Chapter Text
Enid POV
Later, as the dying winter sun painted the room in red and gold, Enid stretched like a cat, muscles protesting as she dragged herself into motion after being still for far too long. She rolled her shoulders, worked the stiffness out of her neck, and glanced across the room.
Wednesday was still at her desk.
The light caught the edge of her face and the stark line of her braid as she bent low over an open book, pencil moving steadily as she made notes in the margin. She hadn’t noticed the change in light, or the fact that hours had passed. Enid wasn’t surprised.
The corridors, when they’d finally emerged from the hidden passage, had been mostly empty, which had allowed them to slip back to their room with their little hoard of books. There had been a few dirty looks aimed in Wednesday’s direction, the usual mix of suspicion and resentment, but nothing worse than that.
Once inside, they’d wasted no time.
Books had been spread across the floor, the bed, the desk, their spines cracked open and pages weighed down as they tried to piece together the history they’d uncovered. It had been messy, frantic at first, excitement overriding exhaustion, before gradually settling into something slower, heavier.
They’d discovered quickly that the student’s name, the one who had been burned, had been obliterated at every single mention.
Not crossed out. Not inked over once and forgotten.
Written over again and again, layers of words pressed into the page until the original was completely lost beneath them.
Wednesday had tried everything. Different angles of light. Charcoal rubbings. Even taking impressions from the page beneath, pressing carefully and then peeling the paper away with surgical precision.
Nothing.
Whatever the name had been, it had been erased. Still, even without it, they’d managed to piece together a general record of what had happened.
The student body had turned on one of their own.
There was no clear inciting incident recorded, no single event that explained the hatred. Instead, a belief had grown, slow and poisonous, that this unnamed student was responsible for the corruption spreading through the school at the time. That they were a source of rot. A problem to be dealt with.
Enid had her own thoughts about that. Every entry she read from that era made the headmaster look worse, not better. Self-satisfied. Obsessed with tradition. Willing to ignore anything unpleasant so long as it didn’t interrupt his comfort or his funding. If anyone had nurtured an environment where cruelty could thrive, it was him. Negligence, she thought bitterly, was still responsibility.
As the hostility escalated, students became more brazen. Petitions were filed, demanding the student’s removal. When those failed, the language in the records shifted, growing uglier, more assured. Certain phrases appeared again and again. Dangerous. Necessary. For the good of the school.
Enid’s mind kept circling back to Wednesday. To the two times she’d already seen her attacked for reasons no one could properly articulate. To how quickly a crowd could decide someone deserved whatever happened to them.
Eventually, the students waited.
They chose a night when most of the staff were away, drunk, or asleep. An event had left the school half-empty and poorly supervised. The opportunity was seized.
They built a pyre.
Dragged the student to it.
Burned them alive.
The language in the records was chillingly restrained, as if careful phrasing could civilise what had been done. The act itself echoed older horrors, the witch burnings that had once plagued outcasts not so far back in history. Enid felt sick recognising the pattern. Different century. Same justification.
What unsettled her most was what came after.
It worked.
Every account from the years following suggested improvement. The oppressive atmosphere eased. The belief that outcasts should rule rather than coexist began to lose its grip. Slowly, the school shifted toward working with the surrounding community instead of standing apart from it. Policies were introduced, cautiously at first, then with more confidence, regulating spending, creating opportunities for students who hadn’t previously had them.
It hadn’t been quick. Reform had taken decades. More than a century, really.
But there was no denying it.
This had been the turning point.
The simplest explanation was also the most disturbing, that the student they’d killed had, in some way, been responsible for the corruption poisoning the school. That removing them had removed the problem.
Except it didn’t fit.
Not with what they’d found in the Nightshades’ library. Not with the Mask’s own accounts, fragmented and furious and painfully human. And not with the fact that, for all the obsessive record-keeping, there wasn’t a single whisper of the Whisperer anywhere in the official texts.
Erased. Just like the name.
Enid’s stomach gave a small, insistent pang.
She realised she hadn’t eaten since lunchtime.
With a sigh, she closed her book and rolled upright, pushing herself to sit properly. Her gaze drifted back to Wednesday, who still hadn’t moved, hadn’t looked up, hadn’t acknowledged the fading light or the passage of time.
“Wends-” Enid started.
Nothing.
