#But also the cinematic parallels

[rita-repulsa-ke]

the witch-hunter part 2

Fic Summary: Rio and Agatha go on an incredibly anachronistic adventure to help a deadly killer resurrect the woman she loves. There's flirting, kissing, and Agatha's ongoing issues with commitment.

Also, it's now officially a Killing Eve crossover (though still pretty heavily Agatha/Rio focused)

Chapter Summary: Rio hears out a supplicant. Agatha is jealous, Villanelle is heartbroken and Eve is dead.

Part 1 here.

If you’re only in one fandom (ie everyone), just treat the other one like I’m doing original characters and it will probably all make sense? Also, I am writing this two days before the finale of the Agatha show, so there is a chance that may radically change things. Nonetheless, we proceed.

Cast List:

Agatha - A prideful, sarcastic, cruel witch, involved with Rio in a way she currently refuses to label. Uses very anachronistic speech even for this fic.

Rio - Feral green witch, Death in a very literal sense, extremely enamored with Agatha but not always nice about it. Loves knives.

Villanelle - Russian witch-hunter, psychopath, would murder the world to get Eve back.

Eve - stubborn, mystery-obsessed, in love with Villanelle. Currently dead, but surprisingly comfortable with it. Also a big fan of knives.

If you like it, comment/reblog. Honestly, I'll probably write it regardless, so it's really just for my ego.

They both felt the witch-hunter coming, Agatha because she’d long ago bespelled herself to know when someone sought her with foul intent, Rio because she had been expecting this meeting for some time now.

Unfortunately, that awareness happened only a few minutes after they'd gotten back to the inn. Agatha sat up from their shared lumpy mattress and Rio snarled with frustration, tugging at the other woman’s sleeve, her lips still warm with the memory of gentle, honeyed kisses.

Agatha’s kisses were often lies, but sometimes a lie told sweetly was better than the truth. “Agatha,” she said, then repeated, like an incantation. “Agatha, Agatha, Agatha.”

“You felt it too,” the other woman murmured. “He’s here.”

“She,” Rio corrected.

“Really? Huh. Maybe a wronged member of our sisterhood, then. It would be about right, a witch killing other witches," Agatha said, chuckling to herself.

"It would be familiar."

Agatha tossed her hair and Rio could see the edge of her smile, cruel in a way she found very appealing. “You kill a handful of witches and suddenly people act as though that’s your whole personality.” She glanced down at Rio, stubbornly refusing to get out of bed. “Hey, you never gave me a number. How many more witches has she killed than me? I really want to know.”

“Come back to bed,” Rio deflected, folding her hand over Agatha's wrist. “Come back to kissing me. Make good on that statement about thanking me without words. Right now.”

“Can it wait until after we deal with the threat on our lives, please? Or my life, anyway.”

“Same thing,” Rio said, for the pleasure of watching Agatha digest that, then go unnaturally still, her cheeks flooding with color.

“What is with you today?!” she snapped.

“Still allergic to romance, huh, Ags?" Rio purred, her point proven out by how quickly Agatha scrambled out of bed, putting physical distance between herself and the concept of romance.

“It’s,” Agatha said, then seemed to decide she was better off not finishing that thought, remarkable foresight for Rio's favorite person.

“Icky? Gooey?” Rio said, accepting at last that she was going to have to get up, doing so with a biiig stretch, then idly slashing her knife through the air, pretending she was preparing for a fight.

Well, if it came to that, she was, but it wasn't a fight with the woman hunting them.

“Can we discuss this later? Time is ticking away and a woman is on her way to kill us,” Agatha said, always in a hurry not to discuss things that made her uncomfortable.

Us, Rio noted. Us, us, us.

Rio slid to her feet, closed the gap between them in the space of a single breath. Agatha didn’t back away, that would have been too embarrassing and she was almost certainly too slow to succeed anyway, but she was adorably tense as Rio leaned up and kissed her.

Agatha’s real kisses were claims, assertions that Rio was hers. Her false ones were sweet, soft, the lie of a gentle, caring lover, coaxing and manipulative.

