Chapter Text
Death was not as cold and embracing as Wednesday had expected it to be. It was warm, in a cloyingly unpleasant way, and she had the distinct impression of something sticky clinging to her skin, though she could not see what it was. In the ink-black darkness, she couldn't see her hand right in front of her face, nor hear a sound, except her own ragged breathing as her chest heaved.
It was unnatural. It was unnerving.
If this was death, then it certainly was not something to look forward to, like Wednesday had always assumed it would be.
The dying part hadn't exactly been fun either.
Wednesday had always known that she would perish in some horrifically grizzly way, but death by Hyde was not the way she would have chosen to go. For all that it would be a memorable death, it was not at all unique. Tyler had killed at least twenty-five other people that Wednesday knew about. There was no great achievement in being the twenty-sixth.
And if she absolutely had to be killed by a Hyde, then Wednesday would have preferred that he actually maul her to death. Being ripped to shreds would have at least been interesting, if not unique.
Being tossed out a window was so… pedestrian.
The disappointment had almost hurt worse than her bones snapping when she had hit the ground.
Almost.
Truthfully, Wednesday would have much preferred that Tyler had killed her in his human form. She wanted him to tear her apart with his bare hands. She wanted to look into his eyes as her blood splattered across his face, which was somehow even more disgustingly handsome than before despite his nearly year-long incarceration in the loony bin. (Or, perhaps, because of it.) It was personal between them. Her death ought to have been an intimate thing they shared. Like their kiss. Like the kisses (and other things) they'd never had the opportunity to experience.
It was nauseatingly predictable of her to fall for a boy whose hidden darkness turned out to be a literal serial killing monster. It was even worse that she had only been able to admit to herself that she loved Tyler after he had killed her. She had not believed that it had been real for him until now. He was a creature under the control of a madwoman who had intended to use Wednesday in a resurrection ritual since the moment she had heard that Wednesday was coming to Nevermore, and Tyler had deceived her and manipulated her on his master's orders. How could any of it have been real? He had all but confirmed that he had been pretending all along when he taunted her in the police station.
But Wednesday knew better now. Her murder had been the ultimate declaration of his love. After all, the opposite of love was indifference, not hate. And when he was acting of his own free will, completely free of Laurel's influence, Tyler hated Wednesday enough to kill her.
Who could blame him? He had expressly told her that he wanted them to be together, during the single time she had visited him at Willow Hill, and Wednesday had thrown his declaration back in his face. She had deliberately hurt him with the cruelest words she could think of in the moment—and some she had been rehearsing in her head for nearly a year, during her angriest moments.
It was not exactly well-adjusted for Tyler to decide that if he could not have her then he would kill her. Then again, it was not exactly the epitome of mental health for Wednesday to like it.
Besides, she was in no position to judge. In hindsight (or maybe just with the clear eyes of death), it was obvious to Wednesday that she felt the same way about him. She had never had an emotional response when anyone else had betrayed her, other than members of her own family… and the feelings she had for Tyler were decidedly not familial in nature. She would never have admitted it in the waking world, but her intractable hatred and insatiable thirst for vengeance against him had been because she had allowed herself to care for him and he had thrown her feelings back in her face with his betrayal.
Wednesday prided herself on her rational mind and her ability to withstand pain in order to uncover the truth, but she realized now that she had deliberately blinded herself to her own feelings in order to avoid the discomfort of feeling them.
Her last living thought was that her mother had been right—she had made everything worse—and she wouldn't even be alive to set things right, not for herself or Enid or Tyler or anyone else.
"Wednesday Addams," said a familiar voice from behind her.
Wednesday turned to face it, struggling against the thick ether pressing in around her on all sides, and there she was. Goody Addams, a streak of white in the dark, her pale braids and white dress so bright that they hurt Wednesday's eyes. At the sight of her, the truth slammed into Wednesday all at once. She had known, of course. Intellectually. Rationally. But she had not fully processed it until that moment.
"I really am dead."
Wednesday felt the hot, unwelcome sting of tears behind her eyes, no matter how ruthlessly she tried to suppress them.
She had never feared death; she had always thought that she would welcome it when her time came. But it had come too soon. She did not want to die now, at sixteen, before she had time to live. Before she had time to publish her novel, to finish school, to carve a path for herself outside of her mother's shadow. Her parents would be devastated. Pugsley would not survive long without her. There would be no one there to save Enid, either. What if Enid died because Wednesday was not there to protect her from Tyler's wrath?
And Tyler—there would be no closure between them. Wednesday would never have a chance to come to terms with the things he had made her feel, and Tyler would have to live with having killed her.
"Yes, you are dead," Goody confirmed placidly, either unaware or uncaring of Wednesday's inner turmoil. "When I gave my soul to save yours, I expected you to sacrifice yourself to defeat Crackstone. I expected your death to free my spirit."
Wednesday blinked, once, to banish the tears from her traitorous eyes.
"Free your spirit? I thought you had sacrificed your spirit to heal me."
"So I did, but healing you was not only a matter of restoring your physical body. You died and ought to have stayed dead. My soul acts as the bridge between your soul and your body, the tether that lashes them together. So long as you live, I persist in this state."