The normally rigid line of Wednesday’s back was curved low over the desk, shoulders drawn in as she studied the faded text with absolute focus.
“Wednesday?” Enid tried again, standing this time and crossing the room.
Still no response.
Enid slowed as she approached, watching carefully, already gauging how deep her friend had sunk into the work.
Wednesday POV
This was a nightmare.
History was always written by the victor, but here there seemed to have been no clear winner at all. Every account contradicted the next. Justifications tangled with denials, moral certainty dissolving into half-erased footnotes and revisions layered so thick they obscured whatever truth had once existed beneath them. Extracting anything clean from it all felt less like research and more like excavation through rot.
Ordinarily, she would have relished it.
A puzzle shaped by death and secrecy. A mystery that resisted easy answers. This was exactly the kind of work she excelled at, the kind that rewarded patience and precision.
But the parallels to her own life were too sharp, too immediate.
And time bore down on her. If the present was following anything close to the same trajectory, she calculated she was at most a week from the culmination. A few days either side of that, perhaps. The emotional pressure in the historical accounts followed a recognisable pattern, escalation disguised as righteousness, fear recast as necessity.
At the end of it, her predecessor had burned.
She still could not determine why.
The Mask’s own writings insisted on certainty. On purpose. They spoke of cleansing corruption, of saving the school, of an obligation to act where others would not. They were calm in places they should have been horrified, convinced where doubt would have been appropriate.
Yet the surrounding records did not support them.
Letters from heads of houses. Minutes from board meetings. Personal journals and student papers, brittle with age but blunt in tone. All of them pointed in a different direction, resistance, concern, outright condemnation.
So where did that leave the Mask?
Was this delusion? A sincere belief in their own righteousness masking the fact that they themselves were the source of the rot? Very few people ever believed they were the villain of their own story. Most atrocities were committed by those convinced they were doing good.
If that was true—
Her thoughts stalled, then turned inward with surgical precision.
What did that make her?
The Whisperer complicated everything.
They were undeniably real. The notes. The messages. The deliberate timing. They undermined her, provoked her, pushed at weaknesses with uncomfortable accuracy. They were dangerous. They were her opponent.
Weren’t they?
Or were they something else entirely?
Someone who saw her clearly. Someone who recognised what she was becoming, or had always been. Someone attempting to replay history not out of malice, but out of the same warped sense of protection the Mask had once claimed.
Was she the hero of this narrative?
Or its inevitable villain?
A deep, sinking sensation settled low in her chest, heavy and unpleasant. It suggested, with quiet persistence, that she had always caused problems. That wherever she went, conflict followed.
Her mind rebelled, instantly cataloguing decisions, replaying moments, branching paths. She could identify a thousand alternatives, small changes that might have reduced collateral damage. But every choice she had made had been guided by the same internal compass, an uncompromising sense of justice that felt less like a belief and more like a force.
Unstoppable. Immutable.
Was that what delusion felt like from the inside?
She had done the best she could with the information available at the time. That had always been her metric. That was supposed to matter.
Still, she kept reading.
Her thoughts darted between texts, seizing on fragments, weighing them, testing whether they supported her fear or refuted it. Emotion threatened to intrude, and she countered it with data, clinging to concrete facts, anything untouched by bias, time, or reinterpretation.
A hand on her shoulder cut through her concentration like a blade.
Her body reacted before thought intervened, muscles jerking as she bit back a snarl and shrugged the contact away. The interruption felt violent, invasive, an attempt to tear her from something necessary. Essential.
She leaned closer to the page, scanning desperately for answers, for any passage that explained the hatred directed at the Mask. She understood being disliked. She had long since accepted that.
But this-
Another hand.
The sensation burned through the fragile structure of her focus, splintering it. Despair surged up, fast and sharp, immediately smothered by a reflexive anger she had learned young, a defensive flare that kept tears at bay. Her mind screamed at the disruption.
This time, she shoved the hand away with force.
Rougher than intended.
She was in her room. At her desk. This was her territory. She did not need to divide her attention here. She had been fully submerged, and now-
Two hands. One on each shoulder.
Enid’s face filled her vision.
It registered only distantly. An insignificant part of her mind noted the crease between Enid’s brows, likely concern, but the observation failed to anchor. The world rushed back in all at once, sunlight slanting through the window, the hum of the heating, the unbearable clarity of touch.