When Rio initiated, there was only one modality, a searing hunger that often turned violent, teeth and tongue and bloodied lips, turning her lover’s mouth into a battlefield upon which she waged war. When she pulled back, Agatha was panting, skimming her tongue over her lower lip to taste her own blood and Rio loved that the tang of copper was on both their tongues.

While Agatha was still reeling, Rio leaned up and bumped her forehead against the other woman’s. “Mine,” she said. “All mine.”

Agatha went the color of a tomato, and Rio pivoted to look at the door to their room. “Ags, she’s coming.”

Agatha opened her mouth, then closed it, briefly at a loss for words, a situation so rare that Rio could remember all the times it had happened before. Agatha had words for every situation, even if they were rarely the right words.

“Together, then,” Agatha finally said, spinning to face the door.

Huh, Rio thought. Right words.

***

The witch-hunter kicked in the door with an old-fashioned booted foot and Agatha almost did the stupid thing, blasted that foot and the presumed body behind it with the full force of her magic.

But anyone who had killed some untold number of witches was likely to have some tricks up her sleeve and when the woman stepped through the door, brushing aside shards of wood with ease, Agatha was immediately glad she'd shown rare self-restraint.

Even though Rio had told her that the hunter was a woman, she was still surprised by what she saw. The woman in question was pretty, in her mid-twenties, blonde, obnoxiously tall. She was also wearing an insane number of protection amulets, hanging off her in jangling mess. One glance told Agatha that most of them were the type made to throw magic back at the caster, such that anyone blasting her full force would likely fry themselves. Agatha wondered how many of her victims had gone out that way, with no further effort needed.

The hunter carried a small crossbow in one hand and an obnoxiously big knife in the other. She moved with a fluid quality that reminded Agatha of Rio, as though she might simply flow between one point and the next.

The moment she crossed the threshold, though, she froze, her breathing coming in quick, short bursts, her hands gone white-knuckled on her weapons.

For a moment, Agatha thought it might have been her wards, but no, they’d hit the protection spells and shattered, exploding a few amulets as they did so.

Instead, the hunter was staring at Rio, trembling like someone having either a religious experience or a seizure.

And Rio was staring back, her head tilted, hip cocked, looking at the other woman with a focus Agatha was all-too-familiar with, the kind that meant Rio had developed a new fixation.

“Oh come on, don’t do this!” Agatha whined. “I know it’s a really, really big knife, but size isn’t everything…”

Rio snorted, but strolled past her, toward the stranger. One of the amulets had shattered violently enough to throw shards of metal out, scratching the woman’s cheek.

Rio reached up, dragged her fingers through the blood and stuck them in her mouth. Agatha's stomach burned like the time she'd swallowed a salamander, fire twisting around in her guts.

“You,” the witch-hunter said, her words carrying the accent of the Russian Empire. “I know you. But somehow, you are even more beautiful than I imagined.”

Hey, shove off, I saw her first, muttered the petty part of Agatha’s brain.

Then the hunter's eyes drifted past Rio to Agatha and there was a hatred so intense in them that for a moment, Agatha knew what her own eyes must have looked like when they chained her to the stake.

“You know me,” Rio agreed, her voice dropping into a cadence Agatha associated with witchcraft, incantations, the tone she would have used on a dark night for a dark spell. “You serve me. You dream of me. You have made such sacrifice to me, over and over, so many bodies, so many lives taken. Speak, supplicant. Tell me what you would ask of Death.”

The witch-hunter fell to her knees in front of Rio, who fingered her hair absently, making Agatha's teeth clench so hard her head started to ache. “Please,” the hunter said, her voice shaking. “I will make whatever sacrifice you desire. I will kill anyone, everyone, the world, all for you. Please. Please, I beg you, give her back to me. Give Eve back to me.”

Agatha was starting to get a very different bad feeling. “Rio. Sweetie. Honey pie. Want to explain what the hell is going on here?”

Rio looked at her and Agatha fought the urge to flinch. The mask had slipped entirely and what looked back at her was Death, the promise of an ultimate end from which even Agatha could not escape.

Like hell I can’t, she thought and as she had at their first meeting, faced Death head-on and dared it to take her.

