing that it was almost unbearable. Morticia leaned against Gomez with the faintest smirk, like she’d already read the ending to this story, and he looked positively gleeful, like a cat watching a canary walk into a trap.
Isaac, however, seemed determined to stomp the whole thing flat. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped, though his voice was tight. “You wouldn’t waste your time with something so…frivolous.”
That stung. Bad. Someone help me throw this boy off Iago Tower.
I let out a sharp inhale. “Maybe I would like to try something different.”
The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on. Isaac’s jaw flexed, his eyes darting between me and our two witnesses like he wanted to crush the rumor before it bloomed—but it was too late. Morticia’s smirk only widened.
“Well,” she purred, “it seems we’ll see soon enough.”
Isaac buttered something under his breath and tugged me down the hall, away from Gomez’s delighted chuckles. Huffing as he dragged me around the corner.
We said nothing to either of us. I don’t think we knew what to say after that awkward exchange. I think he knew I was actually upset this time around and actually shut up for once in his life.
The moment Isaac let go of my wrist, the feeling of his grip lingered; the metal of his ring was cold like a phantom against my skin. I stopped walking, planting my feet in the corridor as if the random paintings on the walls were suddenly more interesting than him. My arms folded across my chest in a tight knot, the universal sign for do not talk to me, though of course, he noticed right away.
I didn’t snap at him, though. Didn’t lace my voice with the venom he probably expected, and no doubt deserved for what just happened. Instead, I bit down on the words, kept them ready in my mouth, and chose silence. It felt pettier that way.
The hall around us bustled— students drifting past in pairs, books pressed to chests, laughter bouncing off the stone arches. Sunlight cut in beams through the narrow windows, catching dust motes that danced lazily in the air. But in our little pocket of space, it felt muted, all of it muffled by the quiet war I was waging with crossed arms and a stubborn jaw.
Isac stood there, watching me. He was good at staring, at pinning people down with those dark, assessing eyes until they squirmed. Usually I’d shoot back something caustic, but this time I didn’t give him the satisfaction.
“...You’re mad,” he said finally, his voice pitched lower than usual, stripped of its normal bite.
No shit—
I tilted my shoulder, barely glancing at him. “I’m fine. Is there a reason I should be mad?”
He huffed a quiet, incredulous laugh. “You’re pouting.”
Heat rose in my cheeks— I was not—but I turned my face away so he wouldn’t see. “I’m not,” I said flatly, the words clipped short.
A silence followed, longer this time. I could feel his gaze on me, a weight pressing between my shoulder blades. The air carried that faint tang of ink and chalk dust, the ordinary smells of school, yet the tension between us made it thick, harder to breathe.
For a while, he just studied me, the way he doesn’t when he’s dissecting a formula and waiting for it to crack on its own. The hallway buzzed faintly with voices and footsteps, but it felt like we were sealed off in our own tense little bubble.
God, that was so embarrassing. Did he really have to act like that earlier? He couldn’t have denied any faster if I’d been a plague rat. He did a good job at making me feel as if I was on top of the world one minute, then the next cut me down like it was nothing.
Isaac sighed, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck. Words clearly weren’t doing him any favors. He hesitated, then straightened, his expression sliding back into that unreadable calm he wore when he wanted control of a situation.
“Come with me,” he said finally.
I raised a brow at him, still grumpy, still avoiding his eyes. “Why?’
“Don’t be a brat and just walk with me.” His voice was firmer now, though not unkind.
I didn’t move right away, partly because my pride wanted to watch him squirm a little longer. But when he offered his hand—not grabbing, not dragging this time, just open, waiting—I sighed and slipped mine into his.
He led me out of the crowded halls, through the winding staircases. Until we were climbing the familiar hidden path toward Iago Tower. The air grew cooler the higher we went, the sound of the school fading until it was just the echo of our footsteps on stone.
I kept my frown intact, but curiosity was gnawing at me. He walked with too much purpose, glancing at me now and then as though measuring if the storm cloud still hovered over my head.
Finally, at the tower door. His hand lingered on the iron latch before he looked at me fully, eyes dark and searching. “You’re not allowed to stay mad once you see this,” he murmured, a faint curve tugging at his lips.
I raised an eyebrow, trying not to soften at his attempt. “That so?”
“That’s so.” His smirk deepened just enough to spark my curiosity against my will.
When Isaac shoved the tower door open, it wasn’t the grand reveal he seemed to think it would be. Instead, a choking cloud of dust spilled from the rafters and rained down around us. I coughed, waving my hand in front of my face, glaring at him through the haze as if he’d planned this inconvenience just to test my patience.
The laboratory inside was… cleaner than before. The power housing was still broken, metal casings tossed to the side like shed armor, but the rest of the mess from this morning’s chaos was gone. Polished away. Ordered. It was eerie how fast he had done it.
I squinted at him, arms folded stubbornly again. “Oh. You cleaned up the place—how lovely.”
“That’s not what I wanted to show you.” His voice was too firm, too intent. He brushed past my sarcasm as though it hadn’t touched him at all, and that made my irritation flare hotter.
Without giving me the chance to argue, he started climbing the narrow ladder to the upper level of the lab. Dust flaked off the wooden rungs beneath his hands. He glanced back once, expectant, and for all my pride, I still followed. He offered me his hand at the top like a gentleman, and I hated that I took it. My brows stayed furrowed, my lips pressed thin; I wasn’t going to make this easy for him.
And yet—when I looked up, my eyes snagged on a large rectangular shape, draped in a cream-colored fabric, standing against the wall like a secret trying to breathe.
“What is this—” I startled, but Isaac moved before I could finish, yanking the sheet away with a theatrical flourish. The sound of fabric snapping against the air made me flinch.
What I saw stole the words from my mouth.
It was a painting.
Not the crude, half-finished sketches I’d sometimes glimpsed from his notebooks during class, but something else entirely. Something painstaking. Obsessive. Done with such frightening realism that for a moment I thought the canvas might inhale, its chest might rise and fall.
I stepped closer without meaning to, cough in the web of its detail.
The brushwork was ruthless in its precision, every strand of hair rendered with merciless care. Tiny flyaways defied the order of the res, just enough to breathe life into its whole. The folds of the school uniform were crisp, the fabric seeming to rustle in an invisible wind. The eyes—shining, intent, brimming with a vitality that didn’t belong to just paint—watched me with unyielding patience. The face wore a soft, almost melancholy smile, one that felt too alive, too knowing.
The longer I stared, the more wrong it felt. Because she was small, delicate, her features weighed with a gloom too heavy for her age. She was hauntingly familiar. Painted in shades I knew all too well.
My stomach churned. My hands shook before I realized they were trembling.
And then Isaac’s arms slide around my waist, his chin finding its place on my shoulder as though he had been waiting for this very moment. His presence pressed against me, steadying me against the quake in my knees. His breath brushed my ear as he murmured low, smug:
“Do you recongize her?”
I swallowed, forcing the words out. “Do I…know her?”
He chuckled, dark and quiet, the sound vibrating through my spine. His nose grazed the curve of my neck, sending a shiver through me I didn’t want to admit. “Better than anyone else.”
The truth broke over me like glass. This wasn’t anyone else. This wasn’t some faceless student or stranger. This was the closest to a reflection I could ever get to. I was seeing myself for the first time.
I wavered, dizzy with the realization, my throat tight, “Am I…really that beautiful?”
His arms tightened around me like a vow. His voice curled into my ear with a reverence that frightened me more than his temper ever could. “The kind of beautiful that, once seen, you could never go unnoticed again. You don’t fade, you haunt.”
That undid me. My tears came hot and sudden, spilling faster than I could swipe them away. I hadn’t even noticed until he moved, cupping my cheek, his thumb brushing the stray drops from my skin with deliberate tenderness.
“Don’t cry,” he murmured, tilting his head to watch me as though even more brokenness belonged to him. “You’ll ruin your pretty face.”
I gave a shaky laugh, the kind that cracked under its own weight. “So…that’s why you were so quick to defend yourself earlier? You didn’t want to spoil the surprise?”
His lips curved against my shoulder, the faintest brush of warmth that made my breath hitch. “Something like that.” His voice was smooth, deceptively casual, but there was a thread beneath it—satisfaction, like a predator content with its snare.
The silence thaw followed as thick, oppressive. The painting loomed before us, its eyes following me even when I tried to look away. It felt alive, as though every brushstroke had been stitched from his obsession, each line binding me tighter. Between us and it, the air itself seemed to pulse.
Then, as though the thought had been plucked from the silence rather than his mind, Isaac’s voice cut through. “Do you really want to go to that silly dance?”
The question startled me more than it should have. My lips parted, then closed again. I hesitated, heart thudding, before nodding. “I do,” I whispered, almost ashamed of how small it sounded.
He hummed, a deep, approving sound that vibrated through me where his chest pressed against my back. It wasn’t simple agreement—it was possession, a claim.“Then go with me,” he murmured, his thumb tracing the sharp line of my jaw with deliberate care, a touch that felt both tender and commanding. “And wear something red.” He leaned close enough that his breath warmed my skin. “That color belongs to you. To me.”
The words sank into me like an anchor, heavy, leaving little room for denial. My chest ached with something I couldn’t name. Something that wasn’t entirely pain but wasn’t entirely comfort either. I turned to face him, though my knees felt weak. My lips brushed against his cheek—soft, fleeting, but electric all the same—as they found the faintest curve of his smile.
“Thank you, Isaac,” I whispered, though I was not sure if it was gratitude or surrender.
master list part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 part 6 part 7
part 8 (you're here) ...
A/N: May or may not have been listening to waving through a window (deh)and free (kpdh) while writing this part. The next part is definitely going to be weird to navigate but it is also the chapter i am looking forward to writing the most so far
Obviously spoiler warnings to those who have yet to finish the second season of Wednesday
warnings: depression, passive suicidal ideation, talks of death, overall morbid/vulnerable conversation takes place
word count: 2.6 K
Weeks had bled into one another, and somehow I’ve been demoted from assistant to mule duty. Every night, without fail, I found myself hauling crates of scrap, wires, and “very essential pieces” that looked suspiciously like junk—up five flights of a spiraling staircase designed by someone who clearly hated anyone with legs. Augustus Stonehearst had been generous enough to give Isaac the funding, but apparently hiring workers to do the grunt work would “draw too much attention.”
So guess who ends up being the one to carry hundreds of pounds of steel scaffolding up a narrow staircase while someone else waved his delicate hands around and called it strategy?
Me. Always me.
The first two weeks had been agony. By the third, I’d stopped hoping my arms would fall off and started developing calluses in places I didn’t even know could blister. Somewhere in between, I decided that this was my personal purgatory—endless labor for a boy who thought he was putting the same amount of effort as me by moving his pencil across a page.
I was the one to gift him the record player since he wanted to play music, but refused to get a boom box, big mistake. Now I felt like I was going insane, trying to find a way to shove multiple giant metal boxes up narrow staircases, all the while Isaac insisted on playing dramatic classical music that made us sound like we were supervillains. Then tell me that I was somehow being too loud when he suddenly was struck with inspiration and needed to go hunch back in his little corner ,doodling away at God only knows what.
Amusing. But I was still exhausted.
Tonight, the pièce de réskstance was an operating table. I had just wrestled it into the center of the room, beneath what Isaac proudly called an electro-galvanic stimulator he built himself, but I was about ninety percent sure it belonged to a mad scientist stage set. It bristled with giant rods and copper coils all over the ceiling, cables dangling like veins. If it started smoking, I’d believe it would somehow open a portal to hell.
Isaac, of course, was delighted. He prowled around the table like a predator amirings its kill, one hand raised as iron bolts quivered in the air and drove themselves into the metal floorboards at his command. My job was just to hold anything steady while he played conductor.
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” he said idly, like this was a casual fireside chat and not slave labor, “why didn’t you use all this strength when we fought the werewolf?”
My spin cracked when I stood back up I had to roll my shoulders before they locked up entirely. “Despite what the media says about our nonexistent rivalry, most of my kind don’t make a habit of provoking beasts that could turn us into confetti.”
“You’d heal.”
