Chapter Text
Wednesday Addams and Enid Sinclair were about to officially meet for the first time. Neither of the girls were aware of this fact, nor were they aware of the highly improbable, logic-defying, Rube Goldberg-machine style set of events happening outside the walls of their university library to bring them to that exact moment.
Right now, across campus, one Pugsley Addams was attempting to electrocute himself.
His reasons for doing so are his own, but anyone who had met Pugsley Addams would give it 50/50 odds on this activity either being for fun, or for his Advanced Medieval Tortures class, in which he had the top grade. Plenty could be said about Pugsley’s experiment methodologies, but if there was one thing even Pugsley himself would admit, it’s that he does have a tendency for clumsiness. Which is why he took every precaution possible. Upon hearing the lightning storm approach, Pugsley Addams grabbed his lightning rod, helmet, knee pads, and barometer while positioning himself a safe 30 feet away from the power box on the roof of his dorm building.
In his excitement, Pugsley did not think to wonder where his roommate was. If he had, he might have noticed the beehive.
Eugene Ottinger loved all of his bees equally. Depending on who you asked, this was either the most charming or the most off-putting aspect of his personality. However it did, indisputably, make him an excellent beekeeper. So when Eugene felt the lightning storm approach, he did not mind the late hour, and dutifully made his way to every hive around campus to ensure that all bees were safe and accounted for. By the time he reached the last one, Eugene felt a premature wave of relief fill his heart at noticing all 10,000 of them seemed to be doing well.
Eugene Ottinger loved his bees very much, and was therefore so distracted by their well-being, nobody could really blame him for not noticing the other man quickly running up behind him.
Ajax Petropolus was about to get a phone call.
He had been the first of his study group to leave the library that night, his drooping eyes betraying him to his friends. In a rare moment of pity and kindness, the rest of the group told him to get home first while they stayed and cleaned up. Grabbing his things in a slightly-inebriated state, he awkwardly walked out of the library, opened his umbrella, and made his way through the dark rain to let his legs take him back to his dorm.
Ajax Petropolus was notoriously not a man who notices obvious things happening around him. So, when subtle things happened, like accidentally grabbing two extra umbrellas from the group’s table on his way out, his friends truly did think they could only blame themselves.
Bianca Barclay, Yoko Tanaka, and Xavier Thorpe were all very tired. Using every available minute the library is open to study for their upcoming final seemed like such a good idea when the sun was out and everyone was caffeinated. In the cold reality of a midnight walk home through a storm, Bianca, Yoko, and Xavier all individually blamed each other when they collectively realized Ajax had stolen all their umbrellas.
Bianca, however, was the only one to voice this opinion out loud.
Xavier was sternly directed to go see if the librarian had any extra umbrellas in the lost and found, while Yoko was told to call The Thief to see if he could come back immediately to help them.
Sighing, but with no energy to complain or fight back, Yoko and Xavier went to fulfill their assigned tasks. Yoko picked up her cellphone while under the temporary shelter of the library’s overhang, and Xavier sought out the imposing Ms. Weems.
To say that Larissa Weems was good at her job would be an understatement. She was the most competent, efficient, and frighteningly intimidating librarian the university had ever employed.
So on that night, when the two other librarians assigned to work alongside her called out, Larissa Weems did not even blink. Not only could she accomplish all the collective tasks of their jobs alone, she was confident her shift would go even smoother with less distractions.
Upon the final minutes before the library would close for the night, Larissa had done every item on the closing checklist except one. So when the lanky boy who had just left with his group came back to ask for umbrellas, Ms. Weems made sure to check the last part of her routine before helping out the student. On the bottom floor of the library, the security system had indicated that two students were using the archives section for most of the night. To ensure she was not leaving the building with students inside as per the mandated rules of the university, Larissa Weems refreshed the page, and saw that those two students had both scanned their badges off the floor. Having not checked on that floor in a number of minutes, Larissa would have no reason to think that those two students had not yet left the building.
