#this is basically a viv and agatha chapter and i love them

[aparticularbandit]

For Fake: Chapter Seven

Summary: America lied about having a girlfriend to get her moms off her back, but when they want to meet said girlfriend, she asks her good friend Viv to step in and help.

Viv Vision/America Chavez

Chapter Rating: T. Fic Rating: T.

AO3

previous chapter

The knock comes on Viv’s door more than a few days later.

Hah.

What are days?

Viv tries to leave her emotional core on, and instead of feeling everything all at once, which tends to happen when she turns it on after it’s been off for a long time, she finds that she feels even less, which doesn’t seem possible, in all honesty, but it’s true.  It’s a funny thing, to turn the feelings back on and then lose them.  She’s checked her emotional core more than a few times – maybe if she turns it off and back on again, that’ll fix it – but no, it’s on, it’s running, it’s plugging away just like every other processor inside her, and the numb’s just another numb at this point, so she hasn’t asked her father to run diagnostics.  What would be the point?  If she doesn’t feel anything now that she’s actually trying to feel things, then, well.  What’s the saying?  That’s just the cherry on top. Or something like that.

(America would say something different.  In another universe, they don’t use cherries.  They use strawberries.  Or raspberries.  Or blueberries.  In another universe, they have cacao berries instead of cacao beans and they double them up with coffee berries right there at the top of whipped honey cream, something sharp and pungent to cut through all that sweet.)

Viv can’t, exactly speaking, lose track of days.  Her internal clock keeps plugging away, too, much more reliably than her emotional core.  She doesn’t even need to check it; she never loses grasp of it, never loses track of the time.  But if she doesn’t focus on it, then she can pretend she doesn’t know how long it is, how long one day bleeds into the next, over and over and over again, just the same thing day in and day out, while she feels. nothing.

Her father notices this time.  Of course, he’d noticed when she turned her emotional core off, too, but then, he’d done the same thing for a while and approved of her decision, considered it the logical reaction to what they’d gone through.  But she sees it, sometimes, the concern in his eyes when she responds even less than she normally does.  (His core appears to be functioning just fine.)

So, really, she shouldn’t be surprised when the knock comes.

And, in the quiet numb that her emotional core provides, she isn’t.

~

The knock comes, and Viv, curled up in bed under blankets that don’t keep her nearly as warm as she would like and certainly no nearly as warm as she would be if Sparky were curled up with her (but he doesn’t like being shut inside her room, even if he can phase through walls just as easily as she can) – Viv remains curled in bed, closes her eyes, and turns away from the door.  She has no desire to talk to her father right now, and if she doesn’t answer, he often will not enter.  It’s a boundary they’ve set up: knock first, do not phase in without permission, give each other privacy.  (She did not come up with these rules; her father gave them to her shortly after the four of them moved into their home.  She has no reason to believe they came from anyone else.)

Her father should not open the door without her permission – her father would often not open the door at all, would instead phase through it just the same as she and Sparky do – and yet even without a word from her, the door creaks open.

(It makes no sense that the door should creak, not when it is so rarely used.  Yet somehow she finds comfort in the sound.)

Someone sits on the mattress behind her.  It is not her father.  His density is different than whomever this is, and her father’s cologne smells nothing like the vanilla, honey, apple cinnamon worn by whomever this is.  A hand lands gentle on her shoulder.  “Alright, hon.  Time to quit your moping.”

Agatha Harkness.

Who has absolutely no reason to be here.

None.

“I request that you leave my house.”  Viv shifts away from the hand on her shoulder, but not far enough to get completely away.  The touch is nice.  Also, if she moved too far, she would fall off the bed, which is less than desirable.

“No can do, kiddo.  Your daddio—”

“My father has interfered enough.”  Viv’s eyes darken, and she glares, unfocused, at the wall in front of her.  “I request again that you leave my house.”  She swallows once.  “If you will not, then I request you leave my bedroom.”

And get off my bed.

Agatha doesn’t say anything for the span of one heartbeat.  Then she murmurs, “Alright,” grips Viv’s shoulder, and says, “Then let’s get out of here, why don’t we?”

Viv blinks.  Let’s.  “Agatha, I would greatly request that you do not—”

It doesn’t matter what Viv requests because Agatha appear not to care in the slightest about any of that.  Before Viv can even finish her sentence, a cloud of violet magic envelops her and tears her from her room before throwing her somewhere she doesn’t want to go.

