#Agatha and rio

[aloneandaloe]

She is my scar.

[bestwitchsam]

Kathryn Hahn as Ghost Agatha behind the scenes of #AgathaAllAlong

[ice-coffeeeee]

A little request from @nyoclosmom

[down-in-dixie]

[blushingteddy]

Precious Things: Chapter 2

Plot: Rio visits Westview after The Hex comes down and finds Agnes O'Conner in Agatha's stead. She must team up with an unlikely ally to help get her wife back and confront the past to make sense of the future ahead. (Agathario x Rio/Mrs Hart unlikely friendship)

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The Hex had fallen a little over three weeks ago. Rio knew the proximate location without knowing the details, felt Agatha pulsate through the veil like the dull throb of a burning wick. Again, without knowing the details, Rio knew perfectly well she had lost the Darkhold—must have lost it along with her mind, Rio thought. Three weeks and no attempt at one of her swift, Agatha Harkness’ exits.

Perhaps she really was ready this time.

Rio couldn’t allow herself the grace of such a naive fantasy. 

It would be short-lived, of course. Fantasies always were when they involved Agatha.

The doorbell rings. The footsteps land steady, quick and unhesitant. Then, for the first time in over sixty years, they’re eye to eye. Rio loses her breath, then sees Agatha’s lips betray herself into a smile. A real smile. Resisting every urge, Rio doesn’t trace a finger down her cheek, doesn’t step close and bury her nose into the nook of her neck, begging wordless for something un-nameable, to be neither absolved nor forgiven but some concoction of the two.

“Have we met before?” Agatha narrows her eyes.

“How very coy of you, my darling.”

“What’s a bad girl like you doing in a nice place like this?”

Rio’s eyes flicker. 

Agatha is still smiling wide, her sparkling blue eyes firmly locked, but there’s nothing behind the waxy, frozen expression. No grief, no hatred, no self-loathing, not a single feeling detectably her own. Agatha glances down at the hand gently turning her elbow, another woman’s thumb gliding idly along a thick raised scar underneath the hem of her short lilac sweater sleeve. She observes it with strangeness, her brow furrowing at the touch, but she doesn’t pull away, and Rio feels a chill run through her.

“Either I’m about to walk into a trap or you already have.”

Rio waits for a response, waits and waits and waits. Agatha just stands there on the porch with vague conflict in her eyes, until Rio brings her hand away from the scar on her elbow, and then she smiles again.

“I have the strangest feeling we’ve met before, haven’t we?”

The windows shatter suddenly, the curtains blow inward, the lights flicker and the rage of the last two centuries exudes from Rio’s palms in graceful sheets of pearlescent black. She slams Agatha back into the house and across the living room with a flick of the finger. In her arrogance, perhaps Agatha hadn’t expected her arrival so quickly after the Hex fell, had answered the door with all the pomp and circumstance of a suburban housewife in the nice part of town because it was all a rouse—a play at the Achille’s heel. Rio strode through the guts of the living room, eyes scanning across the upheaval, searching for her wife.

She had missed Agatha.

She needed Agatha to have missed her too.

The house sat torn apart and disembowelled from the single pulse of turbulence, the cupboards and kitchen drawers and all of their contents strewn everywhere. A glint of metal catches Rio’s eye. The cutlery and utensils. Another flick of her finger, Rio instantly sends a dozen steak knives into the fortified coffee table slumped on it’s side—where Agatha was laying in wait, no doubt. They struck the wood like darts flying at a board. 

Rio waits for the parlay, for the response, for purple to ricochet around the room like a bleeding mortal wound and squeeze her so achingly tight she might never breathe again. 

Nothing happens. 

In her ecstasy and rash excitement, cackling and screeching in delight, Rio shatters every lightbulb with a gesture, the sparks and glass flying like glinting crystal at every available surface. Rio waits on baited breath, still nothing happens.

In the deep lightless dark, a terrified muffled whimper punctures the silence.

“Agatha?” Rio calls out tentatively.

Perhaps it’s a trick.

Of course it’s a trick.

Agatha always plays dirty, Rio reminds herself.

There in the corner, Agatha Harkness sits balled-up with knees pulled into her chest. She whimpers with her scarred elbow tucked around her face. There’s a cut on her head, it’s not severe, but she touches the blood and there’s unmistakable horror in her eyes.

“You’re…scared?” Rio takes a step back. “Why? Why are you frightened of me…”

“Please don’t hurt me,” Agatha hyperventilates.

Definitely a trick.

“You know it’s your time.”

“You can take anything you want…” Rio watches her insurmountable, great proud harbinger crawl on her shaking hands and knees to a leather purse by the stairs. She digs inside of it, looking for something, and Rio looks away in abject horror at the sight of her so human and vulnerable. “My. My husband Ralph. His car is in the garage…”

“It better fucking not be!”

“Please don’t hurt me”—Agatha turns back with paperclips strung together—“Here, take his keys. You know how to drive stick right? Most women can’t. He says that. I-I wouldn’t know…”

“Agatha it’s me.”

“I don’t know who you are!” Fear bursts through her voice.

Wounded and staggered, Rio steps back like a bleeding stag caught off-guard. Agatha scuttles back like a rabbit until her back strikes the wall. She looks twenty-five again, wide-eyed and human, true palpable terror exuding from her like liquorice Rio can taste in the air. Two centuries ago it aroused her. Now she prays for a trick.

“I’m frightened,” Agatha begins to cry. “I want Wanda.”

“Sweetheart, it’s me.” Rio croaks, a flood of tears sting her eyes, the balls of her knees land on the wood and she touches Agatha’s shaking hands. “Agatha what has she done to you?”

Agatha flinches back.

“I can handle you hating me for taking Nicky away from you.” Rio grasps her chin harder than she means, forcing Agatha to meet her eyes. “I can handle not being your wife. I can handle us doing this—the fighting—until the very end. I cannot handle you looking at me like you have no idea who I am. So please, Agatha, drop the other shoe!”

Rio watches her brow furrow in distress and confusion.

“Who is Nicky?”

Engulfed in a sudden hug, Agatha puts up no resistance. A husk. A shell of a woman. Rio tempts the idea of smothering her gently. She doesn’t have the heart, perhaps she never had it to begin with. Rio does the only thing she can. Her fingers strewn in Agatha’s long dark hair, she nuzzles her neck and holds her closer than she’s been allowed in centuries.

Rio feels tears dribble on her skin. 

They aren’t her own.

“Nicky,” Agatha’s breath warms her shoulder. “Why does that name hurt so much?”

“Because he was your son.”

“Was?”

“Yeah,” Rio swipes her cheeks with the back of her hand. “Forget what I said. You can forget me, okay? But don’t let her take your boy, Agatha. You made him from scratch, remember?”

“My name is Agnes.” Agatha stood, her voice devoid of warmth or emotion. “You have me confused with somebody else.”

Rio laughs bitterly, “Clearly.”

And then, she hung her head and cried.

***

Perched on grey blocks, Rio sat and watched from the adjacent lot. The curtains finally twitched open, Agatha yawned and stretched as the morning sunlight touched her sparkling blue eyes. She looked happy—happier than Rio had seen in a while.

She took it as a symptom Agatha remembered nothing strange from the night before.

The house had been left pristine and exact, better than it had been found, accounting for the azaleas and vibrant flowers trailing up and around the brickwork. Rio’s lips fidgeted, unsure of what do with herself now. She hoped she would look up and find Agatha staring down, some sense of familiarity etched in her eyes, as though the sight of Rio alone would be enough to reach through the curse the Scarlet Witch had placed over her tormented mind.

Rio glanced up at her window again and found nobody there.

She willed herself to be seen.