She gestured broadly to encompass the black space around them.
"If I'm dead now, why are you still here?" Wednesday wondered aloud, her mind racing with the implications.
"Your body is not beyond repair," replied Goody. "They are rendering you aid even now, and you may yet recover. Or you may not, and your soul will leave the mortal plane forever."
Wednesday felt both hope and dread well up in her chest. It was not an uncommon combination for her but was wholly unwelcome in this instance.
She leveled a glare at her erstwhile spirit guide. "So you're here to make sure I die so that you can be free."
"No. I have no power over what happens to your body now," denied Goody. "I yearn for your death, but there is no guarantee it will happen. That is why I am here: To offer you another path, one that guarantees my freedom."
"What path?" Wednesday demanded sharply.
The other girl's eyes, two dark pits in her white face, bore into Wednesday's, unblinking, but her expression remained impassive, as though she were not discussing something miraculous and perilous.
"To return to the last time you died, when I bound my soul to your body. I could, perhaps, bind you to your past body instead."
Wednesday was beginning to suspect that this was a trick. Likely she was in hell, and as soon as she accepted Goody's offer it would all be revealed to be an elaborate illusion designed to torment her. Or maybe her dying brain was misfiring and hallucinating this entire scenario due to her desperate desire to live. Either way, it was too insane to be true.
She had been raised at the breast of a gifted witch and weaned on tales of sorcery, and one of the most fundamental lessons she had learned was that you did not lightly interrupt the cycle of life and death. Necromancy was a powerful and potentially useful branch of magic, as members of the Addams family well knew, but it had the capacity to go terribly wrong. Especially when the witch's intentions were selfish. Goody's own missteps with Crackstone were testament to that.
And trying to transfer a person's soul across time? Unthinkable.
"Time is somewhat more fluid in the spirit realm than in the mortal realm," Goody explained, as if she had read Wednesday's mind and sought to alleviate her suspicions. "That is why you can see visions of events both past and future. While it is true that we spirits cannot move freely through time, our situation is unique. We are tied together, body and soul, and the act of saving you tore the fabric of reality and left a scar behind. I should be able to revisit that point in time, and I may yet have enough power to send your present soul into your past body."
"You may?" The corners of Wednesday's mouth pulled into a frown.
Goody's chin dipped in acknowledgement. "I may. Or I may not. If I fail, the attempt will prevent me from saving you at all. In that case, you would die in Crackstone's crypt. If I succeed, you would wake there with all the memories you have accumulated since. The past would be changed either way, whether for good or ill."
"And either way you will never tie your soul to me. You would go on as if that never happened."
Wednesday would have admired the unfettered selfishness of the proposal, if not for the fact that Goody was willing to risk Crackstone succeeding in his mission to kill all outcasts in order to save herself. So much for taking accountability for her own actions in having cursed the pilgrim in the first place. So much for her grand act of self-sacrifice.
"Yes, now that I have had to endure the consequences of my decision to save you, I am willing to risk the consequences of not saving you in order to free myself from this purgatory."
Well, that confirmed that Goody could read her mind.
"I can," she said immediately, "and therefore I know that you, Wednesday Addams, also regret many of your choices. I am offering you a chance to correct your mistakes."
Sure, but at the risk that I die a year ago, thought Wednesday.
"And if you refuse, there is a risk that you will die now and leave your loved ones to deal with the consequences of your mistakes." Goody's voice had risen half an octave in her impatience, and her frown matched Wednesday's. "Times runs short. If you are revived or if your body expires before you choose, it will be too late. What is your decision?"
It should have been an easy decision to make. Who in their right mind would pass up the opportunity to repeat the past with full knowledge of their mistakes and missteps? Wednesday would have a leg up on Laurel. And on Judi Stonehearst. She would be able to save Donovan Galpin's life. (Not that she cared overmuch that he had died, but he had proven himself not entirely incompetent, in the end. Her desire to save him definitely didn't have anything to do with Tyler.) Tyler—she would be able to prevent his fight with Enid from happening altogether and prevent his incarceration at Willow Hill. And if it turned out that Tyler was not the one fated to kill Enid and Wednesday's vision of her death remained the same, she would have more time to solve that mystery and save her friend's life.
Yet Wednesday hesitated. As she had recently learned, to her everlasting chagrin, it was also possible that her interference could make things worse. What if the confrontation with Crackstone went differently than before? What if Tyler and Enid still fought, but Tyler killed her this time?
What if Enid killed Tyler?
That thought was too unbearable to contemplate, for reasons that Wednesday would have happily and vehemently denied before her untimely death at his hands.
Suddenly, there was a terrible ringing in her ears, which was made all the worse because the space they were in had been devoid of any sound other than Wednesday's and Goody's voices. If she weren't currently a disembodied spirit, her eardrums would have ruptured. At the same time, the formerly impenetrable darkness around them began fading to gray, as though they were on a page that had gotten wet and the ink was bleeding around them.
"We're out of time!" cried Goody. "Choose!"
And Wednesday, mind racing with the possibilities and heart pounding as it never had before, chose.