Chapter 1: Prologue I: not a lot, just forever.
Notes:
Note! This first chapter is quite introspective in order to set the scene and background information necessary for the plot, I pinky promise the story will pick up the pace after this. :))
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Craving wasn’t a new sensation to Lady Death; it was raw, real, and just as undesirable as she was.
She was a fate that would befall all, after all, and no matter who her admirers may be, they will all attempt a hasty retreat once they truly perceive Rio in her entirety. She may be a famed deity to some, and an eventual enemy to all once they wither away at her embrace, and Rio has never been anything but fine with it. In fact, she’d argue that she prefers it this way.
Impartiality remains Rio's stagnant perspective. A fact that held true before she had even embraced her primordial calling, and once she had entered her role’s infancy just short of a decade old, she had quickly learnt the importance of a sustained unbiasedness.
(Even when her morals and perspectives would morph away from their previously desensitised, cemented state).
Newly harvested souls would cry, beg, and scream at her for a second chance. But no matter how high a passed one’s pillar of pride stood, it would all crumble down once she had supposedly blessed them with a passage away from their mortal plane.
Back then, she’d do nothing but freeze as a blank state of dissociation washed over her being (or whatever was left of her perishable self); Rio had a duty she had sworn an oath to fulfil, and there was no changing the expectant pressure of her mentor's hand against her shoulder.
The witchling she was and the primaeval visitant she had welcomed into her body were in a state of symbiosis. She wasn’t it as much as it wasn’t her.
(At least that was until the spring of her apprenticeship had withered away, and with it, her mentor, prompting a suffocating realisation that her girlish hands had been stained with ignorance and loss).
❀
When one is destined to relinquish souls until the end of time, one should expect a few adverse effects.
Rio had grown since her first season of primordial ladyship in a way that paralleled witchlings of her own age. She was taller, her wide doe eyes transformed into a pair of optics with feline-like qualities, and the curves of her face had hollowed out to display more prominent cheekbones.
She was no longer the little girl with sputtering outbursts of magic from her fingertips but instead a host that exuded an aura of omnipotence. But even with this change in appearance, it couldn’t soften the overt distrust of newly-passed humans.
Death’s hand was not to be held, no matter if said hand belonged to a child or a young woman. She shouldn’t mind it. The perceptions of her became routine and predictable and had no impact on her job.
Little can shock her now as she slowly approached her second decade of ironic life.
Meaning that she doesn’t even bat an eye when her next calling-card of souls projects into her consciousness with a magick imprint much stronger than usual. She doesn’t bother to think twice about how the coven in front of her has been massacred in such a niche way that left their mortal bodies shrivelled and abominable.
The only thing that takes her by surprise is a woman only a few years older than her mortal body; her eyes are blood-shot, her wrists have rope burn, and her dress is ripped. Rio cares for none of it.
The thing that had caught her attention had nothing to do with any aesthetics, but instead was centred on the sheer, abstract nature of this stranger's soul and magick.
There’s a purple smog dancing around this woman’s fingertips with overtones of a power even greater than that of a prodigy’s. It’s mouth watering and it’s stolen. And even if Rio wanted to go forward and rip away this thief’s bounty, that doesn’t change the fact that this power is festering and embedding itself into its new host's soul at an alarming speed.
Rio swallows harshly. Even as Death, she’s unable to trace the lifelines of an individual in spite of the fact that all walks of life exist under her patient jurisdiction. She only possesses an errorless recognition of someone's definite end once the moment occurs.
This woman is different. Her soul sings with zero secrecy and a freedom unlike any other. Because her soul is unmarred by an impression of Rio’s future claim.
Frosty blue eyes meet her soulless black.
Rio pretends her heart doesn’t race when a grief-maddened smile is directed at her.
❀
Death shouldn’t be allowed to show any favour. But that doesn’t stop her from watching the path of Salem’s newly emerging witch-killer with a curious gaze.
Death shouldn’t be allowed to entertain humans beyond anything superficial. But that doesn’t stop her from truthfully answering the Harkness woman’s questions as she collects the trail souls the other witch has pridefully left behind (she tries not to question why the other woman is always waiting for her at the site of every new slaughter).
Death shouldn’t be allowed to want another. But that doesn’t stop her knees from buckling once Agatha grabs her by the throat and roughly kisses her for the first time after over a decade of dancing around each other.
Death shouldn’t be allowed to be devoted to anyone. But that doesn’t stop her from readily engaging in a blood oath the night she becomes a wife.
Death shouldn’t be anything beyond death. But with Agatha, she’s Rio.
❀
Rio has been witness to gluttony being the downfall to many beings of varying backgrounds, and she has been nothing but foolish to think that she’d ever be exempt from a similar fate.
But after centuries of work and play mixing so well into her life, she had grown reckless. But in her defence, who wouldn’t do the same after spending so many mornings waking up next to her wife?
They start and end with desire (as it always does with Agatha and Rio). It's a feeling that has led them to a life of travel and cherished memories. It’s a feeling that brought them to investigate the darker crafts and incantations of ancient magick. It’s a feeling that had them settling down surrounded by nature, far away from anyone else.
It’s a feeling that led them to becoming mothers to their Nicholas.
❀
Nicholas Harkness-Vidal was three, with Rio’s eyes and Agatha’s hair.
Nicholas was clueless, and never supposed to unsteadily wander into his mothers office during his nap time.
Nicholas was innocent, and never knew the danger of dark artefacts until it was too late.
❀
The exact moment they broke was surprisingly clean in spite of the centuries they’ve spent wrapped around one another. Rio remembers it as if it was yesterday.
Since they had lost Nicholas, their home was quiet. They moved through the motions of living, but neither of them did more than survive.
As always, Agatha would get up and make breakfast (now leaving an extra portion size growing cold in the pan). As always, Rio would linger by Nicholas’ bedroom (now without going in and waking up their boy with a gentle kiss to his forehead). As always, they would sit out on the patio as the morning passed them by (now by spending their time staring out at a towering cherry tree, shading a small headstone that lay beside a well-loved rope swing).
It was wrong. Everything was wrong. But Rio still preferred this splintered reality over when the shock finally wore off, leaving them with aching hearts and guilt-laced intentions. Comments slowly turned into snide remarks. Which turned into accusations. Which turned into a screaming match with no victors.
Their home was nothing but a house now, and there was nothing left for either of them to stay. Perhaps that’s why Rio stayed frozen in their kitchen after yet another screaming match. Tears toyed with the edge of her waterline as final comments rung in her head. The inside of her mouth flooded with the taste of iron as she bit through her own lip as her and Agatha’s eyes remained fixed on one another in a silent, bitter conversation. She see’s Agatha take off her wedding ring in slow motion as she places it in Rio’s palm.
Rio then blinks for only a moment, but that’s enough to see her wife-... Agatha, leaving the house and her for good.
It takes eleven months for Rio to properly grasp that there won’t be any returning from this. Then there’s a period of three years where Rio battles to accept that she’s truly lost Agatha, because the funny thing about blood bonds is that they can never be removed. Meaning that despite the fact that the two women are done with each other, Rio is able to feel Agatha’s unruly soul as if it was a second heart next to her own.
Consequently to the above, that also means that Rio nearly lets a soul slip through her fingers once she feels a brief blip in that second heartbeat. The sensation is almost unreal, as if someone had cracked open her thorax and taken a bruising bite out of the contents of her chest.
From that moment alone, Rio is thrown into a second cycle of grief, which of course means that she’s left festering in unfiltered rage.
So what if Agatha was trying to sever their bond? She shouldn't-... Didn’t care.
There will come a time where Rio won’t spend her nights wide awake after feeling that damned heartbeat dampen for a millisecond once again. There will come a time where her blackened heart doesn’t fit perfectly in Agatha’s palm.
Agatha no longer loves her, a fact that’s clear as day. Rio just needs time to catch up.
(She’ll only stop lying to herself after flowers start sprouting in her lungs five springs after their separation).
❀
A sense of impending doom is the first marker of an oncoming demise, but Rio’s not sure what to make of that very sensation weighing heavy in her chest when she knows there is no one out there that can erase her existence (and even if they could, her soul is fragmented enough that it is near-impossible for someone else to collect).
So there’s nothing to worry about… So long as she forgets the fact that at her very core, she’s a green witch.
It’s hard for Rio to deny how horrifically fucked she’s become when her organic matter has morphed into a garden of her estranged lovers unknowing creation. It’s just additional salt in the wound when her abilities make her aware of the flower seedlings settling into the branches of her lungs three months before the first petals burst out of her throat.
❀
The first time Rio considers taking action to fix her situation, she’s waking up next to a pile of blood-stained hyacinths with a burning sensation in her throat.
Immortality is a bitch, and turns out Lady Death herself can’t avoid the final stage of her illness. It makes her feel painfully average at times, knowing that she has succumbed to the condition that is the most common reason why she's collecting souls.
Limerence. Lovesickness. Hanahaki. The names vary across the globe, but what stays the same is the fatality rate.
The only difference between Rio and the disease's victims is that she can’t remain dead. At best, she’ll black out for an afternoon, only to arise with the same traitorous heart and a new scar on her body to remind her that what’s happening isn’t a twisted nightmare.
It hurts to breathe, and her collection of scars flare up under the lightest of touches, leaving Rio’s mortal vessel aching.
She’s nursing thoughts of escape, leaving her in her current predicament of lying on the forest floor with a flower bed for a set of lungs, and an intense longing to let her bones wither away under dirt.
She’s tired.
Rio swallows harshly and savours the tang of iron that’s slick against her tongue. Out of all witches she’s ever met, she has never strayed away from who she’s sworn to. Being anyone else’s was out of the question: it was Agatha or nothing.
