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rita-repulsa-ke · 4 months ago

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Ritual of the Rose - Ch 3

"That form you're wearing is a corpse. It should have been in the ground years ago," Rio hissed, and as she said it, her voice a cold mist over his skin, Billy could feel decay setting in, his fingernails loose and prone to falling away, his skin slack on bones, his heart no longer beating in his chest—

Fic Summary: Changes the events of the last episode. Instead, Agatha swears a vow and prepares to go on one final adventure with Death.

For some reason, Billy has decided he's a protagonist as well.

Part 1 Part 2

Chapter 3 - Who is Billy Maximoff?

William Kaplan was a murderer.

No. William Kaplan was dead. He'd died in a carwreck with his parents and someone else had co-opted his body.

That wasn’t his fault! William was already dead and he was dying too, so he'd grabbed on to what he could, like some kind of weird, body-snatching parasite. Only he hadn't gotten just a host, he'd also gotten a life, someone else's life, someone else’s parents, who were currently downstairs thinking loud, worried thoughts about what was going on with their son.

Drugs? Online bullying, maybe? He was so into that weird occult stuff, should they have put a stop to that sooner?

No, he was a good boy. Reliable, kind, got good grades, had never done anything seriously wrong. They should trust him.

And here it was, he braced for it every time, and it still hurt.

It's only, he changed so much after the accident.

I'm sorry, he wanted to tell them. I'm so, so, so sorry, I'm not your son, I'm the leech that took his body. You guys are great parents, and you're my parents, you're the only parents I've ever known, please don't hate me for not being him.

He couldn't tell them that, though. He couldn't tell them their son had died years ago and now there was only him, Billy Maximoff, murderer.

He couldn't tell them the murder part either, couldn't sit downstairs on the couch and sob and let them hug him and tell him it would get better, like they had the first time he'd gotten his heart broken or a bad grade or a mean comment on his Instagram. He couldn't even let them be his parents right now, because there was no way he could confess that he'd killed three women on a Road he created with his mind.

Agatha said she would have killed all of them. And she had, in the most literal sense, killed Alice. Still, it had been his idea to form a coven in the first place, his idea to lure victims to her, even if he hadn't known what he was doing.

He should hate her, but he was too busy hating himself.

He uncurled his hand, locked in a fist since the fight in Agatha's garden. Took out the crumpled piece of stationary and smoothed it out. Noted with mild amusement that it seemed to have silly cartoon cats around the edge of the page. He couldn't imagine anything less Agatha, so probably this had belonged Agnes prior to her time as a hardboiled detective.

Agnes, a woman who'd been kept that way by his ostensible mother, who'd also trapped and tortured a whole town.

Boys, thanks for choosing me to be your mom.

"William! Do you want some dinner?"

He jumped and his hand clamped tight around the stationary again. That was his mother, he reminded himself, the one calling to him with concern in her voice. "No," he said. "I'm not very hungry right now."

"This is why you're such a beanpole!" His dad called, trying for jovial.

"I'm watching my figure," he retorted on automatic, smoothing the paper once more and looking at the address.

An apartment in New York City. No other information, except the hastily scrawled number on the bottom.

He wasn't going to call. He didn't need Agatha's help anymore. He had never needed her help, probably—except for the part where he had and he still didn't know if he was murderer a fourth time over for that, if he'd killed the boy he'd helped put Tommy in.

But that part was done and he didn’t even really regret it. The Road had made his wish come true. Now he needed to find his brother. Tommy, at least, wouldn't go through what he had, waking up with no memory and no understanding of what had happened to him.

Agatha had to told him to go alone. He could do this. He'd made a whole (deadly) reality. He could handle one mysterious stranger.

Resolute, he turned to go and almost screamed, clapped his hands over his mouth to stop the sound at the last moment so he didn't get his parent's attention.

He really didn't want them to come up here, because standing too close, smiling like an open wound, was Rio.

"You know, I think she forgets I can do this?" the woman said. She was wearing her green witch outfit, skintight and kind of cool in a scary way, but all Billy could remember was staring into the skeletal face of Death. "Be everywhere at once, I mean." Then she lunged suddenly, closing the gap between them until their noses almost brushed. "Boo!"

