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In the end, she supposes, it was always meant to end like this.
“I want my prize!”
And how delightfully treacherous of fate, to gift Rio hers instead. To have Agatha looking up at her, every inch of her bloody and dirty and sweating. Muscles taut and shaking, fed in excess by the only kind of power that had never left her—her anger.
What an exquisite prize, indeed.
From where she sits, perched on the rooftop of the cardboard prison the scarlet witch had stashed Agatha’s mind in, Rio grips her dagger tighter. She drags it across her thigh, letting its tip dig in just enough to keep her from shivering at the sight before her.
She blows Agatha a kiss, sending another gust of wind her way.
Drunk on laughter and the howling noise that envelops them, she watches Agatha get dragged back like a ragdoll, feels the vines wrapping around Agatha’s legs as if they were her own hands. Somewhere deep within the decrepit, aching cavity of her chest Rio feels a pang of something—hurt, anger, mostly hunger, at the memory of a time where that very same flesh had been offered to her on a platter.
“A meal fit for a God.” Agatha had said, breathless and flushed, purple-tinted fingertips digging into Rio’s back. She’d laughed then, biting Agatha’s shoulder and reminding her that she wasn’t a God and that a witch, wicked and dripping in purple as she may be, was barely a snack to her.
Finger food.
And then she’d laughed even harder as Agatha’s teeth sank into her neck.
Now she watches Agatha get up once more, watches her dig her nails into the ground as she attempts to crawl her way towards the house. Rio traces her tongue across her lips, almost tasting the dirt and blood caked under Agatha’s fingernails as they bend back from the strength of the witch’s grip. The desperation of it.
There could still be room for desert, she supposes.
And she tries, her wicked witch, her darling ant scurrying to and fro. She lets herself be ripped right open by all the glass, the splintering wood, the howling wind. Anything Rio throws her way she bites down on, and digs her hands deeper into the ground. Bares her teeth and asks for more.
Death by a thousand of Rio’s kisses.
It might be the most romantic thing they’ve done, Rio thinks.
“That body’s not gonna hold on for much longer, sweetheart.” she calls out.
Agatha’s eyes snap up to meet hers. She’s panting, her skin glistening from all the shards of glass imbedded in it.
“I did it.” Agatha shouts. “I walked the goddamn Road.”
“You did.” Rio nods, sending another gust of wind barreling towards her. The cut above Agatha’s brow rips itself open afresh as the glass burrows itself deeper into her skin. Rio fights the urge to fly down just to press her finger on it, see how deep it can really go.
“So give me what I want!”
This, Rio had known with certainty from the start, the end of the Road as clear as that pretty glass shimmering in Agatha’s hair.
She’d always told Agatha that magic, real magic—Earth magic, the very matter woven into the fabric of their blood that had granted Agatha her powers, her life—it did not bend. It did not play parlour tricks, it did not waste itself on concepts so inherently flawed and human like fear or desire, or worse, hope.
It simply was.
Just like the Darkhold before it, who’d chewed Agatha and spat her out like stale gum, The Road would—could never grant Agatha what she truly wished for.
A bunch of tricks held together by rudimentary spells and glitter glue, some bored Goddess’ playpen—that’s all the Road was. A fantasy she’d let Agatha and her litter of has-been’s and never-could-be’s believe, if only to buy the woman some more time.
Let the scarlet witch’s hex properly drain out of her system before Rio could decide where exactly she would like Agatha Harkness’ head to rest on her wall of trinkets.
“I can’t. You know that.”
She watches Agatha furrow her brows, her fists clutched tightly next to her body, the faintest wisps of purple running up her arms.
“But I did it!” she all but growls, back held straight despite the tremor running through her, betraying the most delightful fragility of the human flesh.
If Rio didn’t know perhaps her soul, if she even possessed one, could still be saved from eternal damnation. If she didn’t know precisely what Agatha had wished for. Who she’d—
Perhaps she might’ve stood a chance.
As it is, Rio swallows the knot in her throat and slowly makes her way down, floating until her and Agatha are just a few feet apart, and she can make out the tremble in Agatha’s jaw as she speaks.
“I know, my love.” Rio nods. “You did good.”