Given her track record, she has unashamedly picked the other woman every single time the option had been given to her. But after six years of petals choking her airways, for the first time in her life, Rio has resigned herself to nothing.
Loving Agatha Harkness is the most exquisite form of self-destruction that she’s experienced, and Rio’s ready to submerge herself fully into the sensation.
Now all she needs to complete her goal is something she had sworn to herself long ago that she would never take: a successor.
Notes:
EEE This idea has been sitting in my mind for a while and it's finally hereee!!!! - thankyou for reading!! I hope you enjoyed
Chapter 2: Prologue II: intertwined, sewn together.
Summary:
“You’ll be fine if I take this then?” Rio asks with a fake innocence, “Just… Walking away with it in my possession?”.
“Completely fine with it,” Agatha answers cooly as she flicks her hair over one shoulder in a smooth motion before crossing her arms. Her lips are pursed and she’s looking to the ground, “I actively encourage it in fact. It gets you further away from me.”
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The question of ‘what if?’ is a recurring subject in the souls Rio collects.
Beyond the screaming, begging, and spiteful threats, all will eventually reach a point of impasse, with some souls being much quicker than others. It’s a tiring experience, but a requirement which she had personally set for all living beings to go through in order to steer clear of moving on from their mortal plane prematurely.
During that short yet intense time, they’ll ask question after question while analysing what had happened in their lifetime and ruminating on what they had missed out on. Some will ask to know the possibilities of their wasted youths, the wiser ones will bite their tongues to prevent themselves from doing so. Some will ache for a final glimpse into their cherished past, the rest will want to peek into their uncertain future.
Neither of which Rio will grant them, especially the latter request. She herself doesn’t know what exists past that final threshold (if anything at all) once she relinquishes each soul from her possession.
She doubts any greater power in the universe could unlock the secrets that lay beyond. It’s a natural state that has reached an unshakeable equilibrium with the universe, much like her sycophant power.
Before the fallen souls leave, nine times out of ten they’ll look back at her with an unsettling, calm understanding in their eyes. They’ll see her as the one force who ultimately brought and ended their suffering, before seeing past her entirely. There’s an unnerving peace radiating from them as they fade away; a gentle understanding which their lips remain sealed about as they transform to be more stagnant matter than living spirit.
Rio never thought to question what was going on then. It was their business, and far from hers. Especially in a moment as final as that.
But now with several bouquets worth of flowers trying to claw their way up her trachea, Rio wishes she knew what was going on behind the glassy eyes of those emancipated souls.
She wanted to know how to finally let go.
❀
Tilting her head back against the soft leather of the arm chair she had sprawled out on, Rio only sighed as she took the ink-stained end of a quill to cross out the final name off of a short list in a final, dramatic stroke.
It seems that even with the unshakeable job security, there have yet to be any witches willing to become the new mantle for the primordial ethos within Rio.
“It’s a shame you lived and died without magick,” she remarks, looking to her side. On the polished coffee table by her side, her eyes focused on a slanted picture propped up against an empty vase. Forever frozen in coloured ink is the smiling face of the latest soul she had collected; a pale, blonde woman who had made it to sixty-six before meeting her end.
Leaning forward to wipe away a light layer of dust on the table, Rio set down her notebook before going to stand up, going to turn around a few times to take in the room she was in. What this woman had left behind was an estate that was nothing short of breathtaking, especially given the personal library found on the second floor of the house that Rio found herself snooping through.
“Your fascination with documenting everything could have made way for a… Mutually advantageous deal between you and I,” Rio carries on talking in the empty space. She slowly walks away from one edge of the woollen rug beneath her heel until she reaches the adjacent side, her eyes scan across numerous mounted awards until Rio pauses her attention onto a cursive name on a framed doctorate certificate, “Wouldn’t you agree… Sharon?”.
There’s no response. Of course there isn’t, but Rio chuckles anyway. Though her laughter is cut short by a distinctive tickle in her throat, causing the witch to lean her arm against the wall as coughs racked her body.
By now, Rio knows better than to try to stifle her symptoms, it’ll only make them come back with twice as much intensity. But the knowledge never truly extinguishes her innate reactions, leading to her shoulders hunching as she tries to tolerate the burn that is all too familiar to her now.
There’s a stinging fire that radiates from the cavities of her inner chest to her upper neck. It’s in a constant state of motion between somewhat tolerable and horrifically draining.
Rio knows what happens next. She’s lived it in malicious cycles over the years, and what she’s experiencing now is only the mildest stage yet. But that doesn’t stop her eyes from widening in alarm once the pricking torment switches to a sudden asphyxiation.
The witch stumbles as her solid lean against the library wall slips, causing her to double over with one hand covering her mouth. There’s a few moments of struggle before a finalising cough marks her airways free once again, and she relishes in the iron-tinged air rushing back into her lungs as she looks down at the contents in her palm.
Delicate dahlias with broken stamens. It’s one of the more common flowers that have bloomed from her lovesickness, but Rio notes that there’s a considerably larger volume of blood coating the white petals than last time.
“...Maldito corazón traidor, ” Rio swears under her breath with furrowed eyebrows as she moves to let the petals fall on the expensive carpet beneath her without a care.
Rio pushes down the instant memory of vivid blue eyes and a chaos-inducing smirk almost as soon as it makes itself known in her mind. Yet the tickle in her throat doesn’t disappear.
Releasing a shaky exhale, she slowly stands back up properly. The room felt too hot, and the sensation of the silk shirt against her skin seemed like sandpaper. Reaching up to roughly tug against the collar of her shirt, she didn’t waste any time to undo it with care. In fact, the scatter of buttons against the floor was a welcome sound that snapped her out of the ringing haze of her mind.
The air that hit her bare skin was cooling, given that the only source of heat in the library was a dying fire that would soon leave her in darkness. Looking down, Rio’s frown deepened as she took in the crime scene that was her own body.
From the lowest, sharp jut of her ribs, to the junction between her shoulder and neck were raised scars. All varying in length, with some more faded than others. Each scar was unique in their own subtle ways, and if Rio put in the effort, she could recall what dates which scar appeared on. After all, everytime she was supposed to finally succumb to her condition, she would snap back into consciousness to a new, shiny silver slash on her torso.
For a being that never used to sustain any reminders of injury on her body, Rio would sometimes find these permanent marks morbidly thrilling to have. Though in all honesty, she’d prefer to have gone without so long as the aching pain that clung to the raised tissues would finally leave.
Rio bit the inside of her cheek as she squeezed her eyes shut. She wasn’t here to lament her current situation. Time wasn’t on her side, and she had a goal to accomplish, meaning she couldn’t sacrifice another evening to wallowing in sullenness when she had a library to search.
❀
Her befallen friend Sharon was a dedicated historian, that was clear enough. But what wouldn’t jump out to the untrained eye would be the fact that she had a fixation beyond the typical remains of human history.
Thick in the library air was an aura of magick from various books, scattered across dusty shelves that towered all the way up to the room's ceiling.
It was an impressive collection if someone judged it based on number alone. But, if someone tried to judge the passed woman’s collection based off of rarity, a low score would be awarded, which gives way to the question of why Rio had felt drawn to scour each and every shelf until every single magick text had been laid out in front of her.
The secret to deciphering enchantment scrolls.
A literary analysis on the effects of conjuration, based on protection magick.
The anthropology of tarot semantics.
An expert's guide to potion brewing: Volume II.
The theory behind sacrifice.
There were other books that Rio had taken off of the bookshelves, all of which she had flipped through until the already age-worn spines had cracked. But the five in front of her gave off an impression that was hard to shake off (and the fact that these were the only pieces of literature in the entire library to have been donned dust jackets says enough about their significance to their previous owner).
They were all basic, lengthy texts. Those that you would find in the shared possession of covens hundreds of years ago. They were arguably the most common of magick resources, with thousands of publications across the entire globe.
Failing to stifle a sigh, Rio pushes the sleeves of her shirt up to her elbows. There was something she was missing. There was something here that kept her working instead of going back to her regular business.
Getting up with a small wince as her shirt material rubbed against her ribs, Rio walked a few steps until she was standing with her back to the fireplace. The past owner of this library, Sharon , had known something that was currently beyond Rio’s comprehension.
A mere mortal. A human. A non-witch.
It was starting to grate her nerves. What was it that this historian was trying to hide? No sane soon-to-be retiree would spend so much of their time over a passion project like this without a greater cause.
Wrapping her arms around her midsection, Rio tilted her head as she carried on staring at the five laid out books. There was a bigger picture she still wasn’t getting. She could feel the potential burning the tips of her fingers.
Shifting a little to one side to lean against the wall, she watches as the light from the fireplace dances across the room. The swirling light patterns cast a warm glow over the woollen carpet across the floor, highlighting the intricately woven details.
Then, and only then, the moment of realisation dawns on Rio; If you were trying to hide something from witch-folk, then the best way to hide something isn’t with concealment runes, but by tucking something away in plain sight.
It’s all a matter of perspective.
A witch would never note down a sacred secret without the use of magick to aid her, so why would other witches think to look any differently given how effective the mechanism has proven to be in history? But for a non-magick user, specifically a historian who prizes their collection above all else, runes and enchantments won’t adhere to their commands even after a lifetime of studying the subjects.
Which explains why so many common books had been left out with such distinctive yet boringly-common magic imprints. They’re red herrings, barring the dust-jacket covered keys.
Keys to a ceremonial summoning ritual that had been hidden right under her nose. Or specifically her heel.