The pressure tipped her over the edge.
“Wednesday, you with me?”
The question was quiet, but too high-pitched, cutting straight through her.
She forced her mind to engage, and fought to organise the flood of information crashing through it. She opened her mouth to answer.
Nothing came.
Her jaw tightened. Irritation flared, sharp and familiar. She tried again, forcing sound past the blockage in her throat.
“I- the Mask, they-”
The words refused to align, thoughts scattering the moment she tried to condense them. Summary was impossible. Everything mattered.
“Take a sec,” Enid said. “I’ve interrupted you, but we need to do food.”
The pull of the research was immediate and seductive. She could disappear back into it, seal herself away. But she knew how this ended. She would only be dragged out again, and the second extraction would hurt more.
She pushed herself up from the chair and began to pace.
Back and forth. The steady clip of her boots against the floor gave her thoughts a rhythm, something external to lock onto. She should speak. She knew she could. She had learned how.
As a child, there had been long stretches where language simply failed her, thoughts trapped behind an uncooperative body. Writing had always come easier. Silence, too, when wielded deliberately. She had learned to weaponise stillness, to buy time with glares and patience, to use paint to shock the words out if necessary.
It had worked. For years.
But today, the body swap, the breakdowns, the cumulative strain, those old fault lines were reopening.
Then there was Enid. None of her normal methods would work here.
Enid would not respond well to her harsher methods. She had proven that this morning. She would not be intimidated into retreat, and Wednesday refused to surrender control to either anger or despair.
So she paced.
The steps slowed, the frantic edge wearing down within a minute. The tapping of her finger against her crossed arms eased, something she hadn’t even noticed she was doing. Her jaw unclenched.
When she looked up, Enid was leaning against the desk, watching her carefully. Concern was evident, but so was restraint.
Eventually, Wednesday nodded once.
A single, deliberate signal.
She was ready to try again.
“Food?” asked Enid.
“I’m not hungry.”
The statement was factual, she rarely felt the hunger that seemed to drive those around her on a regular basis. Enid did not argue straight away, which Wednesday registered distantly as unusual, but not significant enough to pursue.
“The records don’t align,” Wednesday continued. She gestured once, an economical motion that encompassed the books stacked, spread, open, abandoned. “We have two histories. The Mask’s account is internally consistent, methodical, motivated. Before today, I would have classified it as reliable.” A pause, fractional. “Now it is an outlier.”
She flicked her gaze across the room and back again, as if the contradiction might have shifted in the interim.
“Hundreds of fragments. Letters, ledgers, marginalia, testimony. None corroborate them. Not even incidentally.”
Enid nodded. Slowly. “I’ve found the same,” Enid said. “But… majority opinions aren’t always proof. It could be mass hysteria. Fear spreads.”
“Fear concentrates,” Wednesday corrected. “Particularly around an anomaly.”
She folded her arms, the motion precise. “Mass hysteria forms most easily around a perceived contaminant. An outlier. Someone who does not integrate. That is one possibility.” She allowed it its due weight, then set it aside. “The alternative is that the outlier is wrong. That the majority is correct.”
Her jaw tightened, imperceptibly.
“I was convinced by the Mask because they never contradicted themselves. Their belief structure was coherent. They believed in their cause, that they were preventing greater harm.” Her voice flattened. “Opposition reinforced that belief. Gave them an enemy. Resistance reframed as threat.”
She stopped speaking for half a second longer than necessary.
“They never questioned themselves,” she finished. “Certainty preserved consistency.”
“So? Even if they were wrong,” Enid said, sharper now, “they didn’t deserve to be burned.”
Wednesday did not respond immediately. The statement did not require debate, or obfuscation. Only selection.
She chose the portion she could agree with without qualification.
“They did not deserve to be burned,” she said at last.
Enid POV
Something about that answer snagged.
Enid felt it immediately, a quiet wrongness settling low in her gut. She couldn’t articulate it, not cleanly, not yet. For a fleeting moment she wished, for access to Wednesday’s analytical machinery, to pull the statement apart and see exactly where it misaligned. Then she remembered that if she could do that, the feeling wouldn’t exist at all.
Wednesday continued before Enid could chase the thought.
