Chapter Text
I should hold some sort of class , Wednesday thinks as she’s loaded forcibly into the trunk of someone’s car. I’m sure it would be a futile effort, but the state of kidnapping in this town is absolutely shameful. Someone has to give them some pointers. The trunk closes. She’s unbothered. Her night vision is excellent, and the joints of the metal are poorly fitted enough that a bit of ambient light filters in, allowing her to make out the shape of her zip-tied wrists in front of her face when she lifts her head. She sighs and allows her head to thunk back down onto the itchy gray fabric of the trunk interior. Pathetic , she thinks. The car starts. I wonder if this counts as community service.
“Let’s start with the absolute basics,” she says as soon as the trunk opens. She sits up. “Can anyone tell me what you did wrong?”
She’s met, unsurprisingly, with a great deal of blank stares. Wednesday suppresses a sigh. They’ll never improve without instruction , she reminds herself. “Anyone?”
Nothing.
“Lack of disorientation,” she says patiently. “No blindfold or hood, no incapacitation. By the simple practice of paying attention to the movement of the car, I’m perfectly aware of where I am and which direction we came from. Can anyone tell me why that’s a problem?”
She looks around and singles out a stocky bearded man with an offensively red flannel. “You.”
He goes several shades paler. “What?”
Her very small supply of patience is depleting rapidly. She sighs. “Why,” she says slowly, “is it a problem for me to know where I am?”
“Uh -“ he says, and then another one - the leader, she assumes, interrupts.
“Shut up, freak,” he says, grabbing her by the shoulder and hauling her clumsily out of the trunk. She shakes him off and looks around.
“Well, that’s a little better,” she says, trying to be encouraging. Enid keeps telling her that being encouraging is a good way to get people to do what you want. She’s doubtful, but this is as good a time as any to test the theory. “Intimidation is an important facet of kidnapping, but you shouldn’t rely on it completely. Can anyone tell me -“
He pulls a knife. “I said, shut up, freak .” She blinks at him, unimpressed. It’s not a very big knife, and anyway if he thinks she’s worried about a little thing like bleeding out in the middle of the woods, he’s got a steep learning curve ahead of him. She turns purposefully away from him to address the crowd.
“Thank you,” she says, “that’s an excellent reminder. The most important rule of any kidnapping, no matter what approach you take, is to know your victim. For example -“ she raises her hands to either side of her head and wiggles her fingers, “- you should have considered whether I know how to get out of zip-ties. The answer, obviously, is yes.”
There is a moment of stunned silence.
“I’ll take questions now,” Wednesday says, and then there’s a lot of pointing and yelling and amateurs swinging weapons around in ways that are more offensive than they are dangerous. She breaks two wrists and a rib, and after that point there’s a great deal of panicking and running. She ends up alone in the woods, slightly disgusted as she watches the last of them disappear back up the road.
“Kidnapping is a dying art,” she says mournfully to no one in particular. “I just don’t understand why people aren’t willing to put in the effort anymore.”
The trees do not respond. She sighs and begins trudging back up the road.
There’s a great deal of fuss going on when she gets back, because apparently someone saw her being dumped into a trunk and called the police in a panic. She wanders through haphazardly parked police cars until someone notices her, and then she has to stand there and listen to inane questions like ‘who kidnapped you’ and ‘how did you get back’ and ‘where did all of that blood come from’. She ignores all of those except for the last one, which she answers by describing, in great detail, the effectiveness of aiming for the eyes until the officer who asked her grows rather pale, mumbles something about formal statements, and wanders off.
Wednesday tries to go upstairs to her room - being blood-spattered is a wonderful way to dress up an outfit, but if she doesn’t soak this pullover soon it’s going to stain - and is foiled by a contingent of faculty and law enforcement who sweep her off to the principal’s office. Someone tries to offer her tea and a blanket. She stares at them. They go away.
Someone calls her parents, who have somehow been convinced to install a landline for this exact purpose.
“Hello, dear,” her mother says. “I hear you’ve been kidnapped.”
“Yes, mother.”
“And did you have a nice time?”
Wednesday sighs. “They were buffoons, mother. They didn’t even know the first principles, and they ran off when I tried to explain it to them.”
Morticia clucks her tongue sympathetically. “Oh, I see. How unfortunate. People just aren’t willing to put in the effort these days, it seems.”
Wednesday considers the chilling fact that she had the exact same thought earlier and decides to end the conversation before she receives any more psychological damage.
“I’m going now, mother.”
“All right, dear. Don’t forget to call this weekend, your brother is looking forward to it. Oh, and say hello to Enid for us, and your grandmother wants to know if she has any allergies or phobias. She wants to send you two a basket.”
Wednesday considers just hanging up, but Grandmama’s care packages are delightful. “She is allergic to strawberries and afraid of spiders and abandonment. Tell Grandmama not to put cyanide in anything. Enid does not have a tolerance for it. Goodbye.”
She puts the phone down. She’s being stared at by most of the faculty.
“May I go now,” she says.
“Ms. Addams,” someone says. He’s a professor. She never bothered learning his name. “Under the circumstances, we believe that it may be best for you to go home until this is all dealt with.”
She looks at him blankly. He shifts, looking extremely uncomfortable, but continues. “This is obviously a major concern for all of us, and the fact that there are people out there who are attacking Nevermore students means that we need -”
She tunes him out and turns to the acting principal, who is horribly peppy but at least half-way competent. “You can’t send me home because of this .”
He blinks at her, looking unusually serious. “I’m afraid it’s the safest option, Ms. Addams.”
“Safest?” she says contemptuously. “If you sent me home every time something unsafe happened at this school, I’d never get anything done around here. Besides, they didn’t even try to kill me, except after I tried to teach them how to kidnap people properly, and even then it was a pathetic attempt. Eugene could have gotten away from them,” she adds, a little plaintively. She doesn’t have time for this. Her pullover is definitely going to stain, and Thing will be huffy about her asking him to clean blood off of it again.
“I’m sorry you feel that way, Ms. Addams,” he says firmly, “but you’ve already been booked on the next train home. This is for your own good.”