Rio took fast, unsteady steps around the rug. With a flick of her wrist, she had cast away any unnecessary literature and furniture to the other side of her room, leaving only the five keys. Her dark eyes raked over the details of the rug, identifying the shapes of sigils and short form latin all woven into the decorative material to complete an unactivated summoning circle.
“What a deceptive scholar you were,” Rio breathed out with a sense of pride, though she was hesitant to let herself feel anything close to absolute victory until she could prove her hypothesis correct.
Gently picking up each book, Rio made quick work of arranging them in the designated order on the rug. Four had been placed on the corners of the summoning circle, all flipped to their indexes. The fifth and final book, The theory behind sacrifice , had a more particular place in the centre, right in front of where Rio knelt.
Taking a deep breath, Rio felt her veins buzz with anticipation as she readied her magick, lacing her tongue with arcane intention as she prepared to incant the spell laid out before her.
“ Utens hac actione cor meum tibi do, ” she sounds out, savouring the Latin phonetics in a timely fashion.
There’s a brief pause where verbal outlines are replaced with physical instruction. Rio looks to her left palm, coated with a rusty layer of dried blood from earlier. The witch barely hesitates before raising her hand up to hover over the book in front of her.
“ Hac benedictione tua vicissim spero, ” Rio says as she digs her nails into the soft skin of her palm harshly, watching rivulets of ruby red trail down her wrist to eventually splatter on the age-stained stained pages below.
Wasting no time, she proceeds to place both palms down onto the activating sigils before urging a burst of her powers to channel through to her fingertips. And, as if it were a sinful crime, she whispers the final words of the spell, “ Ostende mihi veritatem. ”
What follows next is what she can only describe as a blinding flash of raw, white energy.
❀
Half an hour feels like an eternity when recovering from the daze of a spell. But once Rio comes to, there is an attention-grabbing scroll in her palms.
It’s small, and can easily be tucked away. By all means someone could mistake it for a piece of scrap paper. But once she unravels the string tied around it and takes in the information etched onto the paper, Rio is quick to realise the life-altering instructions this scroll contains.
She doesn’t notice when the heavy shakes of her shoulders from disbelieving laughing morph into agonsing shivers derived from said actions being too harsh on her lungs. She doesn’t even notice that all the materials and the ritual circle have turned to ash around her. She doesn’t even notice that the library she’s kneeling in has caught aflame.
The only reality that is able to sink in is the fact that she finally knows how to locate her successor without spending her future decades going through a trial-and-error method of searching.
She is finally one step closer to peace.
❀
Back in her Salem days, obtaining magical components was much simpler than it was in modern times. And whilst Rio could enjoy the glamour of secret auctions like the one she was at now, nothing can replace the feeling of hunting down the possessor of your desired item in order to win it fairly in a battle of wits and power.
Still, she’d rather not voice that opinion in a ballroom filled with blood-witches high on their blue blood status’. Swirling the golden liquid within the champagne flute she had been handed upon entry, Rio had clung to the corners of the room she was in. Waiting. Watching.
Witches walked around in showy masquerade masks (much like the one she has on now), talking and laughing in good spirits. But there was an air of hostility that was hardly tucked away, because the truth of the matter is that all of them were here for the same purpose; there was a finite amount of desired artefacts being bidded on tonight, and the ratio of bidders to prizes was laughably extortionate.
Rio didn’t care for this type of petty competition, and she wasn’t planning to stick around for the back-handed compliments and fake congratulations that would be passed around the room in an hour's time.
Seconds ticked by, and her gaze flitted towards a curtain-covered archway. She made her way across the ballroom with deliberate, graceful steps as she avoided getting the bottom of her dress stepped on by the surrounding crowd.
Eventually, Rio reaches a drinks table a few paces away from the archway. She sets down her champagne flute and casually wanders behind a pillar next to her, out of sight from the eyes of any observers, given its awkward positioning in the ballroom.
She takes two seconds to murmur a concealment charm before Rio steps out from behind the pillar. The room appears to shift in her perception slightly, with all surrounding conversations muting.
Setting her shoulders straight, Rio takes her opportunity when the enchantment is still fresh to approach the archway. She places one palm up before murmuring a second incantation and drawing a sigil in the air with her index finger. Her magick sparks and sputters.
Her eyes focus on the layered blocking charms in front of the curtains, cast by numerous protection witches undoubtedly. She waits for the tell-tale breaking sign in the blue-tinted shield to crack, and not a moment later is when Rio steps forward and finally passes through the curtains.
Rio clears her throat, as she looks around, feeling the tension in her jaw slacken a little now she was separated from the ballroom of other witches, even if only by a thin layer of fabric.
What’s in front of her is a long hallway, with high ceilings, signed art pieces, and a singular door at the very end. Taking in a deep breath before reaching behind her head to undo the small knot that was keeping her mask up. It drops to the floor with a soft thud, and after looking around once again to make sure the coast is clear, she starts walking down the corridor.
The remnants of the concealment charm make the tapping of her heels on the hardwood floors barely existent, and she takes full advantage of this by quickening her pace until she reaches the large, mahogany door. Once Rio has entered the next room she had felt the magick within her sing with recognition.
She was in the right place: the store-room holding the artefacts for the auction.
Turning her head to the right, then to the left, she notes not even a single guard is present. Part of her wants to roll her eyes at the fact that the hosts of this event thought a few layered protection spells was enough to protect countless bidding pieces. The more reasonable side of Rio is thankful for others' idiocy.
Still, just because there is a lack of stationed guards doesn’t mean that people won’t be here eventually. Preparation for the bidding will start sooner rather than later, meaning that Rio immediately starts her search between all the stored spell components and artefacts.
She doesn’t find what she wants in an enchanted vial. She doesn’t find what she wants in a cracked jade egg (which she is almost certain is cursed over blessed). She doesn’t find what she wants in a crate of potions instructions And as she squints her eyes to read the Latin inscriptions on the stone tablet, Rio frowns as she murmurs a small line. This isn’t what she’s looking for either.
Going to take a step back, Rio’s ready to pass onto the next artefact to continue her search until she senses it . A surge of wild magick (too close for comfort in her proximity), that even under the confines of a concealment enchantment, she would be able to recognise.
How could she not?
Acting on instinct, Rio’s hand drops down to the slit in her dress. She swiftly grasps for a hidden, curved blade that had been strapped to her thigh before whirling around with a swiping motion.
There’s a rough tumble towards the ground, a pained grunt, and the rough grasping of hands before time seems to still. Pinned beneath her with Rio’s blade to her throat, in all her ever-powerful glory is the one and only Agatha Harkness.
In all her past experiences combined, Rio doesn’t wish for the possibility of being able to permanently die as much as she does in this moment.
“ You dropped this ,” Agatha taunts, holding up Rio’s abandoned mask with her free hand. The other witches' intrepid gaze meets Rio’s wide brown eyes.
Fifteen years. Fifteen years of no contact. Fifteen years of feeling their blood-bond wither and wane. And this is the reunion they’ve been fated for?
Rio wants to scream. Both for her situation and for the fact that she can feel her heartbeat speed up in her decaying chest even after all this time apart.
It only takes a moment for Rio to morph her features back into nonchalance, but it’s enough time for Agatha to note down her surprise, causing her to break out into a cruel smirk, “ What? Familiar’s got your tongue?”.
She has hundreds, if not millions of things she would like to say to the woman at the end of her blade. But none of them can take precedence over the creeping burn of petals lodged in her throat.
Agatha seems to recognise this to an extent, because what happens next takes Rio’s breath away. Quite literally.
Agatha’s free hand drops her mask and goes to grab the hilt of Rio’s blade. With both hands now gripping that part of the knife, Agatha gives a forceful shove upwards as she simultaneously brings her knee up to brutally connect with Rio’s side.
Their positions change, now with the knife thrown away into a random corner and with Rio slammed to the ground. She lets out a pained gasp and a few coughs before she feels the threatening pressure of Agatha’s hands squeezing her throat.
Rio senses the powdery taste of petals against her tongue, mixed with the typical tang of iron. She just about succeeds at swallowing the bloodied flora before she was able to retch with the urge to dump a florist's leftovers on the store-room’s floor.
“You look like death,” Rio can just about rasp out, plastering on a fake overconfident smirk as she looks into hateful blue eyes. She tries not to think about the shake in her hands.
The edge of Agatha’s lip is badly cut, and her suit is slightly ripped from their scuffle. So long as Rio didn’t get a concussion from being slammed onto the ground, she’s sure that what the other woman is wearing is identical to the staff’s uniform she spotted in the ballroom earlier.
“I think that’s you, actually,” the woman on top of her replies with gritted teeth, “In all senses.”
It’s a childish jab. But in all honesty Rio wouldn’t even know if Agatha was telling the truth or not. She hadn’t looked in a mirror for a good three years now, and if necessary, she had magick to rely on whenever she needed to appear presentable.
“What are you doing here, Agatha?”
“I could ask you the same question.”
“I asked you first.”
There’s a beat of silence where both of them remain tight-lipped and staring at one another. It takes only one more beat before Rio’s certain that she needs to get as far away as possible if the stinging scars on her torso are any reactions to Agatha’s hold.
Twisting her body a little, Rio is able to push her elbows up and slam her forehead against Agatha’s. The other woman hisses in shock and retracts her hands to cradle the new sore spot on instinct, and that’s enough for Rio to be able to shuffle away and quickly grab her knife.
“Are you going to answer my question or not?” Rio prompts, pointing the tip of the blade in Agatha’s direction.
Both women circle each other slowly, moving between the artefacts as if it’s a well-practised dance. Agatha only gives a nonchalant shrug, “Can’t a girl have a hobby?”.
“You’re not one for gathering antiques,” Rio immediately rebuts, the words ‘not anymore ’ are on the tip of her tongue, threatening to spill over.