“Yeah, slowly, painfully, feeling every bone snapping back into place while my skin tries to knit itself back together. Excuse me if I’m not too eager to test my pain tolerance.”
He hummed, pretending to concede, but I caught the side eye. “Fair enough.”
The table anchored, he drifted back to his corner table full of blueprints and half-finished notes. Tools were scattered across the desk at random; paper curling under the weight of ink stains and coffee rings. He bent over the mess, pen scratching in bursts, eyes alive with numbers and designs I didn’t even bother to try and untangle. Normally, I’d bait him into one of his monologues just to pass the time, watch him spiral into explanations about magnetic resonance and conductive pathways just to pass the time while I moved about.
But tonight, he was too focused.
So instead of pestering him, I dropped onto the empty edge of the desk with a small, graceless thud, ignoring the way my back screamed in protest from being overworked. Dust puffed up all around me, catching the low light in the tower’s rafters. My legs dangled, swinging in the quiet.
We started having these moments, where neither of us spoke.
The silence wasn’t aware. It wasn’t brittle, or sharp, or tense in the way it used to be. It was—God help me— comfortable.
But it didn’t last, not with Isaac.
“You sit there like you are above it all,” he said without looking up, his pen moving in neat slashes across the page, “but you do realize you’ve spent the last few weeks acting as my unpaid laborer. Hardly dignified for a creature of the night.”
I snorted. “Yeah, well, I was exploited.”
“Exploited,” he repeated, as if tasting the syllables, before flashing me a grin over his shoulder. “Only if you hate it.”
I kicked lightly at one of the legs of the desk, rattling his scattered tools just enough to be annoying. “Oh, I do. I spend every evening cursing your name. I’m surprised you haven’t heard all the colorful insults I’ve come up with on the fifth staircase alone.”
“Please,” he said smoothly, “as if you’d waste your time on curses. You’re far too pragmatic for that.”
I raised an eyebrow. “And you would know how?”
He finally looked up at me, leaning back in his chair with that easy arrogance of someone who knew the effect his gaze had on me. “I’ve been studying you longer than you realize.”
Head curled low in my chest before I could smother it away, so I just rolled my eyes instead. “Creepy.”
“Observant,” he corrected. “Though, if it makes you feel any better, you’re far more interesting than half this school combined. Useful, too.”
“Ah, there it is,” I said dryly. “The compliment slipped in under the leash.”
His smirk deepened, satisfied. “You do wear it well.”
I was half a second from throwing a wrench at his head when he shifted the conversation— his tone dipping from playful to something quieter, heavier.
“You talk of Franocise. A lot. As do I, but—” His eyes lingered on me, sharp and searching. “But you don’t talk much about yourself. I know nothing past what I have observed myself. I’d like to remedy that. After all, you are helping me protect my family, but what about yours?”
The question landed like a stone in water, rippling through the easy rhythm we’d built. I stilled, fingers tracing idle patterns in the dust on the desk.
“That’s because there isn’t much to tell.”
“There is always something to tell,” he countered softly, but his words weren’t the knife they usually were. More like a scalpel, precise, probing. “What’s the story of the girl who ended up here, helping me?”
I laughed because it was easier than answering. “There isn’t much of one,” I said, the old reflex rising in my throat. “You probably wouldn’t get it.”
“Try me,” he said, almost gently. His mouth curved in that way he had when he was about to knead a problem into submission, not into mockery but an unsettling sort of interesting. The sound of his asking— not prodding, not accusing— made the edges of my defenses crumble. I’d been surprised more than once how even the smallest shift in his tone undid me.
I picked up one of the bolts left on his table, rolling it between my fingers, trying to find a way to stall this conversation. But it seems it was unavoidable. “Being a vampire is lonely,” I started, slow as if the syllables themselves might cut. “We stick to our own. We don’t die naturally, so the usual anchors, funerals, anniversaries, they mean nothing to us culturally. Most of them move on. I don’t.” I swallowed. “My family…they were always there, in the way people fill rooms. Practical, efficient. I was shipped off as soon as they could; they hardly care to talk to me most of the time. They always called me ‘mature’ like it was a praise. Like they were congratulating themselves for having a child whom they didn’t have to put much work into.”
Isaac made a small noise– no pity, only attention. It steadied me enough to keep going.
“The world keeps on spinning, on moving; I don’t. Children I used to know died in epidemics and useless wars. I’ve watched what used to be my life compressed into textbooks. Everyone says change is the only constant, yet I look down at my own hands and wonder why they are still so small.” The sentence sounded more pathetic in the air than it felt in my head. “Sometimes I feel envious…of people whose lives have proper ends. Of hoping through some freak accident, something out of my hands could end my endless life. And that makes me feel guilty, I don’t deserve the time I have, sometimes I wish I could hand my life off to someone who would actually use it, and all the blessings I have that feel like obligations.”
It made me feel as if the only shot at life impossible to get hurt on was the lone road. I had witnessed so much yet experienced so little, constantly having to force the question out of my head: what was the point of this? I had no answer, I doubt that if I asked anyone, they could tell me either. Asking such a thing of people who will one day be rotting and eaten by worms in a few short decades felt insensitive. How would they know the answer to questions I had been asking myself for centuries anyway?
Saying it out loud felt like scrapping at old scabs. It was humiliating, but felt so necessary. Isaac didn’t flinch. He listened like someone cataloguing evidence— not coldlu, but as if he intended to understand the mechanism so he could fix it.
“You’ve become a bystander in your own life, “ he observed finally. His voice was blunt, but not cruel– more like a doctor naming a diagnosis. “You stepped aside because playing alone hurts. You watch because that is safe. Does it not tear you up? Who looks after you if you never ask?”
His question landed harder than the observation. I hated that he was right. Worse, I hated that he saw straigh through what I’d smoothed over for centuries.
“You’re not wrong,” I admitted. “I don’t see myself as a person. It’s easier to be a ghost. Easier than asking for help I don’t deserve.”
His hand came to rest near mine on the table— no pressure, just presence. It was an oddly intimate thing for a boy who usually used to touch to claim rather than comfort. “You think you don’t deserve it because you measure yourself by unfair standards,” he said. “By the standards of people who were never built to understand you. That doesn’t make you less.” The words were dangerous because he said them as if stating a fact, not offering consolation.
A laugh escaped me—half-bitter, half-reliefed. “How am I supposed to give a shit about the girl I live in. I don’t even know what I look like, there is no face to my name, I know the color of my skin, the feel of my hair, but the picture— who’s body I live in, it’s…blurred.” Saying it aloud made it worse and better at the same time.
The words caught my throat, things seemed to come out easier when I spoke to Isaac; there wasn’t fear. I know I shouldn’t be throwing this onto him; he wasn’t looking to have me drop what outliving eras does to a person.
He watched me like someone counting the ticks on a mechanism. When he spoke again, there was a new softness under his usual edge. ““It’s a shame you can’t see the girl sitting in front of me. You’re—” He paused, as if searching for the right words. “You’re perhaps one of the most tragic creatures I have ever laid my eyes upon, perfectly preserved, stuck, yet it hardly takes away from the sight that you are. I know I have no way to prove it to you, but you are quite beautiful.”
I paused, he watched me, not with the predator’s amusement I expected but with a steadier, quieter focus that felt almost like a shelter. The heat in my chest and face— it was small, unwelcomed, yet bright.
“Okay…that was good. I’ll admit.” I looked to the side, embarassed for different reasons now. That earned a chuckle from him.
A small beat of silence fell between us, I could sense him trying to find the words. Trying to find a way to make me feel better, even the thought of him trying to understand felt like everything.
“I understand,” He said, voice folding into something rawer. “That feeling of not being equipped for life. I thought I was going to die before I even made it to high school. Even my own sister is destined for an early death, everything has always felt like a race against the clock. I don’t want her to run out of time.” He rolled the thought around like it was a puzzle piece finding its place. “If playing God means buying more years for us—if breaking the rules of nature keeps breathing, I don’t mind cheating another person out of death with me.”
Hearing him speak like that— not as the amused mastermind but as someone who counted nights in terms of what they could save— shifted something in me. It made the atticc feel less like a place full of wires and tin, and more like a refuge for two people broken, able to find a bubble where they could breath.
He took a breath and then looked at me that made the air thin, “And you. You’ve been left alone for too long. I don’t want that for you either.” He stood and moved until he was a small, steady distance away, reaching out and taking my hands. His fingers were warm against my own; his grip, deliberate. “I don’t know what the exact shape of what I’m promising,”he said, “but I know the direction. I want…us to be able to witness each stage of life together, to live at the same speed, to give all of us the privilege of aging. I’d like to rewrite whatever keeps you frozen in time, if you’ll let me.”
My heart stuttered at that. The idea of being “rewritten” usually tasted like a threat. In his voice, it sounded like an offer. Dangerous, ridiculous, intoxicating. No, hopeful.
“You mean…grow up together?” I heard the astonishment in my own voice. It came out softer than I expected. “Graduate. Stand at Francoise’s wedding. Babysit her terrible children. Watch you become named the greatest scientist to have ever lived. Let my skin wrinkle for the first time? That…sounds like a dream.” The thought made me laugh, a short, disbelieving sound. It shouldn’t have felt possible.
Neither one of us said it, perhaps I was delusional in believing so, but I think we both had other intentions as to why we wanted to grow old together.
“If that’s what you want,” he said, and there was no theatrical show in it—only a strict, almost stubborn devotion. “You are the only person that is willing to step into the mess with me, you make room for me to create the impossible, I would like to make room for whatever you dream about as well.”
I let the words settle. For the first time, the future didn’t feel like a sentence; it felt like a map that could, maybe, be redrawn. My throat tightened. “I—” I swallowed. “I’d like that.” The confession felt fragile, yet large all at once. “More than anything.”
He smiled then— not the crooked, triumphant smirk he used like a mask, but something small and honest. He bent and, with a gentleness that surprised both of us, he pressed his lips to the back of my hand, a soft, deliberate kiss over the knuckles. It was an old gesture softened by new intentions: possessive, yes, but protective.
master list part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 part 6 part 7 (you're here) part 8 ...
A/N: sorry this took a little longer than most other parts. I got busy- my favorite part is coming up soon, so I'm getting hyped about writing that, next chapter will hopefully be even better since its the most emotionally charged one we have had yet
the taglist is getting so long lol also in case anyone was wondering, Spotify started playing Tightrope from the greatest showman and it suddenly inspired me to be more gentle with y'all this installment
Obviously spoiler warnings to those who have yet to finish the second season of Wednesday
warnings: none! i know im just as shocked as you are
word count: 3.6 K
The courtyard buzzed with the usual midday chaos – utensils clattering, chairs scraping against concrete, the rising and falling tide of overlapping conversations. I’d chosen a spot beneath one of the wide umbrellas that dotted the space, its shade cutting a soft circle into the brightness. Normally, I would have eaten alone in a hallway corner, where the only noise was the echo of passing footsteps. But lately… I’d gotten used to this. To Francoise.
It wasn’t so hard to be around other people if she was with me. Ignoring the other fencing classmates that had followed her over here, us being off to the side meant it was easier to shift to one conversation, which made it easier for me. Only Morticia Frump ever seemed to occasionally acknowledge me anyway, and I preferred it that way. It did warm my heart that the club seemed to rally around her. The more the rumors spread about her attacking the werewolf, they protected her so much so that the faint whispers around the girl had begun to fade.
Francoise sat across from me, her spine straight and composed in a way that looked practiced—probably something fencing had drilled into her—but the formality ended there. Her face was all sunshine and bubbling expression, warmth radiating even in the way her hands painted arcs through the air as she spoke. I was admittedly pretty irritated when the others came over with her. She was recounting some nonsense from fencing practice, gesturing dramatically as if her story would collapse without the support of her whole body. The light caught on strands of pale brown hair that had slipped free of the braid she’d made me tie that morning, curling rebelliously against her cheek.
I leaned forward against the table, chin resting on my hand, watching more than listening. To most people, my face read as calm, detached—resting bitch face, as Francoise liked to remind me—but she had this uncanny ability to tug at the corners of my mouth, dragging out smirks I’d sworn I didn’t have in me.