“So who exactly are you with, huh?” A surly older woman appeared from nowhere. “The Post? The Eastview Journal? TokTok?”

She was short and imposing, with rosy cheeks and a neat blonde bob underneath her straw gardening hat. Rio watched the woman remove her gloves one at a time, tugging at them with a frustrated snap, as though she might wrap one across Rio’s cheek like a Victorian insult. Then others came, tentatively at first, a neighbour from across the street in his cycling helmet and shorts, another two from the same front door across the road—wearing matching pyjamas. The street seemed to accumulate in dribs and drabs. Rio watched as the residents stood firm behind this small, angry woman making daggers beneath her sun hat.

“I really cannot stand you people!” The woman yapped and stomped her boat shoe. “Hand it over right now, give me the camera!” Her hand shot outward.

“The what?”

“The camera, now.” She grabbed Rio by the arm. “You journalists really cheese me, you know that. You are not welcome in our neighbourhood and you certainly will not bother Agnes on our watch. What does the sign say, bitch?” Her finger flew at one of the many red posters hung to lampposts and walls:

No loitering.

No photos.

No interviews.

No bothering Mrs. O'Conner

—Thank you, the HOA.

“Sharon you gotta cool it mama, you keep putting hands on photographers”—a larger man pulls her floral-printed shoulder gently—“Jed will have to book you overnight, you remember  him saying that, right?” His voice lowered.

“Yeah yeah,” Sharon shirked him off, straightening herself neatly. “Well, what are we going to do with her?”

“Uh-oh and what do we have here!” A familiar voice boomed loudly from behind the small gathering of neighbours. Rio would recognise it anywhere, apparently the neighbours did too if their grimaces and tight expressions were any indication. “Mrs Hart, is this lady bothering you?” Agatha slipped a protective arm around the short blonde woman.

“It’s Mrs Davis, honey. You can call me Sharon or Mrs Davis.”

“Mhm. Whose our friend, Mrs Hart?” Agatha glanced Rio up and down. “Is this the big-shot journalist from the city who knows nothing about Christmas cheer despite being born in this little humdrum town?”

Rio felt the ghost of a smile tug up her cheeks.

The man sighed, exasperated, glancing to the other neighbours. “We’re going to do  the Hallmark movie bit again? Really?” The others looked at him in commiseration, nobody challenging the order of things. “Fine. I’ll put the decorations up but I am not—I repeat not—wearing a Christmas sweater in July.” He trudged back up the street to his home.

Rio realised Agatha was still staring.

“So, what’s your name?”

“Rio.”

“I’m Agnes.” The grip of her firm hand felt the same. “Agnes O’Conner.”

“Well Agnes, aren’t you just the prettiest girl in town.” She shook her wife’s hand under Sharon’s hawk-eyed stare. “And, I guess, I’m a handsome journalist here to report on this little humdrum town I haven’t been back to since my parents divorced. Where everyday is Christmas and there is inevitably some kind of financial issue within local government?”

“So you heard. That the town might go bankrupt this year and have to cancel the Christmas barn buster.” Agatha nodded seriously. “Unless we put on the best talent show this town has ever seen, that is.”

Perhaps this was a trick.

Rio narrowed her eyes and nodded along.

“Are we sure the mayor hasn’t been embezzling—”

Sharon interjected with disapproval, “Don’t spoil the ending for her.”

“Well alright.” At a loss, Rio followed them back toward Agnes O’Conner’s make-believe home. “So she’s always like this or do you get the impression it’s…some kind of long-con?”

“A con?” Sharon’s head shook side to side as though she couldn’t imagine something further from the truth. “Agnes saved us from Wanda. And I’m-I’m so sick of everybody complaining! Like celebrating Christmas in July is such a…and cover your ears because I’m about to use some really foul language…god damn’ tragedy. Well, it isn’t.”

“Oh, cool.” Rio nodded and followed them inside. “So the HOA has assumed guardianship over Agatha Harkness, last of the Salemites. Yeah that’s cool, I guess.”

***

Rio grew awkward and uncomfortable as a wooden spoon was thrusted into her hand to stir bubbling molasses and ginger. Agnes breezed out of the kitchen, a navy blue Christmas sweater pushed up her forearms, cranking the radio as she went by. The Phil Spector Christmas album looped for the third time.

“Uh, I love the Ronettes,” Mrs Davis approved.

“What are we doing here, exactly?” Rio murmured to the neighbour.

Mrs Davis—Sharon, she insisted—rummaged on her hands and knees in the back of the bottom cupboard. She emerged triumphant, two extra aprons in her hand, then blew a piece of blonde hair out of her eyes and looked Rio up and down. 

She said nothing, shrugging awkwardly.

“Nice, well that’s helpful.” Rio grimaced.

“It’s not that hard.” Mrs Davis pushed up on to her feet and handed her an apron. “She gives you context clues.”

“For who she thinks you are?”

“No, for the recipes.” Mrs Davis rolled up her sleeves. “I think we’re making spiced cinnamon cookies. Have you made them before? You’re letting the molasses burn. Clearly not…” She rose to the challenge and took the spoon from Rio’s hand. 

“And you just let her do this to you?”

“Invite me over to make Christmas cookies?” Mrs Davis balked as though it were a strange thing to get worked up about. “So, what’s your real name anyway?”

I don’t have one, Rio wanted to reply.

“Rio,” she said.

“Lucky you.” Mrs Davis rolled her eyes. “You never did say which newspaper you were with, by the way.”

“I’m not with a newspaper.”

“Seems like you know a lot about Agnes…”

“I’m her wife.” 

Rio needed to admit it to somebody—anybody. She watched as Agnes came back in the room, all smiles and Christmas cheer, her heart aching indescribably at the pathetic sight. There was nothing remotely familiar about Agnes, nothing that felt dangerous at least, which inherently left Rio out of her skin and unsafe. A firm grip tightened around her bicep. Rio glanced down and saw Mrs Davis’ face etched with sympathy.

Rio pulled her arm away, “We were already separated.”

“Are you ladies ready for my famous barn-buster winning pistachio butterscotch eggnog,” Agnes tilted a dusted bottle of Vodka from side to side. “It was grandma’s family recipe.” 

Rio laughed at the absurdity.

Mrs Davis took down three glasses from the cupboard, “Sure Agnes, I think we could all use a drink right about now.” She turned back to the stove and stirred the bubbling sugar. “So, the talent show. Are we thinking Dottie’s backyard or mine this time? Herb says he can hardwire the Jack Frost decorations if this is going to become a regular thing…”

“We should probably call Wanda - see what her and Vision think,” Agnes nodded slowly as though it were a wise thing to say. “She had some great ideas for last year’s Christmas barn buster. If it wasn’t for Wanda, this town probably would have gone under years ago…” Agatha knocked back a healthy pour.

The molasses bubbled and burned in the undisturbed silence. 

Rio glanced and saw Mrs Davis’ white-knuckled grip tight on the wooden spoon.

“Wanda doesn’t live here anymore, Agnes,” Mrs Davis said softly through gritted molars with far-away eyes. “You were the hero of the story, remember? You saved us from Wanda.”

“Saved everybody from Wanda’s best-attempt at chocolate mint liqueur egg nog, maybe! Poor thing left the heat too high and let the eggs congeal!” Agatha cackled boisterously. “Nearly served scrambled egg to half the town!”

Sharon slumped in defeat and said nothing, Rio watched Agnes finish the drink and go back to the coffee table - a half-wrapped garden hose reel still dripping on the paper. She shook her and turned back to Sharon.

“Is she ever lucid?”

“Not in the ways that count.” Mrs Davis reached for the bottle and grimaced into a sip. She offered the bottle, gesturing it toward Rio. “Every day is Christmas and Wanda is always the best neighbour around.”

