Anagrams

[ Written to the song "Habits" by Mr.Kitty (lyrics in italics) ]

Visions flashing...

Nevermore Academy sits against a black sky, rain stabbing through the dark like needles, their cold steel glistening for the briefest of moments against the lamp lights and occasional lightning. A figure can be glimpsed passing along the open corridors of the school's castle-like breezeways, rhythmically blocked by the large stone pillars as they pass along in silence, like a ghost.

          At night, I travel.

Larissa Weems moves at a brisk pace, neither hurrying nor casually strolling. She doesn't sleep this night, her thoughts wracked with the heavy mud of years she tried to keep buried in the past, now suffocating her within the walls of her office space. An attempt to escape her own self, she fled to the vastness of the campus in search of a... quieter space of mind to occupy.

          My nerves unravel.

Morticia Addams had stepped through her office doors earlier that morning, along with her precious family, at the enrollment of their oldest daughter. She anticipated the encounter, rolling every possibility of events through her brain in the days leading. The moment she'd seen the admission application, she knew her life —everything she had built within it— and her past —everything she had killed and buried long ago— were both liable to come crashing together. There was no way on this earthly plane that it couldn't. Yet, try as she might, she would fight to hold her composure, and the composure of both the worlds she had kept strongly apart, hoping foolishly that she could keep the tide from the shore. Inevitability was her weakest point.

          It hurts to hide myself from you.

Still, something tugged at her. She had half expected herself to remain as cold and embittered as she had been in their last meeting so many years ago. Or, at the very least, she expected only professionalism as a means to keep any emotion at arm’s-length away. As much as she tried to uphold either mask, something slipped between the two that she had not accounted for at all. A small, almost infinitesimal warmth. Like the beginnings of a flame from a candle being lit – the wick, not yet long enough to expose anything larger than a flicker, just warm enough for the wax to soften, but not melt. The feeling was uncharacteristic and she fought hard to ignore it. But the moment she dared to dabble in it, to reach out and touch the flame, breathe enough to stoke the fire, she knew there was no turning back.

"Did your mother tell you we were roommates back in the day?"

A stupid question. A tell. A weakness. A soft spot. A memory... She was supposed to feign ignorance. To pretend time had covered that life up. Made it a thing of the past. Made her forget from lack of importance. And yet, she managed to dredge an entirety of life back into existence by merely asking.

          With care, I held it.

Morticia, perhaps out of courtesy or genuine interest, recalled the memories as though they occurred only yesterday. Larissa was wary of the meaning of each word, doing her best to close the book she had foolishly opened on her own for the entire room by stifling interest and bearing her own version of the events as woeful at best.

          Inside I felt it.

She knew Morticia could tell, though. Why bother to prod, bring up the past like an old friend, only to dismiss it and recant them as grim and unbearable? No, she knew better than that. Larissa was reaching for an answer. A reaction. A single, thread-slim tether to what they had shared in the past. She was checking. I can't be the only one who remembers… The inside of their skulls both sang in independent unison. ...Everything.

          My favourite pain comes back to me.

Her attempted dismissal of the memories, like a student too stubborn to be scolded, appeared glass on the surface, like old banter between less-than-ideal friends long gone. But inside, Larissa was a storm. The placid ocean of eyes she wore to the world had begun to churn and rage. A stirring that she herself, no doubt, had caused. And for that, her sigh of exhaustion meant more than an administrative tire. She was kicking herself for opening that door. For singlehandedly pulling the keystone from the cathedral she had built around herself to avoid such feelings. Such… events. She could feel the weight of it all around her. The world of baggage she had been carrying, no longer weightless under her years of strength and resistance, but crushing and faltering on her shoulders. The cracks she meticulously plastered and glazed to perfection were feathering back into existence.

          Don't... break... me...

A flicker of memories. A young raven-haired woman's disarming smile. A flash of white-blonde hair in the sun. Pale fingers wrapped around an unsteady, unsure hand.

          Don't... let... go...

