Chapter Text
It had been over a hundred years since Rio last felt her wife’s presence.
Or was Agatha her ex-wife? She’d certainly not call them wives anymore, Rio was sure, but there was no divorce. For now, Rio planned on taking advantage of that fact.
So, she knew her wife was out there somewhere. Death had been collecting the bodies left in her wake for centuries, but that feeling in her chest, the echo of a heartbeat, had disappeared. In its absence, there was a hollowness, an aching, tearing sensation that never really went away.
She’d been worried at first. Their paths had crossed a handful of times since… well, since everything went wrong. Agatha went on her rampage of grief, killing witches all across the world, and Rio followed, cleaning up her messes. Sometimes, she’d catch her witch before she could run off, and what would follow would be a mixture of vicious fighting and/or hate fucking.
What could she say? It was a part of their love language.
It was an ordinary job, retrieving the souls of a couple of pre-modern mutants, dead as a result of their community's fear. Humans and animals were not her domain; she left the less powerful beings to her lackeys, only personally attending to the witches, mutants, and other supernaturals.
As she watched the young mutants cross the veil, she felt it. The gentle thumping in her chest, muted by anger and distance, disappeared completely. It stole her breath, knocked her back a step as she tried to focus on her wife’s soul. Normally, she could tug on the connection in her chest where her heart would’ve been. She would feel flickers of Agatha’s frustration, her anger, even the grief she worked so hard to bury, and she would know that her wife was somewhere in the world, hating her. But that was okay. Hatred was better than nothing, better than apathy.
Suddenly there was no tugging beneath her ribs, no emotions, just… nothing. Not even the call of a soul to be reaped. Given Agatha’s power and their personal connection, her death would have called to her more strongly than any other. The fact that she felt nothing managed to quell her anxiety some, though she didn’t allow herself to truly relax until eight years later, when she helped a very angry coven cross the veil.
Apparently, her clever witch had gotten her hands on the Darkhold, the book of the damned, and she used it to hide herself from Death. Frustrating, to say the least, but the bodies continued to pile up over the decades, so Rio left her to her sulking.
Now, though, her blackened heart rapidly resumed its centuries-old rhythm. She sucked in a breath, letting the familiar sensations wash over her. With their connection open, Rio reached down the line for Agatha, searching for the cause of this new development. Instead, she found her fury, followed by confusion and desperation, before a flood of fear washed everything else away.
Something was incredibly wrong with her wife, and Rio intended to find the culprit and make them suffer.
***
She expected to find mountains of fire, maybe the very sky collapsing to the Earth, something to warrant the terror Rio felt from Agatha.
Westview did not live up to these expectations.
The quaint little town was serene, though suspicion was in every pair of eyes she met. She’d taken on her most human form, prepared to walk into any fight. The locals were decidedly wary of her, and for good reason. Even in her least intimidating form, Death was not one to put people at ease; her very nature made them uncomfortable.
As she walked down the charming main street, she felt Agatha’s closeness. Something was blocking her, though, mixing up the signals between them and making an exact location impossibly difficult to find. Annoyingly, Rio knew there was only one way to find her witch.
“Excuse me,” she called to a tall black man crossing her path. He eyed her nervously, but stopped despite his unease. Small town politeness truly was a wonderful thing.
“Can I help you?” She tried to smile to calm him, but based on his responding grimace she was out of practice.
Well, she sighed to herself, that was bound to happen after centuries of isolation from any living beings.
“I’m looking for a friend of mine,” she explained. “I’m not sure where to find her, I was hoping you might be able to point me in the right direction.” A little tension receded from his shoulders at the innocent request.
“Of course. Who are you looking for?”
“Agatha?” Rio replied. “Agatha Harkness?”
The man frowned. “I can’t say I’m familiar, sorry. What does she look like?”
“Brunette, about yea high,” she began, indicating just below her ear. “She would have come to town about four months ago.”
“Oh! You mean Agnes.” His smile was one tinted with sadness and pity. “Yeah, she came right around the same time as… um… t-the witch.” He gradually lost volume in his voice and colour in his face as he spoke.
Rio wracked her brain for a moment before it clicked.
The Scarlet Witch. Chaos magic. She might as well have slapped her forehead, she felt so stupid. Because of course her wife was trapped in a Nexus being’s spell; why else would Rio have such trouble finding her? What else would inspire such fear in the centuries-old witch?
“Yeah,” the man continued, oblivious to Rio’s inner beratement, “she showed up during all the, uh… unpleasantness. We don’t really know the whole story; all we know is we saw Agnes in the sky fighting her, and when the smoke cleared she was gone and Agnes was… different.”
“Different?” Rio prompted.
“Well, kind of the same.” She was growing very tired of his cryptic answers. As he spoke, she sifted through some of his recent memories. The initial onslaught of internal screaming and utter hopelessness eventually gave way to the odd, late 1900’s style sitcom the town had been overrun by. “At first, she acted like she was still under the Hex’s effect. We all chipped in, helped her when she had memory lapses and, um, breakdowns.” He frowned. “She’s been getting worse though.”
Despite this man’s amazing inability to give a straight answer, Rio had a basic understanding of the situation.
Agatha followed the trail of an incredible release of magic, finding the Scarlet Witch in a small town playing housewife. She played along, hoping to take Maximoff’s powers for herself, but she was tricked by her own teachings. Rio smirked at her lover’s inability to keep from bragging.
Wanda stole the Darkhold, took her magic back from Agatha, and then continued to take until her wife was left without a drop of power. To further cement her shame, or perhaps to keep her out of trouble, Wanda placed a personal hex on the now-powerless witch, warping her mind to fit the nosy neighbour persona.
“I can take you to her house, if you want,” the man offered. “I’m headed that way, I live right around the corner.”
Rio nodded, eager to see the state of her wife.
“Great!” The man started walking, turning around to make sure Rio was following. “I’m Herb, by the way,” he said, reaching his hand out in greeting.
She took the offered hand. “Rio,” she replied. Touching her hand sent a shiver down Herb’s spine; Rio had to bite back the smirk tugging the corners of her mouth.
***
As they came upon the white house with the blue door, Herb bid her farewell.
“She doesn’t like to see too many people at once,” he explained gently. “We think it overwhelms her.”
“Of course, I understand.” Rio would be lying if she said she didn’t feel some gratitude for the residents of this town for taking care of her witch.
“Good luck,” Herb said, waving as he walked up his driveway and disappeared into his house.
Rio checked her surroundings, knowing a fight between her and Agatha would likely end in external casualties, and really, that just made her job harder. When she sensed no souls sending interest in her direction, she made her way to the front door and knocked. She waited a minute before knocking again, this time with more force.
No response.
She sighed. She reached for the doorknob but at the last second it turned on its own. The door was roughly pulled open and before she knew what was happening, she felt her button up shirt being used to tug her inside.
As the door slammed behind her, Rio turned to look at her wife for the first time in a hundred years.
Agatha was… unwell.
Her hair was stringy and matted, her clothes rumpled and in need of a wash. She frantically checked the windows through the blinds before aggressively shutting them, her eyes darting back and forth in search of a threat before they finally locked on Death.
When their eyes met, Rio expected to see the usual: hurt and grief buried behind layers of anger and hatred. Instead, there was no recognition in the other witch’s eyes, no emotions beyond the obvious distrust.
Agatha crossed her arms, glaring at the supposed stranger in her house.
“Who sent you?” She asked, her voice gravelly and low.
Rio just raised an eyebrow in response, unsure of the game she unwittingly joined.
“Don’t play dumb,” Agatha growled, stalking closer while brandishing the stapler hooked through her belt. “I know there are people after the code, people that would kill anyone in their way to win. So I’ll ask you again: who sent you?” Their faces were so close Rio could feel her warm breath caressing her skin. It had been so long since they saw each other, and this was not how Rio imagined their reunion to be.
Clearly, something was wrong with Wanda’s spell, because this was not the nosy neighbour the Scarlet Witch had intended on creating.
Rio sighed. Faster than Agatha had been prepared for, Rio snapped her hand to her wife’s temple, sending her into a deep sleep as she slumped forward into Death’s embrace.
“It’s alright,” Rio cooed to the sleeping witch. “I’m here, I’ve got you.”
And she would not leave until her witch was restored to her formerly formidable self.
***
Now sprawled across the lumpy-looking couch, Agatha seemed so much smaller than Rio remembered. She’d always been several inches taller than the witch, of course, but her confident and outgoing personality took over any room she graced with her presence.
Shaking away her thoughts, Rio focused on the task at hand. She lifted her hand to run a diagnostic but it came away clean; physically, the witch was perfectly intact, if a little underweight. Focusing her energy on Agatha’s mind, she slowly put together the issue.
Wanda, being an inexperienced witch, had cast an incomplete spell. Agatha had started as her intended character, but over time her unconscious mind summoned new plots and genres for her show to follow. Currently, Agatha believed she was a special agent, double crossed by her agency and the only individual capable of stopping an impending war.
Very self-important, in Rio’s opinion.
In Agatha’s mind, her surroundings fit her scenarios; occasionally, she would venture outside her house, garnering concerned looks from her neighbours before she locked herself inside once again.
Unfortunately, despite Wanda’s inexperience, her magic was strong. The only ways to break this spell would be through the Scarlet Witch’s death (unlikely), or if it were broken from the inside. Rio groaned to herself at the prospect of the task ahead of her.
She’d have to work from within Agatha’s delusions to convince her to break the spell.
This would be fun.