“Cool, well that’s settled then.”

“What is?”

Rio finished a third of the bottle and placed it gently back on the counter. She didn’t experience alcohol—couldn’t articulate a notion of what it must feel like to be out of control, subdued and numb. She felt all things, all of time, existed in all moments and found the grandeur completely exhausting more often than not, but the vodka tasted sharp and bitter and burned the entire way down. Rio enjoyed the burning sensation inside her body.

“Oh.” Rio glanced and saw Mrs Davis staring expectantly, waiting for an answer, which Rio had assumed was self-explanatory. “We’re going to break this curse and then kick the piss out of Wanda Maximoff. Your molasses is burning, by the way. Agatha go get your Santa suit, sweetheart, we’re going for a ride!” Rio strode into the living room.***

Salem, while not a model of neatness, was a miracle of supply. The car idled in the parking lot of a strip mall on the outskirt of town with high beam lights staring into the windows of a gutted discount clothing store. 

In the back, Agnes sat like a pre-occupied child, a garbage bag of half-wrapped utensils and homeware sprawling into the footwell. Presents for the needy, she had kept saying for miles until she had slowly stopped saying things at all. Now sat silently, her eyes were fixed out of the window staring at nothing like an imitation of deep, monastic thought. 

Rio made a mental note of the correlation between Westview and the curse.

Perhaps proximity effected the state of things.

Privately, Rio found this ordeal eery. The absence of Agatha’s soul. The uncertainty whether it was buried deep within or cast far, far away in some distant crevice unknowable to even Death herself. Wanda would have answers if required, Rio reassured herself.

She hoped she wouldn’t require them.

“You know it’s really past my bedtime,” Mrs Davis yawned at the steering wheel. “What are we waiting for exactly?”

“Those witches.” Rio nodded at the group of reprobates.

“Oh, honestly, I blame the parents!”

Rio glanced in the rearview mirror at her stalled, silent harbinger. “Me too,” she said.

“Still I loved Elizabeth Montgomery in Bewitched. Nicole Kidman was great, a little hammy, but remakes always are…”

“Mhm. Wait here, Mrs Davis, if this works I’ll see you in ten, maybe fifteen years. If it doesn’t we’ll take a ride back to Westview plus a better plan if you have one laying around…”

“You can call me Sharon—”

“Mrs Davis works fine,” Rio closed the door.

The witches were young, Rio noticed, and a pang of guilt went through her. She was out of better options and the scales tipped in neither direction as the decision set it’s teeth into the permanent fabric of time. She interpreted the lack of sway on the balance within herself as neutral, unbiased approval. That, or perhaps she had already been here, had already made this decision, and the balance was no longer aggrieved by the insult.

Just a few miles further up the road, covens would be dense and easy to come by, each group practically within earshot deep into the woods or dotted along some tiny, untouched wild—the cove, Highland park, the forest conservation, the light of distant row boats sparkling on the water, because perhaps The Road would open in a swirling riptide of magic. A deep blood red moon sat above the clearing, then a faint mist of clouds parting to reveal its entirety. Blood moons had always brought out the optimism in witches. And Salem, while not a model of neatness, was a miracle of supply.

Too young to know better, selected for their otherwise lacking experience and numbers, three noviciate witches sat under a corrugated plastic awning passing a blunt between themselves. Rio heard their quiet laughter from a distance. She felt the sense of sisterhood, saw the colours of their aura, wondered briefly on their reasons, because the reasons that led witches to attempt opening The Road were always sad. Rio hesitated as she opened the rear passenger door, then decided her reasons were sadder and more important.

“Hey neighbour.” Rio unbuckled Agatha out of the car. “Wanna sing a Christmas carol and give one of your really special gifts to those poor witches in need? For old time’s sake, call it work and play in fluctuating balances…” She hoisted Agatha upright.

Agatha said nothing, simply obeyed Rio’s direction, allowing herself to be handled and guided to her feet. She walked as Rio led, staggering and mindless, a protective arm slipping firmer around her spine. 

Agatha smelled the same, Rio felt her heart ache over it as she caught it on her collar. The soft plaid shirt lingered with Agatha’s indescribably Agatha scent. She hated how lovers described one another in this way. The idea somebody could smell of vanilla, or petrichor, or warm spring cotton, or whatever other deeply personal experiences could be extrapolated from nothing, except Agatha did smell like a deeply personal experience that needed to be extrapolated and bottled. 

Something Rio did not realise she had forgotten to miss until it was there, achingly missed, faintly on Agatha’s neck. The smell of personality and skin and clean, floral soap. Rio turned toward it, resisting the urge to press her nose on her wife’s collarbone, and then looked back to the witches beneath the awning.

They walked further toward them.

“Marching ever forward ‘neath the wooden shrine,” Rio hummed loudly. “I stray not from the path, I hold Death’s hand in mine…”

“Ah, fellow sisters of the craft?” A young, vaguely stoned butch with sand blonde hair looked at them curiously. “Well you’re shit out of luck, I’m afraid. We’re already up a green witch and that one…” She pointed at Agatha, her brow furrowing oddly. “That one doesn’t have an aura…why doesn’t she have an aura? Weird.”

“No, no, she totally does.” Rio patted Agatha’s belly. “She’s just, you know, shy.”

“Shy?”

“A grower not a shower.”

“Cute,” the butch laughed, inhaling a hard pull, then passed the blunt to her coven sister. “Take it you’re trying to open The Road? Shit’s a bust, man. Either that or you’re looking for somewhere safe to lay? We can help the the latter, but like I said…” She raised her hands. “We’re up a green witch.”

Rio looked at their faces, really looked, and saw wide eyes and hollow thin cheeks. A girl sat with her back pressed to an old laundromat door had a sleeping bag beneath her. The other in shorts and scarlet red lipstick, dark black eyeliner swiped in thick batwing lines, a crescent shaped bruise on her forearm, thigh-high patent leather boots with mended high heels.

“So, you’re the green witch?” Rio nodded.

“Mhm. We hold dominion over the cycles of life and death, you know…” 

“You hold dominion over nothing.”

“Ouch.” She laughed. “I’m Theo, that’s Frieda Kahlo, and that right there”—Eyeliner gave a scowling wave—“Is Pliers.”

“Pliers?” Rio raised a brow.

Pliers shrugged, “If it can take a prick it can break a prick…”

“Aw.” Rio nodded, unbothered. “Well, I guess we solved the mystery of the protection witch. I’m Rio—Green. This is Agatha she’s…” Rio hesitated, unsure of how to categorise her swaying shell of a wife. “Seen better days,” she said. “Anyway whose ready to open The Road? Wow. I know I am. All our hopes and dreams are about to be fulfilled. Are you excited?” She forced a grimacing smile and pumped Agatha’s wrist in the air. “We’re going on The Road and nobody’s going to die!” She sing-songed.

Agatha always made this look so easy.

“Cute. You’re not just any green witch though, are you?” Theo stared acutely. “And if I didn’t know any better? I would say your roommate there looks a whole lot like fabled Persephone from your grimoire…”

Rio liked that.

That made her smile.

“Look at you with all the hot takes.” Rio tilted her head and dropped Agatha’s hand. “What gave it away?”

“Your face.” Theo took the blunt from Pliers. “Shit, I mean, my friends can’t see you but me?” She inhaled and held it. “Big fan of your work.”

Rio understood perfectly well there was only one way a person saw through her skin.

“We’ve met before.”

“Two years ago. Called on you for help. I would say you never showed but, you did, you just didn’t help how I wanted you too…” Rio’s face softened as she glanced at the silvery scars on Theo’s wrists. “Now you remember me,” Theo puffed.