He jumped back and hit his dresser, gave a short, unmanly shriek and she burst into cackles of laughter so loud he worried his parents were about to come rushing up the stairs.

"W-what do you want? Are you here to—" he said, swallowed and didn't finish the sentence, his eyes on the blade in her hand, even though he knew she wasn't going to literally stab him to death.

Well, he really hoped she wasn't going to stab him to death.

"Take you? I should, you know. This…" she shook her head, back and forth, and each time it turned too far, creating the unnerving illusion her head was going to start spinning around like a bad horror movie effect. "This is so wrong, what you're doing here. You're the wrong soul in the wrong body. Very, very gross. But no, not right now, I'm busy letting Agatha drag me along like she always does. Do you know she's really bossy?"

"I know," Billy said, unsure if they were bonding here.

"Right, I bet you do. That whole Road business." She paused, twirled her knife, paced in a circle around his room and watching her now, he couldn't imagine how he'd ever thought she was a normal person, even a normal witch. She moved like a tiger penned into a cage, as though the form she wore didn't quite contain the edges of her, a non-Euclidean—

"She likes you, you know," Rio said, interrupting his mind's desperate attempt to comprehend what was right in front of him. "Agatha, I mean."

"Can she? Like people?" Billy said, which prompted a shorter, sharper cackle.

"I ask myself that All. The. Time," Rio said, sprawling back on his bed and kicking her feet, impatient, restless, almost human except for all the ways she wasn’t. "But apparently she's got a soft spot for little boys."

It took Billy a moment to correctly interpret that statement. "Because of her son."

Rio gave a one-shouldered shrug. "Probably. So maybe I can help."

"What?!"

"You," she pointed her knife at him. "Maybe I can help you."

"With what?"

She wrinkled her nose, jerked the knife up and down to indicate all of him. "Your…condition."

"…And that help isn't killing me?"

"Right," Rio said. "But it would involve you vacating that bod—"

"No!" Billy snapped, his arms wrapping tight around himself, as though he could keep his body held in place.

"Stop!" His magic flared and on instinct, he grabbed for her mind, like he'd done to Jen and Lilia and for a brief, overwhelming moment, he was Death, standing side-by-side with a winged shadow bigger than he could grasp and he was—

He was everywhere. He was vast, all-consuming, but deeply personal at the same time.

He stood at a hospital bed, listening to the monitors make a sound he'd only heard in movies. Flatline. "…Sorry," he said to the woman standing in front of him, looking much healthier and more alive than what lay in the bed.

"Damn," the woman said. "I'd really hoped I'd get a bit longer."

"Everyone does," he said, or rather, something else said, speaking through him like he were a ventriloquist's dummy. "How was what you had?"

He barely heard the answer. There were simply too many, all competing for his attention. An undiscovered allergy. A stupid bet about who could drink the most. A car wreck. A heart attack. Kidney failure. Aneurysm.

And then he was scooped up, deposited back into his body on a wave of green magic, and for a moment, he could see himself as she did, an abomination, an outright defiance of the natural order—

"I'm not doing that to them!"

He snapped back to himself, fully himself, no trace of lingering Death. Rio was still on his bed, looking up at him with narrowed eyes, her mouth firmed into a thin, sharp line. "…You are powerful. And dangerous. I can't believe Ags didn't drain you dry. Them who?"

He collapsed onto the floor, pulled his knees to his chest. "My paren—"

"William? Are you okay?" A familiar voice called up the stairs.

"Yes! Everything's fine, mom."

"Their son is dead," Rio pointed out and Billy glared what he hoped were daggers at her, feeling the urge to use his power boil up again, magic dancing across his fingertips. He forced himself to wrestle it back. He didn't know if he would ever sort out everything he'd seen in the few seconds he'd been Death. He was certain he didn't want another go-round and he'd seen how ineffective Agatha had been at fighting her with direct magic, something he didn't even know how to use.

"I'm their son! And I'm not going to let you kill me,” he said, very aware that he had no way of preventing her from doing whatever she wanted.