She would also have no reason to think that the security badge she dutifully remembered to grab before walking out the front door would be completely useless only a few seconds after the doors closed.
No, as Larissa Weems walked Xavier Thorpe out of the building with two old umbrellas, even someone as sharp as her could not have seen this coming.
* * *
On the bottom floor of the library, at precisely 11:58pm, Wednesday Addams and Enid Sinclair both scanned their respective badges against the university’s security system and waited for the elevator to come. While their official first meeting was only a number of seconds away, standing in the basement of a library together was not the moment either woman had first seen the other.
Enid’s first impression of Wednesday Addams came at the beginning of the semester. Enid had stayed late in the Music and Arts building to practice for an upcoming showcase her Choreography class was putting together, and Enid was determined to keep her routine a surprise. When asked why she was so secretive with what would be a public performance, Enid would say she liked making an impression. But that was a lie. Enid was secretive with her routines because her roommate Agnes DeMille once memorized her dance while she practiced in their shared room, and actually joined in on her performance without any warning whatsoever. Their subsequent very long talk about boundaries was helpful, but Enid still preferred to practice when nobody else was around.
So when Enid Sinclair walked up the stairway of what she thought was an empty Music and Arts building, she was lured by the sound of music coming from the instrumentation rooms. Her curiosity was piqued, as perhaps this like-minded individual would be a potential friend in the music department. Enid was never short on friends, and attributed that fact largely due to this exact habit of friend-seeking tenacity that was once described by Yoko Tanaka as ‘frighteningly persistent’.
When she found the musician, it took Enid a few seconds to remember to blink. Through the small window in the door, Enid could see the profile of a young woman completely lost in the concentration of her music. Long black braids framed the cellist’s face, and Enid was immediately taken with such a cute but simple hairstyle. Enid was also immediately very jealous that this person had managed not only to procure the most stunning black cello she’d ever seen, but had also found a completely black-and-white version of their college’s logo on an equally black hoodie. The stinging behind Enid’s eyes indicated that she was at stalker-levels of staring, so she blinked, and took a step away from the window.
To Enid Sinclair, the music she heard from the cellist would be best described as ‘haunting’. It was not an arrangement she was familiar with, but she could picture it fitting in perfectly in a black-and-white horror film. It was with great disappointment that Enid pulled herself away from the door completely, as she realized with the intentionality and pacing of the piece, that it might not be finished for some time. ‘No matter’, the girl thought. She will ask around tomorrow and find the musician’s name, so that she might try and befriend this monochromatic musical prodigy.
She did not get the chance.
For nobody in any class in the Music and Arts building could identify the person Enid described, which was very odd, considering she might be the single most striking figure Enid had ever seen. There were several nights in the following weeks where Enid Sinclair would wander up to the instrumentation rooms late at night, hoping to catch a glimpse of her mystery woman. She was disappointed every time, but never lost hope that she just might hear those haunting notes again.
But up until the very night of a large thunderstorm, in the basement of the library, she would remain Enid’s ghost.
Wednesday’s first impression of Enid Sinclair came only a week before walking into the bottom floor of the university basement. The semester’s musical showcase had been a heavily-advertised affair, which Wednesday pointedly ignored. Her off-campus housing allowed her to specifically ignore most on-campus shenanigans. Outside of class, visits with her brother and Eugene, or stopping by her favorite coffee place near the library, Wednesday Addams was content to never visit the campus at all outside of necessity. When said necessity reared its ugly head with her neighbor’s loud construction, Wednesday would use the campus music rooms to practice her cello. When necessity mandated that she could not check out archival materials from the library, she would appear in person to gather her research.