She had, the insufferable pet—through gritted teeth and fear as her only motivator, she’d somehow managed to get those ungrateful twerps across the finish line.
Well—most of them, anyway.
“Fuck you.” Agatha snaps.
Her purple, though weak, weaves itself around her like a blanket as Rio takes a step closer.
“Time’s running out.” she cocks her head, shooting Agatha a strained smile.
From up close she can see how utterly exhausted Agatha is. How the past few centuries have treated her—the Darkhold, the scarlet witch, and now this shit stain of a town and its shameless mundanity, how they’ve all given her a taste of her own medicine, leeching onto her and draining her, drop by drop.
On nights when she’d indulged herself in the fantasy of seeing Agatha again, Rio had imagined this exact scenario. Had bitten down on her own fingers dreaming of watching Agatha finally get the very thing she’d always ached for, the thing she’d always dug her nails into Rio searching for.
To be consumed by something hungrier than herself.
Seeing it now, manifested into the muddy tear tracks running down Agatha’s cheeks, the hollows carved underneath them where once there had been only soft, rosy flesh—well, it buries itself uncomfortably inside of Rio’s chest.
“Fuck you!” Agatha spits out. “I wish I’d never met you.”
Her voice is hoarse, and despite the distance Rio can see her lips are stained red.
“Yeah, me too.” she smiles, expelling a quiet huff.
Though she’d called the wind back, Agatha is still shivering.
Somewhere just in the periphery of her consciousness Rio can hear them coming—those feral freaks.
“They’re coming, Agatha.” she raises a pointed brow, signaling behind her.
Rio takes a step forward, watching Agatha almost stumble as she attempts to take a step back, eyes unfocused as she strains to look behind Rio for any signs of the Seven.
“What are you going to do?” Rio grins, taking another step forward. “C’mon, what’s your plan, Agatha?” she bares her teeth, practically begging Agatha to go for the jugular.
Agatha falls down.
Must’ve tripped on one of the vines, Rio thinks.
“How are you gonna claw your way out of this one, hm?”
As she kneels over the witch, dagger practically thrumming with excitement at being reunited with its favorite resting spot—Agatha’s throat, Rio feels it.
“No.” she breathes out a sharp inhale. “No! You don’t get to do that!” she grunts, pressing the flat side of her dagger in the column of Agatha’s neck.
She’s fished Agatha out of frozen lakes and found her skin warmer than it is now.
“Don’t go jealous on me now.” Agatha shakes her head, smirking.
Rio lifts her hand, letting it hover between them, leaving Agatha’s chest enough space to keep its stilted rise and fall. Looking down, she sees Agatha’s hands hanging limply by her sides, fingers grasping at blades of grass instead of her familiar purple.
“You promised me formidable.” she growls, gritting her teeth. “C’mon, let me see that purple.”
She pushes the tip of her dagger just hard enough to pull a quirk of an eyebrow out of Agatha. The back of her neck tightens, tension crawling into her ears and filling them with the same frantic thrumming she can feel rattling inside of Agatha’s chest.
“You’re a coward.” she whispers, voice shaking. “I wish I’d killed you the first time I laid eyes on you.”
“Yeah, me too.”
She searches Agatha’s face for anything—a slight upturn of a lip, that sharp glint of a tooth peeking out through a smirk, a narrowed stare, any sign that Agatha is plotting, feeling the ground with her nimble fingers for an escape route. Anything but that horrible rattling inside of her lungs, the dark shroud slowly forming like a web in front of Rio’s eyes as she watches her.
“No.”
Agatha coughs, her lips pulled down into a scowl.
A drop of blood mixed with saliva falls on Rio’s hand. She brings her other hand down to grasp at the ground next to Agatha’s head.
They’re getting closer.
Agatha’s drifting further away.
Distracted while trying to gauge just how little time they have left, she barely registers Agatha speaking, until she feels a soft exhale on her cheek—the last remaining bit of warmth trapped within Agatha’s body.
“Worm’s gotta eat, right?” she looks up somewhere just behind Rio’s head, her eyes the clearest Rio’s ever seen them. “You always used to say that.”
Despite herself, Rio bursts into laughter, hanging her head down just low enough to where her forehead almost touches Agatha’s. She can smell her blood, and resists the urge to lick each cut off of Agatha’s face, to lap at her like a terrified dog.