~

Now.

Viv has been equipped with the ability to use harsher language, but she has very rarely, if ever, felt the precise need to use any of it.  Even when she’s felt that need, she’s very rarely, if ever, indulged in it.  Perhaps this was due to how long her emotional core was turned off; most of the moments she’s felt that need she can track back to her earliest days, when her mother and brother were still alive (and, thus, before she turned her emotional core off), or during the period of time when she was forced, quite against her will, into a human form (and, thus, had no emotional core to turn off).

But as most people are not aware of this decision, much more a commentary on her own desire for privacy than anything else, they often describe Viv as being self-controlled.  Wise, sometimes, which her father refutes whenever he hears it.  Restrained, too, which is likely the most apt of the descriptions.

Viv would use none of those words for herself.  Viv wouldn’t use any words to describe herself.  Not now, anyway.

Point of all this is to say that the sudden rage Viv feels for being ripped from her bedroom inspires her to nearly let loose words that she rarely, if ever, uses.  It doesn’t take a second glance to find that not only has Agatha ripped her from her room, she’s also ripped away the nice protective shell of a blanket Viv had been using and changed her into…into…whatever this is!  (This being an actually very comfortable hoodie that feels as though it is full of fleece on the inside and what are probably sweatpants, which are just as comfortable and probably just as fleece-lined, which honestly?  Viv would appreciate them both if she were still at home and not out and about in public in sweatpants.)  She pulls herself to her full height – reminded that she does, in fact, have a couple of inches on the esteemed Agatha Harkness, which would feel odd on a day when she actually cared – and glares down at Agatha with golden lights that look like pinpricks in a deep sea of black.  “Agatha Harkness, I believe you knew full well that I did not want to leave my room, and yet you have torn me out and brought me here—”

“You’re welcome, hon.”  Agatha brushes a few snowflakes from her shoulders and gives Viv a grin and a wink.

“I do not believe I was thanking you—”

“No, you weren’t,” Agatha interrupts again, “but you will in a few minutes.”

Viv’s eyes narrow.  “If you would stop interrupting me—”

“No, I don’t think I will, hon.”  Agatha’s grin deepens as Viv grows more flustered, and she reaches over and boops her nose.  “If I won’t stop for my wife when she’s like this, then I certainly won’t stop for you.”

“I’m not your wife—”

“No, you’re not, but unfortunately for you, you’re still family, and I can’t stand to see family moping around instead of doing all that heroic shit you types tend to do best.”  Agatha waves a hand, gesturing at Viv’s outfit.  “Comfy, hon?”

Viv scowls.  She stuffs her arms into the front pocket of her hoodie.  Then she gives Agatha a sharp look, raising one brow.

Agatha rolls her eyes.  “You can answer, kiddo.  I’m not that cruel.”

“Then I would say yes, I’m very comfortable.  However, I do not like—”

“Yes and comfortable and thank you are all I needed, hon,” Agatha cuts in again.

Viv’s eyes narrow again.  “As I recall saying before, I do not believe I was thanking you—”

“Of course, you weren’t, hon.  You types aren’t very good at thanking people.  Some sort of moral center the lot of you are.”  Agatha pauses for a moment.  Then she turns to Viv, her smile gone.  “Nothing to say to that, super star?”

“I do not believe I have anything to say that you will not interrupt.”  Viv’s eyes widen then, and she meets Agatha’s eyes with a look of surprise.  She’s not sure she wants to say anything.  In all honesty, a part of her is afraid to try to speak again – not afraid, but somehow certain that if she does, the witch will only interrupt her again.  And yet.  “You did not interrupt me.”

“Did I not?”  Agatha lowers her gaze and taps her lips twice.  “My mistake.  I’ll make sure to do better in the future.”  When she looks back up and meets Viv’s eyes again, her grin has softened into an incorrigible smile.  “Now, come, love.”  She takes Viv’s hand in hers.  “We’ve a lot to see and not very much time to see it in.”

It takes a moment, but even after consideration, Viv refuses to remove her hand from Agatha’s.  Instead, she shifts her appearance to mimic something a little more human and nods, as that overwhelming rage quickly dissipates, leaving her feeling numb and empty again.  “Next time,” she murmurs, “I would prefer to wear something other than sweatpants.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?”  Agatha snaps her fingers, and Viv’s sweatpants shift into pajama pants.  “That better, hon?”