Rio tossed her head back and cackled, shrieked, and his parents must not have been able to hear her at all, because she was really loud. "You can't stop me. Even Ags can't stop me and she knows that, though she hates it." Something in her expression went distant, sad like mourners at a funeral. "...She knows that,” she repeated and Billy opened his mouth to ask, but Death spoke first. "But fine, have it your way, keep this disgusting charade up a little while longer. Eventually I'll come and collect. I always do. I am the end of all things, baby!" She sprung to her feet, spread her hands too wide and gave him a toothy smile. "Sooner or later, everything is mine."

"…I can see why you and Agatha might have worked once. She's really dramatic too," he said, which got him another cackling laugh as response.

"She is. I've got nothing on Agatha Harkness," Rio agreed, cloying affection lacing her voice.

"…creep," he muttered.

Rio only snickered. "You'll understand one day, when you fall in love," she told him.

"I am in love! I just have a healthy relationship, thank you.”

"Someday, you will meet someone who takes part of you away with them, and you never, ever get it back," Rio said, somehow managing to sound genuinely adoring as she said it. "And then you'll know what love is."

"…I think you should look into counseling."

"Tell your father to get his heart checked," Death replied and then, before he'd even processed the words, she was gone.

“...Thank you?" he whispered to thin air, then staggered to his feet, suddenly desperate for his parent’s company even if he couldn’t tell them a single true thing about his life.

"Hey, dad," he said as he came down the stairs. "I'm going to ask you to do something really weird…"

For more of Rio being everywhere at once, try Death and the Scarlet Witch. Or for something cuter, try the witch who cried wolf.

#agatha x rio #agatha all along #agathario #billy maximoff #ritual of the rose #uh idk rio is sort of trying to help I guess #She's a good girlfriend when Agatha isn't looking

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brw · 4 years ago

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ok so hold on a second... are billy and tommy half romani, quarter or full or non romani????? how does that work w them being wandas sons but also reincarnated and sons of vision and wanda being half jewish half romani?????? or is wanda full romani... i fucking hate comics!

this is a long, complicated question that tbh probably has different answers depending on which person interprets their story, so feel free to ask other people about this too if you havent already!

short answer is that billy kaplan and tommy shepherd, the reincarnated sons of william and thomas vision-maximoff, are not romani ; neither of their parents were romani, they were not raised in a romani community, and to the best of my knowledge neither of them have mentioned or acknowleged any romani heritage or identity.

william and thomas vision-maximoff, however, i would say are romani; they were the genetic (in a handwavey way, mind) children of wanda, a roma woman, and vision, a synthezoid who is aracial and has no acknowleged ethnicity. they were raised by a romani parent, and while visually they were in a very american suberbia environment i would imagine that still informed the way wanda (and vision) raised them.

but billy and tommy (reincarnated) are also not not romani, poor if a writer was to have them both acknowledge and identify with being romani, it wouldnt not make sense, if you know what i mean. they still clearly and obviously identify wanda as their mother, and wanda is roma. so.... basically, my answer is no, they are not, but they could easily be i guess if a writer chose to clarify, and many people in fanon (myself included) generally identify them as being romani like their mother.

and about the wanda question! currently in comics canon wanda is full romani (here is a condenced timeline by bobbimorses about wanda & pietro's ethnic identity throughout the ages), with no mention to a jewish identity, and to the best of my knowledge in comics there's never actually been a time where wanda has acknowledged being jewish, even when she was magneto's daughter (possibly because she has rarely shown to be comfortable with the relation, and has rejected it on multiple occasions). however, there is no reason why her parents can't be jewish and romani simultaneously 🤷��♂️ currently, her mother is a romani woman named natalya, and her father is unnamed. django and marya, previously thought tp be her biological parents, are actually her uncle and aunt, but they raised her and pietro as their own children. to the best of my knowledge neither have specified a religion (although have always consistently been romani), so there's no reason why django and marya couldn't be jewish, and tbh i choose to interpret them as such.

hope this helps, anon! as you can see there's lots of different ways of interpreting this whole mess, but this is just my opinion on the matter! @/scarlet--wiccan and @/soledadmiranda are romani & have talked about the matter in a more in depth way than i could ever hope to do, so perhaps search through their posts for deeper insight! comics are indeed VERY messy.

#asks #anonymous #ch: don't be so quick to judge witches #billy kaplan #tommy shepherd

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