“You’re not even listening,” she accused suddenly, narrowing her dark eyes at me.
“I am,” I said evenly, taking another bite of the bread on my plate. “You were just over-prouncing ‘épée’, like you were trying to teach a preschooler French.”
That earned me a soft gasp but a burst of laughter. “I was not!”
“You absolutely were.” I let the faintest smile slip, just enough to make her swat at me across the table.
Her gaze dropped suddenly, “By the way—that’s garlic bread, isn’t it?”
Caught. I looked down for a moment, almost guilty– like a child caught elbow deep into the cookie jar.
“Yes.”
“What?!” Her voice pitched higher, heads turning for a second. “But you’re a vampire! Shouldn’t you be like—deathly allergic?”
“Yes.” I took another slow bite, savoring the crunch, then bared my fangs at her in a grin. “Everyone has their vices. I just happen to like mine buttery and dusted in parsley.”
“You’re insane.” Her tone was scandalized, but her laughter slipped out anyway.
“I take a fistful of antihistamines first,” I continued, deadpan. “Cuts the drama. Otherwise, yeah—it gets ugly fast.”
Francoise shook her head, both horrified and delighted, the giggles tumbling out despite herself. Adorable. “You’re so weird…But I guess I understand the addiction to the stuff, it’s super good.”
The moment hung warm and easy, rare and grounding. Then, with a nervous little flourish, Francoise set something down on the table between us: a thin braid of red and black thread, knotted carefully around half a heart-shaped charm.
I blinked, caught off guard.
“I made it last night,” she said quickly, words tumbling as if she needed to get them out before I could respond. “It’s nothing special, really, I just thought… it’d be nice. To match.” She lifted her wrist to reveal its twin in pink and white, snug against her pale skin.
For a moment, I didn’t trust myself to speak. She looked at me with those wide, guileless eyes—so open, so unguarded, and utterly beyond what I was equipped to handle.
“You made this?” My voice came out flatter than I intended.
Her shoulders dipped slightly. “You don’t have to wear it. I know it’s silly—”
“No. It’s not. I’ll wear it forever, fuck off.” The words shot out too fast, sharper than I’d meant, but my fingers were already brushing against the bracelet, following the uneven weave. Delicate, imperfect, but real—messy in a way that carried weight, because it was hers.
I slipped it over my wrist. Francoise lit up like I’d just handed her the moon.
“There,” she said, her voice bright with triumph. “Now you can’t get rid of me, even if you try.”
A laugh escaped me through my nose, low and reluctant. “Pretty sure you decided that a while ago.”
Her grin bloomed, cheeks pink, and for a heartbeat, the courtyard noise fell away. Just us—an unlikely equation that shouldn’t have balanced but somehow did. Even the most mundane things became worth speaking aloud, simply because she was the one speaking them.
That moment of peace was when a shadow fell across the table, slicing through the sunlight that had been warming Francoise’s grin. She looked up first, her smile widening a touch before settling onto something familiar.
“Francoise,” Isaac drawled, his voice carrying that usual slick edge of amusement he wore like cologne. He leaned one hand on the table, too close to my own plate, too deliberately invasive. His gaze flicked briefly to me, then back to her. “Entertaining my…classmate for me?”
I turned then, because ignoring him would have been more suspicious than acknowledging him. He stood at the edge of the umbrella’s shade, immaculate as ever, his blazer sleeves rolled once at the cuffs, posture too self-assured to belong to anyone our age. And was it any surprise he looked amazing? Like god damn it. In his hand, he held the umbrella I’d set against the chair, twirling it once before snapping it open with a sharp click.
“Come with me.” It wasn’t phrased as a request, more like a foregone conclusion. The audacity made my eye twitch, but I felt the itch to stand up.
Francoise’s brows lifted, her lips curling into a sly, teasing smile. “Straight to the point. No hello? No, ‘may I borrow her for a moment, dear sister’? You are no good with girls, you’ll scare her off if you’re not careful.”
My jaw dropped. Francoise was that attitude? I feel like a proud mother.
Isaac angled her the faintest smirk that I could have sworn doubled as a glare. “I’m fairly confident she knows better by now.” Then, as if to underline the statement, he shifted the umbrella, angling it towards me in an unmistakable invitation—no, an expectation—to rise. Gentlemanly, yes, but with that edge of command that made the gesture less courtly and more inescapable.
I didn’t move right away. Francoise filled the pause with a little giggle, leaning forward on her elbows. “Ohhh, I get it. You just wanted her all to yourself. Should I be worried?”
This was too funny, though a part of me couldn’t help but feel a touch flushed by her words. If only that were the case—who said that?
Isaac’s gaze flicked to her, cool but not unkind. “You worry enough for both of us. But no—I’m simply borrowing her. Nothing more than that.”
Damn it…
“That’s what villains always say,” Francoise teased, though her tone was light. For the time I’ve known the girl, I've learned of this secret new power that friends have. Mind reading, no, not really, but that tilt of the head mixed with a small wink was her way of saying: Don’t let him boss you around too much.
“Villains at least consistent in their ambition,” Isaac said, returning his attention to me. His tone dropped half a note, quiet enough that it was meant for me more than for her. Or maybe that was delusion talking. “Come on. There’s something you need to see.”
For a second, I just looked at him, umbrella hovering between us like some kind of test. I could feel Francoise’s eyes flicking between us, curious, amused. We even had a silent conversation between the two of us girls before it ended with me sighing while Francoise’s smirk was smug and triumphant.
“Fine,” I muttered, finally pushing my chair back. Isaac’s smirk deepened just slightly, satisfaction threading through the light of his mouth as if he’d known I’d cave all along.
Was I that easy to read? The short answer was no; someone was just too demanding not to listen to.
“Don’t break her,” Francoise called out after us as I stepped beneath the umbrella’s shade.
Isaac didn’t miss a beat. “She’s tougher than you think.”
His hand adjusted the umbrella just enough to cover me fully, thought it meant the sun caught his own shoulder. An intentional choice, of course— it was always intentional with him. Gentleman, tyrant, manipulator, all blended so seamlessly I couldn’t separate the different parts of him from one another. Perhaps that’s why I had begun to unconsciously justify his more sinister traits these days.
The courtyard noise faded behind us as we walked, making our way deeper around to the side of the school, Francoise’s laughter trailing faintly in the air, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d just agreed to more than a simple walk across campus.
The umbrella clicked faintly with each adjustment Isaac made, the spokes catching the light as he steered me across the courtyard like I’d already surrendered the right to walk on my own. Students parted easily around us—half because of the umbrella, half because of him. He had that effect: commanding without effort, as if the very air decided to make room for him.
“You could at least pretend you weren’t trying to abduct me in broad daylight,” I muttered, stepping in time with him despite myself. The two had barely let me get a word in earlier, not that I knew what to say, but their bickering felt as if I was a toy the two were playing tug of war with. Guess that was my fault for picking a pair of strange siblings as my only consistent choice of social interactions with.
“Why?” His eyes slide towards me, faintly amused. “Everyone already assumes I am cold and calculating. I’d rather not waste energy dispelling rumors that, as you know, are probably accurate.”
“Charming.” I tugged at the strap of my bag, glancing sideways at him. He was so infuriatingly close, I couldn’t help but admire his features up this close, masking it as a glare. “So, are you going to tell me where we’re going, or do I keep following the pretty boy who stole my umbrella until I end up back in the woods again?”
“So I’m pretty now?” He laughed, sharp enough to sting, and the smugness on his face made me want to smack him. “If I wanted you back in the woods, you’d already be there. You gave me almost no pushback this time around. Don’t tell me you are growing fond of me now.”
“Don’t read too much into it.” Please don’t. Just the thought of that made me feel a mix of warmth in the face and shame in my soul for not being strong enough to say no to the walking red flag.
Isaac laughed— quiet, unexpected. The sound made me bristle because I couldn’t tell if he was laughing with me or at me. Both. Most likely both.
We crossed under the looming shadow of a more private wing of the school, where the stone looked even older, darker, and clearly less polished than the main campus. The courtyard chatter was long behind us now, replaced by the rustle of trees and the occasional low hum of cicadas.
I realized where we were heading when I caught sight of the looming tower stretching above the trees around. We were taking the back way to the school’s black sheep of architecture. Abandoned, drafty, rumored to be haunted: Iago Tower.
I slowed my steps, “Oh, absolutely not. No way. Why are we heading into the Scooby-Doo set piece? Did you finally snap and plan to murder me?”
Isaac tipped the umbrella just enough that the shadow across my face deepened, his smirk never faltering, “Not today. Unlike you, I don’t let cobwebs and bad campus ghost stories get in the way of progress.”
“You mean trespassing.” I corrected, narrowing my eyes.
“Semantics.” His gaze flicked upward towards the tower. “Augustus Stonehearst offered it to me.”
That made me stop completely. “The Augustus Stonehearst? As in the man with his name plastered all over the library, science wing, and half the scholarships?”
I’ve had the man multiple times in the past for classes, he never bothered to recongize my name. I had heard rumors that Isaac was his prized student, but I, honest to God, never believed it because of how miserable the man was.
Isaac pivoted to face me, still holding the umbrella so the shade clung to me like a leash. “The very same. He finds me…promising.”
I stared at him before scoffing, which sounded more like a laugh. “That’s one word for it. Promising. Deranged. Terrifying. Take your pick.”
“Careful now, you were the one who followed the deranged and terrifying pretty boy into an abandoned part of the school.
“Because you stole my umbrella.”
He tilted his head, pretending to consider my words. “Or because you’re curious.”
I didn’t dignify that with an answer, mostly because he wasn’t wrong.
The tower loomed larger the more we reached a crooked entrance, which held a sign that permitted students from going any further. Isaac ignored it entirely and nudged it open with his shoulder. The metal hinges groaned in protest, and he gestured for me through as if this were some grand invitation. Inside, the air grew cooler, tinged with dust and stone. The stairwell spiraled upward, steep and narrow.
“Watch your step,” he said as I tested the first step, as if he sensed the uneasy feeling I had deep in my gut. “It’s a long fall if you misstep. I’d hate to have to scrape you off the ground.”
“Wow, you do care.”
He grinned faintly, “Only about the cleanup.”
By the time we reached the topic level, I was out of breath and thoroughly unimpressed. The door at the top stuck out before giving way with a reluctant groan, spilling us into a wide space that smelled of dust, disuse, and faintly of mothballs. Light leaked from the clock tower's windows, spilling across the crooked beams and a scattering of old crates. Though the upper decks were metal grated floorings, clearly the place was still a work in progress, with even a section that contained a narrow elevator that would have been much more useful if it were functional.
I sneezed the moment my foot crossed the threshold: dust rose up in a lazy swirl and the attic answered with a dry, papery cough., “This is your grand reveal?” I asked, voice rough from the dust. “A glorified broom closet?”
Isaac swept his gaze over the room, and unlike me, he didn’t look disappointed. No— he looked invigorated, the way a predator perks at the scent of blood. “A blank canvas. Don’t you see it? This could be ours.”
“Ours?” I repeated, letting the word sit with an irony I couldn’t hide. I’d been trying to parse the possessiveness in his tone since the hospital; the choice of vocabulary was finally catching up to me.
He set the umbrella aside, taking off his uniform coat and rolling his sleeves past his elbows. The movement was absurdly domestic and oddly intimate; the sight had a tendency to unclench something in me I’d spent years guarding. I immediately looked away, shutting my eyes as I prayed for whatever deity could hear to lend me the strength not to stare.
“You’ll help me set all this up,” he told me, eyes already scanning for anchor points and power runs. “Equip it. Stonehearst may have given me the keys and will provide me with whatever materials I ask, but what use is a laboratory without an assistant?”
“Assistant?” My laugh was brittle. His phrasing suggested promotion; the translation in my head read: You will do everything, I don’t feel like moving myself. It was not as if Isaac was the type that came off like he’d want help or to share any sort of credit, but if it meant messing with me he could excuse it. “Funny. Because why do I get the feeling being your ‘assistant’ means I am going to do a lot of the heavy lifting?”
His smirk sharpened. “I’m not the one with super strength. I read up on you..”