“Yeah, like any worm would touch you with a ten foot pole.” she snorts, surprised to find her nose runny and her cheeks wet. “You’d probably give them indigestion. They’d shit you right out.”
Rio clears her throat. She lifts her head, letting her magic reach out to locate the Seven, only to be met with the sharp call of the crow—one of their familiars.
When she looks back at Agatha, she finds her eyes have drifted shut.
“Fuck!” She cries with a sharp yell.
She lifts her hand, dragging the dagger across Agatha’s chest until it reaches her heart. She grips its hilt, bending down until her lips are right next to Agatha’s ear.
“This is going to hurt.”
That infuriating hummingbird takes flight in Agatha’s chest again as she gasps out a ragged chuckle.
“It better.”
A wet, pathetic laugh rips its way out of Rio’s throat. She kisses Agatha’s cheek, selfishly claiming a taste of that dirt, sweat and blood.
Just in case.
The dagger slices through Agatha’s skin just as those goddamn ghouls finally make their grand appearance.
Chasing after it—a blast of green.
For a second which stretches out like an eternity, Rio holds both Agatha’s death and her life in her hands.
It’s lighter than she’d imagined it. A burning, flighty thing, slipping through Rio’s fingers as if it were playing hide-and-seek.
She’s got half a mind to put it in a locket and wear it around her neck.
Ultimately, she is reminded of how much more fun that wisp of a thing is when it’s wreaking havoc out here, in the real world, and how dreadfully catatonic an eternity would pass by without Agatha Harkness to chase after.
Her green ebbs and flows like a steady river, breathing life into Agatha’s body as Rio pulls the dagger out. Despite the deafening thrum of her own fear booming inside of her skull, Rio bends an ear to Agatha’s chest and listens.
Maddening violence—the sweet rhythm of life and death engaged in a murder-suicide.
And hidden somewhere among it all, a heartbeat. The slow and steady crawl of blood and sinew, the faintest echo of that disgusting pulse Rio had once taken to calling a lullaby—something biological, in any case.
Life.
It’s beautiful in a way that leaves Rio feeling ashamed of herself—a bit unworthy of witnessing any of it.
For the briefest of moments, she sees them both—purple and green, twisting around each other, pulling apart before colliding once more, as if courting one another, both equally predator and prey.
It doesn’t last long, though, and the stone that had slowly begun to dislodge itself from under her breast sinks deeper into her core as her green slowly begins to darken.
“Agatha, let go.” she says, grasping the witch’s shoulders.
Agatha’s eyes snap open, her own hands coming to grip Rio’s wrists.
She tries to sever it herself, to pull back her magic before the dark can reach Agatha, but she can feel Agatha’s magic clinging on like goddamn thistle.
Curious and hungry, those purple wisps tug at every inch of Rio’s power like a child tugging at its mother’s skirt. Were it not for the matter of Agatha’s death, Rio might find it—endearing, for fear of using more deplorable words, such as adorable.
“Agatha!” she yells, digging her claws into Agatha’s shoulder until Agatha’s gaze finally rises to meet hers.
Just as the dark tendrils of her power reach Agatha’s own, a magnificent scream rips itself out of Agatha’s throat.
Rio’s hands move to the back of Agatha’s head, her grip just shy of caving Agatha’s skull in.
Leaning down, she presses a small kiss to the soft shell of her ear.
“Let go, love.”
For the first time in centuries—Agatha listens.
Like the tip of a steel measure tape, Rio’s power comes back howling, lashing at her as it coils itself back into her core, almost knocking her back.
Beneath her, though, Agatha stills. Her eyes have drifted shut again, and Rio struggles to make out any faint traces of purple cradling Agatha's body.
The air feels lighter, Rio notices. No creepy cawing, no sight of snake tail. No stench of ancestral vengeance-seeking.
Just one more half of the plan left to bake, then.
Looking down at Agatha’s still body, she briefly contemplates attempting to slap her awake, before disregarding the idea with a shudder. Toying with Agatha’s corpse feels like a tad too much—even for them.
