This one is a bit long, so I'm putting it under a cut.
Ten-year-old Xavier Thorpe normally loved the Addams estate. He didn’t know any other family with its own swamp, cemetery, or secret underground canal that led to interesting rooms and vaults.
It was the first time he had ever been sad there, however.
It was his grandmother’s funeral, and like any Addams event, it was done at night under the stars and moon.
He wore an uncomfortable suit that was a bit too small, but his father said that now grandma was dead, he would shrink to fit.
Xavier didn’t know people could shrink, he thought they could only grow. He also didn’t understand what his grandmother’s death had to do with his size, but he took his father’s word for it.
He stood outside one of the many rooms in Addams manor, Miss Eudora and his father were arguing again. The adults never yelled, mostly they were too prideful to do something as gauche as yelling, but he could sense it in their terse voices that they did not like each other.
He didn’t understand why not, as Grandma Violet and Miss Eudora were the best of friends.
But the two had never gotten along, and ever since Grandma Violet died, Vincent was even less willing to pretend he liked Miss Eudora.
He thought he heard some snippets of what they were angry about, something about a villa in the south of France. He thought maybe his father wanted it, but Xavier didn’t know why. They had never been there, and they had a huge penthouse in New York and another in Las Vegas.
He was also certain the arguments were about him, as Miss Eudora didn’t like that his father was living amongst the Normie’s so much.
To Xavier’s heartbreak, he would later learn that his father had much more planned for them in terms of cutting themselves off from Outcast society. If he had known then that it would be the last time he’d see Miss Eudora or the Addams siblings for years, he would have run away and hid somewhere in the vast estate.
“You shouldn’t eavesdrop,” a voice told him coolly, which made him jump.
He turned to see Wednesday, standing there in her best black dress. Most of her clothes looked the same, but this was one embroidered with roses and the collar delicate white silk.
“Unless it’s something really interesting,” her twin sister Freya had popped out of nowhere and whispered right into his ear, which made him jump again.
Freya then stood next to Wednesday, a wide smile on her face, amused that he had been scared twice. She wore a similar dress, except hers had spiderwebs instead of rose embroidery, and the collar was lace silk and not solid.
They wore matching twin braided pigtails, but Wednesday’s were looped at the ends to mimic a noose.
Xavier tried to gather what was left of his ten-year-old dignity and stood up straight.
“Freya, be kind,” Wednesday warned her twin, it was not the time to antagonize Xavier.
The other girl’s smile didn’t leave her face, but she scrunched her nose in acknowledgement.
The adults’ voices were raising higher, and the children knew not to get involved in adult business.
“Want to play hide and seek?” Wednesday offered, thinking the game would cheer Xavier up.
Addamses didn’t mourn like the Normie’s or even other clans. They embraced Death and looked forward to the True Peace brought by Oblivion and becoming one with the Void. If souls were not ready to go into the Void, then they could still communicate with the Dead as the Frumps were powerful mediums.
They were taught, however, that some were deeply saddened when one died regardless.
Wednesday could understand that. Even if the Dead were at peace, the Living had to spend the time between life and joining them without their loved ones. What was speaking with the Dead compared to embracing the Living?
She looked at Xavier, his vivid green eyes sad and his round cheeks slightly red from crying.
“Yeah,” he immediately forgot that the adults were arguing and for a moment was distracted from losing his grandmother.
There were so many places in the mansion to hide, and he was certain he would find even more new and interesting places.
He was It first and gave them to the count of twenty. He had found Wednesday in a mausoleum and Freya on top of a bookcase. He had found Wednesday first, so he and Freya went to go hide.
Wednesday found Freya in a suit of armor, and Xavier was in Grandmama’s large iron pot in the kitchen.
All of this took hours, and it was a nice break from missing his grandmother.
Freya tended to be an aggressive Seeker. Instead of gently tapping on the Hider to tag them as found, she would jump on them or tackle them to the ground. He wanted to try extra hard to hide from her.
His feet found their way to the Addams Family mortuary and crematorium.
That’s where he found her casket. During the wake it had been decorated with onyx skulls and her namesake flower. In the brick mortuary, most of the decorations had been removed. He knew that soon, at midnight, she would be lowered down into a grave on the property.
That had been another point of contention with his father, he had wanted his mother to be buried with his father, Violet’s husband, in the Outcast cemetery in New York. But Violet had been clear in her will what she wanted done with her remains. Xavier didn’t understand why it made his father so upset and was told it was a “grown up thing.”
It was probably disrespectful to go hide in a casket, but he couldn’t stop his hands from lifting the lid and then climbing in.
He was certain it was Addams magic that preserved the body so perfectly, as the only way he could tell she was dead was that she was cold and wouldn’t wake up, no matter how much he asked her to.
He laid himself beside her, wanting one last goodbye.
“I’ll miss you grammy,” he whispered to her as he felt the soft silk of the collar of her dress.