“This Whisperer,” she said, tone even, “anticipates me. They know where I will be, my movements before I make them. Beyond that, they predict my reactions. Either they are employing some novel combination of precognition and telepathy, or they are familiar with me. Or my ilk.”
That last distinction tightened something in Enid’s chest.
“Though I am not them I can see the similarities between the Mask and myself,” Wednesday went on. “And whoever previously occupied the moral high ground is somewhat irrelevant, the Whisperer will inevitably see me as a recurrence. The Mask reincarnated. A hostile force working against their purpose. A poison in their school.”
Enid shifted where she stood, the discomfort blooming sharper now. She didn’t like the certainty with which Wednesday framed it, how easily she slotted herself into the role history might require.
“Wednesday,” she said carefully, “you’re not like that. You haven’t done anything to justify this. You’re just trying to help.”
“Haven’t I?” Wednesday asked.
The question landed between them, not accusatory, not defensive. Analytical. Dangerous.
Before Enid could respond, Wednesday continued.
“I do agree in principle that the responses to me appear disproportionate,” she said. “As I stated, the Mask did not deserve to burn.”
This time, Enid heard it.
What was left unsaid.
Wednesday met her eyes then, directly, without flinching. “I am capable of introspection. Of evaluation. I can identify potential harm, and alternatives.” A fractional pause. “But in the moment, my decisions feel inevitable.”
The vulnerability in that admission was stark, almost surgical. Enid felt it register before she could stop it.
Wednesday wasn’t claiming she was the Mask.
But she was identifying what she believed the Mask’s failure point had been, and by extension, her own risk. She was trying to protect herself against the same fate. And though she seemed willing enough to shoulder blame Enid wasn’t convinced belonged there, she wasn’t confessing, she was defending. Guarding herself against the flaw that had ended in death.
That distinction mattered.
As much as it unsettled Enid to hear Wednesday dissect herself like this, especially after such a brutal day, she knew dismissing it outright would hurt. Worse, Wednesday might hear it as pandering. As refusal to take her seriously.
The concerning parts could be returned to later.
For now, Enid drew in a slow, deliberate breath, pressing her instincts down. This wasn’t the moment to pry. Not when Wednesday had offered something this raw without armour.
“Okay,” she said finally. “I can see that.” She kept her voice level. Steady. “But now you know.”
A brief urge flared, to clarify, to make sure Wednesday understood she wasn’t agreeing wholesale. That acknowledging her pride and rigid sense of justice could work against her didn’t mean Enid accepted every conclusion she’d drawn. It meant recognising a risk, not a verdict.
But she’d pushed hard already today. And Enid wasn’t convinced another debate would help now.
So she let the words stand, resisting the urge to add anything else.
Well. Other than returning to the original purpose of the interruption.
“If that’s all for now,” Enid said, carefully casual, “let’s go get dinner.”
Wednesday gave a small harrumph and stepped to move past her. “I’m still not hungry.”
Enid caught her arm.
She met the dark glare that followed without flinching.
“I know,” Enid said calmly. “But I also spent several days as you, and I know that even when you don’t feel hungry, you usually are.”
She released her grip but didn’t move aside, even as Wednesday rolled her eyes.
“Wends,” Enid added, a little more exasperation creeping in, “when did you last eat?”
The question landed.
Wednesday hesitated, just long enough for Enid to see it. She could practically watch her rewinding through the day, skipping backwards through events, coming up blank.
“It doesn’t matter when I ate,” Wednesday said sharply, folding her arms. “The body is a well-oiled machine. It signals when it requires sustenance through hunger, and I am not hungry. There is, however, research to be done.”
She stepped forward again.
Enid stepped directly into her path.
Fine.
If Wednesday wasn’t in a mood to be reasoned with verbally, Enid would use something more concrete. Something physical. Something Wednesday was far more likely to accept when logic failed her.
“Okay,” Enid said lightly, holding up her hands. “You don’t have to come with me.”
Wednesday’s eyes flashed with immediate, premature triumph.
“If-”
Wednesday froze, levelling a glare at her.
“-you hold your hand out in front of you.”
The glare deepened. But, Wednesday extended her hand, palm flat.
It trembled.
Enid made a great show of examining it. “Uh-huh,” she murmured. “And what causes that, Wednesday?”
The answer came through clenched teeth.
“Most likely low blood sugar.”