“Hm, interesting.” Rio observed the stilled, perfectly balanced scales within herself and realised now why they were not fluctuating—this one was already on borrowed time. “I hate to drop in unannounced, believe it or not, I do have a soft spot for my own kin…”

“But you have need of me?”

Rio nodded her head. “Will your friends cause trouble?”

She glanced, expecting wide-eyed horrified looks, or perhaps the protection witch had already started drawing some analogue mortal conjuring to expel her. They always tried their tricks. She was greeted by the sight of two frozen, dull-eyed statues stuck in sleeping delirium—the lights were on but nobody was home. Accounting for Agatha’s condition, it left only two of them to tango.

“Datura.” Theo lifted the joint, then rolled her hand to reveal the laced joint she had switched-out behind her palm. “I always keep one up my sleeve. Better to need it and not have it than…well, you’re the green witch. I’m preaching to the gospels. Mean ol’ hangover when they come around but they will come around, right?”

Rio nodded at that.

She was not wasteful with life.

“Glad we’re on the same page. Will this hurt?” Theo boldly pushed up on to her feet.

“Yeah, this is going to suck. I need you to blast her.”

“Do something for me?”

“You had two years, I already did.”

“Okay do something else for me, anyway?”

Rio paused. “Name it.”

“My friends,” Theo glanced. “Says in the Book of Stones you’re not the only immortal—says you have sisters.”

“Brothers, actually.”

“You still count Creation on your Christmas card list?”

Rio glanced at Agatha, the irony never going amiss, then looked at Theo with a fixed expression. “Kid, if you knew the day I was having…” she sighed. “Let me guess you want fresh, clean, happy little new lives for the Olsen twins over there?” She pointed at the stoned zombies.

Theo folded her arms. “Something like that, sure.”

“Fine, whatever. I’ll do it.”

Theo nodded and narrowed her eyes at Agatha, “You’re sure this will work? I could kill her, you know…”

“Be just great if you could. I’ve been trying for two-hundred and sixty years…”

Two jolts of light pale yellow shot out from Theo’s palms and struck Agatha’s chest like sparks to a dead battery. She moaned in pain, face contorting, and then Rio saw the flicker of her aura. The most beautiful, lilac shocks of her essence exuding from her in iridescent waves. In the absence of herself, Agatha’s body knew what to do. Her feet slowly rose from the ground as her purple latched and pulled Theo’s pale yellow magic back into herself. Rio watched on baited breath, hoping for bursting shocks of laughter and swirls of unpredictable purple and chaos, she would settle for just a glimmer in her wife’s sparkling blue eyes… 

And as Theo died.

Agatha rewarded her. 

Her purple drained the very last drop of Theo’s magic and slowly Agatha came back to the ground with large, hyperventilating gasps of air. Rio knew better than to touch her—fuss over her. She tilted her chin, poised and manicured and ready for a fight. Hoped for one, desperately. She swirled her fingers and conjured a pulse of black, beautiful pearlescent death in her hand like a toy to play with—ready for the worse if it came to a quick draw.

Agatha stared with those beautiful, sparkling blue—bent over and out of breath—licking her cerise lips like a viper filled on live bait and blood. Rio saw the flicker of recognition, the grief, hatred and self-loathing in her eyes. It was beautiful, she thought, and with that she snuffed the little death in her fingers and took a step closer.

“I have missed you.”

Agatha began to blink and stumble. 

“I hate you…” she quietly hissed.

Then Rio watched her collapse backward to the floor.

***

Salem, while not a model of neatness, was a miracle of supply. Beyond townships the population dwindled away to the rare, odd passing carriage out in the wilds and thickets. An unsustainable diet for a creature of constant consumption. A maiden defined by her hunger.

Salem sat like a sentinel against the vast emptiness of the world. In Salem covens brushed shoulders in their dozens every day—locals, travelling groups, those covenless few, the rara avis, seeking safe refuge on their journeys like foraging rabbits awaiting some great predator—and if one wanted to spend money, the witches market in Salem sold everything from sundries to sundresses to wizardbane to scented parchments and papers.

“People buy this nonsense?” She stands loftily, lifting a sample of jasmine scented parchment from the wicker basket, amusement and disapproval etched across her face. “And for such a pretty penny too! Oh dear, where are my manners. I don’t mean to…” A cawing laugh escaped her. “Well, I suppose I am making a mockery of you.”

The stall owner, an elderly woman with clouded eyes and sallow skin, pulled her face into an offended snarl. A response sits on the brink of her lips but it never comes. The light blue in her eyes grew wide, the air leaving her all at once in a stalled slow exhale, she stared straight ahead—through Agatha, through everything and everyone.

The woman wept beneath her breath, “I imagined you so differently.”

“Most do,” the witch-killer confirmed suspicions only she had assumed.

An inexplicable feeling came over Agatha, one which followed her entire life up to this moment, and she understood perfectly well her reputation preceded her in this instance. 

The sensation of beating August sunlight disappearing behind thick impenetrable February clouds fell upon her cool, prickling skin. The taste of copper formed on the back of her tongue as though some unsourced part of her mouth were bleeding. Her tongue touched the backs of her teeth, gently prodding for the taste of blood, but she half-expected already there was no wound. Agatha shook her head, the feeling faded.

Then the cloyingly sweet smell of black cherry filled her nose and Agatha closed her eyes. Some said corpses smelled like sweet cherries and almonds when turning toward decay. Agatha inhaled regardless, though she knew perfectly well this woman wasn’t long for the grave, she figured cherries smelled simply of cherries—enjoyed the smell, either way.

The woman collapsed backward into her table, quills and stationary knocking outward in every direction, ink sent up into the air from mixing bowls in a collision of black and emerald green dyes against the flutter of parchments, then they floated to the ground like feathers. A crowd drew to the scene, but the elderly woman’s eyes remained fixed despite the chaos all around. Agatha looked in the same direction.

And Agatha saw her.

There behind the crowds, a woman with a bright green lantern stood completely still and flat. 

It was as though somebody had gone to the effort of painting her across the fabric of reality, etching every fine feature on to the tapestry of existence like a drawing without dimension. Agatha blinked, eyes narrowing, unsure of the sudden anxiety knotting her stomach with dread, she realised quickly she couldn’t account for perception, distance or dimension. 

The woman was closer than she appeared, or perhaps further still, like an apparition assimilating around physical laws that were unnatural and not her own. An aura of omnipotence vibrated from her slight thin figure, cloaked in garnet and emerald, the woman appeared unassuming though she wasn’t a witch nor a woman, Agatha recognised this instantly. She was a manifestation of elemental power.

A temporal embodiment.

Entropy. Eternity. Infinity. Creation. Death. The five inextricable brothers to never be seen, heard or witnessed. Agatha bowed her head, a rose by any other name, to look upon Death was to surely die, and Agatha wondered if she had stared too long. She feared Death had caught her eyes and was now looking upon her curiously in return. 

Death gently brushed past her shoulder with a perceptive smile, some inextricable part of Agatha’s soul responsively yearned and keened toward the apparition, drawn to her magnetism, and she exhaled all the air in her chest. Death stopped in stride, their shoulders still touching, then Agatha felt fear anew. A kind of fear that overwhelmed and overtook every fibre of her being.

“It’s not my time.”

Death said nothing.

Death was surprised to be seen, Agatha realised quickly.

“Oh…You are not used to being caught off-guard.” Agatha’s voice hung as a sharp, jovial whisper. “Tell me, have you ever felt it before? It kind of tickles, doesn’t it?”