A waning moon illuminating a garden of dark flowers. Soft whispers in the nighttime. Shadows curling on the walls against candlelight.

          Don't try to leave.

Footsteps down a corridor at dusk. Clenched fists. A muffled sob. An echo in an empty chamber atop a stone tower. The large glass window white with the reflection of the pale moon.

          Let your habits control you.

Silence.

Morticia, eyes glazed with distant interest in the rows of deadly flora around her, moved impossibly slow, hand outstretched. Hovering. Touching merely the air around each plant as she glided from one end of the conservatory to its center. The high walls and glass ceiling all but muffling the storm outside. Rain streaked the panes like fingers, desperate to catch a landing, but failing and falling to their death silently outside. A flash of lightning illuminated her silhouette.

          These blades I'm hiding.

The meeting not much more than hours earlier with the Nevermore Academy's headmistress had left her feeling… something. Distraught? Perplexed? Nostalgic? ...Longing? Morticia was a woman of many levels of feeling. Nothing was as simple or as flat as a single emotion. Happiness was not merely such; it was a sense of weight-lifting, a touch of admiration, sprinkled with a kind of calm for the soul, and perhaps a dash of selfish indulgence. Sadness, as well, a mix of complicated and sometimes contrasting feelings that melted into one dark impression. Like a bruise. These feelings, however, were far too many layers deep. As deep as the years that had buried them. And, like a wine, aged and deepened them only further.

          Keep safe the tidings.

Her initial reactions when crossing the gates into Nevermore had included wistful and sentimental memories of her shared years at the school, intertwined with the note-so-easily-hidden joy for her daughter to be a part of its history. The pride and admiration she held for the school swelling in her chest at the sight of its stone cathedral frame and towers. There was almost an uncharacteristic excitement to walk the halls once more. Like someone grown revisiting their purest childhood dreams, peaking at every corner to see how much it had changed and delighted by how much it hadn't. She had known from the signature and the admission letter who she would be in the presence of as they entered these hallowed grounds. Ghosts, not only of the campus, but of her past here, rising silently and watchfully from their graves to take sight of her. This one in particular, however, she had no canvas of feeling when meeting. Or rather, no canvas large enough to convey such feeling. Every cell of her being remembering the past

          Of bridges crossed that soon collapsed.

The very sight of Larissa Weems, a ghost of her former studentship, in the flesh before her. Her platinum hair was gracefully swept as it ever was. Her icy blue eyes, as they looked up from her desk, tearing through Morticia as they always had. Sharp. Almost painful. Enough to quickly remind you that you were alive. Alive enough to hurt. The familiar ache her gaze caused came rushing back. Sprinting through the years without a single touch of footfall to disturb them, only preserve them. Her breath had caught in her throat, only briefly, before the headmistress rose and spoke to them. Not allowing herself to be caught up in the frill and flower of old times, Morticia kept her composure as sure and as silent as she always had. But just below the black velvet and pale skin, electricity was crackling and pulsing, dormant for a spark to set it into visceral chaos.

          No fear of falling.

Pleasantries exchanged, formalities put forth, and then... a casualty she was not necessarily expecting from Larissa. A death in her character. An unpolished stone amongst the order. An old secret rearing its soft head quietly.

"Did your mother tell you we were roommates back in the day?"

There it was. A hair of a memory, plucked from the dark, heavy fabric of time and effortlessly placed into the present of that office.

Morticia anticipated no such offerings with the way their relationship was left those many years ago. This, in fact, was the last thing she expected Larissa to unearth. Perhaps, she surmised, she too was feeling the effects of their revisiting. Perhaps the air, the day itself, the circumstances, the very campus and rooms themselves, parted the lines of history —past and present— and created this linear space where the two conjoined. Like parting waves, the shore beneath showing, unblurred by refracting light and liquid. A moment in time holding its breath for the briefest of moments, as if it hadn't battered either individual in the ways that shaped them to this day. Time stood still.