The satisfied smirk Enid had been suppressing finally broke free.
“Oh really,” she drawled.
Wednesday’s glare could have frozen over Hell itself.
Enid just laughed, as Wednesday angrily shoved her arms in her cardigan to go and get food.
It was only when they neared the crowded dining room that Enid saw the flaw in her plan. Of course, without classes the room would be rowdier than normal. She had been so focused on the task at hand, on getting Wednesday to come and eat, that she had forgotten the rising tensions, and the possible violence awaiting them. A stab of guilt went through her as she regretted needling her friend to come.
She slowed instinctively, already half-turning, ready to suggest they come back later. Wednesday moved forward regardless, the sound spilling out ahead of her like something physical. Enid did a small gallop to catch up, to tell her that she didn’t need to go in there, not after today, but Wednesday’s hand was already on the door, pushing it open.
Warm light flooded the dim corridor.
Enid didn’t know what she’d expected. A hush, maybe. People falling silent. An angry mob waiting on the other side. Instead, the room carried on, forks clattering, voices raised, laughter sharp, with only the slightest hitch as people noticed Wednesday. Dark looks. Studied indifference.
She should have felt relieved.
She didn’t.
Something stayed locked in her shoulders, her jaw tight as they crossed the centre of the room towards the food. The reaction wasn’t overt, but it was constant. The way conversations bent around them, the way attention snagged and stuck. Enid felt it like a second-hand echo, as though she were still half inside Wednesday’s head.
She didn’t stop long enough to hear full sentences, but the fragments were enough.
“…Sir said to just let it play out but—”
“…needs to leave. It’s not—”
“…that she just gets to walk around—”
A loud, ugly laugh. “…you can’t say that! Imagine if—”
Enid’s steps grew more clipped, her movements more deliberate. She drifted closer to Wednesday, watching her with the intensity of someone bracing for impact. She noticed the twitch in Wednesday’s fingers, the way her hands hovered too still at her sides. Enid could almost feel what this must be like — the lights, the noise, the voices scraping — because she had felt it. In Wednesday’s body. Not long ago.
She didn’t touch her. Not yet.
Wednesday’s face gave nothing away. No crack, no flicker. That calm, carved expression she wore when she was holding everything in place by force of will alone.
They reached the food, and even as they moved slowly along the counter, filling their trays, the voices pressed closer, longer now that they were forced to linger.
“We should really do something about her, she can’t—”
“Miss Rinchester said she can’t be kicked out because she hasn’t done anything, but…”
“…she deserves it really. It’s not right that …”
Enid felt like they were threading their way through a nest of coiled snakes, every one of them tense, watchful, waiting.
When Wednesday’s tray was full and she turned towards a table across the room, Enid reached out and caught her elbow, stopping her.
“We can eat somewhere else,” she said quietly.
Wednesday paused, then replied just as quietly, “No,” already moving again.
Enid glanced around and met several pairs of eyes fixed openly on them. Too many.
She caught Wednesday’s arm again, firmer this time. Wednesday turned, her expression cool, lips pressed tight, not pain, Enid realised with a jolt, but irritation.
The realisation rattled her. Irritation meant Wednesday was still holding herself together, still choosing control, and that should have reassured Enid. Instead it made her chest tighten. Because irritation was what Wednesday looked like right before she broke, when she pushed too far and pretended she hadn’t.
“You don’t have to prove anything,” Enid almost hissed, desperate now to get through to her. Desperate to make her understand that leaving would not be failure. That today, of all days, she didn’t need to endure this. “You don’t have to do this.”
There was nothing to prove. Not to her. Not to anyone. The level of malice pressing in from all sides made Enid’s skin crawl, and she couldn’t stop herself from projecting it forward, imagining what it must feel like inside Wednesday’s head — the sound, the eyes, the constant abrasion. She knew what it felt like. She’d lived it. And she hadn’t coped.
Wednesday blinked once. Slowly.
“Prove?”
The confusion looked genuine, and that only made Enid more certain she was right. Of course Wednesday didn’t see it, she never did until she was already past the point of safety.
Enid stepped closer, lowering her voice even more, shrinking the world down to the space between them. “You said you were fine earlier. And you don’t have to be. We’ve got food. That’s it. Problem solved.”
Wednesday took a short step back and frowned slightly. Her face gave nothing away. Her tray was steady. Her breathing even.