My jaw hitched. What the fuck, man? I didn’t know what I was expecting when I offered would help with anything he needed. I didn’t know that meant physical labor. “You literally have telekinetic abilities. Why do you need my help?”
“Well, for the record— DaVincis are known for our brilliant minds, abusing that ability for too long and with too big pieces strains our bodies and can cause fainting spells. And I’d rather not deal with that mid-build.” He spread his hands as if that made the admission charming. “So having a vampire to be my muscle is a perfect complement.”
So he wanted me to be his strong, silent moving service. Delightful. “As much as I’d love to lend a hand, unfortunately, that boost only happens at night.”
“Then I guess we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other outside of school hours, losing some sleep, but you’re nocturnal by nature anyway, right?”
Well, now I was praying for whatever deity was listening to give me patience, not strength, give me strength, and I might strangle this boy.
I glared at him, “You absolute bastard.”
“Guilty.” He leaned casually against one of the beams, watching me with infuriating patience. “You are invited to sulk if you like, but we both know you’ll help me.”
I folded my arms. “And why exactly would I?”
His gaze softened— not gentle, never gentle, but with that dangerous sincerity he used like a knife. “Because you care about Francoise. That’s more obvious than ever now. And you know I’m the only one insane enough to build the machine that she needs.”
He was right. He almost always was. I didn’t answer; I hadn't even noticed until now how I had begun to nervously fidget with the bracelet at my wrist, thinking. Scanning the dusty benches, the new wiring mixed in with the old, the places we’d already be able to anchor new equipment. My brain ticked unwillingly into gear.
He saw it immediately, of course, the way my mind was moving. His smirk widened. “There it is. That lovely little look you get when you’re calculating against your better judgment. Almost as attractive as when you’re furious with me.”
I grabbed the nearest rag off a crate and tried to smack him in the head with it.
He caught it easily, laughing under his breath as he dusted off the nearest bench. “See? We already make a good team.”
“Shut up…”
He chuckled. The sound kindled a strange heat under my skin that had nothing to do with the attic. I turned away before he could see. Walking through what was soon to be a fully functioning lab, letting my fingers drag across one of the metal desks and roll the dust between my thumb and forefinger.
I was already beginning to dread this arrangement.
That was until I noticed a crack in the window of the clock, pushing on the pane and looking out, the sight stole my breath straight out of my lungs. The winding dark forest that surrounded our school was outlined by the sun, high in the sky; it was so easy to suddenly know how beautiful the world was down below.
I was careful not to step into the beam of light that spilled past the window, only getting so close as to not let its rays hit my skin.
Isaac watched me look at the view. When I had turned back, the way the light had touched him made the shadows on his cheeks and under his eyes soften; the sharp planes of his face turned gentle like stone warmed by the sun. I had seen him in moonlight, under school lamps, but the warm mid-day light had draped over his pale skin in a way that brought more color to his skin than I had ever noticed before. Faint pinks, oranges, and peaches blended over him. His eyes, inky and black, almost ambivalent, suddenly held a soft ring of gold I had never seen before.
Was he always this colorful?
“So,” he said, slow and careful, the questioning unwinding like a thread between two machines. “Will you help me with this?”
The answer was supposed to be practical, contractual: conditions, limits, ethics, consent. I could list them off now and bargain and draw lines sharp enough to cut his arrogance in two. But standing there under that boxy shaft of light, catching the dust in the air falling all around him, I felt a different tug. His plans were reckless and terrifying, yes— but there was a strange clarity in his madness, a vision so exact that it pulled a part of me that had gone dormant from too many years left being careful. Perhaps it didn’t even exist before this.
I felt something settle in me—the beginnings of excitement, the danger, it was the delicious kind. The exact opposite of the careful and predictable life I’d practiced for centuries, it both terrified and thrilled me.
For the first time, I let the idea of following someone rather than habit or numbness feel less like a surrender and more like a choice.
master list part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 part 6 (you're here) ...
A/N: I had such a hard time sounding smart this chapter without overdoing it; my time in college anatomy came in clutch. Also, in the middle of writing this, i got hit with an unskippable side quest, not to mention I'll be busy as fuck tomorrow, so no chapter tmw unfortunately :((( also this chapter is meant to help you wind down from the last one
Obviously, spoiler warnings to those who have yet to finish the second season of Wednesday
warnings: this chapter is tame, only maybe some swearing and Isaac being Isaac (he's calming down tho)
word count: 2.6 K
The week after the attack blurred together, a haze of hushed hallways and teachers pretending not to gossip about what happened. Whispers followed Francoise everywhere — the Hyde, the monster, the miracle that she survived — and though she tried to smile through it, I could see how each passing glance hollowed her a little more. At least it seemed that the sudden attention brought out more supporters from the background when they otherwise would have never been pushed to speak to the girl.
Isaac, on the other hand, seemed unchanged on the surface. If anything, he carried himself with more precision than before, every button fastened, every movement clipped and deliberate. But I noticed things now that I hadn’t before: the way his jaw tensed when Francoise wasn’t in sight, the quiet way his eyes flicked to me whenever she laughed too loudly, as if gauging whether I’d use it against her.
And me? I told myself nothing had changed, yet I found myself replaying the hospital conversation in my head. His words about curing her, about control, about the weight he carried for his sister — they lingered like a bruise I kept pressing just to feel it ache again.
My hands found their way to my own throat, no markings left behind. It was like it had never happened. Perhaps I should have taken that moment of violence more seriously, yet I find myself not caring so much since it was not as if he truly could hurt me.
Immorality once again made me numb to yet another interaction.
So when the teacher announced partners for our next advanced biology project, and Isaac’s as my table partner he was defaulted as my lab partner for the experiment, I didn’t argue. A few weeks ago I might’ve rolled my eyes or made some cutting remark, but now I only felt the inevitable weight of it settle in. Maybe this was always going to happen — us orbiting closer, caught in the same pull.
The lab smelled faintly of alcohol and crushed fruit…a strange cocktail of sterility and sweetness.
Rows of small glass vials lined the benches, each labeled with neat black ink: Strawberry DNA. The bright red strawberries cheerful and brigh in their bowls, deceptively innocent considering we were about to reduce them to pulp and rip their genetic story out strand by strand.
Isaac had adjusted his gloves with a slow precision, his eyes barely skimming the handout before sliding it aside like an annoying fly. Typical. He already knew the procedure– because of course he did. “We’re not just going to be extracting DNA, you and I” he murmured, his voice carrying easily over the soft chatter of other students still attempting to figure out how to proceed with their own experiments. “We are going to be rewriting it. Taking one story and forcing it into another.”
I shot him a look. “It’s just strawberries Isaac, it’s not–”
“Not what? Not people?” He smiled sharp, like I’d walked into a trap. Damn it, he was probably going to use this as a chance to monologue now. “That’s the fun part, isn’t it? The machinery is the same. Life can be so…editable, if you’re clever enough.”
My knife stuck halfway through the berry, the juice staining my gloves bright red. I told myself it was easier to focus on the mess in the mortar than on him. Lie. Isaac was too easy to look at, which was exactly the problem.
He leaned in anyway, invading the space I was trying to preserve. Close enough that his sleeve brushed my arm, close enough that his scent—sharp cologne just barely covering that metallic tang he always carried—pried its way past my defenses. Since when did he start wearing cologne?
“Here,” he said smoothly, reaching over my shoulder. His hand closed over mine where I gripped the pipette. His fingers dwarfed mine, guiding the angle with infuriating ease. “Don’t rush it. You have to coax it out. Like this.”
There was absolutely no way this was happening…
The drop of liquid fell into the vial in a clean, precise ribbon, no air bubbles, no hesitation. Perfect. Of course. His control made me ache with a mix of irritation and something I refused to name.
“Are you trying to make it sound seductive?” I muttered, attempting to be mocking, since silence felt worse.
“Sometimes seduction works better than force.” His eyes met mine as though he’d been waiting for me to look. They glinted, smug and daring. “Haven’t you noticed?”
My pulse tripped over itself. No. Absolutely not. I forced myself to focus, transferring the liquid as he displayed. My hands were steady, but I was anything but calm. Infact I felt like I was about to implode on the spot if this man didn’t back away from me in the next few seconds.
“That’s better.” Isaac said softly, almost approving. “You learn quickly when you give in.”
Oh hell no.
That did it. I lifted my heel and brought it down on his foot with all the force I could muster.
His hiss of pain was barely restrained, and the way he stomped once against the tile to mask it made me grin to myself. Call it sadism if you want, it was a funny sight. He bent slightly, muttering through his teeth while I calmly began filtering the strawberry mixture as if nothing had happened.
“Ugh—just when I thought we’d shared something that night,” he muttered under his breath.
“It’s because I’m not in the mood for your mental gymnastics, Night.”
His eyes flicked up, something sharper in them now. “Oh, so I’m Night again? No. To you, it’s Isaac. Say it again.”
I froze, staring hard at the glass funnel rather than him. I had called him Isaac at the hospital. Once. It must’ve mattered to him more than I realized.
Finally, I exhaled sharply. “Fine. Isaac. But don’t flatter yourself. You were the one who shared that night, not me.” I tilted the beaker to check the clarity of the liquid, forcing my voice steady. “So quit invading my space.”
For a beat he said nothing, and I thought maybe I’d finally won a round. But then he leaned against the desk, his smirk curling back into place like it never left.
“You’re missing the point,” he said, tapping a finger against the glass vial where the DNA strands were beginning to cloud at the bottom, pale and ghostly. “This—” he gestured at the white fibers forming like cobwebs—“is the foundation of everything. Code waiting to be rewritten. If we can do it here, in this pathetic excuse for a lab, imagine what I could build with the right machinery.”
I glanced at him then, despite myself. His expression wasn’t playful anymore. It was calculating, sharp enough to cut.
He lowered his voice, the words brushing against me like a secret not meant for anyone else in the room. “Imagine what could be done if we rewrote the code of something… less harmless than a strawberry. If we rewrote her.”
My throat tightened. “You mean Francoise.”
His jaw flexed, but he didn’t deny it. “One day, maybe. Someone has to figure out how. Why not me?”
The thought hit me with a mix of dread and—God help me—curiosity. He was serious. And worse, part of me wanted to know where this conversation would go.
“You were the one to say if anyone could do it I would be the one to find a cure for her.”
The arrogance rolled off him in waves, but it wasn’t empty arrogance, this had teeth. This was practical hubris. The sort that could actually produce results because he had the brains to back it. So it’s not as if what I said that night wasn’t true.
“You’d really put yourself in charge of rewriting a person’s DNA?” I asked, voice low. “Sounds less like science and more like—”
“God?” he finished smoothly, his smirk sharp as glass. It made me a tad uneasy, but in a strange way it made me believe him, “Maybe. But tell me–if the alternative is watching her get torn apart from the inside out, which would you choose. To play God or to do nothing?”
It landed harder than it should have. He wasn’t wrong. The image of Francoise in that Hyde form, the way she’d crumpled afterward, had rewired something in my brain that night. But wanting a sick friend fixed and wanting someone to rewrite their essence were two different things.
I forced myself to look at the samples we’d extracted, watching the thin strands swirl in the alcohol solution. “You’d need more than just machinery. You’d need something big, a lot of power. Even if you could sequence a Hyde genome– and that’s assuming that monster in her can be sequenced– you’d still need a system for splicing it without causing mutations. Otherwise, you’re trading one curse for another.”
His eyes flicked towards me, the edge of his grin softening into something almost…pleased. “So you do understand. Good. I was starting to think I’d have to dumb this down for you.”
I rolled my eyes, but the faint twitch at the corner of my mouth betrayed me. “Careful. My patience for your ego is paper thin.”
“Ego?” He leaned a little closer, voice a low murmur. “Or vision?”
“Fine—vision,” I conceded. “But vision without restraint usually ends with bodies in the dirt.” I jabbed the pipette into the beaker a little harder than necessary, filtering out the last of the pulp. “If you want Francoise cured, it has to be precise. No shortcuts. I won’t support your experiments if it puts her at risk.”