When necessity required her appearance at what was little more than a glorified talent show, Wednesday Addams almost burned the entire building down. When Wednesday became a journalism major, there was no question to anybody that she would be the best investigative journalist the college had ever seen. She was respected (and feared) by both her peers and the faculty. She turned in materials on time, asked insightful questions in class, and never bothered her professors outside of the dictated office hours. But no amount of goodwill could get her out of her current assignment. No amount of threats to the professor’s physical safety would either.
So here sat Wednesday Addams. Ready to debase her written prowess by sinking to the low of ‘theater critic’, but with too much pride to throw away the assignment completely. She was determined to write an article so powerful that her competency would never be questioned again, and she could continue her education unimpeded by theatrical drivel.
Wednesday committed herself to critiquing her fellow students at an expert level. If she was going to write them an expert-level review, they should be held to her exacting standards in return. Her trained ears and detail-oriented mind made this an exercise in futility to the young journalist. To Wednesday Addams, no performance so far could be called anything other than ‘crushingly mediocre’. That is, until a dancer by the name of Enid Sinclair walked onto stage.
There was no spark of light, no innate sense of connection, no dramatic camera zoom-in the second Wednesday saw Enid Sinclair. No, this particular woman took Wednesday’s breath away completely on her own. For Wednesday, Enid’s perfect blend of talent, technique, focus, and clear hard work was a shining beckoning light in an evening otherwise stuck in fog. While she despised writing anything positive in her review, lest anyone think she remotely enjoyed herself, Wednesday Addams despised dishonesty even more. Wednesday ended up including a comment that was much too flowery for most of her writing, but one that she decided was, in fact, the truth. “Exquisitely transformative, as though she were a spirit floating effortlessly through the air.”
Wednesday Addams enjoyed Enid’s performance so much, she briefly thought about going up to the woman afterwards to thank her for being competent enough to make the evening bearable. But that thought would end a few seconds later. Upon seeing the woman in question squeal in surprise as some companions of hers presented her with flowers, followed by a suffocatingly giant group hug, Wednesday Addams walked away into the night. The woman was perfectly content to not ever speak to Enid Sinclair in person if that was how she behaved herself in public.
When Wednesday Addams and Enid Sinclair made eye contact for the very first time, they both froze.
Enid had already set herself up at a desk in the archives floor of the library, her cat-ear headphones playing kpop music and her brightly colored assortment of notebooks and pens littering the entire surface area of the space. So when movement caught her eye after 20 minutes of solitude, the woman instinctively looked up.
Enid’s face wore her emotion in a way that was fundamentally opposed to how carefully Wednesday masked her own. Enid’s curiosity turned to shock, which soon turned to elation, which then quickly transformed into an obvious attempt to start a greeting. Wednesday did not need a degree in investigative journalism to guess what the obvious next step in this interaction was going to be unless she cut it off at the head.
So Wednesday Addams stopped their conversation before it could begin. She abruptly turned her gaze, walked to the furthest table from Enid Sinclair, and sat with her back to the dancer. The message was rude and incredibly ill-received, but it was respected by Enid, who had charitably decided to imagine the other girl was simply having a bad day.
The two worked for hours.
Wednesday Addams prided herself on being a particularly focused individual, but even she found her mind drifting to the other student in the room. Hoping Enid would leave before her, as she was determined to stay up until the last possible minute. But she remained stalwart in her quest to finish her studying tonight, no matter what was happening around her.
Enid Sinclair was distracted, and not just by the music she was listening to. After weeks of searching, her cello-playing, braid-having, black-clothed ghost had finally showed back up. In almost the exact same look. It had Enid contemplating the realities of this woman actually being a ghost, which was not conducive to focusing on her research into classic compositional frameworks of Italian operas in the 1800s. This woman had taken up so much space in her brain that Enid Sinclair had, for the first time in her life, stayed at the library until it closed in order to finish her work. Upon noticing that her ghost was packing up her things at the same time, Enid made the snap decision that if this mystery woman was giving her the cold shoulder, two could play at that game. Enid was too tired to try and annoy someone into being her friend tonight anyway.
