synopsis- After the Hyde attack, Wednesday stitches Enid back together, one careful stitch at a time
(trying to find a writing style that works for me- don’t mind the inconsistency i apologize :3)
The dormitory air reeked faintly of iron by the time Wednesday managed to drag Enid through the door. Blood, her own, not Wednesday’s, had already dried stiff against the wolf’s sleeve, but the smell carried with a persistence that refused to be ignored. The Hyde had fled; in its place remained claw marks, bruises, and the wolf who had finally proved that she was far from defenseless.
Wednesday catalogued the injuries without ceremony: a laceration high across the shoulder, skin torn in parallel lines that betrayed more brute force than precision; abrasions at her hip, knees raw from impact. Enid swayed where she stood, still feverwarm from the transformation, exhaustion threatening to level her entirely.
“I’m fine,” she rasped. A lie so transparent Wednesday refused to dignify it with response.
Instead, she guided Enid into the chair by the desk, retrieving her medical kit from its place beside her violin case. It was odd, one instrument to mend the body, one to soothe the mind. however , Wednesday had long since accepted her attraction for contradiction.
The buttons of Enid’s torn blouse resisted at first, gummed together with blood. Wednesday’s fingers worked them open one by one with clinical efficiency, though the heat beneath her skin reminded her she was dismantling far more than fabric. Enid flinched when cotton peeled back from the wound.
“Hold still,” Wednesday instructed. Her tone carried the same sharp edge she might use with Eugene when he fumbled a hive frame, but softer beneath it, tempered for Enid alone.
She cleaned the wound with iodine. Enid hissed. A sound equal parts pain and defiance, and for reasons unfathomable, Wednesday found herself cataloguing it alongside Enid’s laugh, Enid’s whines, Enid’s ceaseless chatter.
The first stitch went in clean. Wednesday’s hands were steady, she had never been anything less. Thread pulled skin together in a neat, uncompromising line.
“You do this a lot?” Enid asked, voice watery but curious.
“More than you would expect,” Wednesday replied. “Less than I would like.”
Enid managed a laugh, weak but real. The sound vibrated in Wednesday’s chest like a dissonant chord. She found herself irrationally relieved when it did not stop.
When the last stitch was tied, Wednesday pressed gauze into place and taped it down. “You will shower,” she said. “Now. Your current state is unsanitary.”
Enid blinked at her, then nodded. Compliance, though exhaustion had stripped her of her usual bite. She swayed when she tried to rise. Wednesday was there instantly, her hand braced against Enid’s back, guiding her toward the bathroom.
Steam curled around them, rising thick enough to blur the mirror. Enid stood clutching the towel as if it were armor, her shoulders hunched forward. For once, she wasn’t babbling. Her silence told Wednesday more than words ever could.
Her voice fractured. “I don’t look good.”
Wednesday tilted her head. The observation struck her as absurd. Enid was covered in bruises and half-healed claw marks, yes, but the wolf wore her wounds as evidence of survival. Wednesday found them honest. “You are alive,” she said. “That is sufficient.”
Enid laughed weakly, but she still twisted the towel tighter around herself, knuckles blanching. Wednesday’s gaze lingered, not on the exposed skin, but on the way Enid’s hands shook. She recognized the gesture for what it was: shame, misplaced and corrosive.
“Turn around,” Wednesday ordered, tone flat but not cruel. When Enid obeyed, hesitant, Wednesday took the cloth and began with her back, scrubbing away blood in careful, measured strokes. She kept her eyes on the task, not the body. To look too long might have humiliated Enid further, and Wednesday—though she loathed to admit it—found the thought intolerable.
“You don’t have to be embarrassed,” she said finally. “Nudity is biology. Biology is clinical.” A beat passed. “I don’t see you as diminished.
The wolf let out a shaky breath. Some of the tension bled from her shoulders.
Enid shivered as hot water sluiced over her. Blood spiraled down the drain in pink rivulets, diluted but insistent. Wednesday rolled up her sleeves further and again took the cloth in hand, scrubbing gently along Enid’s spine, over her shoulders, down her arms.
When the grime had lifted and only raw skin remained, she shut off the tap. Steam clung to them, curling Enid’s hair in damp golden ropes that stuck to her cheeks. Without hesitation, Wednesday wrapped her in a towel, tucking the edges with soldier’s precision.
“Lift your arms,” Wednesday instructed. Enid obeyed, pliant with fatigue, as Wednesday guided her into the waiting flannel top. Buttons slipped easily into place beneath deft fingers. Wednesday smoothed the collar down, then maneuvered Enid’s legs into the soft bottoms, pulling the fabric carefully over bruised knees.