He watched me, and in that look I saw something like fondness—quick, guarded, as if the warmth surprised him. “Then we build precision,” he said almost casually, as though building a machine to rewrite genomes were the same as assembling a clock. “Machines don’t make mistakes. People do. We minimize the variables. Remove the human error.”
I turned to him, arching a brow. “That’s cute, but machines still need someone operating them. Last I checked in many greek tales, even the God’s let their hubris get in the way of what was reasonable.”
“That too.” He let the smirk return, but softer this time. The dangerous edge was still there, but underneath it was something almost…warm. It made me laugh too briefly, and suddenly the two of us were absurdly practical in our shared obsession.
To be honest, I only was smart when it came to the the body, machinery wasn’t my thing. But I had to voice my own expertise on the matter so it felt less like abstract danger and more like a possible plan to help cure Francoise. ““You’d need monitoring. Constantly. Something that can watch what’s happening in real time and pull the plug if it veers off course. Messing with DNA can easily lead to chaos, a viral vector can target her organs but the risk of off-target effects would be massive without safety measures. Not to mention the machine you’d need to make to rip supernatural abilities out of a person would have to be massive with an even more massive power source.”
His eyes seemed to brightened the more I spoke– the kind of light that made his dangerous and beautiful at the same time. He reached out to snatch the lab hangout, flipping it over and pulling out a pen, already sketching the barest lines: a containment chamber, a cold-pack array, a loop of circuitry labeled “feedback sensor.”
“You think in contingencies.” He said in a low voice. “I like that. A closed-loop system–real time monitoring everything, coupled with an auto-abort if the aberrant splicing occurs. We could build multiple safeties into the system. Quarantine modules.”
“From what I’ve read, a containment with a failsafe that sterilizes the sample upon failure would be good.” I corrected, grabbing my own pencil, I began to draw beside his lines, adding a sensor here, a bypass there. The movement felt natural, like finishing half of a sentence for someone who already knew what you meant before you did. It helped that Isaac did all the heavy thinking with the actual engineering sketches, with me only adding to his work.
He watched me add my notes, and out of the corner of my eye, for the first time this semester, I saw him unguarded. Attentive, almost proud. The possessive edge in him softened into appreciation.
It made me feel disarmed.
“You think too,” He spoke quietly,. “Not just clever– calculating. That’s rare. Useful. You can actually keep up with me.”
The way he said it made my face hot. It was reckless feeling and slightly intoxicating.
I pushed myself back into my chair, scanning the scrawl of graphite strokes– the seeds of an idea. “This is just a theory.” I said tapping the paper between us with my pencil. “A thousand things could still go wrong. Off-target mutations, ethical concerns, legality, how we are even going to find the space or resources– Isaac are you even listening to me?”
“I’m listening,” he said unconvincingly, still drawing models on the paper. “I hear all of it.” Then, softer, with that tiny, private ferocity of his: “And I don’t care which part scares you more. Whether it’s the hubris or technical impossibility, if it means she doesn’t have to live like this anymore– I will do it.”
It was that last part– the certainty in it– that fractured part of my resistance. He wasn’t just some monster with a plan. He was a frightened man with a mission, and he’d wrapped the fear in a god complex so it would make sense to him.
“Fine,” my voice quieter than I intended. “We start slow. We journal every step. No unilateral experiments. We need to make sure this is safe.”
He smiled that time, it was small and genuine, edged still with his usual mischief. “I knew you’d come around. You always do…”
“If we’re doing this.” I started, turning to face away as I wished to hide the embarrassment on my face as he spoke so fondly of me. “We have to do it right. Ethically. Carefully. And with her consent– always with her consent.”
He hesitated, the rawness I saw in his expression as I turned back around made him look human in a way he rarely seemed to allow. “She chose you,” he said finally. “If you stand in her corner, I’ll be able to build her something that will allow her to be more than what she fears.”
I look at him– really look at him– then nod. We weren’t friends him and I. We were barely starting to trust another. But in this cramped classroom, over vials of strawberry DNA and the first outlines of an impossible machine, we had began to find the shape of how we might work together. Two stubborn individuals, broken in their own way, aligning to try and find the same impossible end.
The bell had rung, and the room bustled around us. Other students filed the past, obvious to the gravity of the doodles we had across our desks. Isaac had taken off his gloves and rolled up his sleeves, and without much ceremony, invited himself to help me up from my seat– it felt like an extension of whatever fragile compact we’d just formed. It felt weird, considering every interaction I’ve had with him thus far, his feigning being a gentleman felt off.
I sighed, rolling my eyes but decided to just take the gesture. His grip was cool, a lot steadier than the scientist’s bravado would have let on. In that small moment of pressure I felt something like an accord: we would try, and we would do it together. And beneath the unease, a little spark of something dangerously like fondness flared up bright and too stubborn to stuff down.
master list part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 (you're here) ...
A/N: I'm actually SEETHING rn, this post gave me so much trouble because it was so long, so it maxed out on Tumblr when I copied and pasted start from Google Docs. Genuinely, I started tweaking out, but I mean it worked out in the end. I won't say much else since it would be a spoiler to share any thoughts on this chapter specifically, but I hope you all enjoy despite my rage, and hopefully it doesn't come off rushed. Also, the way the reader walks off trauma and lowkey not acknowledging how awful it is, is an intentional character choice
Obviously, spoiler warnings to those who have yet to finish the second season of Wednesday
warnings: swearing, violence, death threats, genuine arguing, blood/injuries, minor gore, toxic behavior, hospital setting, and the reader lowkey excusing bad behavior
word count: 4.8K
The walk back to Nevermore should have been a peaceful one. At first, it felt like a reprieve– no sly digs, no cutting remarks– but after about twenty or so minutes of walking beside him in that unnatural quiet, it curdled into something worse. Every step felt like a clock counting down on something, and I hadn’t the slightest clue of what.
He’d been entirely silent since our walk from Pilgrim World. Francoise even tried to ask him if something was the matter, but he gave a short, quick response that seemed to ease her intently, but only made me all the more suspicious and on edge.
The grounds were empty, the gates looming against a star-streaked sky, the air crisp enough to bite my skin. Instead, every step beside him felt like trudging through quicksand. My ears strained for sound, even the crunch of gravel beneath our boots, but what I really waited for was him.
He finally spoke when the school gates creaked shut behind us.
“Francoise,” he said smoothly, voice carrying a command disguised as care, it came out velvety like he had been mentally rehearsing it, “why don’t you head to your dorm? (Y/N) and I need to have a chat.”
Her brows drew together, confusion softening her voice. “What? Why? What about?”
I almost opened my mouth to intervene, but his gaze slid to her with a brotherly softness I didn’t trust. “Don’t question, it’s nothing serious. Go.”
Whatever this was, it wasn’t something I could avoid, I could tell by his tone. I caught the flicker of unease in her expression and spoke before I could stop myself. “Francoise… It’s okay. Just head to bed.”
She hesitated — and then, almost too easily, nodded at me. She gave her brother one last look, reluctant, but still turned and walked toward the dorms. Only once her figure had melted into the glow of the lantern-lit steps did Isaac move.
His eyes tracked her vanishing form, but the moment she was gone, they snapped back to me. Hard. Unblinking.
Isaac didn’t look at me until she was gone, his profile sharp against the lamplight. Then he jerked his chin toward a darker path skirting the side of the building. “Walk with me.”
It didn’t sound like a request—it was a command, sharp and absolute. Normally, my first instinct would’ve been to snap back, to dig my heels in just to spite him. But something in his tone…something in the way it left no room for argument…stripped the retort from my tongue. For once, even my usual attitude with him shrank back, unwilling to spark against whatever weight hung behind his words.
My throat tightened, but I followed. Out here, under the skeletal branches and the weak glow of lanterns, the night felt stretched thin. Too quiet. Too still. He led us out pretty far, so much so that the school had to be a good few minutes away.
He stopped abruptly, and when he turned, his eyes gleamed in the dark.
“Where do you get off,” he said slowly, each word like the press of a knife point, “messing with her head?”
The accusation landed like a slap. I blinked, the echo of his words ringing too loud. “What?”
He took a step closer. Not rushed. Deliberate. A predator closing the distance. “Don’t play dumb. You know what she is. What monster she carries inside her. And now…” He smiled, humorless, sharp. “Now she’s chained herself to you.”
Something hot sparked in my chest. Does he mean? No, but her father was the one to control her, her Hyde. I didn’t do anything, I didn’t even want that. Could Hydes learn to change masters?
“I didn’t mean to– I didn’t ask for that.”
His laugh was short, bitter. “No, but you didn’t refuse it either, did you?” Another step forward. I instinctively backed up, but the gravel crunched loudly under my boots — it sounded too much like retreat.
“I don’t want control over her,” I snapped.
He tilted his head, eyes narrowing, and then he was suddenly closer again, closing the distance with unnerving ease. His shoulder nearly brushed mine, his presence wrapping around like smoke. “Then why does she listen to you?” His voice was softer now, coaxing, dangerous. “She never listens to me like that. One word from you, and she folds.”
“That’s not my fault,” I shot back, but my pulse betrayed me, hammering in my throat.
His smirk widened, cold satisfaction curling at the edges. He leaned in, so close his breath ghosted against my ear. “Oh, but it feels good, doesn’t it? Having her hang on your words. Knowing she chose you. Don’t act like it doesn’t make you feel powerful.”
My jaw clenched. “You’re twisting this—”
“Am I?” He shifted abruptly, cutting me off by stepping fully into my space. His hand brushed my shoulder — too casual, too deliberate — and shoved lightly, enough to push me half a step back. My spine nearly kissed the rough bark of a tree.
His smile didn’t falter. “Francoise isn’t yours to command. You don’t get to just mess with her head just so you can feel better about your long, sad life. She’s not your little experiment.”
“She’s not yours either,” I bit out, anger sparking despite the way my chest was tightening.
That landed. His eyes narrowed, shadowed, and for the first time, his mask of control fully cracked. Splitting wide open for me to catch a true look at the monster beneath.
He moved with startling speed, the air cutting cold as he crowded in, his body pinning me without a single touch. His palms slammed against the tree on either side of my head, caging me in so tight that bark bit the back of my neck. My pulse hammered, not just fear—rage, defiance, the awful knowledge that if he wanted to snap me in half, he could.
“You have no idea what you’re playing with,” he hissed. His breath brushed my skin, hot against the night chill. Moonlight glanced sharply along his teeth when he bared them. “And if you hurt her—”
The air went taut, stretched until it quivered, like a bowstring ready to snap.
I forced myself to meet his gaze, my voice low, steady, even as my chest heaved. “Then what? You’ll kill me?”
He didn’t answer. His jaw worked, and in the silence, his eyes spoke for him. I read it clear as blood on snow: yes. He would.
“Normally,” he murmured at last, voice dropping to something almost silky, almost amused, “I’m quite charmed by that smart mouth of yours. But right now?” His stare dragged down my face, my throat, my chest, in a way that felt both like possession and a threat. “Right now, I’d like nothing better than to drive a stake through your heart.”
My stomach dropped, cold sweeping up my spine. I told myself to move, to shove him off, but my hands hung useless at my sides, trembling.
“Or,” he went on, slower now, crueler, “maybe I could rip that pretty head off your shoulders. Hold you here until dawn and watch the sun turn you to ash.”
The casual way he spoke it made my blood ice. My throat bobbed, but my words cracked out anyway. “If this is your way of trying to get under my skin, it’s not working.”
He smirked, and the gesture was unbearable—sharp, knowing, intimate. “On the contrary. I think it’s working beautifully.”
His hand shifted. First, the back of his knuckles brushed my cheek, deceptively tender, burning where he touched. Then it slid down, slow, deliberate, curling around the column of my throat. He didn’t squeeze, not yet—but the weight of his hand was enough to make my breath falter. “You are terrified of me,” he whispered, almost coaxing, almost pleased.
“This would scare anyone,” I ground out, though my voice rasped.
“Exactly.” His grip tightened, just enough for the bark to dig deeper into my spine as he leaned closer. “Smart girl. Smart enough to be afraid.”