Viv’s eyes narrow again.  There’s no fleece inside the pajama pants, and they’re so thin that the ice cold January breeze blows straight through them.  That’s no matter; she doesn’t need to feel the cold in the first place.  The plaid looks nice, but….

“If we are to be in public for any amount of time, I would prefer jeans.”

Or khakis, but Viv has a very specific pair of khakis in mind, the ones with all of the pockets, which are left, folded up, in her bedroom back at home.  They’re her favorite pair, and they’re far more comforting than fleece-lined sweatpants or plaid pajama pants.  She shivers once in spite of herself.  “Or is that too much effort for—”

Agatha snaps again, and the plaid pajama pants shift into a pair of jeans that are perhaps a little too tight at the waist, but flare out as they go.  And leggings – thick leggings so that when the breeze tears through the denim, it has an extra barrier before it gets to her.  “That to your liking, dear?”

Viv considers.  They aren’t her style, but she doesn’t think it would be a good idea to try and press Agatha further.  Besides, when she takes a hand from her hoodie pocket and shoves it into her jeans pocket, she finds that they’re deeper and more usable than they normally are in her jeans.  She can live with this.  “They are acceptable.”

“Good,” Agatha says with a huff, “because I wasn’t going to change them again.  You kids are so needy.”  She loops her elbow around Viv’s and starts forward without another word.

Viv considers saying that if she’d been allowed to choose her own clothes, this wouldn’t be a problem; considers reminding Agatha that this entire scenario was her fault in the first place; considers jabbing again that she would rather have stayed at home.  But if she’s learned anything in her admittedly short time with Agatha today, it’s that trying to say any of that would only lead to more interruptions.  Besides, she’s too tired to fight.

So she lets Agatha lead her on to wherever and whatever the witch has in store for her.

~

“The zoo?” Viv asks as they round the turn into the parking lot, as Agatha leads her to the ticket line.  “You are taking me to the zoo?”

Agatha shrugs.  “Zoo’s a good place for talking.  Also figured it’d be one of the places your dear old dad never took you.”  She turns to Viv as they stand in the line, surrounded by much smaller children holding one or the other of their parents’ hands.  “Am I wrong?”

Viv stares at the nearest small child, who only pays her enough attention to smile up at her before turning excitedly back to his mother and chattering away with her.  She could listen in if she wanted.  She could listen in later if she wanted; one of the many features her father gave her is a memory that records everything to be perused later.  Unlike humans, whose memories fade, hers remain as sharp as the day she formed them.  She’s not sure that’s better.

When the child turns away from her, Viv gives a little shake of her head.  “No,” she admits, as though it should mean something when it doesn’t, “my father never brought me here.”

Perhaps he would have, if I were smaller.  That thought is nearly comforting until it’s followed by, If he wanted me smaller, he would have made me smaller.  She hates it, hates realizing that, He didn’t want to have these sort of interactions with me.  Or with Vin.

That should cut through the numbness.  It should provide some sort of discontent.  But there’s nothing.  Nothing at all.

“Thought not.”

They make their way through the line.  When they get closer to the booth, Agatha says, “Now, I’ll cover you, so don’t say I didn’t do you any favors.”

“If you had allowed me to grab my wallet before we left—”

“You wouldn’t have gone at all, hon, so don’t fall back on that.”  Agatha notes the woman in the booth and then leans close to Viv and whispers, “Don’t tell Wanda.”

Viv blinks twice.  “Do not tell Wanda what, exactly?”

“What you’re about to see, hon.”

They hustle forward.  Agatha smiles sweetly at the female vendor in the booth.  But in Viv’s mind, she reinforces, Don’t say anything.  Let me handle this.

I was not going to—

Hush, hon, and let the master work.

~

Five minutes later, they walk away for free.  Agatha has the vendor’s phone number plugged into her phone.  Viv glances back to see the vendor looking after them with a sigh of longing before returning to her job and then turns back to Agatha just in time to see her deleting the new number out of her phone.  She blinks twice.  “You used magic on her.”

“No, hon, I didn’t.”  Agatha fidgets with her phone.  “That would be cheating.”

Viv raises an eyebrow.  “At what game would that be cheating?”

Agatha rolls her eyes.  “The one where I charm people into giving me free stuff, hon.”

“It looks like she gave you more than free stuff,” Viv says, staring at Agatha’s phone.

