Wenclair One-Shots

you know it's good to be tough like me (but i will wait forever) (Part 1/4)

Summary:

In the wake of her confrontation with Crackstone, Wednesday is suffering and must reckon with the weight of her most severe shortcoming. The weakness in question? She would really like a hug. Enid is all too eager to assist.

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When Wednesday was six years old, she learned her greatest weakness.

It ended, really, as it began – with Mother.

Though Father was the most egregious offender, it almost made him less odorous for it. He was wretched in his own way, inflicted with a cursed, horrible need to douse his affection on every person he holds dear. But it was inflicted in myriad ways and not so focused on her.

Mother folded her hands over Wednesday's shoulders, swept her hair from her face, brushed her ruby red lips against the prickling skin of her face. Her affection was all-encompassing, all-consuming, and Wednesday, well.

Wednesday loved it.

It was the worst thing she could do.

It would be easier, so much easier if she detested the touch of others. It would be perfect and right and deserved but alas, such was not the case. Instead, she was cursed in a new way, a way that was so terrible, so cruel, that she couldn't help but feel a sense of admiration about the whole thing. She loved to be touched, to be held, to be cared for, and it terrified her more than anything. It made her not herself. She whined to Mother for attention, juvenile and puny, upset if she couldn't hold Father's hand when they went places. She was weak. She was desperate. She was broken and warped and it made her so frightened sometimes that she thought she might actually have a heart attack and die at the tender age of six.

So, she ducked out of Mother's hold, learned to braid her own hair, and jerked herself away from the tender kiss that made her feel warmth in her heart. She didn't need the warmth. She didn't. She was cold to the touch and cold in the heart and that was the best she could ever hope for. She was cruel and she wanted to be loved and that was unfair. She knew how people perceived her, and she was proud of it, because it was how she strived to be seen, but she couldn't imagine forcing someone to be kind to her. It wouldn't be right. She was not meant to receive it. There was a hearth in her chest that was made of weak, flickering kindles, but if she wasn't careful, that fire could burst to life and destroy anything in its way. She couldn't trust it. Herself.

She had headaches at first. Her mood grew more sour, her skin always prickling and her heart squeezing hard in her chest when she saw Pugsley throwing his arms around Lurch's leg in a giddy hug. The urge to sprint over and crash into them, too hard, even, was so intense that Wednesday had to bite on her tongue so hard that she bled. She turned away.

It was even easier in Nevermore. The adults would never touch a student even in a friendly manner, and the other students were all either terrified of her or sufficiently aware that she could destroy them and were rationally keeping their distance. Some had lessened the distance – Eugene and Bianca of all people especially, and a few others to a lesser degree. But the bubble around her remained.

Then, came the source of everything that was wrong with her.

Enid Sinclair had warm, callused hands. Some of the calluses were so intense, the rugged skin snagged on Wednesday's jacket when she touched her shoulder.

Because Enid did that. Touched.

It started even before Crackstone, pokes on the arm during class, nudges in the hallway, a gleeful arm thrown around her waist in the wake of the Poe Cup victory, where Wednesday had been so swept up in the delicious taste of Bianca's humiliating defeat that she hadn't protested the brief embrace.