Threads Of Fate

Skull Tree

Morticia knelt on the floor, Gomez's head in her lap, her face pale and streaked with soot, both of them trembling.

And then Lavinia saw him.

Isaac.

He lay crumpled on the cold stone, his curls matted with blood. His eyes were half-lidded, unfocused. His remaining hand twitched weakly at the air.

"No," Lavinia whispered, dropping to her knees. Her hands shook as she pulled him into her arms.

His body was warm, but the warmth was fading fast.

"Oh God, please," she begged. "Please—please don't—"

Her sob cracked the room open.
An earth-shattering scream ripped from her lungs, echoing through the wreckage, through the night, through the halls. It was the kind of scream that left scars.

The day she had always seen.
The day she had always known would come.
But nothing—nothing—had prepared her for how brutal it would be.

The Skull Tree.

The forest was damp, the mist coiling low to the ground. The tree's skeletal branches clawed at the gray sky like blackened fingers. Lavinia sat at its base, mascara and soot streaked down her face, her hands limp in her lap.

"Hurry, Gomez," Morticia whispered urgently. Her voice trembled despite her steady hands.

Gomez lowered Isaac's limp body into the open grave. The wet earth smelled like iron and decay.

"No one will ever know we were here," Gomez said. His voice was flat. Hollow.

Lavinia didn't speak. She just stared down at the boy she had once loved. His face was already too still.

"I'm so sorry, Lavinia," Gomez murmured, placing a muddy hand on hers.

"He was going to kill you," she said coldly, her voice stripped of everything but truth. "Don't apologize."

The shovels bit into the earth. The sound of dirt hitting Isaac's body echoed like a drumbeat in her skull.

Jericho, Vermont – 2024.

"She threw live piranhas into a full swimming pool?" Leo asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah, I heard it was bloody," Elvira replied with a wicked grin.

Lavinia smiled at their daughter, amused despite herself.

"Now Elvira, Wednesday isn't going to have any friends, so I want you to be nice to her," Lavinia said gently.

"That's if she doesn't try to kill you first," Leo added dryly. Lavinia smirked, pressing a kiss to his cheek.

She looked out the window at Nevermore's courtyard, unchanged after all these years. The gargoyles still leered. The mist still crawled. The school had aged, but it was still a beast she knew too well.

Lavinia walked her daughter to her dorm, fixing Leo's blazer collar before he headed to teach his first class.

"Must you really return once Wednesday arrives?" Leo asked softly, brushing his thumb along her jaw.

"I could stay," Lavinia teased. "I'll stay with you. Like school all those years ago."

Her heels clicked as she entered the familiar hallway and stopped in front of a door.

"Wednesday?" she called.

A dark-haired girl turned. Her face lit up, though only slightly.

"Aunt Nia?" Wednesday rushed forward, the closest thing to an embrace that Wednesday Addams could muster.

"I came to see you get comfortable," Lavinia explained, slipping an arm around her niece's shoulders.

They entered the room.
Lavinia froze.

The creaky floorboards, the cobwebbed window, the moonlight cutting across the walls—it was all the same. Her room. Her past. Her ghosts.

She knelt at a warped floorboard and pried it up. Inside, wrapped in dusty cloth, was Isaac's mechanical heart pendant. It was cold now. But holding it made time fold in on itself.

"What's that?" Wednesday asked, peering curiously.

"Something I hid a long time ago," Lavinia murmured. She tucked it away again, but the ticking seemed to echo in her bones.

Movement in the corner caught her eye.
Thing scuttled into the light. Its presence was unmistakable. A remnant of him.

"Elvira will look after you," Lavinia told Wednesday softly. "If you need anything, ask her."

She swept out of the room, her long black dress trailing like smoke.

Later that day, Lavinia wandered into the woods, following a path her feet remembered better than her mind. The fog was heavier here, clinging to her dress. And then—

Tick.
Tick.
Tick.

She froze. She hadn't heard that sound in thirty years.

Her hand pressed against the Skull Tree. She closed her eyes, letting the faint, mechanical heartbeat vibrate through the bark. Her gaze fell to the overgrown grave, wildflowers blooming where his bones slept.

She sat down beside it, exhaling slowly.

"I still don't understand why you did it," she whispered. "I understand you hated me... but why try to kill my brother?"

Silence. Of course, silence. Isaac had been dust for decades. Yet part of him had never left. He had lingered, like the ticking in her ear.

She had everything now—a daughter, a husband who adored her. And yet Isaac was still there, haunting the edges of her memory.

Not alive.
But never fully gone.

Lavinia brushed the leaves from her dress and returned to the school. Leo greeted her at the door, still with that warm, steady smile that had anchored her all these years.

"How was your day?" he asked, setting his blazer aside.

She kissed his cheek softly.

"Dreadful," she replied.

He laughed, wrapping his arms around her waist. The halls of Nevermore hummed faintly beyond them. But somewhere deep in the woods, under the roots of a dead tree—

the ticking continued.

Tick.
Tick.
Tick.