Instead, Rio lets her fingers trail slowly down Agatha’s arm, not really touching her, but scratching softly at the thick shroud of energy still pulsing off of her. She lets her magic trickle out in small tendrils, pushing and teasing at Agatha’s own magic, drawing it out as if it were a scared kitten hiding under a bush.
She pretends there isn’t an invisible vise gripping her chest cavity.
Torturous second after torturous second, Rio waits.
Finally, she sees a finger twitch, followed by another.
Here, kitty, kitty.
She doesn’t let her magic touch Agatha’s, only allowing her green to twist itself once around the tiny wisps of purple before drawing her hand back.
There wouldn’t have been much time for foreplay, anyway, as Rio finds herself knocked back on her ass, Agatha thrashing violently under her.
She drags herself back just as Agatha begins to gag, a thick stream of dark bile pouring out of her mouth. Rio can smell it, blood and ashes and rust—death upchuck.
With a gleeful shriek, she grabs at Agatha’s waist, holding her hair back.
“Atta girl!”
She bends down, peppering the crown of Agatha’s head with kisses as waves of sick wrack through the woman’s body.
“That was beautiful.” she sighs, burrowing her nose in Agatha’s hair.
Once she’s done heaving out the last remnants of underworld slush, Agatha turns to look at Rio—not quite in grateful elation, but not in a rush to remove Rio’s hands from the back of her neck, either.
“What did you do?” she grunts, wiping roughly at her mouth.
“Something that’s bound to bite me in the ass eventually, I’m sure.” Rio grins.
Agatha blinks.
“I died.”
“Briefly.” Rio nods. “How was it?”
“Cold.” Agatha shrugs, before frowning. “Is that what it’s like for—”
“No.” Rio cuts her off. “No, just when you fuck with the natural order. For—it’s not like that.”
It hadn’t been like that for him. She’d made sure of it.
Agatha nods, her gaze faltering for a brief moment before she drags herself back, turning to take in their surroundings.
“Where’d the petting zoo go?” she asks.
“Oh, they’re still after you.” Rio throws her a pointed glare. “It’ll probably take them a couple of centuries to crawl their way out of the underworld again, though.” she shrugs.
Agatha chuckles weakly, a faint smirk dragging at her lips. The soft tremor of her spine tickles Rio’s fingers, sending a shiver throughout her entire body.
“You know, for a second I actually thought I might get him back.”
“I know.”
Agatha casts her eyes downwards, cradling her hands in her lap as she watches her magic flicker and wind itself around her fingers like a cat wrapping its tail around its owner's leg. She presses down on it harshly, the trail of purple scurring up her arm as Agatha's hands gather into tight fists.
“That was his voice, Rio.” Agatha whispers. “It was him.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
Rio doesn’t try to turn Agatha’s gaze upwards, casting her own eyes somewhere above her head. She lets her fingers thread softly through the knots in Agatha’s hair instead.
“It was you, your memories. Your love for him.” she says.
Though her throat feels thick with emotion, her voice doesn’t waver because she isn’t trying to soothe Agatha’s ache.
It’s just the horrifying truth of it all, that this whole ordeal is just that—love, splintered and strewn across centuries, across every inch of land Agatha’s feet have touched whilst running away from it.
“That’s what the almighty Road has rewarded me with, huh?” Agatha clenches her jaw, red-rimmed eyes finally meeting Rio’s. “More heartache to carry?”
“Maybe you just carry the love?” Rio frowns.
She brings her hand to cradle Agatha’s cheek, her thumb rubbing soft circles across her skin, shepherding Agatha’s tears into the fullness of her bottom lip.
Eucharist for the damned, Rio chuckles to herself.
Agatha narrows her eyes, an angry grunt rumbling in her throat. She lets Rio hold her nonetheless.
“His voice, his eyes, his hair, the smell of him.” Rio shakes her head, inhaling deeply.
Lavender and milky oats.
“Agatha, you’ve been carrying his death for centuries.” she frowns, her grip tightening. “His life was just as meaningful.”
Agatha doesn’t break—would never allow herself to fall apart anywhere else except the sprawling coldness of her own core.
Instead, she kisses Rio. She digs her teeth into Rio’s lip, already claiming another body in her new stake at life.
She tastes like blood, and dirt, and a bit like death.
What could be greater than a God, Rio thinks, to deserve such a meal?