Then his hand closed. Not crushing, but firm, and with it came something worse—pressure flooding through me, like invisible chains cinching every joint. My body locked. My heels dragged against the earth as he lifted me off the ground, and I realized with dawning horror it wasn’t his strength. It was his mind.
“Swear to me,” he growled, and his voice shook with barely leashed fury, “that you’ll leave her the fuck alone. That you aren’t going to use her.”
His grip was not so much that I couldn’t get air, yet I still felt the words catch in my throat.
“SAY IT!” His roar cracked like thunder. “If you don’t, I swear by every unholy god your kind clings to—I’ll kill you right here, right now.”
I clawed at the tree behind me, nails digging into bark until splinters tore my skin, trying to ground myself, trying to fight the hold that made my body nothing more than a puppet. My chest burned. My teeth clenched against the panic rising fast enough to choke me.
Still, somewhere deep under the fear, something hot sparked again—anger, bitter and stubborn.
But then— there was a howl.
It cut through the night sharp as broken glass, close enough to rattle my bones.
Isaac’s head snapped up. The clouds thinned just enough to reveal it, pale and merciless overhead. A full moon. The sound wasn’t distant. It was nearby.
He let go of my throat so suddenly I gasped softly, but before relief could bloom, his palm clamped hard over my mouth. The heat of it seared against my chilled skin. He dragged me down, forcing us both to crouch low behind the tree. The leaves crackled under us softly as we attempted to be silent.
His body pressed close, far too close, until I could feel the steady rise and fall of his chest against my back. Or rather, the unsteady rise and fall. His breath came fast, harsh, misting against my ear, the only warmth in the icy night.
“You heard that too, right?” he whispered. The sound was raw, stripped of his usual composure, and that alone made my stomach twist. Isaac never doubted. Isaac never asked, at least never questioned he didn’t already know the answer to.
I nodded, jerky and quick.
It was hard to focus. Hard to sift the world for a heartbeat to try and find out where that thing was when all I could hear was the frantic ticking, hammering of his heart, quick as mine. The two tangled together, beating so violently that it drowned out everything else.
Then came the roar.
It erupted behind us, so suddenly my vision jolted white. I barely had time to twist before something massive burst through the trees—fur, fangs, eyes too wide, too wild. A werewolf.
I tried to scream, but Isaac’s hand still pinned my mouth. He dropped it only to fling his arm out, his control snapping through the night like a whip. The creature’s body slammed into a nearby trunk, the wood snapping against its force, the crack echoing like gunfire.
We hit the ground, too, leaves and dirt scratching at my palms. The beast staggered back up, drool swinging from its jaws. It barked—a grotesque, guttural sound that vibrated in my ribs—and then it charged.
Isaac hauled me sideways at the last instant. The impact of its claws raked the air where I’d been a heartbeat before. I stumbled, but he dragged me with him, his grip bruising around my arm. The wolf spun, snapping at shadows, its pupils blown wide until only rings of white gleamed. It didn’t move like a predator. It moved like a frenzy. Like a body already broken but forced forward anyway.
I had seen werewolves before. None like this. Crazed at times, yes, but never to this extent.
It lunged again, erratic, unstoppable, its body twitching with unnatural speed. Isaac caught it—barely. His hand shot out, fingers trembling with the effort, and the wolf’s body jerked up, suspended midair like a snarling marionette.
“What the fuck is this mutt doing here?” His voice strained, breaking at the edges, he was out of breath, but his eyes never left the beast.
I was gasping, chest tight, the metallic taste of fear in my mouth. “I-I don’t know. They lock them up during the cycle—did they somehow break out of the Lupin cages?”
The wolf thrashed against Isaac’s invisible hold, claws swiping empty air, foam bubbling at its mouth. His arm shook, tendons standing sharp in his neck. For once, his expression wasn’t mocking, wasn’t controlled—it was tight, teeth gritting, concentration etched deep into his chiseled face.
Still, he kept me close, tethered near enough that his shadow covered mine. Even in panic, he positioned himself between me and the beast, like I was a thing he owned, something he refused to let the creature touch.
When he finally moved, it was with staggering precision—dragging the werewolf in his grip like a weight, step by step. I stayed rooted at first, torn between following him or running the other direction. My throat ached from his earlier hold, and the ghost of his fingers there made it hard to see him as anything resembling safe.
But the werewolf shrieked, claws still flailing—and Isaac tightened his hold, jerking it closer as though daring it to try again. His control was terrifying, faltering at the edges, but enough to bind the creature. It was too close, though. Far too close.
And still, he didn’t let me slip out of reach.
“Guys?”
The voice was small, wavering—Francoise, calling from the gates.
Isaac’s head whipped toward the sound of his sister. That flicker of distraction from the DaVinci was enough. I watched as the werewolf lunged, its claws going straight for his chest with deadly precision. His heart. His manmade heart wouldn’t be able to take that hit.
I didn’t think. Instinct shoved me forward. My palms slammed into Isaac’s shoulder, knocking him hard through the gates of Nevermore—just out of reach.
The claws buried themselves in me instead.
White-hot pain flared across my ribs, tearing through flesh and bone. The force sent me flying back, spine cracking against the brick wall. My skull bounced against stone. The world spun, swimming in darkness and blood.
“(Y/N)!” Francoise’s voice broke.
Air refused my lungs. My stomach twisted, bile rising as I staggered, forcing myself upright on trembling arms. The ground pitched beneath me. Francoise was rushing toward me, wide-eyed, but the beast was still prowling, its attention snapping toward her.
“NO—STAY BACK!” My voice tore raw from my throat. “I’LL BE OKAY– JUST GET OUT OF HERE!”
The wolf’s shadow blotted out the lanternlight as it leapt, claws raised—
—then the sound hit. Bones splitting. Flesh-tearing.
I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting to be sprayed with my own blood. It never came. Instead, there was a crash somewhere off to the side.
I blinked blearily—and froze.
Another monster stood between us and the wolf. Taller, gaunt, its gray skin stretched tight and waxy over sinewed muscle. Fleshy, spindly, warped. The remnants of soft clothing hung shredded over its form. Tangled brown hair framed its deformed skull.
Its roar was hideous, wet and guttural, rattling my teeth.
My stomach lurched. I knew.
“Francoise?”
The Hyde didn’t look back. She only gurgled a growl that sounded almost like acknowledgment, her hunched frame prowling around the wolf in a circling dance. Then they collided, claws raking, bodies slamming together in a violent blur.
I barely registered the hands scooping me up until I was pressed against a warm chest, ribs straining under the thundering of his ticking heart. Isaac. His hold was iron, crushing, his breath sharp above me. I never thought I’d be relieved to see him, but that was short-lived once I looked up at him.
He stared at the fight, and I saw something I’d never seen on his face before. Sheer terror.
“Francoise!” His voice cracked, louder than he meant it. “Snap out of it before—” But he bit the words off, jaw tight.
The Hyde was merciless. Even wounded, Francoise dwarfed the wolf. She snatched its snout in clawed hands and slammed it into the earth, again and again. Mud sprayed. Claws and teeth are trying to rip at each other. She roared her fury, unhinged and raw.
Beside me, Isaac was shaking. Not trembling from weakness, but from the effort of keeping his voice controlled, his arms locked around me like a tether. “We need to get closer,” I rasped.
His head snapped down, eyes wild. “Are you insane?”
“If she kills them—” My words tangled on blood in my mouth. “If she kills a student, she’s done. They’ll never let her go. We have to stop her.”
His jaw worked, panic flickering, then hardening. He didn’t argue. He lifted me, half-carrying, half-dragging, every step stiff with dread.
“Francoise…”
Her name scraped out of my throat, raw and desperate, I almost didn’t recongize it as my own. My hand trembled as I reached toward her, fingers slick with my own blood, arm screaming from the effort. She loomed over me—huge, trembling, her claws wrapped so tightly around the werewolf’s skull I swore I heard bones crack. Her chest heaved, her grotesque ribcage expanding and collapsing like a bellows, and those awful, bulging eyes fixed not on me but on the prey she was about to finish.
The werewolf’s snarls had gone hoarse, almost pitiful, but she didn’t stop. She slammed its head into the dirt again, and again, each impact sending shockwaves up through my bones.
“Francoise, that’s enough…” My voice broke, not from fear, but from something deeper—grief, maybe. Or the sudden knowledge that if she did this, if she killed, she’d never come back the same. They’d probably take her away, lock her up, and forcefully try to control her only means of defense.
She froze mid-motion. Her claws shook.
I dragged myself forward on my knees, ignoring the searing fire in my ribs. Isaac hissed my name behind me, tried to grab my arm to hold me back, but I shook him off. For once, I wasn’t going to hide behind him.
“You’ve done enough,” I whispered. My palm touched the clammy, leather-like skin of her forearm. Her body jolted under my touch, her head snapping down to look at me. And God—those eyes. Bloodshot, wet, stretched so wide I could see every vein running through them. They were monstrous, yes. But beneath that rage, beneath the animal frenzy, I saw something else. Fear.
“I know you’re scared,” I said, softer now. My thumb brushed over the uneven texture of her skin. “I know it hurts. But Isaac and I are safe. You are, too. We are all safe, you can take it easy.”
Her claws slackened, and with a wet thud, the werewolf collapsed, coughing up dirt and blood before scrambling away to put some distance between them and the Hyde. She didn’t chase it. She didn’t even move. Her entire frame hunched in on itself, as if my words had cut deeper than the fight.
She made a sound then—a horrible, warbling gurgle that might’ve been a sob, if a sob could come from something so twisted. Her knees buckled, and she crumpled down, her huge body folding into itself like it was trying to disappear.
I caught her, or tried to. She was heavy and shaking, her damp skin cold against mine, but I wrapped my arms around as much of her as I could. “I’ve got you,” I murmured, over and over, until the words blurred into something more like prayer.
The cracking started slowly. Bones shifting. Skin crawling. Her frame shrinking in my arms. She groaned in agony, every breath a plea I couldn’t answer. All I could do was hold on tighter as her monstrous shape peeled away to reveal my friend again.
And then she was—small, broken, her body streaked with blood and bruises, bare skin shivering beneath Isaac’s coat when he rushed to drape it around her. She clung to me like a drowning child, burying her face against my shoulder, sobbing so hard her whole frame shook. Isaac was there an instant later, quick to take his coat from his shoulders to drape it around her. He knelt in front of us, his hands hovering over her as though he could hold her together by sheer will.
“Why were you out here?” His voice snapped sharply, but the edges trembled. “Do you have any idea what could’ve—”
She sobbed harder, shaking. “I thought you were going to die—I saw you guys leave, it was so dark out, so I waited, and I just—I was scared—and then I changed, I didn’t mean to, I didn’t want to—I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please don’t hate me—”
His face cracked. For a heartbeat, I thought I saw his own tears, swallowed back before they could fall. He gripped her shoulders, firm, grounding. “Francoise. I could never hate you.” His voice was low, fierce, desperate. “Do you understand? Never.”
She clung tighter, crying into my chest.
“We could never hate you.” I whispered against her hair, weak but sure, “You saved us. You’re hurt, but you saved us. You did well.”
When the teachers arrived, their voices cut sharply into the night, full of questions and orders, but I barely heard them. The only thing I registered was Isaac’s grip—still tight on both of us, holding like he thought if he let go, everything around us would shatter.
—
I don’t even remember how I ended up in the hospital. Everything blurred together—sirens, shouting, the haze of adrenaline still dripping out of my veins. It was like I had been watching myself from the outside, detached, letting the night unravel instead of living it. They said the whole disaster started when one of the werewolf students decided to get high before being locked in the lupin cages. Not just weed either—something stronger, something that left him half-feral and now in police custody.
My wounds had closed hours ago. Perks of immortality, I suppose. The doctors didn’t even bother keeping me overnight, but I stayed anyway. Because Francoise was still here.
She hadn’t been so lucky. Three separate areas needed stitching. The bite marks on her arms were angry and deep; the ones across her thighs looked like they’d scar. Bruising crawled all along her back and ribs like storm clouds. She looked so small curled into that hospital bed, swallowed in starched white sheets, pale beneath the fluorescent lights. They promised she’d recover, but insisted on keeping her overnight.
