Live for You

Scars

 Enid's POV

 I was walking down a corridor side by side with Yoko when Thing found me. I didn't notice him at first, I was deep in conversation with my vampire friend about some Spring Fling where they had a day of sports and stuff in the sun. I didn't feel like doing it. It was in three weeks. But he began tugging on my ankle. I looked down and started to say, "oh, hi, Thing," when he tapped words I'd been dreading. 

Wednesday is going to die.

 I didn't wait. I ran. I didn't speak to Yoko or Thing, didn't give any words at all. Not after everything we'd gone through the last term. Wednesday could not be dying. I wouldn't let her, she meant too much to me. We were best friends, sure, but so much more than that. I could not let her die. I burst into the dorm room and she was standing in the middle of the room. She was in her black sweatpants and her black and white T-shirt; there was something under the shoulder, like bandages, but that might be from last term. They were slightly bloodstained but she appeared to have wrapped them tight enough. I didn't push her. 

 But she had her beautiful dark eyes closed and a butterfly knife held to her chest. She didn't see me, didn't notice me, but all I could think about was how she felt the need to kill herself. What was so wrong in the deep eyes of this monotone goth, this black queen of venom? I could not believe this. She had seriously been broken. I seized one of my textbooks from homework two years ago I never did and blocked it, protecting her from the knife. 

 She opened her eyes and looked at me, and I whispered, "Wednesday, what the fuck are you doing?" I dropped the book, she dropped the knife, I put an arm around her shoulders and guided her to my bed to sit down. Because she was hurt. I could see the pain and misery in those eyes. She would never let anyone see it-anyone but me. I was hurting, too, of course, but I hadn't been particularly close to Tyler, so the most shaking part of the night was the wounds. Wednesday, getting stabbed, getting nearly killed. Me, getting ripped up by the Hyde and his claws. Weems, her wound in the neck from the poisoning that killed her and left her for dead on the dirty ground of a greenhouse, so much worse than the beautiful spring grave I thought she deserved. Like Weds had said, she died for the one thing she truly loved-this school, and for that I have immense respect. I agreed.

We both had scars. Wednesday, on the side of her head, running the length of her ear and a little in front of it, from where Thornhill had cut her and knocked her out, and one on her shoulder, where she'd taken an arrow. Me, one above my left eyebrow, and three claw scars from my lower cheek to my neck. Wednesday hadn't been normal. We'd both been traumatized, I knew, even though she barely let it show. But she would curl up on her bed with her arms around her knees and think for hours straight, trying to sort out what happened.

I did so, as well, but it was mostly her and what Tyler had done to all our friendships that really plagued my mind. That was what she was doing now. She hadn't eaten since yesterday evening when we'd gotten here. I had, I'd eaten dinner and breakfast, but she stayed up here, eyes numb and deep, lost in thought and pain.

"Wednesday?" I tried tentatively. Apart from my joyful greeting of her, to which she replied with nothing but more but slight pleasure in those dark eyes and a monotone face with a slight tilt of trying not to show sadness or pain to me, and our conversation half an hour previously, which I now recognized as her trying to get me out so I wouldn't save her, we had not spoken. She sighed. "Yes, Enid." I went on immediately. "I think you need to eat something."

"I am fine, Enid. I do not need to eat for a while longer before I will get hungry," she assured me softly, but I knew she needed help and care. I tightened my grip around her, reassuring her, trying to let her know I was there. Unexpectedly, she let her head drop onto my shoulder, and my heart literally seemed to explode with longing for her, for her to finally be okay, and talk to me and be with me again.