Author's Note: Thank you for your reviews. I enjoy reading them, truly. There is one more chapter to go and I am so glad you have loved it as much as I have enjoyed writing it.


He looked at her, reached out a hand to stall her trembling one. It was just after dawn, and her whole night had been spent in a panic at the prospect of their task the following morning. A confession, a divulgence, an enumeration, of their dark and permanent sins.

"It's going to be alright," he murmured, "Cara mia, you need to trust me."

"I do," she whispered, "But the pain of it…I don't know how to cope with that. I am…"

"Reluctant to acknowledge emotions at the best of times?"

She nodded and then turned towards him, "That is why I have fallen for you. You can be emotional enough for both of us."

He smiled and lifted her fingers to his lips as they pulled up at her familial home.

He watched as she looked out into it and a sort of emotionless came over her face.

"Are you ready?"

"As much as I shall ever be."

-0-

"Morti-"

Her mother smiled at first but then faltered when she looked at their joined hands. She could see the bewilderment at the confusing equation; these were not hands that were supposed to be joined, these were not hips which were supposed to be pressed together or bodies that had become one. There was intense confusion for a moment, then the drop of a weight as a sickening realisation.

"Morticia."

Her mother began to shake her head and fell against the chair.

"Mama," she said gently, "Let us explain-"

"Explain away," Ophelia said lowly, "But I twigged a long time ago."

"Mrs Nightshade-"

"You don't speak," Morticia's father said soundly, "You remain silent Addams. Not only have you humiliated one of my daughters, but you've taken advantage of the other."

Morticia bristled at her father's assumption. He was an ostrich by nature, and it was at this she came to realise that his desire to see his daughters married in a way he thought right, to have it arranged, was the catalyst to the misery she was about to paint across all of them.

"No father, you are wrong," she squeezed his hand in hers, "You are choosing to blame Gomez-"

"Oh so it's Gomez now," Ophelia suddenly stood, "You treacherous little whore."

"Ophelia!"

Gomez stepped forward, "Don't call her that. Hold your tongue against insults."

Ophelia flew forward, her little hands springing out to claw at Morticia's neckline. She tugged at the chain so it emerged from its hiding place under the garment and snapped, the ring bouncing to the floor. She screamed triumphantly, crazily, and she scrambled to the floor for the piece and held it up as if it were some long lost treasure.

"I knew it! I knew it! I saw it at the funeral, after you disappeared again! Again. Rutting with him at any chance and he pays you in jewellery."

"Again?"

Her mother seemed to have recovered her voice but not her confidence, and she shook as she spoke.

"Oh they've been at it for ages!" Ophelia stepped back, her chest heaving, "After the engagement dinner she couldn't have been more of a slut and he, he was practically drooling. I knew it, I knew it all along."

Gomez's hand tightened on hers and he said flippantly, though there was an undertone of derision, "You're undermining the seriousness of it slightly."

"Oh I am not," Ophelia stood again, "This is the kind of thing my little sister has always done."

"Ophelia," her father suddenly said, "Ophelia that is unfair. You are being unfair. She's never hurt you, betrayed you. She's never been anything but decent to you. Morticia has always played-"

"Father," Morticia intervened gently, "I've always been happy for Ophelia to monopolise the time, the attention. It never upset me. But mother, father…" she stepped forward, "I am not at all proud of this. I didn't mean for this to happen. It just did."

"The classic line!"

Ophelia suddenly started screaming, her cries filling the entire room and rattling around the house. It would have been attractively unhinged if it didn't seem contrived.

Morticia stole a look at Gomez, who seemed to be largely unmoved by Ophelia's grumbling.

"Gomez," Morticia turned to him, "You should go."

"I am not leaving you," he motioned to her sister, "With that."

She leaned towards him, "I can manage."

He looked at both of her parents, whose eyes were daggers aimed solely at him. She felt suddenly guilty she had put him in this position and yet relieved too that he understood now where her reluctance must have come from.

"Tish-"

"Tish?" Ophelia's scream stopped abruptly, "Not just a fling then, not just a fling, not just a fling! You traitors!"

"Go Gomez," she said gently, "Please. I will see you tomorrow."

He nodded, bowed, and swept from the room.

There was an intense silence then, the kind that she hated because it was so full of criticism. She settled in the seat where she ordinarily sat, set back slightly from the heart of the parlour. All eyes were on her in the terrible silence, which was shattered intermittently by Ophelia's little gasps of misery.

"Oh Morticia," her mother wept suddenly, "Oh Morticia why? I don't know what to say."

She sighed and tried to answer as honestly as possible, "Mama, we are in love."