“Phone number’s just another form of stuff.”  Agatha shoves her phone into her pocket and then links arms with Viv again.  “Now, what animals did you want to—”

“Would you teach me how to do that?” Viv interrupts, unable to keep herself from asking.

Agatha stops in front of the signpost and stares at it, tapping her chin.  “Bears, big cats, penguins….”  Her voice trails off.  She’s pretending not to hear what Viv just said, waiting to see if she’ll repeat it, but that’s not a game Viv wants to play.  A few seconds later, she asks, “How to do what, hon?  Get free stuff?”

“Get a girl’s number.”

A rasping chuckle escapes Agatha’s lips, so warm that it leaves a cloud longer in the air than a simple outpouring of breath.  “Why would you want to do that, hon?  Aren’t you and America together?”

“We broke up,” Viv says.  “A while ago.”  She blinks twice, uncertain.  “Did she not tell you?”

“No, she didn’t.”

“Oh.”

Viv doesn’t know what to say to that.  Her first instinct is to pull out her phone and text America – to ask her why, exactly, she’d decided to not tell her moms about their break up.  The break up they were always meant to have.  Because they weren’t really together in the first place.  Her second instinct is to remember that she’d told America she didn’t want to talk for a while, and breaking that just to bring up that she hadn’t told her moms felt…wrong.  Especially since Viv shouldn’t know that.  Especially because America would probably feel awkward that Viv is hanging out with Agatha, even if Viv explained to her that, logically speaking, she should not feel awkward because Agatha refused to hear the word no.

Her third instinct is to realize that, along with her wallet, Agatha has decided to not let Viv have her phone, either.

Sometimes, it feels like the only thing that cuts through that numbness is rage.

(It is hard to explain feeling numb.  It is an entirely different feeling than feeling nothing.  It includes that, of course, but it’s more than that.  When her emotional core is off, Viv knows she isn’t supposed to feel anything, and for the most part, she doesn’t.  But with it on, she knows she should feel something.  It’s not just an absence of feeling.  It’s a brokenness.  An anxiety over not feeling.  It’s so much more than not feeling.)

Viv glances up at the signpost.  She reads the different animals and the different directions.  Some of them she’d already seen in their natural habitat in her journeys to help the world.  Others, she’d seen when she was captured.  Her lips press together.  “What would you like to see?”

“We’re here for you, kid.”  Agatha tugs Viv closer to her and just leans her head on her shoulder.  “You pick.”

“I have never been here before.  I do not know what to pick.”

“Anything you want,” Agatha says, her tone gentle.  “There are no wrong answers.”

Viv’s not so sure about that.  She scans the signpost again.  “Which are your favorite?”

Agatha chuckles.  “That’s a form of cheating, too, hon.  Using my favorite as a way to influence your choice?”  She nudges Viv.  “Don’t think that’s very fair.”

“I believe that you told me to make a choice,” Viv says, glancing back down to her.  “You did not put any parameters on my choice.  Most people would think it would be nice to have someone else choose to see their favorite animal instead of pressing for that choice themselves.  Is that wrong?”

“No.  It’s not.”  Agatha meets her eyes.  “What’s your favorite animal, Viv?”

Viv blinks twice.  Her gaze drops.  “I have never considered that,” she says, searching her mind for something she can’t name.  “How does one choose?”

“You choose based on what you like.”

Viv’s gaze narrows.  “I like Sparky, my dog.  Would that make him my favorite animal?”  She looks up and meets Agatha’s eyes, her head tilting to one side.  “Would that make dogs my favorite animal?”

Agatha holds her gaze.  “Do you like dogs more than every other animal?”

“I do not know.  I have not met every other animal.”  Viv stares at Agatha, but she doesn’t focus on her.  “Do I need to meet every other animal to choose a favorite?”

“I don’t know, hon.  Do you need to meet every other person to have a favorite?”

Viv blinks twice.  “I have never considered that before.”  Her gaze falls again.  There are certainly people with whom she would far prefer to spend her time as opposed to others.  She likes spending time with America.  She likes spending time with her father, most days.  Agatha might have been a pain earlier – and might have dragged her out against her will – and might have put her in clothes instead of letting her choose them for herself – and, honestly, might still be a pain – but a part of Viv, however small, doesn’t hate this.  Wanda makes her uncomfortable, but that isn’t always the case.  But no matter how uncomfortable Wanda makes her on occasion, that’s often far preferable to spending time trying to make conversation with new people.  And yet, in all of the people she’s never met, there could be new friends and new experiences.  More people she might enjoy spending time with.