“This isn’t that,” she said. “I’m fine.”
Enid scanned her frantically, searching for cracks she knew had to be there — tension, glassiness, anything that confirmed the spiral she was bracing for. Fear pulsed hot and fast through her chest, sharp enough to make her breath hitch.
“You said that earlier,” she shot back, breath forcing its way out through her nose. “You don’t have to be fine.”
Wednesday’s posture shifted almost imperceptibly, her weight settling onto one leg as she regarded Enid coolly, assessing rather than reacting.
“This isn’t that,” she repeated.
Enid shook her head, refusing to let the words stand. “You said you were fine earlier too.”
For a moment the noise around them seemed to swell, voices pressing closer, harsher. Enid caught the slight tightening of Wednesday’s pale fingers around her tray and felt it like confirmation, like proof she was right to be scared.
She wanted to help.
She just didn’t know how to make Wednesday stop enduring long enough to let her.
Wednesday POV
The sound spilling out of the dining hall was not a surprise. Wednesday had anticipated it and braced herself accordingly. The lights were aggressive, the voices sharp and overlapping, but she had recovered somewhat during the hours of silent research. The discomfort registered immediately — pressure behind the eyes, a prickle along her spine — but she catalogued it and set it aside.
Pain, when expected, could be treated as sensation.
Enid caught up to her as they crossed the room. Wednesday didn’t turn. Instead, she focused on the voices, letting them in deliberately, sorting signal from noise, searching for anything that suggested imminent threat.
“…Sir said to just let it play out but I’m not sure we can leave it alone—”
“…she really needs to leave. It’s not fair to us—”
“…can’t believe she just gets to walk around like that—”
A laugh cut through the rest, loud and jagged. “…you can’t say that! Imagine if you actually did that to her—”
Her fingers twitched in response, a brief spike of sharper sensation. Wednesday acknowledged it, breathed through it, and continued moving. She reached the food and took the opportunity to fill her tray slowly listening to longer conversations. She selected her food carefully, choosing familiar items she rarely allowed herself. Predictability reduced cognitive load. The steadier her body, the more attention she could spare.
The conversational patterns held. No concrete plans yet, but the idea of removal had taken root. Teachers consulted. Complaints lodged. Suggestions of action laughed off, for now. The laughter bothered her more than the complaints.
Seeds did not need encouragement to grow.
Tray full, Wednesday turned towards a table she had already identified: empty, against the wall, quieter than most.
A light touch on her elbow stopped her.
“We can eat somewhere else,” Enid murmured.
“No,” Wednesday replied without looking at her. There was more to learn here.
She took another step and was stopped again, the grip firmer. Wednesday turned this time, irritation flaring before she reined it in.
“You don’t have to prove anything.”
The word landed strangely. Wednesday blinked, her mind briefly blank as she traced back through their actions, searching for the supposed test she was failing. Eating. Standing. Listening.
“Prove?” she asked, honestly lost.
Enid stepped closer, well inside her space now. “You said you were fine earlier. And you don’t have to be. We’ve got food. That’s enough.”
Understanding followed, slow but precise.
This was not about the hall. It was about earlier. About the moments Enid had seen her lose control. About the hours Enid had spent in her body, drowning in sensation without the years of practice Wednesday had built.
A miscalculation, but not an unreasonable one.
“This isn’t that,” Wednesday said, aiming for reassurance. It was not a skill she used often. “I’m fine.”
“You said that earlier too.”
The words struck harder than intended. Anger flared, quick and bright, amplified by the rising noise around them. For an instant, the edge of overwhelm pressed close.
Wednesday stopped, she took in the frantic darting eyes and the protective stance. Enid was clearly genuinely concerned.
She took stock of herself deliberately. Not calm. Not comfortable. But present. Balanced. In control.
And capable, crucially, of understanding why Enid was doing this. As in this instance her panic seemed unfounded.
She met Enid’s gaze. “This is not that,” she said clearly. “I am not overwhelmed. I am not spiralling. I may not be happy, but I am fine.”
She held the look, ensuring the distinction landed.
“And,” she added, lowering her voice, letting the truth of it sit between them, “I am listening.”
She watched Enid a second longer as she ran her eyes over her once more, pupils still a little wider than normal. Then Enid took a breath, pressed her lips together, and nodded.