A beautiful smile broke across Death’s pale face—the most beautiful smile Agatha thought she might have ever seen. The crowd, now in a fluster over the ailing woman, noticed nothing strange or unusual about the scene. There was only panic, chaos, upheaval and aid. The four mortal elements in times of strife.

Wordless, Death turned and made her way to reap and extinguish. Her distance could be felt in Agatha’s chest, her restless soul had pressed on her ribcage, now it quietened into calm. Agatha watched as Death’s long black fingertips stroked the elderly woman’s cheek softly. She was there for only a moment, then…

“She’s gone.” A coven elder shook her head gravely, fingers firm against the deceased’s pulse points. “Send for the black mistresses, for the horseman, send word to her kin…”

In shock, Agatha simply stood with her feet rooted to the ground. She became a fixed object, processing and ordering the event in her mind, until hours passed, sunlight sinking behind the treeline, and the horsemen came and eventually left, carting the elderly woman’s body away. Agatha stood there still, until her thought processes finally felt linear and whole, until she no longer wished to stand there anymore. Agatha had no remaining questions save for one. 

Did she taste as she had always smelled—were her lips cloyingly sweet and bitter like fresh cherries?

Agatha pushed the strangeness of the day aside and pulled her hood over her nape. It was time to move forward, move away, move quickly at that. Salem was overrated. A slough of mediocre bottom barrel witches and overpriced talismans, trinkets and scented parchment. No, Salem would never do.

Not for what Agatha Harkness had planned.

***

The loudness of New Orleans hummed constant in the air, a battle between French, Creole and newly forming Verlan, distinct to the avenues where old French dialects melted against one another into new parlance. An entire city in harmony, conversations carried across streets from neighbours on their doorsteps and Agatha, most days, felt as though she were ducking beneath it all. A woman out of place. A woman without roots of her own.

A hand shot out from a dimly lit alley and grabbed her wrist as she passed. Agatha froze, understanding perfectly well that to glance in the woman’s direction was to certainly go blind, she was without permission to look upon consecrated conjure doctors. Untrusted and unknown. This made working with the kanzos difficult. 

The Mambo all but impossible. 

For months, Agatha persevered. She wanted a second meeting with Death. She knew the Hodou leaders could grant her this, and perhaps only them.

“Your request has been denied,” a voice whispered sternly. “Whoever you are—whatever you are—the spirit warns you are the unquenchable thirst drying witches like summer riverbeds in your wake, that to commune with you is to surely die. Go from this place by midnight, by order of the Mambo, and if you refuse or ever return to New Orleans you will die on the thirtieth beat of your heart, Agatha Harkness.”

“Lets say, hypothetically, I stood on the border of the territory with one foot in and one foot out.” Agatha felt her eyes begin to wander toward the woman, she stopped suddenly and remembered herself, then clenched them closed. “Is it thirty beats like a warning to leave or thirty beats like a countdown that cannot be reset?” 

The grip receded from her wrist without another word, Agatha drew her hand back to her body and rubbed the tender bones beneath her gold bracelet and purple sleeve. She inhaled and nodded, then continued walking along main street.

She had her meeting. 

The afternoon whittled into early evening, Agatha camped by the border in woodlands that were obscured by thickets and rows. With her back against the bark of a proud water oak, Agatha read the Epic of Gilgamesh, sipping occasionally at her green tea, her toes pressed into the raw damp soil. She would miss New Orleans. She had become accustomed to the noise and bustle, intrigued by the magicks and works brought to this place from the distant corners of the world yet unexplored, then a flock of roseate spoonbills flew overhead in bolts of white and pink feathers, and Agatha decided she would miss that too.

Agatha winced and placed her cup, sensing she had bitten the inside of her cheek too deeply. Then the heat of sunlight disappeared from her skin and the taste of bitter cherries swelled on her tongue. Agatha sighed and lowered her book to her chest. There in the unaccountable distance, perhaps within reach or thirty feet away, Death stood with a dark linen shroud obscuring her lovely face.

“There’s my girl,” Agatha muttered and pulled herself up from her bed roll. “You’re earlier than I thought you would be?”

With the lightest flick of her finger, a powerful wind swung forward and hooked around the back of Agatha’s knees—yanking her forward on to her palms and shins like a noviciate at worship.

“Okay you don’t like over-familiar types,” Agatha bristled.

Still, Death said nothing in response.

Then Agatha felt something prod lightly against her chest bone. She glanced down, saw a paper plane skewered and trapped in the edge of her bodice, when she looked up again the sight sent her skittering back into the bark of the water oak like a rabbit startled by a predator. There in the unaccountable distance, Death stood as a deity, her visage milk pale and rotting like a corpse, her jawbone and teeth defined in calcified bone.

“Got your nose.” Agatha pushed her thumb between her fingers, shaking her hand slightly in the air, doing her best to bring her heart rate down and simmer the tension. “This for me?” She reached to her bodice and plucked the paper plane.

Death’s hollow visage tilts to the side. 

As though to say…

Who else?

And then she leaves with incorporeal flare that sets Agatha’s teeth on edge with fright. Death was not ten or fifteen paces away as Agatha anticipated, she was much closer, close enough to faintly smell of figs and persimmons as her fingers swung a blade millimetres in front of Agatha’s nose. It sliced the air into wefts of fabric. Death cut a bleeding wound in the surface of reality. It was like watching someone step through a strand of hair—disappear into broad daylight before her very eyes. 

Curiously, Agatha touched the two edges of reality with the tips of her finger and drew them back like a stage curtain. Beyond the gaping wound, Agatha observed thick sage-coloured mist and the smell of wet rotting leaves and foliage. Then Death appeared, her features marked with abject offence, she wagged her finger and Agatha nervously scrambled back into the tree bark, stayed there entirely frozen as the wound knitted itself back together on a swipe of Death’s finger. A moment passed, Agatha blinked and remembered the paper plane.

She opened it and found the territory map of Louisiana. The borders of New Orleans drawn fine and sharp. Death had marked the boundaries cleanly, crossed Agatha’s current position, which Agatha had determined based on distance as the crow flies from the centre of civilisation, but Death accounted for variables in a way that required no further conversation to extenuate her position.

Agatha’s math was off by two and a half miles.

And Death did not want to deal with her tonight.

***

Agatha finished her dirty work and snapped the girl’s neck with a stream of purple, grimacing in pain as she removed the poisoned knife lodged in her gut. Word of her power was spreading quickly, and news of Agatha’s movements and reasons—her movements, mostly—seemed to reach covens days before she did. The jagged wound felt wet beneath her fingertips, she glanced down and saw it leaking in spurts and pulses. An arterial bleed. 

She coaxes her purple into a concentrated stream, hoping to draw the last dregs of regenerative power from the bodies littered around the camp ground, but the bodies are precisely that—drained of life and magic. 

Agatha Harkness, all alone and bleeding in the woods. 

She laughs quietly.

Of course this proposal would have to be so…

High stakes.

“New plan. Here’s what I’m thinking!” Agatha remarks into empty quiet nothing, taking a rag along the blade to clean it off. “Dinner, tonight. You’re allowed a night off right?” Self-assured she isn’t alone, Agatha gestures at the slumped bodies lying at her feet. “There could be more bodies if it would…sway you.” Agatha grimaces awkwardly. “How big of a pile do you need?”

“Cute.”

Death leans against the trunk of an old oak tree, her hood shrouding her unmistakable features. Agatha nods, smiling slightly. Death returns the gesture.

“Hello,” Agatha whispers.

“Hello again.”

“I just…” Agatha stops and looks around at her dirty work. “I just wanted to tell you that you’re beautiful, that’s all.”

“I know,” her voice is tentative and light. She glances oddly. “You’re very persistent, do you know that?”