Unbeknownst to Xavier, Freya crept into the mortuary and saw that Xavier was in the casket with Ms. Violet. She gave him a few moments out of respect, but there was Chaos in her blood. She saw the casket was on wheels and the cremator was right there. All it would take would be to push the casket to the entrance and press a button.
She was certain he would be fine…he was basically an Addams after all.
So, she pulled the lid closed and locked the casket. She smiled when she heard muffled yelling and desperate scratching. She pushed the casket to the cremator and set it aflame. It took a moment for the fire to get hot enough and then the casket on the conveyor started to move slowly.
Before Xavier was in any real danger, Wednesday had come in and heard the racket.
She excitedly stopped the conveyor and wondered why Freya wasn’t more excited at the possibility that Ms. Violet might have come back from the dead.
She tilted her head curiously when Xavier was there when she lifted the lid.
“You are not Ms. Violet come back to life,” she was a bit disappointed.
He couldn’t respond as his heart was nearly beating out of his chest at almost having been burned alive. He was also angry because his grandmother wanted to be buried, not cremated.
He turned an angry eye to Freya who simply giggled and then high tailed it out of there as if they were still playing a game.
“I advise against pitting yourself against my sister,” Wednesday warned, understanding that Freya had gone too far. “She would kill you before you got within an arm’s reach. Grandmama is already grieving for Ms. Violet, I would not have you add to it.”
She wasn’t boasting of her sister’s prowess, merely stating a fact.
His initial instinct was to argue, but all it took was one look into her fathomless black eyes and he felt like he was floating. It was something that always happened when he was around Wednesday.
The fight left him and he agreed.
“Come, grandmama can treat your hands,” and without waiting to see if he’d follow her, she started to walk away. He quickly caught up to her, and he was treated to a detailed history of various tortures that included being buried or burned alive.
True to Wednesday’s word, grandmama had patched him up with her special mud. He wouldn’t even be left with scars from tearing at the lid of the casket.
“Go to the kitchens, there will be some cookies waiting for you,” Grandmama promised, affectionately stroking his cheek with her thumb. “Freya, wait here,” she ordered her second great granddaughter.
Xavier couldn’t help his smirk as he and Wednesday left.
Freya rolled her eyes at him, she wasn’t afraid of her grandmama.
“Ma petite monstre,” she affectionately called to Freya and let her sit in her lap, she knew her nature and that she couldn’t be too mad at her, “Why did you almost set Xavvie on fire?”
Freya admired her grandmama’s purple hair, dyed just for the funeral and was in awe of her jeweled embroidered jacket. She always thought her grandmama was the picture of witchy elegance.
She shrugged her shoulders,
“I was just playing with him.”
“You can’t play with him that roughly…” she tried to tell her for the hundredth time, non Addamses were fragile.
“Why not? He’s our cousin, the magic protected him,” she pointed out, tired of being told something that obviously wasn’t true.
That rather shocked Eudora, her heart giving a sweet ache that Freya loved Xavier as kin.
“He and Wednesday are so boring if I don’t show them how to play right,” she went on. “He and Wednesday play like adults.”
That made Eudora frown,
“What do you mean?”
“They’re like you and Ms. Violet…”
“In what way?” she was starting to become concerned. She certainly hoped Xavier and Wednesday didn’t “play” like she and Violet, they were only ten years old!
“You know,” Freya started to become frustrated as it was so obvious, she didn’t understand why adults were so thick. “Like boring old people. They’re just happy to be around each other, not doing anything. They just sit around reading, drawing, or playing dolls…inside…for hours. Like you and Ms. Violet always were. How can you be so happy doing nothing with each other?”
Eudora relaxed when she finally understood, and she smiled and kissed Freya’s hair.
“Some people, like Ms. Violet and me, are…content…or at peace around each other. Sometimes, that’s all you need, is one another,” she tried to explain it as simply as she could.
That sounded awful and not possible, but Freya wasn’t about to argue with her grandmama.
Eudora could tell from Freya’s face she didn’t believe her and let out a cackle.
“Lets get you a cookie and then we lay Violet to rest,” she offered, which the ten year old was more than happy to oblige.
Eudora let herself be dragged to the kitchens, proud to see the next generation get along so well.
Little did she know how spiteful Violet’s son would be, after that night she and the Addamses wouldn’t see Xavier for years.
People forget that there is a 90s show called The New Addams Family and as someone who watched it as a child, I am severely disappointed by the lack of internet love for it.
Much like Bruce Timm did with Clayface in his Batman cartoon, rather than going with one continuity, I picked and chose which relations I wanted for this AU for the Addams Family. So here it is. Eudora Addams is the mother of Fester Addams and his younger brother, Gomez Addams. Fester is engaged to Nathalie Sancoeur. Gomez is married to Morticia Frump (now Morticia Addams). Gomez and Morticia adopted Adrien Agreste( now Adrien Agreste Addams), and are the blood parents of Puglsey Addams, and his younger sister, Wednesday Friday Addams. Adrien is dating Marinette Dupain-Cheng.