“The pet names are new, Ags. Keep that up,” said the nameless end of all things, her smile a skeletal rictus. “Sorry. I may not have told you the entire truth. In fairness, you lie to me all the time.”

“I do not,” Agatha lied, then continued on before she could be called out on it. “So all that about her having killed more witches than me—“

“You’ve been alive longer. But she would have caught up eventually.” Rio’s fingers were still in the hunter’s hair, twining it absently around one finger like a ring and Agatha fought the irrational urge to comment on it, when there were bigger issues at hand. “Maybe even soon. I wanted to talk to her first, though.”

“And all that stuff about being easier to find—"

“Real. I really did want to stay. We never stay. I wasn’t in a hurry.” She laughed. “I mean. Why would I be?”

Agatha narrowed her eyes, took a small step forward and then was sure. Past the final mystery, past heat death, was Rio, her Rio, uncomfortable, defensive, shifting her weight, not quite meeting Agatha's eyes.

“Wait, was that guilt?” Agatha said, and it was so rare she got to throw Rio with a non sequitur instead of the other way around, she took a moment to enjoy the puzzlement on her lover's face, followed by the smallest grimace. “Your big romantic gesture with the puppet show. That was guilt, wasn’t it! You felt bad about lying to me.” She couldn't help it, she was practically crowing with delight. She wasn't sure she'd ever seen Rio guilty. She might have placed a sizeable bet it wasn't even possible, but here they were.

Sometimes it was great to be her.

“You said romantic,” Rio muttered, which was as good as a yes. She was going to milk this for longer than was healthy or necessarily safe.

"Right," Agatha said, forcing herself back to the matter at hand, there was plenty of time to gloat later. "So why did you want to talk to the pretty girl who is trying to kill me with her mind?”

Rio glanced at the woman on the floor and Agatha immediately wanted those eyes back on her. “Is she pretty?”

“Yes,” the witch-hunter said. “I am.”

“And humble, too. Give me some answers here, pllllease,” Agatha said.

“Impatient,” Rio said. “She’s been praying. To me. With each witch she kills, she’s been praying. For me to return her lover."

“Oh. Well, that’s impossible,” Agatha said, waving a hand dismissively. “So can we kill her now?”

The woman on the floor was almost as fast as Rio and somehow signaled her intent even less. She almost reached Agatha before Rio intercepted her.

The ensuing battle lasted five seconds. Agatha whistled. “Slowing down a little there,” she told Rio, who had the hunter pinned under her, knife against the woman’s jugular. Rio twisted around at a completely unnatural angle to look at her and bared her teeth in a snarl. Agatha shrugged, nonchalant. “Just saying. I almost saw that one.”

Her fingers itched to touch Rio, to run her fingers through her hair, to dig into the muscle at the back of her neck, to make herself known to every sense the other woman possessed.

“Your girlfriend is very annoying,” the witch-hunter said.

Agatha groaned as Rio started laughing, too long, too loud, her knife hand never wavering while she went into hysterics. “Girlfriend,” she gasped out, and then continued giggling, discordant and grating as always.

The hunter looked confused, her eyebrows knitting together, flicking her gaze between the two of them, an open question in her eyes.

Rio finally mastered her own amusement, then tapped the woman’s cheek with the tip of her knife, opening an unlikely wound, a flowering brand that cascaded blood over smooth skin. “Try and hurt my girlfriend—"

“Stooooop,” Agatha complained.

Rio continued unabated. "Try, and I will let her end you,” she said, with a glance back at Agatha, her expression one of violent delight.

Agatha pressed two fingers to her lips and blew her a kiss, for the sheer pleasure of watching Death, unstoppable apocalypse, meteoric end, go as rigid and still as the corpses she loved.

"If you let her, would that get me back to Eve?” The witch-hunter asked, stubbornly refusing to stop existing so that Agatha could take her woman to bed.

She pictured saying that sentence out loud to Rio. It was hard to say which would come first, an end to the hysterical laughter that would follow or the heat death of the universe.

“Yes,” Agatha answered quickly.

“I was not asking you. I was asking Her," the hunter said, putting a completely unnecessary emphasis on the pronoun.