Agatha grins. “I’ve been called worse, sure. I think I…imagined you differently?”

“Oh, you did? Never heard that before…” 

Suddenly, Death became decidedly death-like. It’s petulant. A rebuttal. Her sparkling dark brown eyes recede, her beautiful smile melts into milk bone teeth and an ivory-coloured chiselled jaw. She’s trying to scare her, Agatha realises, but it doesn’t work. Agatha laughs as though it’s cute. She is suddenly taken with Death. Taken with her rum-coloured skin and dark, deep brown eyes. Taken with her black linen shrouds, chaos and upheaval.

Her heart in a flutter, Agatha stood poised and manicured - determined to be alluring too. 

Then, Agatha’s eyes wander. For some reason, despite the skeletal visage, Death’s figure is still… 

Death’s mask tilts in confusion. “Are you staring at my breasts?”

“Well, you look beautiful.” Agatha shrugs, guilty of the charge. “I mean an entity of abject cosmic horror, sure, but your breasts are…” She wisely stops. “You look lovely, I mean. And, I think you’re fond of me too.”

“Ah.” Death finally notices the blade. “So you got hurt this time too?”

“I suppose I wanted to look my best for you.” Agatha lifts her cupped palm to reveal the drooling wound. “Of course, you could always change me out of this old thing. You’re the original green witch, right? You could…fix me up before dinner?”

“You know I can’t do that, Agatha.”

“Why? Have you lost your touch?”

Death leans forward, all sparkling brown eyes and obsidian smile again. “No, it would simply be against the rules.” She inhales and sweeps her hands along Agatha’s biceps. “I know it must be hard for you to envision rules and boundaries, Agatha, but there are laws even you must observe. Mine, mostly. I’m sorry.”

“Big talk.” Agatha lifts her chin. “I think you’re scared you’ve lost your touch.”

“I haven’t lost my touch.”

“You’re sure?”

“Quite.”

“Prove it.”

“Agatha,” Death grins weakly. “I see what you’re doing. You are such a beautiful woman, and truly I’m flattered, but intervening in matters of life and death is against the rule of balance. Perhaps in another life?”

“Oh fuck the rules!” Agatha challenges boldly as her legs start to wobble. “I-I. I kill eleven witches just to ask you for dinner and you’re telling me you. You…” A pained expression - then Agatha collapses backward.

“I told you, Agatha, I am flattered…”

The stars are clear enough through branches to make out the constellations. Orion’s belt. Cassiopeia. Ursa Major. Agatha blinks and feels her sweat run cool. Death comes into focus above her, but Death’s face is still a face, and Agatha takes it as progress she might make it out of this thing alive.

Might.

Death seems to be considering her options.

“You should break the rules,” Agatha whispers. “You. You should…” She draws a breath and feels her heart slowing. Agatha blinks and nods, knowing she is dying. “You should consider it.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Agatha furrows her brow as though it’s ridiculous. “How could you possibly bear it if you didn’t break the rules? You’re Death. They’re your rules.”

Death likes that. 

That makes her smile.

She crouches down, her fingers feel cool and gentle either side of Agatha’s jawline and temples. Death hesitates with a certain look in her eyes that lingers.

“You’re beautiful when you’re dying, Agatha. Maybe I prefer you like this?”

“Oh, honey.” Agatha trails her fingertips along Death’s shin, resting them on the ball of her knee. “You should see how often I come close to dying. This doesn’t have to be a one time thing. You’ll see, baby.”

“Alright, Agatha.” Death cranes her neck, unbuttoning Agatha’s blouse. “You get one dinner.” Her brown eyes sparkle.

“What’s your name?”

“I have many.”

“I have time - I could learn?”

“You’re so cock sure of that?” Death stares.

Agatha grins exuberantly, bare chested and bleeding with her blouse undone. “Yeah baby, I’m so sure.”

Death pauses in consideration, her cold fingers resting on warm wet ribs, then she shakes her head in exasperation and sucks the wound.

“Ah, so you’re a power bottom.” Agatha observes - more relieved than she wanted to let on. “Love that for me. You and I are going to be thick as thieves…”

***

Sharon finally grabbed the cassette tape that had been alluding her for the last five minutes, hidden beneath her car seat out of reach, she sprung up and exhaled a sigh of relief, then fed it into the player. A moment later, The Ronettes. 

She turned and then looked again as Agnes and her special friend trudged back over to the car. Agnes was walking by herself unaided this time, smiling that lovely friendly smile, waving excitedly as though they hadn’t seen one another in days—if not weeks. 

Her special friend looked as though she had been crying.

“Did it work?” Sharon asked as the car door opened.

“Nope,” Rio replied, bundling Agatha into the back a little rough. “Can you, er…take her back to Westview? Just some loose ends I need to tie up. I’ll be around. Can you keep her safe for me until I’m back, Mrs Davis? In fact, forget the safe part. Just keep her in Westview?”

Sharon thought that was a strange thing to say.

“Mrs Hart!” Agnes wailed in exuberant delight—her blue eyes growing wide and pleased. “Where have you been! And what is with all this garbage in the back of your car…” she murmured, examining a half-wrapped garden hose handle.

Sharon bit her tongue, hating that name. 

“Those are Christmas presents, Agnes,” she said diplomatically.

Agnes turned indiscreetly as Rio buckled her in the seat, “Gee willickers, I sure would hate to be on Mrs Hart’s naughty list this year. Am I right, sister?” She lightly elbowed.

“Fuck off,” Rio whispered under her breath and fussed over the straps. “Whole thing was a fucking disaster, Mrs Davis.”

“Well she doesn’t think it’s Christmas anymore,” Sharon reasoned.

Rio paused and glanced oddly.

“You’re right,” she observed. “Maybe not an entire disaster, then.”

[moonlit-imagines]

Rio and Agatha - Star Crossed Lovers

[uhhhyaenbyjade]

Chapter 4 is up!

[Fanfic] Please, My Love

Summary:

With a sigh of relief, Agatha turned to Rio, and pulled her into a hug. The action clearly surprised Rio just as much as it did Agatha, so the witch made sure to tilt her head so she could whisper into Rio’s ear.

“I still hate you for taking him away,” she said, and Rio’s arms stiffened from where they were wrapped around her. “But I know you had to do it. And I’m sorry, my love, for blaming you and pushing you away.”

-------------------------------------------------------

I loved Agatha All Along, including the finale episodes! However, I wished some things were different, so this is a rewrite of the last two episodes, with diverging stuff based on the theories and headcanons I had made before the finale episodes were released. Please enjoy!

UPDATE SCHEDULE (I will try to keep to this as good as possible, and may be changed) - Monday, Wednesday, Saturday at ~ 5:00pm EST

[aflawedfashion]

Agatha & Rio | Agatha All Along 1x04

[marvelsgirl616]

[cinemichh]

i love how agatha harkness is a lesbian in every timeline! never sitting straight, that’s my wife!!!

[renegadesstuff]

That explains everything 🥺❤️‍🩹

[witchesverse]

sex club.

pairing: agathario x fem!reader

summary: agatha and rio punish you after you brat out during a sex party.

content: mistress kink, public sex, kneeling, choking, bruising, degradation, name calling (mutt), strap-on sex, slapping, punishment, begging, pain kink, mean!agathario, dom!agatha, switch!rio, sub!reader, slightly bratty!rio.

masterlist

Her grip didn't falter and her fingernails dug into your arm as she shoved past people, pulling you along like a lifeless doll.

"Please, Rio."

You cringed as she turned around. Her eyebrow was raised and her lips were pursed. Her other hand twitched and you could tell she was holding back.

"You know that's not how you address me." She hissed and her grip tightened.

You swallowed.

