He sat back down on the edge of the bed after she left, elbows resting on his knees, fingers laced together. The silence she left behind wasn't new. It just sounded cleaner now—emptied of that strange tension that had been hanging there for weeks.
He'd known it was coming. He'd seen it in her eyes days ago, how she looked at him like he was an equation that no longer balanced. Wednesday Addams didn't fall in love. She observed it, dissected it, maybe pitied those who succumbed. But she never stepped into it. And he was never foolish enough to think he'd be the exception.
Still, the words had cut a small, clean line through him. Divorce. Simple. Surgical.
Toji leaned back, staring at the ceiling for a long minute. Then he exhaled, reached for his phone, and scrolled through the contacts until he found one labeled "Old Bat."
He pressed call.
It rang twice before a voice, sharp and bright as crystal, answered. "If you're calling this early, you're either dead or about to be."
"Neither," Toji said. "Wednesday wants a divorce."
There was a pause. Then, a deep, delighted laugh—low, knowing, not surprised in the slightest. "Nineteen days," she said, almost to herself. "A lot longer than I expected."
Toji's lips twitched. "You were keeping count?"
"Of course I was. I had a wager with myself," said Hester Frump. "I thought she'd last 6, maybe 7 days before declaring you a menace to emotional stability. You've outdone yourself, boy."
He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Glad to know I'm exceeding expectations."
"Oh, don't be so dramatic," she said. "You didn't really think she'd settle into domestic bliss, did you? The girl can barely tolerate her own heartbeat."
"I didn't expect bliss," he muttered. "I expected a challenge. Got a Divorce instead."
Her laugh was soft this time, less mockery, more memory. "That's what makes her an Addams. They never end things with malice. Just precision."
He stayed quiet, eyes drifting toward the half-open window where the morning wind stirred the curtains.
Hester sighed. "You sound disappointed."
"I'm not," he said automatically.
"Liar."
He didn't bother denying it. "Doesn't matter anyway. It was arranged. I played my part."
"You always do." Her tone softened. "And yet, somehow, you still sound like a man who lost a bet he didn't know he'd made."
Toji huffed something between a laugh and a scoff. "You're getting sentimental in your old age."
"I'm getting accurate," she corrected. "Don't confuse the two."
He leaned back on the mattress, staring at the phone in his hand. "So what now?"
"Now? You let her go. Let her think she's the one walking away. It'll make her feel in control."
"She's always been in control," he said.
"Exactly," Hester replied. "And that's why she'll come back—not for love, not for regret. Curiosity. You confuse her, Toji. That's rarer than affection."
He didn't respond for a long time. The air in the room felt too still, too aware of what wasn't being said.
Finally, Hester spoke again, her voice gentler now. "You knew this would end. That was the point. But tell me honestly—did you ever want it not to?"
Toji stared at the floor, thumb brushing over the phone screen. "Doesn't matter what I wanted."
"Then it's yes," she said.
He didn't argue.
"Good," Hester murmured. "It means you're still human under all that indifference. Try not to ruin it."
The line clicked dead before he could reply. Typical.
Toji set the phone down beside him and sat there for a long time. The light had shifted—brighter now, harsher. He finally stood, crossed to the desk, and picked up the small folded paper that had been there since last week. Her handwriting—precise, small, unfeeling. Notes from some observation she'd been making about him. Subject exhibits compulsive control tendencies. Possibly masking instability.
Did she left this paper here intentionally or unintentionally who could tell.
He smirked faintly. "Possibly," he said under his breath, and tore the note cleanly down the middle.
For a moment, he considered lighting a cigarette. Then he remembered she hated the smell and, for reasons that annoyed him, decided against it.
He opened the window wider instead, letting the wind scatter the fragments of paper across the floor.
"Nineteen days, huh," he muttered, glancing at the phone again. "Guess I'm improving."
Then he went back to buttoning his sleeve, because the morning wasn't going to stop just because someone decided to end a marriage that was never meant to last.
---
Wednesday pov
The flame of the candle had burned out sometime after dawn. The wax had congealed on her desk in uneven folds, like a thought she'd tried to contain and failed. Wednesday sat there still, motionless except for her thumb idly tracing the edge of the cold teacup beside her.
She had slept, but not deeply. Her body had rested; her mind had not. Every time her eyes closed, she saw him exactly as he'd been—standing there when she said the words, looking at her as though she'd just asked him to pass the salt. No anger. No hurt. Not even surprise. Just a small nod, polite as indifference.
And somehow, that was worse than fury.
She told herself she should be relieved. This was what she'd wanted—clarity, separation, the restoration of her own autonomy. She'd executed the decision perfectly, delivered it with composure. Yet now, in the unguarded hush of her own room, the silence pressed against her temples like a pulse.
Her quill rested over an open page. She had tried to write about something—anything—but her sentences had turned traitorous. Every observation circled back to him. His stillness. His silence. The way his eyes didn't soften or sharpen but simply… steadied, as if he'd expected the blow and had already healed from it before it landed.
A lesser mind would have called that strength.
She called it detachment.
She called it unforgivable.
Her fingers tightened around the quill. The paper beneath bore the faint indentation of the word divorce, though she hadn't written it. She had only thought it—hard enough that the ink seemed unnecessary.
She pushed back from the desk and stood, crossing the room to the window. The morning light bled through the curtains, pale and almost sterile. Everything outside moved on: the crows, the slow awakening of Nevermore's grounds, the soft hum of life indifferent to personal tragedy.
She should have felt satisfaction. Instead, she felt the strange heaviness of a question with no suitable phrasing.
What had she expected?
A reaction, perhaps. A flicker of annoyance. A sharp retort to prove she'd mattered enough to irritate him. Anything. Even dismissal with venom would have sufficed. But that blank agreement—so quick, so unburdened—had struck deeper than she cared to admit.
He had said yes as though the words had already been waiting on his tongue.
Her hand twitched once at her side, an involuntary tremor she stilled immediately. She crossed to her dresser, set her candle straight, aligned her brush parallel to her comb. Routine. Order. The illusion of control.
But the room betrayed her. His absence sat in every still corner of it. His voice replayed in precise fragments, inflections her mind catalogued against her will. She remembered the way he used to look at her—not with affection, but with comprehension. As if he saw what she was, and decided that was enough.
And that, perhaps, had been the danger.
Wednesday sat on the edge of her bed, posture immaculate, eyes steady on the floorboards. Her heart did not race, her breath did not shake, but her thoughts swarmed like black moths under glass.
She had wanted to prove she could end something before it consumed her.
Instead, she'd learned how quiet ruin could sound.
The clock struck the hour. She flinched—not visibly, but inwardly. She rose again, mechanically, and reached for her gloves. As she slipped them on, her hands paused mid-motion.
They felt cold. Not metaphorically—literally cold.
She stared at them for a long time. In her mind, she replayed the last few seconds before she'd left his room—the silence, the measured space between their breaths. She remembered thinking he would stop her. Or at least ask why.
He hadn't.
The thought coiled like smoke around her throat.
For the first time, she realized she'd wanted him to.
But Wednesday Addams did not want. Not openly. Not aloud. So she did what she always did—she straightened, adjusted the cuff of her glove, and set her jaw.
Regret, after all, was just emotion disguised as hindsight. And she refused to indulge in either.
Still, when she turned toward the door, her reflection caught in the mirror—eyes sharp, mouth composed, shoulders squared—it looked almost like a portrait of someone pretending to be herself.
The illusion was perfect. The hollowness beneath it even more so.