So that brings the two of them here, now. Having each just scanned their student badges to clock out of the floor and call the elevator, they stood shoulder-to-shoulder, in complete silence.
Upstairs, Larissa Weems just hit the ‘refresh’ button on the security logs, and saw that no student was clocked into the building.
Ding. The elevator jumped to life and was heading downstairs, having just passed the 2nd floor.
Outside and across the campus, Ajax Petropolus had just been verbally reprimanded for stealing his friend’s umbrellas. Embarrassed and wanting to make up for his mistake, he turned without thinking and sprinted back towards the library, not seeing a small beekeeper in his way.
Ding. Base floor.
Eugene Ottinger has never been a man to use vulgar language, but when someone is rugby-tackled off their feet, directly into the physical manifestation of their life’s purpose, which also destroys the home of 10,000 of their friends? Eugene dropped the biggest F-bomb of his life as a stoned student crashed himself and Eugene through the beehive, unleashing thousands of bees onto the storming campus.
Ding. 1st sub-level.
Xavier Thorpe walked out triumphantly with Ms. Weems and her umbrellas right behind him. He spared a questioning glance at Yoko, who was apparently cursing into her phone because Ajax suddenly hung up on her? Ms. Weems shot Yoko a teacherly glare, not having to use words to discourage the student from cursing.
Ding. 2nd sub-level.
The sound of 10,000 bees swarming in the rain was not one Ajax Petropolus could describe after hearing it. You simply had to be there. Ajax and Eugene both stared in awe as Eugene’s bees did as they were trained to do: find the nearest hive and take shelter there in case of emergency.
DING. The elevator finally arrived on the bottom level of the library, opening its doors to the two awaiting women.
Ms. Weems handed out the umbrellas, telling the students to keep them since they were from the lost and found anyway. She also took a responsible moment to ensure that none of the children would be walking home alone that night.
DING. The doors close. Enid had selected the main floor button without looking at her fellow student. If she wanted a different floor she would have to press it herself.
Pugsley Addams could perfectly describe the experience of being swarmed by 10,000 bees, knocked off his feet, tumbling into the power box on the roof, right as a bolt of lightning struck his rod, thus sending himself and every electrical line within 10 miles into a state of shock.
He could describe it, but Pugsley's preferred choice of words was ‘it was totally awesome’.
It was, in fact, totally awesome.
In a mere instant, all power in the entire campus went out. Some lights briefly surged before going out, leading to no less than 100 burst bulbs between all the affected buildings. One of those affected buildings was, of course, the university’s central library.
The four people standing outside its front doors all jumped slightly in surprise, having seen both the strike of the lightning bolt and heard the electricity in the air as all the lights turned off around them.
Ms. Weems, who still had her purse and jacket sitting on the desk, futilely tried to give herself access to the building with her security badge, but to no avail.
She sighed, grateful that she at least had her phone on her. Ms. Weems held up a finger to the group of waiting students as she called the university’s maintenance line, knowing they would not dare move away with her watching. The call was short and to the point, with the librarian knowing the department was going to have their hands full all night. Larissa quickly told the man on the other end that the central library was empty of students, but if they could get access to the main desk she would be very grateful to gather her things at their earliest convenience. She was told what she expected, that supplies and maintenance focus would be on student-inhabited areas of campus first. Ms. Weems nodded, hung up the phone, and then told the nervously waiting students she would be walking them to their dorms to ensure they would get back safe. After which point she would take the borrowed umbrellas, walk herself home, and help the morning crew clean up whatever mess was inside the library once she woke up.
In between the 1st and 2nd sub-levels of their university library, Wednesday Addams and Enid Sinclair finally, officially, meet.
As the elevator grinds to a halt, emergency lights flood the space with dim, warm light. The two women, having briefly lost their balance during the outage, make eye contact for the second time. Wednesday’s were curious, but Enid’s showed nothing but panic.
“Hey, what the fuck?!”