"I'm sorry, mistress."

She huffed and continued pulling you through the crowd of people, clearly angered by your disobedience.

Your disobedience was nothing new, but it still bothered Rio and Agatha to the point where they had you bruised all over, and this time was no different.

Rio and Agatha wanted to host a sex party for a few friends and clients; by a few, they meant at least 40 people. You figured that you would be passed around, but no. Rio had forced you to kneel naked at her feet whilst she watched other people being passed around.

The rules were 'simple': Don't complain, stay kneeling, only look at her, and behave.

So, of course, you didn't do any of that. The entire time, you were whining, standing on your knees, glancing around the room, and biting at her thigh.

Multiple times she had slapped your face and reprimanded you, but you didn't stop. Finally, she pulled you to your feet and took you to Agatha.

"Deal with this stupid mutt." Rio snapped as she entered the room Agatha was sitting in.

Her hair was damp and she had a towel wrapped around her body. She had probably just finished a session with her client.

Rio's hand roughly met your cheek and you cried out in pain.

"Don't ever call me Rio like that again." She snapped, pushing you towards Agatha.

You stumbled into Agatha's arms and hid your face in her neck, whining about Rio's meanness. Agatha patted your bare arse with a chuckle and repositioned you to sit in her lap.

Her towel had dropped to her hips, revealing her boobs. You brushed your fingers against her nipple but Agatha grabbed your hand, pinning it to her thigh.

"Can't you ever behave?" She tucked her finger under your chin, smiling at the small pout on your lips.

You heard Rio sigh and a bag zip open. You tried to look over at the noises, but Agatha kept a tight hold on your chin. You whined loudly and tried to pull away from her, but Agatha tsked and tightened her grip.

"So fucking noisy," Rio said.

A cloth was placed over your eyes and tied around your head. You were moved from Agatha's lap and put on the bed. You heard some shuffling then soft moans. Your hands shot to the blindfold, preparing to remove it, but magic wrapped around your wrists and pinned them to the bed.

"Stay." Said the women in unison.

You grumbled something under your breath but it went ignored.

The sound of moans and kisses filled the room, making your thighs clench together. You heard the shedding of clothes and someone fell onto the bed. Rio loudly moaned and the noises of wet pussy filled the room.

You swore you were going to cry from frustration. You wanted to lift the fabric from your eyes and watch them badly but couldn't.

Stupid fabric.

"Awe, is someone getting frustrated?" Rio mocked. Her voice was gaspy and high-pitched; she was getting close. Even when she was on the edge of an orgasm she could be a bitch to you.

"Please." You cried.

"Begging already? Pathetic." Agatha laughed.

Rio gasped and her magic around your wrists faltered, giving you the perfect moment to rip the fabric off. The sight of Rio lying naked and twitching underneath Agatha as she came down from her orgasm made you throb.

"And of course, you can't listen for more than 5 minutes." Rio sighed and pushed herself to her knees.

She wrapped her hand around your throat and shoved you into the mattress. You whimpered and tried to kick her away but miserably failed.

Your vision started to speckle black and you felt dizzy from the lack of oxygen. Agatha had to pull Rio away by her hair.

"Get your fucking-"

"Don't you dare. I will flip this punishment to you." Agatha snarled, her grasp tight. "Is that what you want? To be punished?"

You watched the fire rise in Rio's eyes and then vanish. She adverted her eyes to the ground and muttered an apology. Agatha kissed her on the head and turned her attention back to you.

Magic returned to your limbs, forcing your hands above your head and your legs to be spread. Both witches grinned at how wet you were.

Rio - who was now wearing a black strap-on - crawled between your thighs and lined her fake dick to your pussy. She glanced at Agatha, who gave her permission before slowly sliding into you.

You cried and dug your fingernails into your palms as she stretched your walls and forced you to take her entire length. She has never been the one to let you adjust.

Agatha appeared behind her, kissing and sucking at her neck. She placed her hands on Rio's hips and guided her thrusts.

The room was filled with the sounds of your and Rio’s moans and whines. Agatha brushed her fingers against Rio’s erect nipples, pulling a broken whimper from her.

“Are my girls getting close?” husked Agatha.

Neither of you could respond in a coherent way.

Agatha whispered something in Rio’s ear and you felt your heart drop when an evil smile spread across Rio’s face.

“Please, mistress! I’m sorry, please.” You begged “Please, don’t do that.”

When they didn’t respond, you knew your pleasure wouldn’t last much longer. Normally, you would hold your orgasms off until you were given permission to cum, but you knew you wouldn’t get that permission and there was no way you weren’t going to cum.

With one more thrust, your orgasm washed over you. It didn’t last for long as Rio immediately pulled out and slapped your face.

You grinned as she started to yell at you and call you names. You could see she wanted to hurt you, but Agatha wouldn’t let her, not here, at least.

“Fucking brat. I’m going to make you regret that. Get up, now.”

You pouted and looked at Agatha for sympathy, who only shrugged and stepped back.

You were hers, but she didn’t own you. You were Rio’s toy as Rio was her toy. She never interferes with Rio’s punishments unless she sees her toy acting in a way she shouldn’t.

“You dug that hole yourself, princess.” Agatha said “Now, you’re gonna deal with it.”

You swallowed and looked back at Rio. She was going to destroy you, but that orgasm was worth it.

[idkimboredrnsodoomscroll]

Jac Shaffer: ok guys we are going to film you guys falling top speed straight down on a broom presumably to your deaths, please give me your best scream.

Everyone: *screams terrified*

Aubrey Plaza: *witch cackle*

Producer: Aubrey no it’s a-

Jac Shaffer: No, let her cook

[blushingteddy]

Precious Things: Chapter 1

Plot: Rio visits Westview after The Hex comes down and finds Agnes O'Conner in Agatha's stead. She must team up with an unlikely ally to help get her wife back and confront the past to make sense of the future ahead. (Agathario x Rio/Mrs Hart unlikely friendship)

---

The beep of machines is a reliable monotone to measure the accrual of time to it’s exact and precise end. There was a knack, in her experience. A correct moment that was neither a heartbeat early nor a single beat overdue. The strangely comforting taste of artificial banana pudding felt as good a place as any to ground her overworked thought processes. Rio blew out her cheeks and straightened her criss-crossed ankles, elbows dug into the arm rests, prodding the plastic spoon around with marked disinterest.

She was putting off the inevitable.

Largely, because Agatha had been putting off the inevitable - for such a long, long time. The Scarlet Witch had taken the Darkhold. Agatha finally vulnerable. The dark magic that had shrouded her all of these centuries had lifted like a veil. Rio could feel that Agatha hadn’t run or attempted to evade the inevitable this time.

Perhaps she was finally ready.

“I imagined you differently.”

Rio stopped moving the plastic spoon. 

The ghost of a smile tugged up her lips, because they always imagined her differently, whether she came in one form or another—friend or foe—all of it was subjective, always it was some other version of her they had imagined and built up in their head. Ink black linen shrouds and milk white bones. Deep green aspen leaves ornately woven into clothes with spun spider silk stitching, rust coloured gold, dried sea moss for beading. Rio laughed quietly, amused on private levels, she was never dressed correctly for the occasion. 

Her lips tapered down into a serious expression. “Do you want to finish this?” Rio glanced at the frail elderly man drowning in his blankets and wires. “You always think you know how banana pudding tastes until you’re eating it, and then you realise it doesn’t taste like bananas at all. It tastes like something else. Something pretending to be a banana. Strange, right?” She angled the dessert toward him.

“Will there be banana pudding where I’m going, or…” His voice was a strained murmur - the whites of his eyes a dull cloudy colour. He gestured his finger downward.

Hell.