Wednesday accepted that and turned away, moving toward the table she had already selected. She preferred not to give anyone additional ammunition in a public space like this.
She sat, arranged herself with deliberate economy, and began to eat. She kept her movements steady, letting the action fall into a continuous rhythm, attention detached enough that she barely registered the familiar foods on her tray.
Her focus stayed outward.
Within a few minutes she noticed that although Enid had sat opposite her, she hadn’t eaten. Her knee bounced under the table. Her finger tapped against the wood — the same restless pattern that had first drawn Wednesday’s attention to her weeks ago.
Wednesday hesitated. She was aware of her limits here; she would not be able to keep parsing information for long if Enid continued to spiral beside her. And, distantly, she acknowledged the secondary benefit — removing that frantic edge might help both of them.
She slid her boot forward an inch or two and rested it gently over Enid’s toes inside her sneaker, applying a constant, grounding pressure.
“Eat,” she said.
Enid stilled, stopped scanning the room, met Wednesday’s eyes briefly, then picked up her fork and began.
A small part of Wednesday shut down at the contact, attention narrowing and freezing around it. She did not attempt to push past that reaction. It was a worthwhile expenditure of focus. Enid ate. The room continued to speak.
Wednesday listened.
Enid Pov
They left the dining hall and headed back down the corridor. No one had done anything, no shouting, no sudden movement, no violence, despite all her fear.
The ghost of Wednesday’s foot against hers lingered anyway, steady and undeniable.
Enid broke the silence first, once they were around the corner.
“I’m sorry.”
Wednesday glanced at her and tilted her head slightly. “What for?”
For a split second Enid wondered if she was being needled, then she caught herself. Wednesday didn’t fill in gaps automatically. Context didn’t always arrive pre-packaged for her. Asking wasn’t avoidance; it was honesty.
“I misread that situation,” Enid said.
“Yes,” Wednesday agreed. There was no satisfaction in it. No irritation either.
They turned another corner.
“You can tell me if I’m being too much,” Enid added quietly.
“That’s what I did,” Wednesday replied.
The words landed heavier than Enid expected. Guilt flared, and then, as if she’d felt it, Wednesday continued.
“And you listened.”
The smallest curve appeared at the corner of her mouth. Not quite a smile, but close enough.
Enid held onto that as they walked. Rolled it around in her head. Maybe that was why Wednesday had been able to accept it — not because Enid had been right, but because she’d stopped when corrected.
How often had people who’d seen Wednesday break refused to believe her when she said she was coping?
A quiet, cautious pride slipped in. She’d been wrong, but for the right reasons. And she resolved not to repeat the mistake. Wednesday, she suspected, would not be so forgiving twice.
With that in mind, Enid chose the blunt honesty her friend respected.
“Wends, can I ask?”
Wednesday’s eyes flicked to her. “Ask what?”
“Why was that fine?” Enid hesitated, then pushed through. “Back there. When I was you, I couldn’t, I mean…”
Wednesday took several more steps before answering. They climbed a flight of stairs in silence. It wasn’t until they reached the next corridor that she spoke.
“I have been me for a long time.”
Enid considered that. “Does it get less bad, then?”
Wednesday frowned. “No.” A few steps more. “I think what you experienced is the same as mine. I just have methods of dealing with it.”
Enid thought of earlier, of sobbing, of the way Wednesday had come apart, but Wednesday continued before she could interrupt.
“They’re not always… adequate. I-”
The words stalled, catching somewhere in her throat.
Enid nodded, recognising the boundary. That was as far as Wednesday could go right now, and even that was a significant step from where they’d been earlier that day.
“So even though today was… today,” Enid said carefully, “you were okay?”
Wednesday grimaced. “Not okay. Just… adequate. Managing.” A pause. “It was probably the time in our room. Or…” She shrugged, tight and contained.
For someone who clung so fiercely to control, her ability to predict her own capacity seemed surprisingly fragile. No wonder she fought so hard to maintain it.
“Everybody has good days and bad days,” Enid said, gentler now. “You don’t always know why.” She hesitated. “It sucks that it changes things so much for you.”
Wednesday shrugged again.
This time, Enid let it stand. She felt steadier for the understanding, not certainty, but a clearer map. Something to learn from.
And that, she realised, was enough for now.