Ugh, this was all going to go to Rio's head, wasn't it?

“Not in the way you mean,” Rio said, bounding up, spinning in place. “Ags, we are going on a trip.”

“What?” Agatha said, startled, shaking her head. “No, no, we are not. We have things to do, this is not the time for adventures…"

Rio sauntered over and wrapped her arms around Agatha's neck. “You mean you have things to do," she said. "How many years have I gone along with your plans, served your causes? I’ve torn cities apart for your petty, selfish wishes.” Agatha felt her mouth go slightly too dry, unused to things between them getting this serious. “My turn, I think.”

Agatha swallowed, held her ground, refused to back down on both practicality and principle. She was so close now, she knew she was. “The book—“

“You have so much time. It will wait.” Rio seemed to be weighing her, a hint of disappointment in her expression already, as though she was already expecting Agatha to fail whatever kind of test this was.

This wasn't at all fair. They did things Rio wanted! Most of the things they did involved killing people, which, as far as she knew, was exactly what Rio wanted.

But somehow, she couldn't bring herself to say no and watch that disappointment grow. “Fine. Fine, okay, fine," she snapped, the words tumbling out. "How long is this ridiculous quest going to take?"

Rio looked genuinely surprised, as though she'd expected Agatha to hold out longer. Agatha wasn't sure if that made her feel good or weak. “A few weeks, at the most."

“Sure, great! A fun few weeks with a woman who wants me dead and my—“ Say it, just say it, if you don’t she’ll use it forever, sometimes force is the only way to win. “Girlfriend.” She then immediately tried to blaze past it, but she did mentally record the stunned look on Rio’s face for her own future enjoyment. “But no matter where we go, what she wants isn’t possible.” She waited for immediate negation, didn't receive it, though she did hear the hunter snarl somewhere behind them. “Right?”

Rio's smile stretched and stretched and stretched, a smile that could eat the sun, and in her eyes were tsunamis, meteors, bombs falling, the final few blinks of an eye before the inevitable. “Agatha, you’d spoil everything if I let you. Come along and see. A good journey never starts at end.”

Agatha watched Death herself spin around and skip back over to the woman who’d remained on the floor, hands behind her head. Pretended she didn‘t hear her repeating the word ‘girlfriend’ under her breath.

“What’s your name?” Rio asked the woman on the floor.

“Eve calls me Villanelle. That is good enough," The hunter said, still laying where Rio had left her, hands behind her head.

There was a portent in that name, one Agatha could almost read, except her mind was too busy churning with other things.

“Supplicant,” Rio said, her voice taking on the rumble again, the one that made the hair on Agatha's arms stand on end. “Villanelle, Oksana, Beloved of Death, I will help you reach your heart's desire."

Beloved of what?!

The woman stared at Rio for a moment, barely seeming to understand the words, then sagged forward with a choked sob, collapsing straight into Death’s open arms.

“Oh come on!” Agatha snarled. “Stop touching her!”

*** Eve was in the dark. It wasn’t so bad, really. The dark was a hieroglyph, one she was working on translating. She was beginning to see the shape of the problem. If she stayed here long enough, she was sure she would find an answer.

There was only one snag, a single brass hook in her skin attached to a taut line, keeping her connected to mortality, stopping her from losing herself completely in the work.

Once upon a time, Villanelle had made her a promise.

She'll be on her way, Eve thought. I'd better work fast, then.

I can't wait to see her again.

[jay-wasstuff]

[smileyaly]

Gotta love them cinematic parallels between Puss and Death in 'The Last Wish'

[rottingjam]

it’s been a while since i posted on here— but im back with a bcs study :w

[hiding-under-the-willow]

Sorry for vague posting about my nefarious crossover intent and then dropping off the face of the earth for over a week, I'm currently addicted to minecraft to a generally unhealthy degree. anyways here's the silly crossover art lol

[radiantmists]

this has haunted me since the first time i watched the movie.