Isaac hadn’t left her side. He hadn’t let go of her hand once. The two of us sat in silence, the only sound the rhythmic beep of her heart monitor. He was almost untouched from the fight—just scrapes, some bruises—but the look in his eyes was far more battered.
Guilt pressed down on me, thick and suffocating. Logic told it wasn’t my fault, that I couldn’t have ever hoped to have predicted this. But every what-if still spun through my head. If I’d just told Isaac no, if I’d walked her to her dorm, if I hadn’t let her trail me everywhere—maybe this wouldn’t have happened.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered at last, voice low, my gaze pinned to the sterile floor.
The silence stretched, weighted.
“It’s…” Isaac’s voice finally broke it. There was grit in his tone, like he wanted to cling to anger but couldn’t quite manage. “It’s not your fault.”
I didn’t look at him. My hands lay clean in my lap, but I remembered how they’d been smeared in blood hours earlier. They still felt warm with it. Wrong.
“It just feels like it is.”
He didn’t answer, and the quiet settled again. Not uncomfortable exactly. It felt heavier than that, like the quiet of grief. My old instinct itched—I wanted to run, to escape—but for once I kept myself rooted in place. Running would do nothing.
When Isaac spoke again, his voice had changed. Softer. But darker too, like a well you could fall into.
“My sister… she’s my everything. Has been since we were kids. I was sick back then, always too weak. My body was useless, so the only escape I had was my mind—and her. She was the only thing that made being trapped in bed bearable. Then I got too sick even for that. Our mother spent what little money we had on my treatments, all for nothing. And our bastard father…” His jaw tightened. “He never cared. When she first turned, he cared even less. While all I could do was rot away on a cot, my sister was locked away and berated for the simple crime of breathing.”
I lifted my eyes at that. There was something in the way he spoke—raw, unpolished—that made me soften without meaning to. I knew the story already, or thought I did, but hearing such a prideful guy admit to the tragedy he had experienced only made me hurt all the more.
“I thought if I got us out of there, things would get better. That here I could protect her. Shield her from people who’d use her kindness against her, or worse, exploit the thing inside her. But…” His words faltered. For a second, his eyes glistened, and he looked away sharply, as if ashamed of it.
“She’s lucky to have you,” I said quietly.
That got his attention. He blinked at me, as if the words were foreign. But I meant them, and he knew it.
“It doesn’t feel like it,” he muttered, voice tight. “Not when I let her end up like this. If anyone’s failed her, it’s me.”
He dragged a hand over his face, and when he spoke again, his voice was almost feverish. “I was supposed to be the one to help her. She never left my side when I was wasting away in hospitals. Even when we had nothing, she kept me alive just by being there. I found a way to cure myself. I made myself back up. I know I can cure her, too. You’ve seen what it does to her. Every time she turns, it tears her apart. It’s going to kill her one day.” His hand tightened around hers, pale knuckles taut. “And despite everything I’ve done, all my efforts to guide her… she chose you. She chose you to be the one to control that monster.”
His words hung in the air, heavy with bitterness and something akin to fear.
“I understand now,” I said slowly, choosing each word. “Why you are so protective of her. She’s wonderful. She has so much life in her—life the world keeps trying to crush down. Even in this short time I’ve known her, she’s shown me more of her light than I deserve. She saved us tonight. Meanwhile, we were getting ready to rip and fight with each other like children…”
He looked away, jaw working.
“You’re a good brother for trying to protect her,” I continued. My hand went instinctively to my neck, recalling the way he’d cornered me in the woods. “Back there, you made me swear I wouldn’t hurt her. That I’d never use this ‘master’ bond against her. I never asked for that title. And I never plan to use it.”
His eyes cut back to mine, sharp, searching.
“Maybe that’s the point,” I said. “Maybe her having someone who doesn’t demand she turn—someone who refuses to command her—maybe that’s what she needs. If turning hurts her, then I won’t let her. It could give you time to find another way.”
He stared at me like he was trying to gauge whether I believed what I was saying.
“If anyone can find a cure for her, it’s you, Night. I’ll watch over her until you do. However long it takes. I swear it.”
The monitor beeped steadily beside us, filling the silence between us. Isaac’s grip on Francoise’s hand loosened slightly, though he didn’t let go. He studied me, eyes narrowed with calculation and something softer underneath.
“You swear?” His voice was low, but the demand in it was unmistakable.
I nodded. “I swear.”
Then his mouth curved into that infuriating smirk, the same cocky spark I thought he’d finally buried flashing back to life. “Guess that means you and I will be spending a lot more time together.”
I shot him a glare sharp enough to cut glass, exhaling slow and heavy through my nose—deep, from the pit of my soul. Of course. He just had to ruin the moment.
Only then did some of the tension in his shoulders ease, though I could still see the storm raging behind his eyes. He wasn’t done being afraid. And he wasn’t done trying to control the pieces around him. But for the first time, maybe, he realized I wasn’t his enemy.
And for the first time tonight, I felt a genuine smile stretch across my face, one I didn’t bother to hide.
master list part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4(you're here) ...
A/N: I originally was going to try and post parts 4 & 5 at the same time, but part 5 is proving to be the hardest of the bunch to write. So while a good chunk of it is already roughed out, this chapter turned out longer than I originally had planned. I hope you guys are picking up what I'm putting down regarding the reader and Francoise.
While part 5 is the one that gives me the most trouble to write, it's also the most eventful of the installments you've seen and has more resolution to some of the plot points that have been set up, so I hope y'all will look forward to that! It's also most likely going to be the longest of the chapters because I shoved a lot of what was supposed to happen in that one in this one, and even though I'm not even halfway, it's still like over 2 K words
Obviously, spoiler warnings to those who have yet to finish the second season of Wednesday
warnings: swearing, mentions of oppression/genocide, readers not enjoying a certain amusement park in Jericho, Isaac rage-baiting the fuck out of the reader and disrupting her peace as usual
word count: 3.4 K
Adjusting to life as part of a pair—instead of my usual solitary existence—was a stranger transition than I’d expected. Since agreeing, somewhat against my own instincts, to become Francoise’s confidant, I’d been subjected to things I used to mock mercilessly from afar: gossip sessions, dreamy talks about boys, and even the occasional dealing with her whining about class assignments.
And yet… after a week or so now, I’d stopped grinding my teeth. Maybe I even started to enjoy it. Or maybe it was just that it came from her. For Francoise, patience was somehow easier to find.
That’s how I ended up leaning against the wall of the fencing hall, arms crossed, the faint smell of polish and sweat clinging to the air. I’d been here before, but never while people actually used it. Swords clashed, shoes squeaked, and Morticia Frump—our new captain for the fencing team—commanded the room with such effortless elegance that it made everyone else look like children playing at knights.
And Francoise? Somehow, the shyest girl I’d ever met was holding her own. Natural grace, Morticia had called it. She looked focused, her pale face set with determination, brown locks bouncing as she lunged and parried. I couldn’t help but wonder if she even remembered I was watching.
Lost in that thought, I nearly jumped when a voice like silk brushed against my ears.
“A delight to have you here with us, (Y/N)~”
It took me a full beat to register who was speaking. Morticia. Morticia Frump knew my name. I had to clear my throat so I didn’t choke on my own spit.
“Hello, Morticia…” What the hell do I say in this situation? We’d never exchanged a single word. Was this what happened when you let people into your life—suddenly more came sniffing around?
Fuck me, man…
“Are you here to join the club?” she asked, smile as smooth as her voice. “We would love to have you.”
“Oh, no,” I waved a hand quickly. “I’m just here for Francoise. Maybe another time.”
She glanced over her shoulder at the girl in question, then back at me, lips curving knowingly. The light slanted through the windows just so, illuminating her cheekbones like the universe itself adored her.
“It’s good you're looking out for her. The little one could use more friends. So sweet, isn’t she? Seems to be coming out of her shell. As are you. I’m glad you two seem to inspire change in each other.”
Change. What a scary concept. I hadn’t changed in a decade, maybe longer. The thought that speaking to Francoise might ripple through the stagnant pond of my life was… terrifying. But I know that’s most likely just my paranoia talking.
Before I could string a reply together, the atmosphere shifted with enough drama to warrant its own orchestra swell.
“Cara mia…”
Morticia and I both turned, though only she smiled.
“Mon cher…”
Gomez Addams swooped into the hall like he’d been waiting behind a curtain for his cue. Isaac trailed after him, radiating the energy of a man who’d just bitten into a raw lemon. Gomez wasted no time: he snatched Morticia by the waist, lifted her off the ground, spun her once—twice—like a man possessed. She laughed, he stared at her as though the galaxies were stitched into her irises, and I waited for reality to reassert itself. It didn’t. The entire fencing team ignored them as if this were the fifteenth time today.
“Meeting adjourned,” Morticia sang out, dismissing the fencers with a wave as casual as brushing lint from her sleeve.
Irresponsible. Weren’t they supposed to train for another thirty minutes? Guess love conquers even practice schedules.
Isaac strode past me, exhaling sharply through his nose instead of rolling his eyes. For him, that was basically sainthood. Francoise darted forward and hugged him, glowing with delight that he’d bothered to show up at all to her practice.
I, like an absolute fool, looked back at the couple. Big mistake. Gomez was pressing a trail of kisses up Morticia’s arm at a pace normally reserved for rosary prayers, while she tilted her head like a queen granting audience. His mouth moving from her arm up her neck, both making soft, breathy sounds I’d rather not go into detail about.
My jaw went slack. Public displays of affection weren’t my thing, but this wasn’t PDA—this was… performance art. What was I supposed to do? Clap? Take notes? Pretend I wasn’t watching the live-action remake of an opera?
I glanced at Francoise and Isaac for backup.
And nearly lost it.
They were identical: eyes wide, necks jutted forward, judgment radiating off them in perfect sibling synchrony. They looked like they had just witnessed a crime.
A laugh punched out of me before I could stop it. I slapped a hand over my mouth, shoulders shaking, because there weren’t words in the English language to cover what their faces looked like.
Isaac cut me a flat, warning glance but said nothing, guiding both us girls toward the courtyard with Francoise stuck to his side. For one blessed stretch of silence, no one spoke.
Then Francoise whispered, scandalized: “I’m… like actually scarred.”
I nearly folded. “No kidding,” I muttered, grinning into my sleeve.
She giggled, bumping my shoulder like we’d just shared the best inside joke in existence. Her laughter was light, unforced—like sunlight cracking through storm clouds—and against my will, I laughed too.
Naturally, Isaac had decided now was his time to shine and obliterated the shared moment. “It’s worse in the dormitories,” he muttered, grim as a funeral. “Sometimes they don’t even acknowledge I’m in the room.”
I grimaced, imagining it. “Yikes.”
“My thoughts exactly.” His lips curved, but it wasn’t a smile. No, it was the expression of someone who delighted in our discomfort. “At least my roommate is useful. When he’s not drooling all over that girl, for whatever reason.”
Not helpful. Not kind. Useful. The choice of words sat wrong with me.
“What were you even doing with Gomez, anyway?” Francoise asked.
Isaac’s gaze slid toward her like a knife. “I was having a chat with him when he mentioned my baby sister had joined his lover’s fencing team.” His voice was light, casual even, but the edge in it was unmistakable. “You never told me you signed up for an afterschool club.”
“Oh, yeah… I only told (Y/N). Sorry…” Francoise fumbled, guilt flashing across her face.
He already knew—he’d been snooping. This was just him playing a game with her, a chance to make her say she hadn’t told him. I couldn’t help but glare at him, manipulative asshole. He was guilt-tripping her back to his side.
“I just didn’t want to mention it in case I didn’t make the cut,” she added quickly, then brightened with nervous energy. “But hey! I know how to make it up to you.”
“Oh?” His brow arched, tone almost indulgent. “How would you do that?”
“We could go to Pilgrim World! They just reopened. I’ll even buy your ticket with my allowance—”
I blinked. Pilgrim World? A theme park built to glorify settlers who stole land and slaughtered people? Who in their right mind—
“Sounds like a plan.”
I whipped my head toward Isaac, nearly tripping over my own feet. Since when was Pilgrim World his idea of fun?