“People can change.”
Rio bites her tongue and takes a deep breath. Not them . Other people? Yes. But never them. They have been constant since the day they had met each other. She can’t even begin to fathom Agatha being anything but the stubbornly stagnant soul she knows.
“ If you say so, ” Rio echoes back in a monotonous tone. Her eyes flit over to check the bidding items around her, and her dark gaze locks in on a golden compass with its name engraved on the edge of it: ‘The guide of semitae’.
This is what she came here for.
Rio’s eyes flit back from the compass to Agatha, and she sees the other woman mirroring her actions. There’s a spark of recognition. They both share a knowledge of what it looks like when they desire the same thing.
If someone could blast her with a hexing beam right now, Rio would be eternally grateful.
“What do you want with a compass?” Agatha asks before Rio can.
Rio pulls a little face and tilts her head to the side, “Antique collecting.”
The answer is enough to get a snort of amusement from Agatha. Rio pretends that her eyes don’t widen in reaction to the sound.
“ Cute ,” the other witch comments with a displeased look, “And now the actual answer?”.
Rio pauses, her gaze fixed on the magical item. She reaches to take it in her palm. It’s cold and heavy. “ Oh… ” she murmurs, “A passion project. You’ll find out eventually.”
It isn’t a lie per say, just a stretch of the truth. She’s quite passionate about not choking on flowers anymore, and Agatha would know eventually. Give or take a few hundred years after Rio’s long gone preferably.
“I don’t mix well with patience.”
“And don’t I know it,” Rio remarks. The compass is warming in her palm, but she remains frozen in her current spot. The logical decision would be to leave now and pray to a universal force unknown to her in hopes of never encountering the other witch again.
But she’s never been logical when it comes to Agatha. And the current rapport they have going on is the equivalent of all of life's pleasures bundled into one moment to Rio. It’s familiar and dangerous, and causes both her blood to pump faster in her body and for her insides to ache with the cautionary prod of thorns.
“Why do you want it?” Rio hums, switching the direction of the conversation before clearing her throat.
Agatha is silent for a second, “I don’t.”
Liar.
Rio’s mind immediately flags down the other woman’s tells, and she’s slightly insulted that Agatha could ever think that she could successfully slip past Rio. After all these years, the crinkle in her brow and the twitch of the left side of mouth has remained the same when she lies.
She could call her out now, and taunt the fact that despite Agatha’s best efforts, Rio will always know her better than anyone else. But if she’s going to really allow herself to sink her teeth into this (most probably detrimental to her health) option, she’s not going to outright state it.
“You’ll be fine if I take this then?” Rio asks with a fake innocence, “Just… Walking away with it in my possession?”.
“Completely fine with it,” Agatha answers cooly as she flicks her hair over one shoulder in a smooth motion before crossing her arms. Her lips are pursed and she’s looking to the ground, “I actively encourage it in fact. It gets you further away from me .”
It’s a throwaway line. This isn’t the first time Agatha’s said something like this (they can’t have spent centuries together in complete harmony after all). But it’s the first time it has stung so badly in Rio’s entire existence.
She hates her. God, Rio hates Agatha so much. Rio hates how Agatha’s simple reappearance already has her acting up. She absolutely despises everything about the woman adjacent to her, simply because she can’t find it in her to do so genuinely. Simply because she’s still in love with her.
There’s a rage bubbling up that she can’t shake. Rio’s jaw clenches tighter and her brows furrow as she raises her arm to show off the compass in a grand gesture.
“ Perfect ,” she spits out, “I’ve been meaning to get a new plaything to mess around with.”
With that, Rio releases her hold on the compass and lets it drop . Her eyes are trained on Agatha as she watches her facade drop. Those devastatingly blue eyes widen in alarm, her shoulders jerk back, there’s a sharp intake of breath, and one of Agatha’s hands quickly shoots forward in a reaching motion.
The exact second after Rio had gotten what she wanted, she suddenly dropped her arm in order to catch the compass. The metal smacks against her palm. Going to press the object against her heart, she gives Agatha an expectant look before letting out a mocking gasp.
“That isn’t the kind of behaviour of someone happy to let go of something, Agatha.”
The other witch glares at Rio. If only looks could kill…
“Hand it over,” Agatha demands, taking powerful strides forward. They’re centimetres apart, and Rio is able to note that Agatha still smells like persimmons and smoke, even though her breathing has become fractionally restricted, given the shortened distance between the pair.
Rio shakes her head, “Finders keepers.”
“What are you, five? ”
Rio rolls her eyes, “I’m a primordial host. I’m as old as the dawn of all time.”
“ Correction, ” Agatha interrupts her, “That magick in you is as old as the dawn of time. You, however, are three-hundred-and-forty.” Rio scoffs. She’d ask if Agatha had a thing for always being in the know , but Rio already knew the answer to that.
“It’s not as if age is a deciding factor on who’s walking out with the compass anyway,” Rio states, “Though I still want to know why The Agatha Harkness is sneaking into an auction store-room in order to steal this magick guide. Didn’t you rob a witch who had mastered tracking incantations of her power fifty years ago?”
Agatha tenses slightly. “I’m… Looking for something.”
“.... Evidently .”
“I’m looking for the Pane of Arbitrium.”
Rio’s heartbeat fastens as she swallows harshly. Her muscles tighten and a wave of dizziness crashes through her mind. She knows the name of that dark artefact. It’s the very same name that was scrawled across the scroll she had summoned less than a week ago in the library of whatever-her-name-was.
“You know what it is,” Agatha states, annoyingly perceptive to the slight change in Rio’s being. Rio doesn’t trust herself to say anything, but she watches as Agatha goes through numerous trains of thought.
This is just her rotten luck. Out of the few other people who may be aware of the artefacts' very existence, one of them just had to be Agatha.
“You do too,” Rio echoes. She raises one eyebrow as she takes a few steps back, crossing her arms over her chest protectively. “What do you want with it?”.
Rio expects Agatha to say something about power, or to simply just be on the hunt for such a powerful item for the thrill. Neither of which are the case.
“I need to destroy it.”
Rio is near instant with her response, “I can’t let you do that.”
Agatha blinks once. Then blinks again. Her expression turns from serious to downright cruel once she registers what that meant about Rio’s intentions.
“ Oh… ” she draws out the sound as her cheshire-smirk widens, “You don’t just know of it. You’re looking for it too.”
Suddenly the high collar of Rio’s dress feels like sandpaper against her neck. She goes to look at anywhere else but Agatha, “I won’t be stopping my search just because you want to let your destructive desires loose. You can have it after I’m done using it for all I care.”
“And how will I know that you won’t go running off with it?” Agatha snorts, “You have an annoying habit of slipping away.”
Rio feels her simmering rage bubble up once again. How ironic of Agatha to say that. “I won’t.”
“And am I supposed to trust your word?” Agatha prompts with furrowed brows. There’s a wave of her hand where a purple mist simmers across her skin. Rio barely has time to block the potent, purple forcefield that was directed at the compass in her grip.
“I could easily take that compass,” Agatha continues, “I’d be directed to that damned magick artefact within an instant and I’d find it before the night was even over.”
It’s her typical head-strong behaviour, and it’s enough to clue Rio in on the fact that Agatha doesn’t actually know how to obtain the artefact. The Pane of Arbitrium is summoned, not found.
“Fine,” Rio hums, blowing a stray piece of hair out of her face as she extends her arm towards Agatha with the compass presented on her palm, “Go on then. Find it. ”
Agatha’s quick to take hold of the compass, but she doesn’t move. Instead she stays staring at Rio with an openly suspicious stare. Rio flashes her canines in a sickly-sweet smile as a response. Agatha turns and starts taking a few steps away. Rio holds her breath for a moment.
The other woman only makes it a few more paces before she’s paused again. Rio stifles her chuckle as she watches Agatha’s actions play out exactly how she expected them to.
Whirling around with a furious expression, Agatha once again closes the distance between them.
“You know something,” she accuses with a frosty glare, one hand holding the compass and the other clutching the velvet collar of Rio’s dress.
“ Do I? ”
“Stop fucking around with me, Rio.”
“So long as you stop your temper tantrum,” Rio shoots back, tilting her head to the right. She puts up her hands in a mock-surrender.
“Take my word,” Rio breathes out, “Once I acquire the artefact, I can safely deposit it somewhere after I use it. You can go on your little treasure hunt and then spend your afternoon firing hexes at it, hm?”.
“Your word means nothing to me,” Agatha snarks, “I’ll be there in the very moment the artefact is found.”
She lets go of Rio's collar. Rio savours the taste of pollen and ivy against her tongue, “Will you now?”.
“Yes,” the other witch insists.
“I’m not telling you what I know, Agatha.”
“Work with me then,” Agatha snaps, and for a moment Rio questions whether she’s entered an alternate universe. “It’s obvious you know something about locating the artefact that I don’t. I don’t see you giving it up, and I’m not planning to quit my search. So unless you want to deal with me sabotaging your every move… Work with me to find it.”
There’s a beat of silence. “I could do this solo. Why do I need to drag you along?” Rio huffs. There are a hundred other things she would prefer over work with Agatha. She questions why she even decided to humour the other witch earlier instead of taking off with the auction piece she needed.
“Because you need me.”
“Excuse me?” Rio questions with an irritated scowl. Agatha gives her an irritated expression, as if it was an obvious answer.
Agatha goes to push down the sleeve of her suit, pointing towards the pulse point on her wrist. Rio knows playing oblivious won’t help her here, their blood bond has given her away.
“Obtaining objects festering with dark magick takes power, and you’re weak,” Agatha states, “Even with your scattered soul, I can sense something going on with that ancient power in you.”