And then, just as quickly as the odd, unique moment presented itself —uncharacteristic to all the involved universes— it was quickly swept back into place as if not to disturb the flow of time any longer than it had been allowed.

Morticia, genuinely happy to recall such memories. Larissa, genuinely distraught that she would let herself be fooled for an instant that Morticia, too, would recall them with such happiness.

          Endlessly calling.

In its aftermath, Morticia felt the wide arms of nostalgia wrapping around her, calling her to explore it. So she did. She returned to the Academy later that same day to reminisce, her doting husband absolutely thrilled by her desire to touch the stones of her past and reclaim its euphoria. She would allow herself until nightfall to endure such memories, recapturing everything she had missed in all those years. She had not, however, known the reach of things for which she would be recapturing.

Hours around the campus, eventually finding her way under the protective covers of the corridors when rain came to dance among the students and walls. It couldn't have been more perfect, she thought. Nothing pushes the joyful ache of nostalgia quite like rain. A storm, nonetheless. She closed her eyes and smiled, resting herself against a cold stone pillar. It was perfect in every way. A flash of lightning lit up behind her closed eyes, and then opened, wide with youthful excitement. Quickly, she turned and hurried along the stone walk, her heels clicking steadily as she made her way to the very place she knew she would not only feel the memories, but grasp them tangibly and smell their sweet, deadly longings. The conservatory.

          You make me feel like I'm alone.

As she crept into the enormous greenhouse within the conservatory’s space, her body sighed at the atmosphere. Everything was exactly as it had always been. Her favourite place as a student was here: Among the dangerous, poisonous, and carnivorous dark plants that lined the tables and walls. Fascination preserving them after all these years. She could smell the memories. Taste them just under her skin. The soil, the sharp vines, the cold steel of the tools. The ancient chalk and board. The resisting old oak desks that refused to let time take their toll on them. The rain outside had picked up, lightly drumming the glass and dulling the unimportant sounds of the world beyond. Exactly how she remembered this place. A secret solitude. A chamber for everything and all things, like a capsule, unsullied by time itself. True magic.

As she breathed in the scent of everything within the room and everything beyond the physicality of the room, she was flooded with scenes and memories and visions of her life within these enchanting walls. The years she had spent here. Like all the ancient and unwavering things of this room, her memories —just as preserved in here— came rolling through every one of her senses.

          Don't break me.

A finger lightly grazing the black petals of a midnight flower. A laugh. The soft scribbling of graphite on parchment. Hands clasped beneath the tables.

          Don't let go.

The creaking of the heavy wooden door hinges. A lock clicking into place. Dark hair spilling like ink. A flash of blue in the moonlight. A stifled sigh between parted lips.

          Don't try to leave.

An empty seat. The clang of metal and swish of sliced air. A drop of sweat hitting the floor like an anvil. Hands clenched, the knuckles cracking. The copper taste of blood.

          Let your habits control you.

Silence.

The door knob twisted and rushed to swing open.

There, lighted by a flashing from beyond the cold walls and crooked glass, at the crux of their existences both prior and concurrent to this moment, Larissa saw her as she pushed the door open. It was as though the storm outside had punched through the sealed threshold, a vacuum created. Sucking all of its force and impact into her with a ferocity she was nowhere near expecting. Her face frozen, as if laced by an icy wind. Her chest caught all of its air, as though her lungs refused to receive or give oxygen to the immediate ache in her ribs. Her fingers clenched tighter to the old, steel handle of the door. Every muscle in her body tensed, as if to be holding every thread of universe and fiber of time to resist it from pushing further into whatever this was before her. Perhaps, if she ceased to move, so would the grains of time cease to fall. And this moment cease to exist. Before it had the chance to wildly unravel into something she was wholly unprepared to be a part of.

The dark woman before her illuminated briefly, irregularly by the lightning outside, before the shadows of the large room folded gently over her once again. Like catching the glimpse of something just beyond the reach of one's eye, Larissa wasn't even sure she had seen what her brain was trying to register.