"How can you possibly-," her father ground his knuckles into tight fists, "I will kill him."

"Then you must kill me first," she whispered, "Because I am as much to blame as he."

"How could you do this to me, Morticia?"

Ophelia had lifted herself from her prostrate position on the floor to kneel. Her mascara had made stark lines across her cheeks, like twisted war paint.

"I didn't do it to you," she said solemnly, "I did it because I didn't know how to stop feeling how I felt. It certainly was not to hurt you, though I thoroughly acknowledge that it will, that it has."

"I'm surprised you have any feelings at all."

"Ophelia," she wanted to reach out and touch her sister, but she knew better than that, "You didn't want him. And you never have. You only started to want him when it became clear he didn't want you."

"At the beginning," her sister growled, "And then…"

"And then," she said calmly, "You fell in love with the idea of winning him over."

Ophelia suddenly snapped her lips back, so her teeth were bared.

"And you did not?"

"No," Morticia folded her hands in her lap, "And you know that, just by looking at what I've done."

"You've always been jealous of my toys!"

Morticia felt her lip lift in an ironic half-smile, "It's that thinking that's always made you unbearable. I couldn't care less if he was destitute. He makes me feel alive."

She turned to her parents.

"With your blessing, or without, I am marrying Gomez," she stood, "And if you don't want me here that is fine. I will go."

She couldn't suffer the misery anymore, so she turned and went from the room as Ophelia started another wail again.

Her chamber was quiet, a sanctuary made strange by the revelation of moments before. She sat calmly on the edge of the bed and felt the silk of the sheets, cool, under her hands. Here now, she could finally think.

And the thoughts were ones of quiet triumph, laced with regret at the suddenness of the change. There was no way back now, so there was acceptance too, of what she had to give away in order to have what she needed for her future.

She sat a while longer, until the sobbing died down. Then, as she had well expected, there was a knock at the door.

"How is she?"

Morticia realised she sounded desperate in that tiny moment of weakness. She tried to reign it back in, to release the feeling that she'd broken the sodality once there and that now those bonds were severed, they would always be weak if they were ever mended at all.

"Distraught," her mother answered, "Quite understandably."

Morticia examined her fingers, "I wasn't frightened of this, or of father, but of you."

Her mother let the door slide gently closed.

"You were always the easy one," her mother mused, settling on the dresser seat, "I used to forget you were even in the room. So quiet, so unassuming. No one could ever tell what you were thinking, how you were feeling."

Morticia nodded, "I know. It sounds terrible to say, but Ophelia never wanted him, she never wanted this, not really. And that's not an excuse, it's a fact. Even if she did, we've gone too far now."

Her mother opened her palm then, and the engagement ring which had been ripped from her in the parlour before was in the centre.

"Do you really love him?"

"Would I do this, to you, if I didn't? Would I do this to Ophelia if I didn't?"

Her mother nodded, then hung her head, "I don't know you enough to answer that."

"How sad," she said, and for the first time her voice quavered, "How sad that I've broken your heart and you can't even know me enough to see why."

"I want your happiness Morticia, as much I want your sister's," her mother continued, still staring at the jewel, "But you must see now, what you're doing, what your choice will mean. But tonight, I watched you with him…"

She nodded, "Mama, the very fact you think it's a choice shows how much you underestimate it. I love him, and you see that. There is no choice in this for me."

"What would you choose though," her mother asked patiently, "If it was a choice?"

"I would choose him," she answered, without a beat, "At the cost of all else. But it isn't a choice, you must see that."

Her mother considered for a second, then nodded and standing up, handed her the engagement ring. It lay in Morticia's open palm until her mother closed her fingers around it and went from the room.

She lay down, the piece still tucked tightly in her hand, and fell asleep only when she'd exhausted her mind to the brink of delirium.

She awoke hours later in the silence of the night. When she had been little, and sleep had proven elusive in her constantly whirring brain, she would wander the halls of their old, creaking home. It was not as grand as Gomez's (they were not as wealthy, and their estates not as vast) but it was entertainment enough for a child as curious and learned as she. So she re-tread her old paths, her feet bare against the wood, until she came to the small sitting room off of the kitchen. Normally she was above eavesdropping; little was interest enough to find her curiosity piqued, but the lowered voices of her mother and sister stopped her in her tracks.

Ophelia's voice had calmed, but there was still an edge to it.

"You want me to go for how long?"

"For as long as…" her mother paused, "For as long as you need. Six months Ophelia?"

Morticia retraced the words in her brain, not fully comprehending them at first.

"But she was wrong," her sister hissed.