Actually. A place where narcissistic psychos had oppressed and killed hundreds sounds pretty on brand. “Great!” Francoise clapped, then turned to me with innocent delight. “And (Y/N), you can come too!!”
“Pardon?” I just stared at her, half sure I’d misheard.
She grabbed my shoulders, shaking me with more strength than I expected from her slight frame. “Of course! Our first night out together since becoming besties!”
“Oh no, I wouldn’t want to intrude,” I protested, holding my hands up. “I have things to do—”
“Well, it’s not like you have homework.”
That voice. That smirk. Isaac.
My head snapped toward him, jaw dropping. “Excuse me?”
“I watched you finish it in class today.” His grin was pure provocation, smug and sharp. He knew exactly how much I hated being cornered. Wait– he was watching me in class?
I opened my mouth, but Francoise was already unleashing her secret weapon: wide brown eyes, pleading pout, soft little whine.
“Pleaseee, (Y/N)? It’ll be fun!”
My eye twitched. I was doomed. How do I get out of this?
—
I don’t know how I got here…
It was a blur, one minute I was trying to fend off the Night siblings, next thing I knew, I was in a cozy fall sweater with my hand clutching a cone of blue cotton candy. Staring at the “Ye Old Fudgery,” I watched people rush in and out wearing fake buckled shoes and grinning like idiots.
If the light hadn’t left my eyes decades ago, now would be the time. This was ridiculous. Fair food mixed with an old-timey façade, the whole thing built on top of what was probably once a burial site or the blood-soaked earth of displaced tribes. A carnival of oppression. Even after a few miserable hours at this place, I still didn't see the charm in it, not to mention the place was crawling with Normies, which added to my discomfort.
I'm not sure when, but while I internally shredded everything this place stood for, Isaac shuffled his way next to me, plucking a tuft of my cotton candy without hesitation. He popped it into his mouth, sugar dissolving on his tongue, and had the audacity to grin down at me.
I glared at him from the side.
“What? Not into sharing?”
“Not with thieves.” I yanked the cone closer to my chest. I didn’t even want it; I just didn’t want him to have it.
“Wow,” he murmured, leaning down just enough that only I could hear, his tone like velvet stretched over barbed wire. “You sound like one of those bitter old cranks who writes angry letters to the editor. Next thing I know, you’ll be shaking your fist at the children and their… candied apples.” He gestured dramatically at a passing toddler with a smeared face covered in caramel.
I rolled my eyes. Before just conceding and shoving the cone towards him. He just raised one of his brows when his hand touched mine as he took the cone away-- I just wiped my hand away at the front of my coat like it was dirty.
“You are so cute when you try to act unaffected." He chuckled, looking down at me smugly, “Thanks for the treat. It’s a good thing you're such a good friend to my sister that you and I can share moments like this.”
I bit back a retort, instead focusing on the way Francoise skipped toward us, holding a flimsy park map with earnest excitement. “They’ve got a recreation of the original Pilgrim meeting house here,” she said breathlessly. “With original artifacts! It’s supposed to be one of the oldest buildings still standing in the colony.”
Of course. The historical guilt-trip portion of the evening.
Isaac, naturally, perked up. “Sounds perfect. Let’s go immerse ourselves in a shrine to hypocrisy.”
At least he acknowledged it, though we both lacked the heart to truly spoil Francoise’s fun.
She beamed at him like he’d just agreed to Christmas morning, missing the sarcasm entirely. She grabbed my wrist before I could think of an excuse and pulled me along.
The inside of the meeting house was worse. Cold wood floors creaked beneath our steps. The air smelled faintly of dust and something sharper, like dried blood that no one bothered to scrub out centuries ago. Even as a fake, they did a good job at replicating the damp feeling of this place. Displays lined the walls—rusted tools, yellowed ledgers, old Bibles with cracked leather covers. A drawing of what the people most likely looked like back in time, their eyes an inky black, watching.
My skin prickled. I kept my hands shoved in my pockets, refusing to touch a thing.
Isaac trailed close, his presence heavy, invasive. I didn't even notice he had been taking bites of the cotton candy before I felt his breath by my ear, "It's sweet. Are you sure you don't want to share?"
I wanted to back away, but I just let it happen; if I showed weakness, he was sure to latch onto it. I was starting to see what he was playing at. I just ignored the heat rising to my face.
“Do I make you uncomfortable, darling?” he whispered, voice low enough that Francoise—bent over a display about “the glory of simple living”—couldn’t hear.
“Yes.”
His smile was sharp, knowing. “I could tell. It’s written all over you.”
I clenched my jaw, eyes fixed on a row of hand-forged shackles displayed under glass.
“Funny, isn’t it?” Isaac leaned closer, his breath brushing my ear. “They preserve the chains, the whips, the sermons… all the things that broke people down. And people pay admission to gawk at it. Like suffering is a sideshow.”
“Why are you even here if you hate it so much?” I muttered, I found myself moving closer to his side, away from the displays as if they were diseased. "I can't stand it in here..."
“Oh, I hate this place, but I don’t hate this.” His grin widened, teeth flashing in the dim light. “I rather enjoy watching you squirm.”
I turned sharply, ready to snap back, but Francoise’s bright voice cut through the air before I could.
“Look at this bonnet! Isn’t it cute?” She tilted her head down and faced us as if to pretend the display was atop her head, giggling. “Can you imagine me in this?”
Isaac chuckled, all charm again. “Adorable. Like a little doll.”
She brushed him off with a laugh. I, on the other hand, was still shaking—caught between revulsion for the artifacts around me and the insufferable heat of Isaac’s words lingering in my ear.
The deeper we moved into the meeting house, the more oppressive it felt. The walls seemed to lean inward, their beams swollen with age. Every shadow had weight, pooling thick in the corners like it had been collecting there for centuries. Glass cases lined the long hall, each one holding relics that should have been left to rot: bone-handled knives, cracked goblets, hymnals swollen with mildew, and letters written in ink that had browned almost to rust.
Francoise darted ahead, her footsteps echoing too brightly against the wooden floorboards. “This is incredible,” she whispered, though her voice carried. She leaned over a display of candlesticks, her breath fogging the glass. “It’s like walking through time.”
I disagreed. It was more like being swallowed by it.
“Wonderful,” Isaac murmured at my side. He’d somehow matched my pace, though I hadn’t invited him to. His voice was lazy, like smoke curling into my ear. “You’re scowling again. Someone might mistake you for being some sort of ugly wicked witch.”
I folded my arms, keeping my eyes on Francoise. “And you’d love that, wouldn’t you?”
“I’d find it endlessly entertaining,” he said easily. “Though, to be fair, you make it far too easy. You react to me like kindling to a spark.”
“You’re not a spark,” I muttered, teeth clenched. “You’re a parasite.”
His grin sharpened, unbothered. “Funny. Parasites tend to survive longest.” He let his gaze sweep over me, not hurried, not embarrassed, like I was just another artifact on display. “And you—well, I’ve seen dolls with more light in their eyes. Don’t think I don’t I see how you treat my sister like one, so frigid in how you handle her.”
My stomach twisted. He was wrong. He had to be. Did I really come off that callous to Francoise? Like I was some sort of owner who occasionally entertained their pet simply so they wouldn’t grow restless? No, he was just trying to get in my head.
Before I could answer, Francoise called out again. “Oh! Look at this pew—can you believe people used to sit through sermons that lasted hours?” She bounced slightly on her toes, cheeks flushed with excitement. “It’s so charming.”
Isaac chuckled, voice shifting instantly to warmth for his sister. “Charming is one word for it.”
I pretended to study the nearest display: a diary under glass, its ink faded, the words barely legible. I imagine if my reflection could stare back at me in the case’s surface, I would be pale, tight-lipped, and stiff.
“Something on your mind?” Isaac prodded, almost gently. “Or are you trying to blend in with everything else ancient in this dump?”
That earned him a glare. “Why do you do this?”
He tilted his head, as if the question truly puzzled him. “Do what?”
“Push. Prod. Always trying to get a reaction out of me like it’s some kind of game. Because I’m not in the mood for your witty remarks right now.”
His smile thinned into something sharper. “Maybe it is. Maybe I just like to see what’s real under all your careful silence. Or maybe—” He leaned closer, his voice lowering to a conspiratorial drawl. “—I’m testing how far you’ll let me go before you finally snap.”
My pulse jumped, traitorously, this handsome bastard. I opened my mouth, ready to lash back, when Francoise’s voice broke in again—soft, unassuming, but grounding.
“Come look at this, both of you.” She was crouched beside a cradle in the corner, the one holding what looked to be an old doll. “It’s so delicate. Isn’t it beautiful? To think this used to belong to a little girl.”
I hesitated, still locked in Isaac’s gaze. He didn’t look away, didn’t blink, until I tore myself free and crossed the room. My footsteps echoed harder than I meant them to.
The doll’s single eye gleamed in the dim light, and something in its rotting fabric face made my chest tighten. The kind of relic that carried whispers in its seams.
“Creepy,” I muttered.
“Haunting,” Isaac corrected smoothly, standing just behind me. “Like it could climb out of that cradle the moment you close your eyes.”
Francoise shivered, half-laughing, half-disturbed. “Don’t say that!”
I was not one to usually fear dolls, but even I couldn't help but shiver. It was rather gross-looking.
Isaac’s grin widened when he saw my reaction, cocky and unrepentant, his tone turning condensing. “What was it something I said? Honesty unsettles people. And you—” his gaze flicked over me, deliberate, infuriating—“you’re the easiest of all.”
That did it. My fists clenched at my sides. Heat rose to my face, anger sparking too fast, too sharp. But I forced myself to keep my mouth shut, though I could feel my composure beginning to break.
For a heartbeat, the air between us felt like it might combust. Francoise blinked between us, oblivious to the charge in the room, smiling faintly like this was just another moment between her friend and her brother.
Isaac only chuckled, low and dark, tilting his head like he was savoring every second. “Now that is the kind of reaction I live for.”
My fists were balled so tight I felt my nails pressing little crescents into my palms. Isaac leaned back slightly, like a cat that had successfully cornered a bird and was waiting to see if it would fly or break.
“You’re not as unreadable as you like to think,” he said softly, eyes glinting in the candlelit gloom. “I can tell when I’ve struck a nerve. You wear it so… prettily.”
My throat tightened, but I forced my voice out flat, laced with disdain. “You mistake being irritating for being clever. There’s nothing impressive about knowing how to get under someone’s skin.”
“Um—guys?” Francoise’s voice broke through the air, sweet but shaky. “Is something wrong?”
My chest was tight, my fists aching from being clenched too long. I forced myself to breathe, unspooling the tension bit by bit, and painted a smile across my face even though it didn’t reach my eyes. Pushing past Isaac, I kept my voice soft but steady.
“No, Francoise, there’s nothing for you to worry about. This place just… doesn’t sit right with me. Why don’t we call it a night and head out? I'm kind of tired of all the fair food and dust...”
I expected her to pout, maybe insist on exploring the upstairs rooms. She’d been practically glowing with excitement a moment ago. But instead, her expression softened immediately, like my words alone carried more weight than the creaking timbers of the house.
“Okay,” she said brightly, not even a flicker of resistance. “If you don’t like it, we’ll go. You’re the boss.”
The words landed funny, not bad, just strange. My brows flicked up in surprise, and I let out a quiet sigh of relief, glad to be free of the stale air and staring eyes of the doll in the corner.
But Isaac… Isaac didn’t move right away. He stood rooted, his dark gaze darting between me and his sister. Francoise tugged lightly at my sleeve, waiting for me to lead the way out, and when I finally did, she followed at my side without hesitation.
That was when I noticed the unusual silence behind us. Where was the teasing quip or insistence to stay in a situation that clearly made me uncomfortable? I glanced back, only briefly, catching the way Isaac’s jaw ticked as he trailed a few paces behind. His eyes had narrowed—not at Francoise, but at me. Suspicion simmered there, laced with something sharper, something I couldn’t name.
But I didn’t linger on it. I was too busy savoring the clean night air as we stepped out of the suffocating meeting house, oblivious for a good while to the storm brewing just a few steps behind.
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