Does she have a favorite person?

If she had to choose just one, does she have a favorite?

“Don’t think about it too hard, hon.”  Agatha stands a little straighter.  “You said dogs, right?”  She glances over the signpost once more.  “They have wolves.  That’s close, don’t you think?”

Viv nods.  She glances up at the signpost again, too.  “I would like to see the big cats,” she decides, finally.

“Big cats,” Agatha repeats with an intrigued sort of hum.  “Any reason for that?”

“I have spent a lot of time with Sparky,” Viv says, hesitating, as though she might get the answer wrong, “but I have spent very little time with cats.  Perhaps, by not spending time with them, I have missed out on something I might also like.”  She searches Agatha’s eyes.  “Is my logic flawed?”

Agatha shakes her head.  “No, not flawed at all.  Just different.”  She tugs on Viv’s arm and starts down the path towards the big cats.  “Besides,” she says with a little wink, “my favorite animal is a big cat.”

~

They don’t say much as they walk past the animals.  Agatha appears to be enthralled with the animals, but Viv finds herself more enchanted with the children, with their excited responses to each of the animals, with their jumping and pointing and, Oh, the lion’s taking a nap!  Oh, the cheetah’s doing a prowl!  One of the kids breaks away from their mom, runs to the netting separating them from the jaguar down below, and starts to climb up the net before Viv gently picks them up, untangles their hands from their tight grasp, and takes them back to their mom, who’d started to panic.  Of course, their mom is also not too enthused about a strange girl carrying their child back to them, so Viv doesn’t stay around too long, just gives the mom and the child a little wave of her hand.

Briefly, when it is only the child looking at her with a displeased expression, Viv makes her image flicker like a glitch, shifting between her human and synthezoid appearances in bits and pieces.  The child’s eyes widen, and just when they turn, grabbing on their mom’s hair to get her attention, Viv lets her human appearance settle into place.  The mother doesn’t see anything.  Following Agatha’s lead, she winks at the child and gives him another grin, another wave of her hand.

It’s nice, perhaps, to be just another performance at the zoo, another animal to be gawked at.

But they move on, from one big cat to another, so many animals Viv has never seen – or has seen mimicked by supervillains or superheroes but never been in the presence of an original – until they find a tiny little ice cream shoppe – complete with the different spelling – just near the panther exhibit.  Agatha convinces her to buy a waffle cone, particularly because Viv admits she’s never had one (ice cream, yes, but waffle cones, no; those would come from shoppes or parlors or restaurants, and she very rarely been to any of the sort), and then they stand in front of the exhibit, Agatha with her ultra double triple chocolate fudge ice cream covered with even more fudge with a cherry on top (which she winks as she eats) and Viv with her spiraled chocolate and vanilla yogurt and no cherry.

Agatha sighs with contentment as she leans onto the railing, hovering neatly above the panther exhibit’s netting, and says, “Panthers are my absolute favorite.”  She smiles wistfully.  “Used to have one, you know.”

Viv tears her eyes away from the ice cream cone that she’s only sort of eating and gives Agatha an incredulous look.  She’s not sure whether to believe her or not; the older witch tends to exaggerate, to stretch the truth and play with it like a child does with putty.  That disbelief comes out in her voice, although it might be hard to tell from her normal flat tone.  “You had a panther?”

“Sometimes, yes.  Is that so hard to believe?”  Agatha’s eyes lift from the big cat in front of them just to glance at Viv from their corners.  Then they return to the cat.  “Ebony was just a black cat most of the time, but when she wanted to protect me….”  Her voice trails off.  “It’s nice to see an animal like her again, although I’d rather take this one back with me.  She had just the softest fur.”

“What happened to her?”

Agatha’s expression drops, grows blank.  “Died, hon.  Murdered.”  She licks her lips, swiping the smallest bit of cherry juice from them.  “A few months before your brother.”  Before Viv can ask, as her expression contorts into one of confusion and that gentle, gentle rage, she continues, “I needed her heart to see the future.  I’d seen visions, hon.  Visions of Visions and a destruction of the world.  I needed to know more, and so….”  Her voice trails off again, and she gives a shake of her head.

Viv glares at Agatha.  “You killed your cat.”

“And your mom killed your dog.  For quite the same reason, point of fact, hon.”