Morticia eyed the scene through a slit in the door, unseen by them, and watched as her mama handed her sister a thick envelope.

"I'll wire you more if you need it," her mother said, "It's better for you to be away during this. She was wrong, yes, but you know what you did was wrong too."

The penny dropped for Morticia, and a shudder of ice tracked over her spine.

"For who's sake is it better to be away?"

Ophelia's face was one of defeat, one of a rejection so abundant that it made Morticia's insides crawl.

"For yours," their mother answered, but Morticia could hear the lie as she spoke.

"You know I murdered him," Ophelia suddenly said, "How did you know?"

Their mother nodded, though she did not answer the question.

"Why didn't he want me? And yet both of them wanted her…I got angry, you know what it's like when I get angry. I could tell he didn't want me from the start," Ophelia said, almost dreamily, "I begged papa, mama, I begged him not to set me up for this kind of fall. He didn't want me but I can't lose mama, I can't lose ever."

Morticia's mind was suddenly black with disillusion at the pettiness of the reason. She'd known Ophelia was a murderous little cat, but she hadn't expected it to be for such a shallow reason as desiring attraction. But in her gut there was pity too; she'd never though just of the impact the arranged marriage had on her sister. The idea that a husband could be chosen by anyone else other than his wife, where it had been barbaric before, now seemed an evil in itself to her.

"Ophelia, you must go," their mother said, ignoring her admission as it grew into a bilious elephant in the room, "Find yourself. Find your purpose."

"It won't be that when I drown myself," her sister said, "Will you always feel bad you picked her over me?"

"I don't know that it is that," mama eventually answered, "But I do know I'm picking your freedom, your sanity, over anything. I was as unhappy in my marriage as I could have been, we both were, and I want that for neither of you. You go, Morticia is happy. You go, you find happiness. You have to see why this is the only choice."

Morticia felt a sudden surge of pride in her mother then. The type that only came when you realised the inner conviction, and strength, which made someone who'd once seemed as weak as water into a protective lioness. She was a real mother then, not the wisp who'd wandered in a catatonic state through their childhood.

Ophelia sobbed openly and the sob was sore and wrenching, "Mama please, please don't make me go. I will fix it all. I will fix it with Morticia, I'll apologise, I'll admit. Mama, I know I…mama please. I know what you mean but mama I don't know what I'll do, out there, alone. I wanted to win. I hate losing. Mama please!"

Her mother turned her face away, and it would be that moment Morticia would regret forever. If she had had any compassion, any shred of empathy for her sister, she would have pushed in and told her mother they could mend it, and fix it.

But she didn't.

Instead she turned on her heels and went, back into the silence and peace of the darkness.

The next morning she awoke to a roar. It took her seconds to truly understand the noise, the feral cry of a wounded beast. Her feet beat on the wood as she took the stairs quickly, to find her father clutching a note to his chest.

"She's gone," he groaned, "Ophelia, she's left. A note, just a note."

The cold, almost blank stare of her mama as she looked upon the note reminded Morticia of the one person she never thought she'd see in her mother: herself.

It was an act of protection, an act of desperation, and it was something she'd admire forever. It was an act of unconditional love for both her daughters.

"I asked you not to set them up, both of them, for this," her mother said, into the silence of the morning, "I told you no good would come of it."

Her father leaned forward, let his head drop into his hands.

"She'll come back," her mother said, "I know she will. But she must have time, so we all must."

Neither of them looked at Morticia.

"Did you know?"

Her father suddenly asked her.

"No, of course not," Morticia lied.

Her mother's eyes shot to her then, and she knew as much as her mother did that they were both complicit in Ophelia's banishment.

"Papa," she knelt beside her father, "Papa, she will come back. She will go only until her heart heals."

"You did this," he muttered, though it lacked conviction.

"No papa," she murmured, "We all did. Ophelia included. Everyone has a portion of the blame here. There's no one entirely responsible, but there's no one innocent either."

There was a stark, contemplative silence which stretched into the morning and afternoon. It would never be the same again, there would always be an irreparable tear in the fabric of their world after that.

She was already shedding what she had been, and was growing into what she was to become. She felt it there as she lost a part of her past, stirring deep at the base of her spine.

A year later, without Ophelia, her father would die a silent death lamenting his un-mended relationships with his daughters.

And her mother would move across the city and into the Addams estate, where she would welcome her first grandchild into the world at her silent, contemplative daughter's side.

None of them knew that yet, of course, but the silence, the emptiness of a shadow and the suddenness of a space where once four was now three, was already making itself felt.


Thank you for reading. If you have just a moment, please review.