[ID: two clips from Nimona. In the first, from the knighting ceremony, Ambrosius turns to Ballister with a wink and says, "Here comes the woo." Then he walks forward, calls "Woo!" and the crowd echoes him. The video cuts to a scene from the flashback, where Gloreth throws a rock into a bucket, then gives herself a little "Woo!" of celebration. Nimona watches from the forest. End ID]

when we first see ambrosius do this, he's just the golden boy jock hyping up a crowd; fine, whatever.

the second time, it's with this little smirking comment to ballister and we realize that its part of his Brand, but we've also seen him constantly joking with and gently ribbing ballister to cheer him up so it feels like a sincere part of his Brand, him sharing his excitement because he knows it makes other people smile. it's self-aware but still feels genuine, like ambrosius is just this class-clown sort of person who likes acting a little silly to make people happy.

and then we get ambrosius cutting his boyfriend's arm off because he was trained to, hunting his best friend down because he's expected to. we see how he hides his mental anguish from the people around him, even the director who he seems to genuinely care about and who's offering to listen. we get him trying to arrest bal, really believinh he's a killer, at least in part because bal's consorting with a monster and ambrosius knows what he's supposed to think about monsters. we see him latch on to the first explanation he's told for the director's confession, because it means she's good and bal's good but misguided and the monster's evil, just like it's supposed to be.

and then we see gloreth do the woo, and it's nothing like when ambrosius does it-- she thinks she's entirely alone, she's just cheering for herself out of pure and childlike joy, because she is a child and she's having fun.

but think about how this little mannerism has to have been carried into gloreth's adulthood, how people must have latched onto it so that it got passed down through generations. how it's not only self-aware on ambrosius' part but a deliberate part of his image as the direct descendent of gloreth.

except that infectious cheerfulness is also how he acts with ballister in private, and the people-pleasing is so ingrained that he pauses a manhunt to sign autographs. he needs his boyfriend to tell people about his allergies. he always smells of lavender and he bleaches his hair blond.

and some of these aren't bad things! but it begs the question, how much of who ambrosius is-- not just how he presents, but his whole identity-- was constructed to fit the perfect golden boy image?

and how sad is it that the kingdom and its forces of tradition and conformity managed to twist even this little, kinda dorky expression of joy into something obligatory?

[mikelogan]

POOR THINGS (2023) || SEX AND THE CITY (1999)

"You're being a little bit of a bitch."

[guest-1-2-3]

so. never consumed any mcu content whatsoever. however i have recently stumbled upon peter parker/harley keener fanfics, went down a rabbit hole, and am now obsessed with their dynamic and i realized i have just fallen into the trap of another blond + southerner + sarcastic + calls-his-boyfriend-darlin’ + infinitely supportive + big fucking nerd x incredibly traumatized + sarcastic + italian + orphan + definitely-started-saving-the-world-too-young + big fucking nerd ship. i am nothing if not predictable

[anglerflsh]

sometime i briefly have got to go insane about the two of them. Mandatory

[lynsstrange]

NOW WAIT. WAIT A DAMN MINUTE

[raycatz]

midnight thoughts: like, I know there's a decent number of people in the LU fandom who haven't played the games or have only played botw/tears onwards. So, how familiar are people with zelda music? Like, would anyone be interested in like a fandom discussion post talking about music that stands out from each title?

[pepperpixel]

- IM A MAGIC MAN -

Betty and magic man art!!!! Cuz!!!! Look me in the eyes and fuckin TELL me these two were not a fucked up / death spiral / make each other worse duo… you CANNOT!!! THEY ARE THE SAME!!! THEY UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER!! IN A WAY NO ONE ELSE POSSIBLY COULD… and! I just rlly wanted to draw them ghghg- cuz! I think there whole thing is interesting! Complicated as hell! Yes! But also interesting! Also made an extra meme thing w em too:

[kimwxlers]

PEEP SHOW — 6.06 "Das Boot"

SUCCESSION — 4.02 "Rehearsal"

[sharmoota-job]

finally got around to drawing some au trikey!!!!!!!

[ingravinoveritas]

If I had a nickel for every time a David Tennant character called a wee child a timorous beastie in a Scottish accent, I'd have two nickels, but it's weird that it happened twice...

[moliathh]

[alutegra/alucard x integra, hellsing]