Rio’s expression gave nothing away.

She said nothing in response and idly scraped the spoon around.

“Not the time or place for that conversation, got it.” He nods perceptively. “Jill. Will she be there?”

“There’s only one way to find out.”

“Kinda hope she isn’t.”

“Trust me, I know that feeling better than you think I do.”

“You do?”

Rio smiles, nodding slightly, and with that the tension breaks.

He draws a laboured breath. “Were you human once? You look…” Rio watches him gesture her up and down.

From the corner of her eye, the hospice nurses offer discrete, confirming nods. The kind that never require further conversation. Rio resists the sudden urge to show him her face—her true face—in response to his prying. The staff all knew when Rio visited. They knew when she left. She was a regular in this neck of the woods, a person they could feel in the air like the scent of perfume - invisible and entirely distinct. She didn’t like to trouble them anymore than they troubled her.

Sometimes, they caused her trouble.

But never the hospice nurses.

“I don’t know if there’s banana pudding. And there’s been a lot of Jills, far too many to remember. And I think you know I’m not here to talk about myself, don’t you?” Rio levels at the elderly man. “I’m here to do my job.”

“Do you enjoy your work?”

There isn’t time for this - the back and forth.

The question amuses her nonetheless.

“Not particularly. I punch-in, punch-out, I do it very well, if that gives you any comfort. Did you…have a job like that?”

“Yeah, I wish now I hadn’t.”

“Well.” Rio pushes out her cheeks, slightly exasperated. “Too late for regrets.”

“Everything…hurts.” He looks at her tiredly. “Can we take the pudding to go?” 

Rio likes that.

That makes her smile. 

“Sure we can.”

A deep peaceful sigh left him - he was finally ready.

Expectantly, the elderly man extends his weathered hand toward her. His fingertips graze against her fingertips, wrinkly and warm, ready to be taken away from this place despite the fear of her never leaving him for a moment, as though with the lightest tug of his wrist he could rise from the bed, light as a feather, and Death will take him for a long scenic walk to the next place beyond this world.

Rio took his hand gently.

“Hold this for me a sec.” Rio precariously rested the banana pudding cup on his collarbone. She took the blade from her thigh, haphazardly tossing it round to catch the handle, then quickly stabbed his chest several times as though jabbing a hot pen knife into butter. “Thanks.” She flipped and holstered the blade - the soul collected.

She let go of his limp wrist, allowing it fall down against his stilled chest in a thud. The alarms bleeted loudly into the echoing long corridor - then the cries, always the cries of concerned family and visitors with no further business that concerned her - Rio left and thought nothing of their distress.

They always imagine her so differently.

Express delivery only, Rio had a busy night ahead.

She had to be in Westview come sunrise.

***

Deep and dark was the persistent endless night. The entire mountain fell upon her in a storm of heavy jagged rocks and unbreathable, thick sharp dust that scraped her skin and stung her eyes as it slowly settled. The stagnant heat of harsh beating sunlight, somewhere out there beyond the persistent constant dark, was how Wanda kept track of the time. In the evenings, the cool air brought damp cold mildew which coated the boulders pressing every inch of her body, and the water droplets struck her forehead from a single crack above in awkward unpredictable rhythms. The first night, she willed her survival.

Perhaps Kamar-Taj would pity her once Stephen explained the condition of her maddening grief. He would save her, of course. He had to save her. He was a hero. The Sorcerer Supreme, the protector of earth, the lone sworn sentinel against magic and mystical threats out there between the darkest shades of reality. And what was she?

Who was she if not a hero? 

A woman relentlessly tormented into madness.

Perhaps this was the condition of all villains, Wanda decided.

The third night came, the sound of scraping rocks and movement disturbing her tomb above finally greeted her ears. She strained into the noise, welcomed it like a friend, then thought of her sons and felt her heart retreat backward in shame. The fourth night, the digging grew louder, and tears carved across her dry scabbed lips. Wanda clung to life like a leech. She hungered to survive. Lame, broken, disfigured and dying, she fought with insurmountable will to save herself—to persevere against the mountain.

Until she heard the faint howls.

The hungry snarls of scavenging pack animals disturbing the sediment above.

Wanda went slack, still, quiet and madder than her body could contain. Nobody was coming to save her. She closed her eyes, summoning her scarlet, imagining herself provoking wefts of bright glorious red from her palms, how the dust and sheets of rock would explode outward around her. She would rise in a tide of chaos, fire and glorious red—bright, burning scarlet.

But nothing came.

And Wanda wept and finally wished for Death.

“I have waited so long to say these words to you…” A woman in a crown of obsidian black glass laid beside her as though she had always been there. “Hello, Wanda Maximoff.”

She is there but not there. She is contorted around the jagged rock, her body stretched like ribbon strewn around each obstacle, more viper than woman—more creature than person. A dull green light exudes from her, bright enough to make Wanda wince and turn her cheek, but she feels sharp nails slip along her belly, her ribs, calling back her attention. She smells petrichor and…

Fermenting fruit, rotting cherries, the kind her step-father would stew and seal tightly in jars stacked neatly under the dank kitchen sink, and how the pungent smell of spoiled black cherries and sugar separating into alcohol would puncture their home as the jars were filtered months later, how she would slip into bed with Piotr and cradle his ears when their step-father drank to much of it, how their mother would place herself in front of the bedroom door like a barricade and bear the brunt of it.

A voice rumbles low like an earthquake, “Look at me.”

Wanda obeys instantly, terrified and without other choices to make.

Her fear delights Death.

Wanda’s voice frays with inactivity, “You came. I imagined you so…”

“Differently. Mhm. The name’s Rio.” She cranes her neck to get a better look, assessing the damage. “Your hips are shattered. Pretty nasty cranial bleed. Traumatic amputation at both knees, yuck. Your elbow is broken in…three places? That must be”—her eyebrows go upward in amazement, her head nodding enthusiastically—“Pretty painful, huh?”

“Please make it stop?”

“I will.” Rio smiles. “In time.”

Wanda watched in horror as the faint dull green smog begins to fade like the flicker of a dying candle. “Where are you going!”

“You took something special from me.” Rio stares down at the Scarlet Witch. “Somebody I have loved very, very much for centuries, Wanda. I don’t like it when people take my things.”

“Don’t leave me here!” 

“Then tell me how to lift the spell?”

“The spell?”

“The nasty little hex you trapped her in for the last nine months!” The woman rears forward with maddening grief in her eyes. “Give her back to me and then we can talk about your mortal soul.”

There is no further explanation needed, Wanda understands perfectly well, knows exactly who Death is referring to. Agatha Harkness. She doesn’t know how to admit the truth—how to tell her the only answer she has to offer.

“You don’t know how to lift it.” Rio closes her eyes. “Well, Wanda, until we figure that out? I’ll know exactly where to find you. That’s what you said to her, right?”

“Please don’t do this.” Wanda lurches forward. “Please! Please take me with you, I’ll help you! I swear. Please…please you have to take me from this place!”

“I said I would take you, didn’t I?” Death plays with the tip of an ornate knife. “You just have to suffer for a little bit first. Agatha would like that. Let’s circle back in a few days. You’re not going anywhere, I’m sure you’ll be available,” her voice and light fades away.

[hermslore]

AGATHA ALL ALONG TWEETS

(part 5)

two more days till my lesbians come back to me guys

discord saw most of this first

[darklinaforever]

Some peoples : "Agatha never loved Rio, it was always just a manipulation to deceive death and stay alive, blah blah blah !"

Agatha in reality :

Yes you're right, Agatha seem to feel absolutely anything for Rio in this scene where she looked at her with eyes full of nostalgia and love while Rio wasn't even looking.