She’s right to an extent. Her primordial power is perfectly fine, what’s wrong with her is a lovesickness that has perfectly meshed with her green-witch magick. Random fatiguing drops of power have become her norm. It’s the reason why she has had to resort to more common incantations and runes more frequently. She still hasn’t fully recovered from the summoning ritual she had cast in the library.
“So what’s your decision, Rio?” Agatha prompts in an almost taunting manner, “Your knowledge and my power together. And once we obtain the Pane of Arbitrium, you get first dibs on its properties before handing off ownership to me.”
Rio grits her teeth. She needs to find her successor sooner rather than later, and this would be the most efficient route. Even if she hated everything about it.
“The allyship ends immediately after the terms of our agreement are met.”
“Deal.”
The next moments blur in Rio’s perception. Agatha is focusing her power into drawing a settlement rune in the air, and a minute passes before the angular details are buzzing with purple magic.
Agatha clears her throat and gives Rio an expectant look. They both reach forward and grasp each others hands through the middle of the sigil, and Agatha goes to murmur the spell.
“ Hoc vinculum nunquam solvatur, magno enim periclo quivis proditores erit”.
Looking into one another's eyes, both give a stiff nod as they channel a small surge of their own magick into each other's palms. It’s electrifying, and Rio craves the sensation of syphoning power the more she’s exposed to it.
Once the sigil disappears, marking a complete spell, the moment is over, and Agatha’s touch slips away with it.
“Shall we?” Agatha says, nodding to the exit of the room, compass now tucked away in her suit pocket. She’s walking off before Rio even gives a response. Rio nods stiffly in spite of that fact, before following the other woman.
She pushes down the thought that she has once again signed her own death certificate with her very actions.
Notes:
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!
The final two episodes DESTROYED me and proceeded to push me into a writing spiral until I got this chapter out (if Marvel won't give them a happy ending... THEN I WILL---- eventually that is). I hope you enjoyed reading! <33 until next time xx
Chapter 3: heathers & hyacinths I
Summary:
“With what charm?” The snark is quick and instinctual. As sharp as a knife with Rio’s tone. Agatha’s eyes narrow slightly, but she still displays signs of sheer amusement from riling up Rio.
“Please,” the other witch scoffs, “You of all women should know how charming I can be.”
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Caught in the golden cast of a setting sun, the two witches flee the auction estate with a recklessly cast concealment charm and their stolen prize safely tucked away in Agatha’s suit pocket.
Agatha is leading the way with powerful strides that appear as fluid as water, and before Rio even has a thought to question where they’re going, she’s hiking up the skirts of her gown and following suit. The pathway they’re on grows narrower, and soon enough they’ve strayed as far away from the main entrance to the manor they were in as possible.
(And even though Rio has loudly complained how inconvenient it is to trek through oncoming woodland since they stepped outside, she’s glad that they’re taking the long way round for a getaway; she’s not sure if she would be able to remain in a state of more-or-less performative nonchalance if she’s reeling from the magick-demand of a teleportation incantation.
Though Rio won’t tell Agatha either of those points. In fact, it’ll probably do her some good to complain even louder).
❀
There are whereabouts unidentifiable to non-magick perception. Locations that are for the solitary knowledge of witch-folk, found only by word of mouth or the sheer magick trace such sites exude. So, when Agatha pauses at an ivy-covered archway after non-stop walking, Rio quickly clocks that this is their final destination of the night.
Tucked away between two antique book stores on some inconsequential street an hours walk away from the estate they had reunited, Rio can almost taste the magick buzzing in the air despite no other witches being in sight; there’s no overt sign, just a soft, almost imperceptible hum that vibrates within her chest.
In her peripheral vision, she watches Agatha roll up her sleeves before pointing both of her index fingers in front of her. There’s a misty purple smoke before magic is buzzing from her fingertips, and Agatha slowly moves her hands until a complete unveiling rune has been drawn out. There’s a moment where Agatha lets it linger in the air before pushing the rune forward with a small surge of power. Rio can feel the aftereffects of the magick echo through her bones in a small shockwave.
(Rio tries her best to fight back the intruding thought that part of it feels alien to her. That they’ve been apart for so long that she can no longer recognise a part of Agatha’s core being as if it were her own).
There’s a crackle and multiple creaks before anything happens. Before everything unfolds in parallel motions.
The ivy that once posed as stagnant across the archway started to twitch, morphing and spiralling out of control. Within a few moments, the pointed edges of the leaves had all turned upwards before an iridescent, silver sheen covered the various green hues of the plant.
There’s a rumbling and a quiet tremor, and Rio’s throat feels heavy with old magick leaking out from the actions sprawling out in front of her. The stone of the archway appears to fold in on itself, and soon enough the rough sandstone is crumbling down and reforming itself into pillars, revealing carved golden concealment runes that are at least a century old.
Finally, there’s a distinct sharp snap of magick before a door appears. Aged cherry wood with a beeswax shine that smells of smokey whiskey.
Agatha goes to reach forward, pulling on the handle with a swift tug before looking to Rio with a pair of frosty eyes. “Ladies first,” Agatha prompts, gesturing with her hand for Rio to walk through the door first.
Rio takes a moment to look between the woman and the newly appeared entrance. What’s revealed from her position are simple, wood-bound walls and a wide set of stairs that curve around a corner in one swooping angle.
“How gentlemanly,” Rio mutters as she takes a few steps over the newly appeared threshold, “Does the attitude come with the suit, or is it sold separately?”.
“It’s a survival tactic,” Agatha replies easily with a shrug, leaning ever-so-slightly on the edge of the door she had held open for Rio, “If there are any unwelcoming inhabitants, I’ll just close the door on you and escape with the compass.”
How charming. Rio expected nothing less.
“You’re forgetting I can’t die,” Rio snorts. Not yet anyway. “And that we have a sigil binding us now. You can’t backstab me.”
“Not yet anyways,” Agatha hums as if it’s a promise. There’s a spark of amusement in her eyes, and it makes Rio feel slightly nauseated. Stony silence would be safer than what’s going on right now. Their rapport is too familiar.
It’s stinging her insides.
“I’ll hold my breath,” Rio says monotonously with a sharp shrug, quickly turning to head down the stairs without looking back to see if Agatha is following her. Though from the soft creak of door hinges and the louder thud of footsteps behind her, she knows Agatha’s close by. Rio can only pray to the world's false deities that she’ll stay away at an arm's distance for the foreseeable future.
The descent down the spiral stairs is warmly lit, but ends after a minute of steady footfalls. Soon enough, Rio is pushing forward a large set of oak doors to reveal an unfamiliar, looming room.
The chamber presented in front of her gives off a lively aura.
It’s as if the modern world had been erased entirely in order to give way to a hidden speakeasy, carved out from the bones of a forgotten era, full of witch-folk talking amongst themselves as they demand for a never ending flow of liqueur. They’re all too busy in their own orbits to notice any new arrivals to the room, and thankfully, they’re all dressed to the nines, allowing Agatha and Rio to blend in with their formal attire.
The low glow of amber lamps spill across the room, casting long, dramatic shadows against walls lined with bookshelves. If Rio were to squint her eyes, she could just about tell what the titles etched onto the spines of various books were. And whilst she would have been interested in the French translations of an advanced arcana guide or whatever else lay collecting dust on those shelves, today isn’t the day for that.
“Are places like this where you’ve been hiding out all these years?” Rio questions, her filter forgotten for a moment. Agatha doesn’t reply immediately, and Rio already knows the answer from that alone.
“More or less,” the other woman replies anyway.
Agatha takes a step forward and Rio can smell her signature scent of bergamot. Two seconds later, that haze of citrus is overpowered by the pervasive presence of rust at the back of her throat. Rio looks over her shoulder and meets those damned blue eyes watching her intently.
A chill rushes up her spine, and Rio is quick to move away.
Her heels click against the hardwoods below her as she makes a show of walking by the rows of bookshelves. The tickle in her throat becomes an ever present ache, and soon enough Rio’s facing away from Agatha with her wide eyes locked on a dust-collecting apothecary book set.
The air around her feels as if it’s shifting. It’s too thick to breathe.
Rio squeezes her eyes shut and forces herself to take in a quiet lungful of oxygen. She can’t be giving herself away. She’s gotten too far to do so.
With one shaky palm, she reaches to cover her mouth and coughs . One singular cough. Something anyone would do to clear their throat. There’s nothing suspicious about that. Pulling her palm away, she stifles a small wince. Rio forces herself to carry on facing forward as if she’s studying the tilted spines of the literature in front of her, taking a temporary solace in having somewhat clear airways once again. Her gaze flits down to her palm.
Blood. Too much of it. A ruby splatter that’s threatening to drip through her fingers with a scattering of curled purple petals embedded in the macabre mess.
Weighing out her options, Rio bites the inside of her cheek as she brushes her palm against the side of her dress. What a convenient day to look good in black.
“ So ,” Rio says with a slight shake, “Do you think any of these books can help us on our little quest?”.
She can almost sense Agatha rolling her eyes behind her. “If you want to read through the words of hermits believing their paperback will be the next big thing, be my guest.”
There’s more footsteps. Agatha’s presence is too close for comfort once again. Rio forces herself to turn around, schooling her presence into indifference, “What do you propose we do then?”
Agatha looks around, and her lashes flutter a little as she surveys the room from their corner, “That we find a much more private place to share what we know.”
“Already trying to escape the crowds, Harkness?”
Agatha seems to raise one brow in amusement at being referred to by her last name. Rio feels her cheeks grow hot.
She loathes it. She loathes herself. She loathes Agatha.
“I’d rather not risk having a silent audience to what we have to discuss.”