“How do you know why my mother—”

“The problem with visions,” Agatha continues, interrupting Viv just as she has been, or perhaps, in this moment, ignoring her outright, “is that they give you an incomplete view of the future – and they don’t always show you your own place within it.  I saw your father turning on us, but I did not see why.”  She chuckles.  “My desire to fix things only made them worse.  But you know how that is.”

“No,” Viv says, hesitant, “I don’t.”  She blinks, uncertain.  There seems to be no logic in what Agatha is saying.  Or, there is, but not a logic she can easily follow.  Most importantly—  “Why are you telling me all of this?”  That is what makes the least sense to her.  “Is this why you brought me to the zoo?  Why you forced me out of my room?”

Agatha’s gaze doesn’t move from the panther, who gives a great big yawn and stretches one of its paws out, extending and retracting its claws.  “You turned your emotional core back on, didn’t you, hon?”

The rage returns.  Viv starts to clench her hands into her fists but only succeeds with her free hand; she feels her waffle cone begin to crack, forgetting she’d even had it, and stops before slowly melting ice cream can filter through the cracks and all over her fingers.  “Wanda told you.”  The words hiss through her lips.  “Father told Wanda, which he should not have done, and Wanda told you.  How many more people did he decide needed to know about a private decision I made with my own life?”

“Wanda didn’t tell me anything, hon.”  Agatha takes a final bite of her ice cream and then lets her hand fall to the side, empty, her fingers tinged with dark fudge.  “But there’s a difference between not feeling anything and feeling nothing, isn’t there?”

Viv stares at Agatha, that rage bubbling uncomfortably in her chest.  She takes a deep breath in, as though that will settle it.  People say it will.  It does not.  “Explain.”

Agatha nearly smiles, but not quite.  “I think you know what I mean, hon.”

The rage quells, but the curiosity she should feel does not fill the void it leaves behind.  Logic says there must have been some spell, some magical way of doing to a human being the exact same thing that Viv had done to herself – or at least, something similar – but she had never had any reason to imagine such a thing existed.  But, if logic says that such a thing existed, which it does, and Agatha’s words suggest that she used that spell on herself at some point, then the only logical next question would be not how but, “Why?”

“It might surprise you, but I also went through a surprising amount of traumatic experiences within a short amount of time.”  Agatha begins to lick the chocolate from her fingertips.  “Not as short as yours, of course.  And I was, perhaps, better equipped to handle them.”  She chuckles, holding one singular chocolate-stained finger aloft.  “Or maybe not.  If I was, maybe I wouldn’t have used the spell.”  She shrugs.  “Who knows.”

Viv tries to meet her eyes, to search them, but Agatha doesn’t seem to be at all interested in looking in her direction.  “What happened?”

“My niece died, and I was blamed,” Agatha starts, holding one clean finger up.  “My brother died, and I was blamed, though that was an accident.”  She holds up a second finger.  “My sister was outed as a witch, and I was blamed.”  She holds up a third finger.  “My coven decided it was better to kill me for my crimes, and I accidentally killed all of them in self-defense.”  She holds up a fourth finger, shrugs, and then says, “I didn’t know how to control my magic, and they believed it was evil, so that would have happened eventually.  I’m honestly surprised I lasted as long as I did.”

“That is quite a lot.”

“I’m not finished.”  Agatha takes a deep breath in, as though steeling herself, and her eyes glaze over as she stares at the panther, who cracks one luminous green eye open and stares at them.  “One of my twin boys died within a month of his birth for the same reason my niece died, and I blamed myself.  Then my still living sister found me, burned my other son alive in my house after convincing me to trust her, and then tried to kill me.  For my crimes against our coven, you see.  End of the bloodline.  So on and so forth.  I killed her, less in self-defense and more out of rage, and then….”  She sighs and smiles, a bitter, angry thing.  “Nothing.”  She holds her hand up, waggles her fingers, and chuckles before making a poofing motion with both hands, giggling about it.

Viv stares at her.

Viv stares at her, and she doesn’t know what to say, and she’s not sure there’s anything she can say, because there certainly hasn’t been anything that anyone can say to her that truly helps, and she’s not sure there’s really anything to help.

Viv stares at Agatha Harkness, and her melting ice cream drips from her fingertips anyway, because she’d quite forgotten she had it, and even if she hadn’t, this doesn’t feel like the sort of conversation that you have while eating ice cream, doesn’t feel like the sort of thing you can hear and keep licking away at a waffle cone.

