Sunday at Nevermore University dragged itself toward nightfall, leaving the dorm silent except for the soft, steady shifting of pages as Wednesday Addams paced between her desk and the window.

At twenty-three, with five foot one of rigid posture and tension locked into every joint, she moved like a contained storm—still, but never calm. Her two braids lay straight against her chest, unwavering even when she halted abruptly; her bangs framed a set of dark brown eyes that had not softened once since noon. Not truly. Not until she looked toward the bed.

Because you had been in it since midday.

The investigation had consumed her again. It always did, but this time her impulses had slipped the leash entirely. A woman—her woman—had been dragged into the underbrush of Jericho’s eastern forest, pushed through dead leaves, pulled through fog, held steady while Wednesday tried powdered roots that reacted unpredictably with the air. The case had been all that mattered in the moment. You had been bait, a variable, a necessary lure. She had known the risks, but she hadn’t realized how deeply she was pushing a body that wasn’t hers to break.

She kept glancing back at the bed, as if expecting movement. But her girlfriend—a woman Wednesday cherished far more than she ever admitted aloud—remained sprawled on her back in Wednesday’s sheets, barely shifting even in sleep’s fragmented grasp.

Guilt tightened Wednesday’s spine. It was an unfamiliar weight. Unwelcome. Undeniably earned.

Every injury you carried had been a direct result of her focus narrowing into obsession. She remembered pulling you from the ground, remembered the way your knees nearly buckled when the herb’s reaction flared hotter than expected, remembered your breath catching—not with fear, but pain—and remembered how she still insisted on walking deeper into the woods because the clue might have been close.

Wednesday approached the bed with the tense precision of someone afraid to disturb even the air around you. She stopped at the edge, staring down, eyes tracing each bruise, each mark she hadn’t intended to leave, each place where her ambition had bruised what she held dear.

The moonlight from the window cut clean across her braids, glinting against the tightness in her jaw as she lowered herself slowly onto the edge of the mattress. She studied you—your stillness, your exhaustion, the quiet rise and fall of breaths that had become shallow hours ago. Her expression, usually carved out of something sharp and cold, softened just enough for some of her regret to show in her eyes.

Wednesday leaned closer, voice dropping to a thread of confession rarely given shape. “Forgive me, cara mia. My behaviour today was unacceptable.”