❀
They rent out a room for the night after swiping a bottle of overpriced wine.
The first hour was spent with Agatha reading and rereading Rio’s summoned scroll, and asking questions about anything and everything to do with it. Rio does her best to answer the other witches' prompts safely tucked away in a chair on the opposite side of the room with her legs swung over the seats arms.
She’s observing Agatha piece together the cryptic cues and too-small font over and over again, noting down the crinkle that is ever-present on her brow. She wants to forget that she knows that it means Agatha is in deep thought as she takes another sip from her wine glass.
(She hates the taste. But she appreciates the distracting revulsion over the blooming turmoil within her thorax).
In the second hour of being alone together, after Rio’s sure she can breathe clearly once again, they sit closer. Agatha’s resting her chin on her knees as she sits in the chair beside Rio in the most unconventional way possible. Both of their eyes are trained on their stolen magick artefact on the table between them.
“Well, it’s… A compass,” Agatha says with a frustrated flick of her wrist. Rio knows Agatha’s growing impatient trying to figure out how to use it. Agatha was never one for happily waiting for what she wanted.
“Your perceptual skills never fail to amaze me, Agatha.”
Rio hears the other woman scoff in response to her comment. She tries her best to prevent her smirk from showing.
“ Well aren’t you catty ,” Agatha goes to provoke her, prodding Rio’s shoulder with her index finger. Rio goes to meet her eyes and finds a fire waiting to be fueled.
She goes to flash her canines in a forced smile and withholds the urge to fight back with a hiss. Agatha has accused her of having the defence mechanisms of a cat one too many times in their past, and Rio would rather not give the other witch the satisfaction of being right.
There’s a beat of silence where Agatha seems to realise that Rio isn’t biting back. Then there’s a flash of suspicion in her eyes which Rio chooses to ignore in favour of reaching forward to pick up the golden compass between them. Her fingertips graze the shining edges as she feels the engravings they had discovered on the object's left side a while ago.
" Dic tuam tristitiam ,” Rio rasps out, flipping the compass in her palm to its right side before reading out the other set of engravings, “ et tuam solutionem. "
Rio brings her bottom lip between her teeth and bites down as she thinks. “Say your woe and resolution,” Agatha says the translation with a slight frown.
They had tried in as many ways as possible. In as many languages as possible. Their demands to be guided to their first summoning component remained unanswered.
They let their frustration and confusion fester in silence for the next fifteen minutes, stubbornly keeping their eyes trained on the compass.
“What does the scroll say again?” Rio prompts. Agatha silently hands it to her, and Rio grasps the paper between her fingertips as she studies the words once again. Their desired spell components had been outlined in Latin riddles which she and Agatha had quickly worked their way through, but it still felt as if there was something missing .
“We need an advanced protection scroll,” she repeats Agatha’s words from earlier in the evening, “That much is obvious from the first riddle… But why .”
Agatha quirks a brow, “ Why? We’re looking for a physical embodiment of dark magick. Why wouldn’t we need a protection scroll?”
Rio shrugs a little, “Spells this ancient aren’t like the contemporary one’s we use now. When have their forgotten makers cared for user safety?”.
“In all fairness, the magick we use currently isn’t that friendly either.”
There’s a dark chuckle that’s shared between the two. “But… You make a convincing point,” Agatha continues, “ I suppose. ”
There’s a small surge of pride that goes to Rio’s mind. “ So , if the protection scroll isn’t for us…”
“Then it’s for those uninvolved,” Agatha finishes Rio’s thought like clockwork, “To keep the consequences reigning down on us, and us only.”
They share a look. No words are exchanged, but there’s a new, sudden understanding, and with it, the pair know they have their solution.
“Say the riddle. Now ,” Agatha breathes out as she reaches over to place her hand on the compass next to Rio’s.
Rio concedes, letting the Latin phonetics tumble off of her tongue in rapid succession as she channels her green magick into the golden object. From the pin-prickling feeling from where her skin brushes against Agatha’s, she knows the other witch is doing the exact same.
Rio only allows herself to take a breath after finishing the riddle, and as she looks up at Agatha and gives a small nod, she lets the other woman answer her words.
“ Scutum ,” Agatha says with conviction. It’s their answer. It has to be. They’re looking for a shield .
The pair stop charging the compass with their magick, looking down with anticipation. Rio’s heart nearly plummets in the wait, but soon enough the orienting lines start shrinking and expanding as the orienting arrow of the object moves . And to end it all, the singular needle behind thick glass starts to spin until it abruptly stops in one direction.
Rio blinks once, and then again. A wicked smile breaks free on her face, and she looks to Agatha who’s still looking down at the compass.
Her feeling of triumph is quickly squashed by what’s said next.
“Rio, why is the needle still moving?”.
❀
Nothing has ever been easy for them, and finding their shield is most certainly a task that has shot up their blood pressure a concerning amount.
They spend the next two and a half weeks chasing a forever changing target location, and they’re quick to figure out they’re not tracking a ‘ what ’ but instead a ‘ who ’.
(During that time, Rio also figures out the most inconspicuous ways to choke on flora without being noticed).
❀
Agatha’s insistent they’re at the right place, and from the pointers the compass is giving, she’s right. Though that doesn’t mean that Rio has to like that fact. She’s never enjoyed crowds.
Over their wild chase, they know their target isn’t one to sit still and has a horrid sleep schedule. The only time they seem to remain in one place is between the hours of ten at night to one in the morning. Consequently, that’s the time frame Rio and Agatha have stuck to when tracking them down, leading to their current moment.
Laughter echoes across the room as the two witches stay perched on two barstools in the corner. The atmosphere is carefully crafted in the bar, which is much nicer than ones Rio has had to visit in the past to collect a handful of fallen souls.
There are clusters of people tucked away in plush booths, clinking their glasses with each others as conversation flows easily. Though most people's attention is focused on the centre of the room over their buddies beside them.
Emphasised with a warm spotlight, there’s a platformed circular stage in the middle of the room. Throughout the night there have been various acts leading up to the main entertainment for the night, none of which they had paid much attention to.
Though, once the clock had struck to ten, both Agatha and Rio had set down their drinks and leant forward with a keen interest on who would come on next. Five minutes later, the bar was greeted with three performers going up to take their positions on stage before leaping straight into their set.
“It’s her,” Agatha states bluntly. Rio doesn’t need to ask who she’s referring to, she already knows. The other two on stage are very obviously non-magick beings.
Their target was an older Asian woman with red-streaked hair and a talent for the piano. Rio thinks her face is slightly familiar, but she can’t pin why. What she does know is that their target, this witch, has waves of protection magick rolling off of her leather-clad shoulder.
It’s in a passive state. But it’s mouth-wateringly powerful.
Rio fiddles with her own fingers, tilting her head to the side, “It’ll be best to confront her as soon as the performance ends. We can’t waste time.”
Agatha shrugs, leaning back against the dark-wood counter of the bar behind them. “In a place like this , they’re sure to have private dressing rooms. We’ll corner her then,” she says with an air of finality.
Rio takes her eyes off of the performance to look to the woman to her right, “Our only concern is getting her to cooperate.”
There’s a wicked little speck of chaos growing in Agatha’s eyes at her words, “Awe, hon , are you not a fan of using brute force?”.
Rio doesn’t answer straight away, and she forces herself to brush over the oh so familiar pet name.
She’s never been one to shy away from gore. In fact, she finds a twisted solace in violence after having plucked so many souls from the claws of brutality. And she’s aware her and Agatha are one in the same.
The other witch has never given a second thought to claiming additional lives to get what she wants, and Agatha has never failed to make a spectacle out of each purple-tinged massacre. It’s hauntingly beautiful. Rio could watch her shape the end of anyone's life line and never grow bored.
But this isn’t like the other times. She can’t afford to let their target do anything but cooperate, and unfortunately for them, Agatha and Rio are a type of indelible duo with a penchant for getting on every other person's bad side.
“I think a softer approach is necessary,” Rio frowns. Agatha gives her a look as if she had grown a second head. This confusion is becoming a much more prominent aspect in every interaction they’ve had since reuniting. It’s a not so gentle reminder to Rio that she’s on a draining timer. Agatha was far from stupid.
Rio looks back to the performance going on, feeling the heat of Agatha’s attention disconcerting her once again.
“At least, for now,” Rio murmurs. Her eyes flit back Agatha despite the fact she had looked away a mere few seconds ago, an old habit which has come back in full force in the past fortnight. The other witch doesn’t seem appeased with Rio’s words.
“What is it that you want then?” Agatha asks, her voice low and cutting across the sound of the room. She gives Rio a mocking smile as she says her next words, “To charm our way in?”.
“I was more thinking we could just walk backstage with a simple concealment charm,” Rio answers, unable to withhold her urge to roll her eyes, “I know you just can’t wait to sink your claws into a scene, but this isn’t like the auction. There aren’t any magick wards or guarding witches. There’s no need for your grandeur.”
Agatha lets out an amused chuckle next. Rio shifts in her seat. Her emotions were buzzing erratically in her mind, and all of a sudden, her chest felt too full. The room felt too busy.
“ There’s that familiar bite of yours,” Agatha husks out as if she had won a prize, “I was worried you had gone soft over the years.”
Hell , Agatha is predictable. So, so predictable. But Rio’s worse for playing right into her hands. Agatha wanted a reaction out of her, and Rio had given her exactly what she wanted with barely any prompting once a lure was set.
There’s a small squeak as Agatha’s bar stool swivels round, and suddenly with them facing each other, their knees are a hair's breadth away from touching. Rio looks down to the near-point of contact before turning her attention back to Agatha, who’s placed one elbow against the bar countertop as she rests her cheek against her palm.