Morticia, unbothered and unwavering to any and all things in this life, as though she anticipated every moment seconds before they actually unfolded, remained still, her back to the door. Her eyes were low, still admiring the black foliage before her like an architect to their masterpieces. Her head rose just slightly, her shoulders still, even as her hand returned to its delicate hovering among the plants. Her wrist twisting, fingers following lightly, as though conjuring magic from the small space of air around them.

"I wondered if I might find you here," she spoke like silk slipping through palms, her words like satin against the storm just beyond them. As though she were not the one out of place here. And she turned, shifting her weight, to fully face the woman standing in the doorway. A soft curve formed at the edge of her lips.

Their eyes locked: Morticia's, gently, like a guiding hand; Larissa's, intense, like desperate fingers. Both of them holding the moment against the flow of time once more. The worlds they had created outside of one another ceased to exist, however briefly. And for once, the universe bent to their wills, allowing it, just this once.

There were no words to be spoken. The cosmos had granted them this space amongst the vastness of possibilities. A bubble within itself where everything precious had stood untouched, unchanged, unimaginably cloaked in the sameness of their youth. The rain seemed to lose all sound. Another flash of lightning, somehow unfollowed by the rumble of thunder. The air so quiet, you could hear the atoms crackle.

The most subtle of movements occurred in each of them, hardly perceptible. Morticia's head tilted slightly, lowering only millimeters, eyes still trained on the figure before her as her lips parted enough for air to attempt an escape. Larissa, in a return gesture of sorts, raised her chin only a fraction, something steeling in her eyes as they lowered, her jaw flexing.

It was a call and a response. A dare and a follow. A step and a parry. A dangerous invitation and a reverent acceptance. Their dance, as perfect in its finicalities as it had been all these years. Time stayed stopped, straining ever so slightly as it held. The room, the light, and the universe, in turn, bent to better hold its tension. It only wavered once. A blink. And then snapped.

Larissa broke the confines of time, shattering it completely, as she closed the distance between them like a glass being pressed too firmly in a grip until it burst. The splinters of every year between them slicing into her skin with each of her steps. The universe pleading to resist. Yet she felt no pain.

She lost no time where too much had already gone missing. Too much taken from her. From them both. She left no room for choices this time. No room for time to step in and take what was hers, even if only for this moment.

Decisively, she moved. And Morticia's presence, complicit.

          Don't break me.

Their lips crashed together, equal halves of the universe finally snapping back together after restraint. Parted waves violently merging. Gravity crumpling under its own weight. Walls slamming in around them.

          Don't let go.

Long fingers grasped and tangled into blackness. Pale hands pressing and pulling like a ragged tide. Passionate would barely be strong enough a descriptor. Volatile, hardly the locution. Desperate, an entirely wrong idiom. Years and lifetimes of longing cloaked in estrangement, dissipating in the snuffing of a candle.

          Don't try to leave.

Not even the thin veil of reality could keep them apart. At least, not physically. A vision of intertwinement kept them tethered, like a miles long ribbon wrapped about their beings. No manner of geography or rearrangements of the earth could shift them apart. Not in this life. And likely not in any other. Death was merely an audience member, and Life, a lucky participant.

          Let your habits control you.

A/N: no one-- and i mean no one-- EVER! has read anything that i have written before. with the exception of teachers of academics, my space-intrusive cat, and the unfortunate ones of my mother in my middle-school years stumbling upon a hand-written kim/shego fanfic in the mess of my room while cleaning (yowch) -- no eyes have ever seen my work.

to say that i am nervous is a gross understatement.

so please… be gentle with me, friends. critique as necessary (i truly value your input if you like it or not!). but be merciful (i beg of you!).

i first wrote this way back when season 1 first aired. i've kept it locked away until now (and with the supportive feedback of those in the tumble morissa community). if you enjoy any small (or great) part of this, then please let me know. i have plenty more to share if it tickles anyone. i am by no means excellent at writing. just hitting the keys when the inspiration strikes me.

thank you for all the kindness on my art-work! and now, here is some of my word-work: