Author's note: I have tried to write this story a number of times but I have never ever felt confident enough to publish. I would say The Addams Family is the hardest fandom I write in, and that often translates in the stories. It came after a prompt from a guest review, and I tried again, and I think it might have worked this time.

Thanks, as always, to my endlessly patient friend Wild Mei Ling. She's a willing ear, a great critic, and a fantastic editor! So this is for her.

This is a chapter story, and I'll try to update it as regularly as I can.

Disclaimer: The Addams Family, and anything associated with it, don't belong to me. They belong to Paramount and Charles Addams and whoever else owns them. I make no money from these stories and this applies to all the chapters.

Thank you for reading and I hope you really, really enjoy it. Please leave a review if you can.

There was an abundance of dresses, scattered shoes, the lingering scent of perfume, the steamy heat of recent bathing, the tea gone cold on the breakfast tray, and in the middle of it all her flighty sister. Her sister was the most chaotic of all, whirring about in a melee of materials and scents. In fact to say it was chaotic was an understatement, and chaos did not sit well with her. Ophelia's flaxen hair, so pale it was almost colourless, flew behind her as she dashed towards the bed, simultaneously shedding the dress she had dismissed in front of the mirror a moment before.

"It looks beautiful, Ophelia," she said, her voice low and quiet, as she perched perfectly still on the chair in the corner.

"Perhaps you're blind Morticia," her sister said, wriggling the dress over her hips and stepping out of the pool at her feet.

"You are all aflutter," Morticia observed lightly, "It doesn't suit you. You weren't like this with the other boys."

Her sister stared pointedly at her in the mirror, then a wry smile appeared on her pale lips.

"I wasn't betrothed to all those other boys," she smirked.

"Oh, I see," Morticia answered, "You only acted as if you were betrothed to them?"

"Darling, what one does before one's marriage hardly counts," her sister answered, holding up a pale satin dress, which had the air of lingerie from a Berlin cabaret, against her body.

"Mother would not approve," Morticia advised lightly but seriously.

"But all the boys do," Ophelia smiled, pushing her hair back, "At any rate, Mr. Addams hardly has a pristine reputation."

Morticia paused in her examination of her nails, "So I gather."

Her sister continued to examine the potential dress as she spoke, "Morticia of so little words. What matter is it that he's a rake? It's hardly likely to be a marriage of encompassing passion…he'll have his dalliances," her sister paused, "And I'll be damned if I'm not to have mine. Arranged marriages are a curse, and I intend to make mine as bearable as possible."

Morticia nodded, silence her only response. It was sentimental and crass to insist marriage was something else, or at least should be, when it was evident that such notions were prime for rebuttal in her world. Her parents' marriage, and their parents before them, and every generation before that, had suffered the trials of an arranged betrothal, and come out none the worse for it, she supposed. None the better either, but none the worse.

She wasn't particularly romantic or naïve but the very prospect of her parents choosing the man to whom she would be bound forever was repugnant in the extreme. For a very great number of reasons but mainly because she wanted to be loved, to be worshiped.

In everything else she may have been complex but not, at least, in this.

"I think I'm settled," Ophelia said, turning for appraisal.

"That looks almost matrimonial," Morticia said dryly, eyes glancing over the white chiffon, "And definitely virginal."

Ophelia smiled, "Neither of which are particularly concordant with my person?"

A delicate eyebrow arched, Morticia laughed lowly, "Your words, not mine."

-0-

The ancient family silver laid out, they sat in the parlour as if awaiting terrible news. Her parents looked grave, as well they should since they were trading their daughter as a commodity to the wealthy and well-connected Mr. Addams. Morticia was not a parent, but the concept of trading your daughter off for security, or a name, or a huge dowry, seemed brutal to her mind.

She was supposed to be excited, and she was trying very hard to seem it, but excitement wasn't an emotion she was particularly familiar with, let alone for a marriage which she was fully against. The only saving grace was Ophelia's can-do attitude in the face of a forced engagement, and in fact she seemed secretly pleased to have bagged such a miraculous connection without having to have lifted as much as a finger in effort. That was Ophelia's forte though; breezing into situations and making them suit her.

She moved slightly, folded her hands in her lap, and then leaned her shoulder against the wing of the chair.

"Tish," her father's smile was stiff, "Look animated, please."

"You're asking the desert for rain there," Ophelia murmured, "Isn't he?"

Morticia smiled wanly, almost exaggerating the languidness of her body to prove her sister right, "Mmmm."

"I hardly think Mr. Addams will want to see what Tishy is like anyway," Ophelia said breezily, "He's here for me, I don't need to remind you of that surely."

"No, you don't," Morticia whispered, earning a sly grin from her sister.

There was always this cattiness there, because Ophelia made it so. Morticia was not, by her nature, competitive, but Ophelia surely was. And though Morticia's words were jocular, Ophelia's were laced with truth.

"Perhaps…soon we shall find a sui-"

"Oh father, please," Morticia moaned, "Please, not this again."

"A girl's got to find a husband," her father said, his voice full of old frustration at this conversation.

"Maybe fifty years ago," she said quietly, "But now… Anyway, we all know that when it comes to it you will pick one for me and I will have no say in it."

"Now she just wants one to keep her in the life you've ensured she's accustomed to daddy," Ophelia finished, wrapping her arms around their father's neck soothingly.

He grinned stupidly, "You should be more like Ophelia, Morticia."

She nodded submissively, though Ophelia grinned at the glint in her eye, "I know papa."

"They're here," her mother croaked from her previous stony silence, "They're here."

Morticia turned her long neck to see a pricey car slide into their drive, the colour of racing green.

"I hope he's handsome," Ophelia whispered as their parents went from the room.

"What if you don't love him?"

She felt stupid saying it but she said it anyway.

"I won't," Ophelia answered, "But he will love me. He has to Morticia, you know that. Who can possibly resist me."

She considered her sister's words and the truth in them. She had men wrapped around her finger, from when they were little to when they were at boarding school and she'd had so many suitors it was both embarrassing and admirable. Morticia was different, quieter, more wary about to whom she gave herself. It wasn't prudishness or shyness, it was the fear of selling herself short that had meant all of her flings had been brief, unsatisfying and boring.

And no man had quite managed to cut through those impeachable standards though she'd let them have a fair go at doing so.

There were voices in the hall and her sister stood at the fire place, her pale skin lit with a glowing confidence that Morticia found objectionable.

"Prepared?"

Ophelia smiled, "The only person who need be prepared is the man in the hall."

Morticia smiled, "I love your confidence."

"No you don't," Ophelia laughed, "But you do love me."

Morticia nodded and, despite their difference, it wasn't a lie, "Of course."

The door behind her fell open and she did not move, staying exactly where she was with her back to the door. It wasn't intentionally ill-mannered, though it undoubtedly was, but she simply didn't want to move.

"This is Ophelia," her father said to the stranger.

A whiff of cologne, earthy and dark and mixed with bitter cigars, breezed by her as the tall man strode past. When she lifted her head it was to see a proud back, a fedora and a coat that was the exquisite, greyish-green of decay, patterned Paisley and lined in Ermin.

He certainly cut a figure worthy of his reputation.

The back bent, kissed her sister's pale hand and turned as her father said:

"And this is our younger daughter Morticia."

She was a pessimist, a denier of cliché, but her heart ceased beating in her breast in the moment he turned.

Black, half-lidded, shining jet eyes glanced over her, appraising. Time stopped, there was nothing between them which constituted space and time, then it snapped as her father spoke.

"Please, Mr. Addams, take a seat."

The man did as he was asked but he seemed to misstep, to falter for a fraction of a second, before smiling slickly and removing his fedora.

She felt suddenly untethered and fear rose up across her ribs and breastbone, climbing up to constrict her gullet. Her palms pricked with the desire to touch something, anything, that would ground her again. She gripped the soft leather of the arm chair and dug her nails in, feeling they might splinter.

Around her conversation ebbed and flowed with the awkwardness of all new acquaintances and yet she felt as if she were floating somewhere above it, cold and isolated from it all. Blue smoke curled up towards the ceiling from his cigar, pungent and delicious all at the same time. His laugh was loud and irreverent, and when he eventually turned his eyes on her again it was with a glistening, bright smile that was an obscenity in its handsomeness.

Suddenly faint, because she knew where this would go if she did not excuse herself, she stood and with few words, went from the room. She felt their eyes on her but she didn't look back, slithering from them silently.

His laugh followed her though, loud and jubilant, as if he'd already won.

Thank you. Please let me know if you liked it!