She sees nothing but the woman she loves and the cruellest of intentions.
“It’s a real shame that that’s our plan,” Agatha drawls, her ingenuine smile never breaking. Crystal blue eyes never leave Rio’s dark gaze as she leans closer, “I could have had some fun flirting with security.”
“With what charm?” The snark is quick and instinctual. As sharp as a knife with Rio’s tone. Agatha’s eyes narrow slightly, but she still displays signs of sheer amusement from riling up Rio.
“ Please, ” the other witch scoffs, “ You of all women should know how charming I can be.” It’s a deliberate taunt. Rio should cut things off right then and there.
She doesn’t.
“ Not really ,” Rio whispers, leaning ever so slightly closer, “You’ve never been much of a charmer. I remember you falling on your face the first time you wanted my attention.”
Agatha’s jaw tenses slightly. It was once a good memory that had turned bitter with their history. They were young, and in love, and complete fools for one another.
In their current time, they are none of the three.
(Rio forces back down the memories that spill out in retaliation to mentioning that small part of their history. She shouldn’t be recalling how she had laughed bashfully after Agatha had confirmed she was okay after her fall. She shouldn’t be letting her stomach swoop at the memory of Agatha grabbing her by the waist and bringing her down on a pile of leaves when Rio had reached down to try to help her back up.
It’ll only make things hurt even more).
Refusing to back down, Rio continues, “You weren’t that charming after, either.”
Agatha’s hand twitches slightly. The air between them crackled with a thick irritation and the undertones of a budding competition.
“Tell me then, Rio ,” Agatha starts, her voice a little too calm. She drags her gaze across Rio’s body in a purposefully slow movement, “How many witches have you charmed then? I can’t imagine many falling head over heels for Death .”
Rio’s body feels electric as her heart hammers. There’s a rage bubbling up in her stomach. She knows full well when Agatha looks at her, she will only ever see Rio as a host of a cosmic entity with no other purpose than to take .
(Agatha used to not mind it before, she thinks at least. Rio can never be sure. But after her job became personal, there was nothing but unfiltered rage left.
And the worst thing? Rio can’t even blame her. She lost her son that day too).
Taking a deep, rattling breath, Rio forces herself back into their current situation. Agatha is incredibly close. Closer than Rio should allow. How hadn’t she noticed? The suffocation from the other woman’s presence makes Rio want to drown in her perfume and the petals that are currently building in pressure between her ribs.
Fuck, it hurts . Rio wants to hurt Agatha too.
“...Just one,” Rio whispers. Her voice is gentle and revealing, and she waits until she sees the first spark of satisfaction in Agatha reveal itself in order to crush it underneath her heel, “Since you, that is.”
Agatha’s reaction is near-instantaneous with the corners of her mouth tightening and her brows furrowing slightly. That got her attention.
“Do you really expect me to believe that?” Agatha nearly spits out after giving out a breathless laugh. Her next action is quick as Agatha’s fingers wrap around her left wrist. The pressure is firm, and bordering on bruising as she tugs Rio forward, their chests now flush against each other.
“Don’t think I haven’t noticed a distinct tan line on your ring finger, Vidal .”
What’s between them is a mixture of frustration, disdain, and something heavier. Something that made Rio want to lash out and run away. The scars across her torso burn as if they’ve been set alight.
Rio’s pulse picks up as she slowly starts her rebuttal, “The funny thing about the whole being Death gimmick, is that my cells replenish at a much slower rate. So, unfortunately for both of us, this little reminder will be present for quite some time, even though I took that ring off long, long ago.”
It was a lie of course. A very bad one.
That statement may have been true if she was any other type of witch before she took up the mantle of Lady Death. She was a green witch at her core; most connected to nature and most in touch with restorative incantations. The art of healing flowed through her veins, meaning that Rio never had to wait long before her bruises had dissipated and her cuts had vanished.
She is a healer. Was a healer. And she could have easily maintained a clean bill of health for the rest of her eternity if it wasn’t for Agatha.
Though she doubts Agatha realises that, given how logic never applied much to them after all. The two were driven on impulse when together.
The grip on her wrist slackens, and Rio pulls away, leaning back and putting some distance between them. She watches as Agatha goes to grab the drink she had abandoned a long while ago. Her grip is strong against the glass tumbler, knuckles whitening.
“ Well, I thank whatever primordial force is out there for that then, ” Agatha says, downing the amber liquid in her glass in one.
Rio wants to reply. She can’t.
Her throat is constricting and she feels a tell-tale stutter at the base of her lungs. There's a raw, shard-like sensation crawling up her trachea that causes shivers to spread across her tanned skin. She’s been too reckless with Agatha. She needs to get away. Quick.
“Enjoy the performance. I’m going to scout out the entrances to the backstage,” Rio just about husks out after forcing a jagged cough to be a gentler exhale of air.
She’s quick to walk away from their corner of the bar, forcing herself to keep at a regular pace no matter how hard her vision starts to blur. She doesn’t look back at Agatha, unable to stomach any retort the other woman would surely have for her running away after their spat.
❀
Rio thinks she sees glowing directions backstage after she rounds the corner.
She’s not quite sure, she’s too busy barging into a thankfully empty bathroom and dropping to her knees in the closest stall. Her body is shaking with convulsions that are too violent to hold back. Perhaps this is retribution for attempting to mute them so much recently.
Rio doesn’t keep track of how much time she’s spent in her hacking fit, but once she finally takes a raw, vulnerable gasp of air after the worst of it is over, she looks down to see a mocking smattering of red and purple.
Notes:
andddd chapter 3 is here!!!!!
I'm glad i finally got to update, November has been nothing but assignment deadlines :'0 I hope you guys enjoyed!! (I pinky swear they get a happy ending--- I promise-- it just gets worse before it gets better and having little miss unreliable narrator Rio Vidal just makes things a bit more angsty :'D)
Chapter 4: heathers & hyacinths II
Summary:
“Listen, we want to be out of here just as quickly as you want us gone-”
“Ohh, strong start there, hon,” The witch beside her remarks.
“Agatha!” Rio snaps at her, her jaw clenching slightly.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The rest of the evening goes by in a haze of second-hand cigarette smoke and Rio nursing the same sickly sweet drink for hours. She appreciates the way the artificial cherry taste masks the tang of iron in her mouth, no matter how nauseating it is to take another sip. It’s a distraction that’s enough to settle her nerves ever so slightly.
By the time the entertainment for the night is nearing its end, Rio’s abandoned the glass in a half-empty state as her and Agatha sneak their way to the dressing rooms backstage. Though with the way Agatha has a hold on her sleeve as they start walking through a crowd of tipsy strangers, Rio can’t help but desire for another distractor.
❀
The allocated backstage area for the performers is a narrow, dimly lit hallway, its walls lined with slightly chipped paint and fading signed posters from past performers. There was a faint echo of the final song of the night bouncing off of the worn wooden floor that was a gentle reminder that Rio and Agatha had to work fast.
The performers' dressing rooms were scattered along the hallway, each door labelled with a simple number and no sign of any names. The light above wasn’t like the warmly lit bar area, it was flickering in spots, cold, and casting long shadows that seemed to spill out onto the floor. Quite frankly, it was all a depressingly dreary sight for such an up-scale location.
Alas, Rio couldn’t sacrifice precious time in favour of lamenting about how artists should be getting treated better. So, she takes a deep breath as she tries to filter out any extraneous noise in order to focus in on a magick trail.
There’s silence before it appears. Withering and waning, but an altogether constant. It feels warm, and flashes a golden afterglow behind Rio’s eyelids. Protection Magick. She doesn’t have to ask to know if Agatha’s sensed it too. It’s as clear as day once it’s noticed.
So, they both step forward together in sync, going towards the strengthening source of warm magick at the very end of the hallway.
As they step into their target's room, Agatha is quick to snoop around. She’s whistling a small tune that Rio faintly recognises, but she can’t remember from where. Rio stays lingering awkwardly in the doorway, watching Agatha’s every move with a blank expression, and soon enough the other witch turns around to meet her gaze.
“ Well , are you going to come in?” Agatha asks with a raised brow. She says it so casually that it startles Rio. She says it in a way that doesn’t give away the fact they were at eachothers throats two hours ago (and how they hadn’t said a word to each other in the interim between then and now). Part of Rio recognises this behaviour in her core, even though it’s been years; they push each other to their limits and then brush it off once the dust has settled.
It used to make her feel alive before. Now she only feels tired, so she goes to step into the room and close the door without giving a verbal answer.
There’s a distinct smell of leather and smoke filtering around the room, causing Rio’s head to spin lightly. Agatha perches atop a small dressing table opposite her, snooping through what’s been left out, and she scoffs a little as she opens the top drawer of the dresser.
“ No one needs this many fingerless leather gloves,” Agatha says pointedly, picking one up and running a fingertip across metal-spiked knuckles, “Do you think there’s a support group for this kind of deal?”.
Rio shoots her a glare, but she can’t stop the way the edges of her lips tug up ever so slightly at Agatha’s words, “We’re waiting to meet our vital first key for our summoning ritual, and you’re concerned about her taste in fashion? ”.
“A clearly lacking taste,” Agatha goes to point out, “A bad sense of fashion. It’s the thing I hate most in the world.”
Rio could list a million things she knows that would set Agatha off far worse than any old pair of gloves could, Rio included , but she doesn’t feel in the best shape to challenge Agatha’s theatrics with empirical arguments… So she’ll settle for taunting instead.
“Didn’t you wear nothing but leather ages ago?”
“ I made it work,” Agatha replies with a snippy tone. There’s a beat of silence before she flips her hair dramatically, letting out a huff, “Though it’s not like you visited me much during that time.”