By the time she had settled Enid against the mattress, the wolf’s eyes were glassy, half-lidded from exhaustion. She clutched the blanket when Wednesday drew it over her, and for a long moment, neither spoke.
Then, haltingly, as though daring herself, Enid whispered, “Will you… stay? Just tonight?”
Wednesday regarded her in silence. A dozen retorts lined up in her mind, cold, precise dismissals that would have been true to her nature. And yet, the sight of Enid trembling in her bed, stitched and still bleeding in places unseen, made cruelty feel dishonest.
She compromised. Without a word, she perched at the edge of the mattress, back rigid, hands folded in her lap. She remained upright, alert, eyes fixed on the dark corners of the room as though she might will the Hyde into reappearing simply to destroy it again.
Enid exhaled softly, satisfied. Her eyes drifted closed, breath evening into the rhythm of sleep.
Wednesday did not relax. She would keep vigil until morning.
Wrote a little Wednesday character study last week - canon compliant but Wenclair coded. Her werewolf transformation scene really stuck with me. Mild warning for canon typical violence. It’s on ao3 as well if you prefer to read it there:
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
—————
Wednesday doesn’t fight it.
When the force of it grips her so tightly that it knocks the breath from her lungs, and her very bones begin to twist, and crack, and contort into elongated limbs at foreign angles right before her eyes—she doesn’t push back.
You need to calm down.
Enid’s words echo in her mind as a warning, but they’re too distant to make much difference. They bounce back and forth like they’re spring-loaded, clashing with the jarring noise that fills her head until it feels like even her skull itself might split in half. You need to—
Wednesday’s too far gone. She’s already changing.
There’s a beast inside this body that’s clawing its way out, drawing strength from her subconscious and her soul. Her emotions are something wild now, and they’re itching to latch onto any escape after being repressed for so very long. You need to calm down, or you’re—
Wednesday doesn’t fight it, because she can’t.
The storm brewing beneath the surface won’t be tamed, or quelled, and it hurts in the way that flames melt flesh from bone and swallow entire buildings whole. It rips straight through her with an impossible force. Her chest is ablaze, and her throat stings with the threat of a growl that somehow still emerges human.
“Too late. Get out!”
Wednesday has walked through fire on her own two feet. She’s crawled into a pyre, and she’s let lit kindling scorch its way down to her fingertips until her skin had been satisfyingly singed. That had always been one of her favorite games as a child: rifling through kitchen drawers for spare matchsticks, and then smuggling them outside to strike each one against stone until that first hint of sulfur hit the air. Every time, a magnificent little spark would grow, and dance, and lick its way across the wood.
How long?
Wednesday would watch it burn and burn.
How long can you hold it?
But her careful grip is slipping now, and the iron seal she’s so intentionally placed over everything she’s vowed to lock away instead of feel is melting beneath the searing heat. Nothing in even her most deranged of past endeavors could have prepared her for the power of this.
Her joints creak. Her cartilage is rearranging.
Enid stares at her, wide-eyed.
Run, Wednesday wants to say, even though she knows the word will never make it past her lips this time.
Everything that follows is mayhem of the highest order.
All of the thoughts in Wednesday’s mind are replaced by a visceral instinct to protect, and to avenge, and to make Tyler Galpin pay. It’s been stirred by the gripping anger that had taken over at the sight of him knocking Enid to the ground—not in her own body, of course, but it had still been Enid—
Leave her alone!
Those three words have morphed into a primal, intrinsic rage. That’s the driving force behind Wednesday’s fury as she launches herself with all of her newfound might against the door that’s locked her in. It clatters to the ground with a resounding thud.
Sparks rain down from machinery like a charged battlefield, and a snarl erupts from the depths of her ribcage, coiling all the way up her body and out past a menacing set of canines until she leaps forward, hell-bent on attack. This bloodthirsty impulse to hunt down what’s threatening Enid and crush him right here, right now, and once and for all, is boiling through her veins with a promise for vengeance.
She has him in her grasp in seconds. He barely even struggles. Oh how simple it would be to snap his feeble little neck.
“Wednesday?”
She wants to make him bleed, gloriously crimson.
“Wednesday!”
She wants to make him suffer.
“Wednesday, we have to go. Now!”
Enid is the only one who can break through her merciless fixation. Wednesday turns to her, and in that moment she can hear the surge of her heartbeat. She can sense the urgency in her words, and she knows that the sea of blue she searches for when she needs steadying is still there, just behind the dark, panicked gaze.
Enid. Enid. Enid.
She tethers Wednesday to reality. She sees the human beneath every mask and front and facade and shape Wednesday has ever shrouded herself in.
And Wednesday knows only this, entwined so firmly within the walls of her hollowed-out heart that not even two changes of body could separate such a truth from the very essence of her being:
