Chapter Text
Hunter - Child
Agatha had always been around. Hunter’s earliest memory was of Sara thrusting her into Agatha’s outstretched and gentle arms saying, ‘I just can’t, Agatha. Take her. I’m at my wits end with this child.’
Hunter remembered kicking out, her legs flailing hoping to hit her aunt but also scared of doing so. Emotions were running high and Hunter screamed at her and Sara shouted back. Agatha shushed Hunter and tried to placate Sara, ‘Now, now… let’s all calm down. Why don’t we take a walk little one, hmmm?’
Hunter clung to Agatha, her face buried into her neck. They walked the Abbey grounds with the witch talking in soothing tones as she stroked the girl’s back with a calming hands.
‘I hate her,’ Hunter said, her breath hitching in a mixture of unchanneled rage and sadness.
‘Hate is a big, big word,’ Agatha said patiently. ‘I don’t think you do, I think you’re mad and that’s ok. It's ok to be mad. But, we mustn't let it fester or it eats away at us. And then everyone will be sad. You know what else is a big word?’
Hunter shook her head and looked up at Agatha with teary eyes.
‘Love,’ Agatha said. ‘Love is a very big word. It's bigger than hate. And I love you.’
Hunter smiled and hugged the witch tighter.
‘Sara loves you too,’ Agatha said.
Hunter believed that to be a lie. She wasn’t sure Agatha believed it either. But she did believe Agatha loved her and so Hunter held on tight as they walked as if her baby arms around Agatha’s neck would anchor them together for all time.
Her mother had left her. Sara had no choice but to keep her. But Agatha chose her.
Agatha chose her.
***
Agatha lived in the cottage at the edge of the Abbey grounds. Every morning, Agatha arrived at the Abbey and took Hunter off for lessons. Some of them involved what the witch called “book learning” but a lot of them involved them playing games, casting spells, eating sweet fruits, and exploring the woods.
Every afternoon, Agatha would walk Hunter back to the Abbey where Sara waited to train Hunter in combat.
Agatha called it “handover.”
‘Right,’ Agatha would announce as midday arrived, ‘time for handover!’ And off they would march, skip, and run to the Abbey, to where Sara waited with crossed arms and a grave expression.
As the months trickled into years the “handover” became tea and then lunch and then hours in which Agatha and Sara talked together while Hunter “got on with it” – as Sara directed dismissively.
Sara no longer waited gravely at the Abbey but walked up to the cottage and walked back with them. Sara smiled. Sometimes she waved. Sara brightened when she saw them approaching in the distance.
Conversation now happened between the adults as they ambled along side by side, with Hunter ambling along behind. Sometimes Agatha would say something funny and Sara would laugh – a sound Hunter hadn’t heard before, not like that.
The grave expression, however, seemed perpetually reserved for Hunter.
Sara’s thawing was evident with every passing season and yet in only one direction.
Hunter watched Sara fall in love – a phenomenon neither Sara nor Hunter understood – and as Sara’s heart fluttered to life Hunter worried that Agatha was slipping away from her. The only parent she had ever really known.
***
Then one day Agatha slept in the Abbey – in Sara’s room. Then suddenly, overnight, Sara’s room became “their room.” The cottage was abandoned.
Life changed completely. Agatha was always there – a sunny presence during the gloomy winter mornings, a fun playmate at lunch, and a caring and passionate teacher during lessons. At dinner time, they were a family – eating together and talking about the day and Agatha’s exciting life before the Abbey. In the evenings, Agatha helped Hunter get ready for bed. She brushed her hair with more patience than Sara and sung to hear witchy nursery rhymes as she waited, by her side, for her to fall asleep.
If Hunter left her room and tiptoed down the passage way, she would see Agatha and Sara sitting close together, Agatha’s legs over Sara’s and her head on her shoulder. They read together peacefully and somehow all of Sara’s rigidness had vanished, replaced with a softness Hunter had never seen before.
Their bedroom door was always locked. Hunter had to knock and wait many minutes for the door to open. When it opened Sara was up and out of bed and Agatha was still sleeping, tucked up under piles of blankets on the left hand side. Ebony, Agatha’s familiar would be asleep by the fire.
One morning, Hunter sat on the floor outside their room waiting for morning training, an event that happened at the crack of dawn and before breakfast. Hunter waited as Sara slipped out of their room, providing Hunter with a meager peek at Agatha who was still asleep.
‘Let’s get going,’ Sara said briskly as if it were Hunter who was late rather than her.
Hunter scrambled to her feet and said sullenly, ‘I’ve been waiting.’
‘Mere minutes,’ Sara said.
They walked to the training ground in silence although Sara seemed to be in a good mood. During training Sara barked commands at her from afar. In a brief and merciful break in which Hunter was ordered over to the table Sara sat at and was offered a bread roll, fruit, and cup of water, Hunter asked her aunt, ‘Do you love her?’
Taken aback by the question, Sara didn’t reply for several seconds and then eventually replied, ‘Why do you ask?’
‘I want to know,’ Hunter said.
‘And if I do?’
After a moment, feeling Sara’s eyes drilling into her, Hunter simply shrugged. Sara folded her arms and narrowed her eyes. ‘Do you have something you wish to say?’
‘My parent’s love was forbidden, and yet yours not?’ When Sara’s eyebrows skyrocketed at Hunter’s daring, the child added, ‘Is your situation special or different somehow? Do the Elder Gods smile on you and not on my parents?’
It was clear that Sara was angry at the questioning and her mouth opened and closed a couple of times as she struggled to find a response. Eventually, she deflected and asked in a flat tone, ‘Do you not like Agatha?’
‘Yes,’ the girl said immediately. ‘She’s my favorite person.’ The added words were truthful and not offered maliciously. Sara didn’t react and Hunter accepted the fact that Sara didn’t want, nor expected, to be a favorite.
‘Then,’ Sara said, ‘All is well. You will see Agatha more now.’
‘I see her less, actually,’ Hunter retorted. ‘Our walks are no longer our own.’
Sara pursed her lips and her expression tightened. ‘I shall refrain from joining in the future.’
Silence descended. Hunter fumed that Sara did not directly answer her questions and she could sense the annoyance radiating off her aunt from across the table.
‘How is it different, though?’ Hunter asked again, putting down her bread and pushing her plate away – determined to talk.
Sara tutted and snapped, ‘Because it is, why do you persist with this line of enquiry child?’
‘Because,’ Hunter said, ‘it isn’t different at all.’
Sara glowered and Hunter stared back. After a tense moment, Sara sighed. ‘I’m different now. I understand your mother better now. I…I… care for Agatha the way your mother did for your father.’
The confession was a concession and so Hunter relaxed slightly although Sara remained tense. ‘I wonder how things might have been if you met Agatha before my parents met each other…maybe things would have been better for us all.’
Sara seemed to reel at the suggestion and looked shocked; she considered the notion and was lost to her thoughts briefly. ‘Such contemplations are unhelpful,’ Sara eventually concluded.
Hunter nodded once and said, ‘Will you and Agatha one day have a baby like my parents had me?’
Sara’s lips quirked into a begrudging smile. ‘Maybe on one of your walks with Agatha she can explain to how you babies are made.’
With a little frown, Hunter nodded. Her frown deepened as Sara’s little smirk evolved into a soft chuckle.
‘Do you not want a child of your own?’ Hunter asked. She suddenly feared the answer, surely Sara would love a child borne from Agatha Harkness.
Sara stopped smiling so suddenly it was jarring. Her expression slid into neutrality once more and she casually replied, ‘Who knows what the future holds for any of us. Currently I am contented with life as it is.’
‘Maybe Agatha will want one – maybe she will want a family,’ Hunter said. The thought was painful and, although she masked it expertly for such a young child, Hunter felt uncharacteristically anxious.
‘We are a family,’ Sara said. She spoke quickly as if the words were natural and flowed effortlessly, for once.
In their truthfulness and unexpected rawness, Sara’s words were perhaps the most beautiful Hunter had ever heard her aunt say.
Later, in her journal Hunter wrote a single line: ‘1709. We are a family.’
Then, after a beat in which ink dripped onto parchment messily, the girl added, ‘Agatha came to the Abbey and we became a family.’
Hunter’s quill paused again, and then she wrote in small, tight letters, ‘Sara does not love me, but she loves Agatha, and Agatha loves us all.’
Hunter put down the quill and looked at the words. She tore the page out of the journal and flung it across the room where it glided across the floor, slid between the floorboards and disappeared from sight.
***
313 years later Illyana Rasputin, Magik, found the page when hiding contraband from Caretaker, days after arriving at the Abbey with The Scarlet Witch.