Viv stares at her, and she blinks, and she doesn’t say a thing.

Eventually, Agatha’s giggles stop, and she turns away from the panther, who continues to stare at them, and she says, “I brought you here because you needed to know that sometimes feeling nothing is a step towards feeling something.”  She meets Viv’s eyes with her own normally bright blue ones, now darkened, and her head tilts to one side.  “Not feeling anything keeps you from being able to move on.”

“And you….”  Viv meets Agatha’s gaze and holds it.  “You have moved on?”

“No.”  Agatha raises one brow.  “What about anything I just did tells you that I have moved on?”

Viv blinks twice, confused.  “Did you not just say that—”

“People want you to move on.  They want to think that you’re better, that you get better.”  Agatha turns away from the panther, props her arms over the rails, and leans against them, staring out into the rest of the world around them.  “You don’t get better, and you don’t move on, hon.  You just think about it less.  You start to think about the good times, when you think about it.  You start to think about other things again.  You start to feel other things again.”

“That all sounds like getting better.”

“Maybe.”  Agatha shrugs one shoulder and looks up at Viv.  “But I would still kill my sister again, if I could.  Just like your father would have killed your uncle, if your mother hadn’t gotten there first.”

Viv’s eyes light up with understanding.  “The only thing that cuts through the numb is rage.”

Agatha nods.  “Sometimes.”  She sighs and looks up at the sky.  Then she grins.  “Look.”

Viv follows her gaze.  “What?”

“That cloud looks like a heart.”

It takes a moment before Viv catches what she means.  Then she nods.  “A valentines false heart, not a real human heart.”

“Yes.  Exactly.”  Agatha shifts.  “Still mad, hon?”

Viv considers that.  “I do not feel mad right now, but I feel as if I could be mad at any moment.”  She gives Agatha a curious look.  “Why do you ask?”

“Want somewhere to direct all of that rage?”  Agatha threads magic through her fingers, and it curls between them like a cat she can brush.

Viv focuses on the magic.  It sparkles and shimmers in the light.  She’s fascinated by it.  “What did you have in mind?”

~

Later, safely back in her bedroom after a long day of walking and talking and animals, Viv curls back up in her bed.  She pulls the blankets tightly around her and finds they still smell sweetly of vanilla and honey – like Agatha had decided she should wash them when she stole Viv away.  That was probably for the best; now that Viv is paying attention, she notices that all of the potato chip crumbs have disappeared.  Sparky might eat some of them, but he wouldn’t have gotten everything in such a short time.

It’s…nice.  She can acknowledge that as nice.

Viv lays down and reaches under her pillow, only for her fingertips to brush against her phone.  She considers for a moment – for longer than a moment – and then pulls the phone out and sits up.  Being with Agatha – being with someone else – it had been…nice.  A nice…distraction.

Maybe the key to this whole thing isn’t to hide away in her room but to get out with people and do…something more than just lying in her bed.

(Maybe that was really what Agatha wanted her to learn.)

Right now, Viv might not be ready to get out again.  She might not be ready to get out for another few days, given that today was…a lot.  But maybe, in a little while, she might be able to do…something.

Yeah.

Maybe.

~

notanandroid: Hey. punchesstars: yo viv! punchesstars: u txted me! punchesstars: yo! hey! hi! punchesstars: what’s up! notanandroid: There are a lot of things that are “up”, America. notanandroid: The ceiling is up. notanandroid: The sky is up. notanandroid: I suppose technically the sky is not “up”, since it is an illusion due to the sun’s rays through our atmosphere. notanandroid: Clouds are more accurately up. punchesstars: no i mean how r u

punchesstars: viv? notanandroid: I am a lot of things. notanandroid: It is complicated. notanandroid: I do not wish to talk about it. punchesstars: oh punchesstars: mom brought a cat home 2day punchesstars: i think she named him salem? punchesstars: he’s a little wild notanandroid: Is he more wild than Senor Scratchy? punchesstars: yah! so much! punchesstars: can’t keep them in the same room punchesstars: salem keeps attacking the cage punchesstars: u should see him

punchesstars: u wanna come see? punchesstars: not 2day obvs punchesstars: but l8r?

~

Viv stares at her phone again, at the light it gives off in the darkness of her room.  She smiles, the barest hint of a thing, and then texts back, Sure.