Rio lets out a dark chuckle. She remembers that time all too well. They had fallen out for a reason she can’t even recall now, but it had spiralled into a venomous little argument that led her and Agatha on non-speaking terms for longer than either of them appreciated. Admittedly, both were trying to pour salt in each other's wounds at that time; it was an unwritten competition of who could go without the other for the longest.
(Agatha had won then. Just like she always does with Rio, and for the longest time Rio had loathed to admit how simply human the other woman made her.
But now, she’s grateful to know that Agatha will be fine without her. Even if the knowledge makes her blood run cold).
“You left enough bodies growing cold for me to know,” Rio shrugs, looking down to the floor.
Agatha lets out a disbelieving laugh, “Well doesn’t that make a girl feel special . To be watched but not approached.”
How dramatic. It wasn’t as if Agatha was looking over her shoulder to catch a glimpse of Rio. “You didn’t want to see me then anyway . ”
Agatha frowns a little as she tilts her head to the side, “ Didn’t I? ”.
Stop it. Stop it. Stop it .
Agatha’s having fun plucking at her strings just like she always does. Rio shouldn’t be hanging onto her every word. Rio’s a fool to even consider anything else but what she already knows when it comes to her.
She doesn’t want her. She doesn’t want her. She doesn’t want her.
“No, you didn’t ,” Rio whispers in a soft but firm confirmation, going to trace the collar of her shirt with her fingers before tugging it up a bit higher. Her other arm goes to protectively cover her stomach, “We were separated fully then, and history has only gone to repeat itself. We’ve led lives with each other and away from each other.”
That’s another lie. She’s getting used to spouting them more often than not now.
Rio has known no joy and no agony in the way it manifests in her life with Agatha. And she’s not quite sure if she can count the other part of her existence, the part that doesn’t revolve around Agatha, without experiencing those extremes. But then again, she still existed during those times, so she’s not entirely sure what to conclude.
“Oh please, I know every detail of your life ,” Agatha scoffs, seemingly peeved by Rio’s fate-centred comments.
Silence.
“ You do now? ” Rio asks in a monotonous voice. Her being unimpressed would be an understatement.
With that Agatha finally puts the leather glove in her hand back down as she goes to stand up. It takes two steps for Agatha to be in her space with one finger curled under her chin. It takes two seconds for the air in Rio’s lungs to become thicker.
“One of us is much better at remaining secretive than the other... Your existence is a statement, and so is mine,” Agatha starts with a click of her tongue, “The only difference between us is that you’re the one unable to fade into the background for even just a second. You’re everywhere I see, Rio.”
She’s presumptuous, she’s arrogant, and she knows exactly what to say to make Rio feel powerless - so much for her primordial powers Rio supposes. They’re nothing in comparison to Agatha Harkness. Though that doesn’t mean she can’t pretend that she’s not affected by Agatha’s jab.
So what if death festered across the glove at an alarming rate? It’s a cosmic balance she needs to upkeep, and she’s shattered her soul, quite literally, to do so. Agatha may have seen Rio in the kill count she constantly grows and also in the passive mortality of the world, but that doesn’t mean she’s watched Rio beyond that.
Rio looks at Agatha through her lashes as she forces herself to remain appearing impassive, “Did you know I was a blonde for a decade?”.
She already knows the answer is no, but getting confirmation isn’t why she asked; the statement is out there, and it’s clearly something that Agatha didn’t expect Rio to say, given how the fire in her eyes dies down a little. The challenge dissipates to make way for muted confusion.
The heat of their situation cools down a little. Rio can breathe a little clearer now.
Though of course she was never one that was allowed to settle with peace for long, because in the next moment Rio hears the dressing room door swing open. She focuses in on the direction of the sound to spot their target’s red-streaked hair.
In her periphery, she notices Agatha had opened her mouth to reply, but the other witch had locked in on the new presence in the room as well, and whatever words she had planned to say died on her lips. Both witches stay silent, waiting for their presence to be noticed.
It doesn’t take long.
Their target turns around after closing the door behind them. She has one hand covering her mouth as she lets out a large yawn. The exhaustion from a long night of performing was clearly catching up to her, though the sleepy squint of her eyes quickly disappeared to a widening gaze of shock once she realised she wasn’t alone.
“Oh, uh…” their target starts with an awkward mumble, looking between Rio and Agatha with a small frown, “ Sorry-... I must have gone into the wrong room by-”
“You’re in the right place,” Rio is quick to assure, unblinking.
“ Alright…? ” their target says slowly as she goes to take a few steps closer, grabbing a pair of keys that were left on her dresser and putting them in her jacket pocket, “Then… Aren’t you both in the wrong place?”.
There’s a seven second pause that buzzed with an awkward air, and Rio has no clue what to say. She probably should have written a script out in her head for this, it was easier to say things when she practised saying them in her head repeatedly before ever uttering the words out loud.
Though by the time Rio has pieced together what she may say in her head, Agatha had let out a dramatic sigh before going to take the lead, “Look, kid , we’re here to ask you for something.”
“Listen if you want to talk business, reaching out to my manager will get you further than talking to me when I’m on three hours of sleep,” the younger woman says, crossing her arms across her chest as she looks at the pair with a clear suspicion, “Also ‘kid’? I’m forty-three.”
Agatha waves a dismissive hand, “We’re not here to talk about your piano recitals.”
“We’re here to discuss your magick,” Rio speaks up, finishing Agatha’s sentence.
“ ...My what? ”
“ Come on ,” Agatha draws out, “don’t make her repeat it.”
Agatha goes to lean forward a little, moving her hand to do the kind of exaggerated faux-whisper that you would see in old movies, “I wouldn’t want to get on her bad side. She’s very hard to escape, you know.”
Rio lets out an indignant huff and elbows Agatha’s side, making the other witch shoot her a glare. Agatha may have agreed to not go into this discussion ready to bloody her knuckles, but of course that didn’t mean she’d stop her taunts and playful baiting... And their target seems to be taking it hook, line, and sinker, given away by how her eyes narrowed in distrust as she shifted her legs slightly apart; weight shifted to her back foot as if she was preparing to jump into motion, “You’re both witches.”
“Obviously,” Agatha scoffs, “A fact that would be obvious if you were at least a century old, kid. ”
“Stop calling me kid.”
“ Sure thing ,” Agatha says with a fake, sickly-sweet smile, “If we can get one teensy favour from you, that is. It’s nothing big, really.”
Their target laughs then. Freely and without any ounce of intimidation, only amusement, “That’s a bit arrogant of you. Two strangers coming into my dressing room and demanding my magick.”
“I know, I know , how vexing of us,” Agatha pretends to sympathise, “good thing you’ll be rid of us as soon as you work your little charms though.”
Their target is neither amused or relieved by Agatha’s words.
“We don’t want any trouble,” Rio starts, biting the inside of her cheek. She can’t believe she’s already trying to do damage control when they’ve barely even started their pitch.
“You both already seem like a problem.”
An annoyingly astute observation , Rio remarks to herself.
“Well that’s one way to describe us,” Agatha snorts, crossing her arms.
“ Agatha… ” Rio murmurs, her expression a small warning in itself. Agatha raises a brow as she meets her gaze, and blue eyes hold her brown for an uncomfortably long period before Agatha’s smirking to herself and shaking her head.
“Fine, I’ll let you take the lead,” she says in an easy manner, “But just this once, don’t let it get to your head, okay?”
Rio withholds her urge to throw something at her ex right then and there, choosing to fully face away from Agatha to address their target. She sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose as she thinks for a moment as she tries to figure out the best way to civilly get what they want. “ Listen, we want to be out of here just as quickly as you want us gone-”
“ Ohh, strong start there, hon,” The witch beside her remarks.
“ Agatha! ” Rio snaps at her, her jaw clenching slightly. She swears she can feel her blood pressure exponentially increasing as the seconds go by. Agatha’s smirk stays fixed, and maybe even deepens as she raises her hands in mock surrender to Rio’s small outburst.
Alright, perhaps trying to ease into it was a stupid decision. Blunt honesty is better when in doubt, at least in Rio’s eyes it is. “We need a shielding ward.”
Their target still looks considerably uneasy in their presence, and if Rio really focused, she could sense the woman’s protection magick fizzling at her fingertips.
“...And if you need it for your own piece of mind, I’ll swear it that there are no traps or hidden meanings in our ask,” Rio carries on, supposing that she’s tangled up in so much that there’s no harm in adding another incantation to her list. At this point she may as well make one with every other person still in the venue just for the thrills.
Their target seems to be deep in thought for a moment, and the next question she asks is more in the zone of cautiously distrusting over aggressively defensive. “What kind of shielding ward do you need?”
Rio takes in a deep breath and prays to all the false deities she knows, “...An aegis arcanum.”
“No.”
Well that consideration didn’t last long at all.
“Oh come on ,” Agatha reenters the conversation with her usual bravado, “we can sense that you’re powerful enough.”
Those words seem to strike at something deep given how their target’s expression hardens. “Do you even know the strain that kind of ward takes to create? One millisecond of an error and…” she says with a deep frown, “and your life is up in flames.”
The woman’s next movements are sharp and jagged as she collects her few personal belongings in the cramped room, “My answer is no. Find another witch for… Whatever death trap you guys seem to be preparing for.”
Rio’s heart drops.
There is no other witch, and even if they could find a substitute, she doesn’t want to see the ramifications that come with not getting down the summoning spell to a perfect tee.
Acting on instinct as their target is just about to walk away, Rio reaches forward and grabs her leather jacket sleeve, “You’re a protection witch.” The statement hangs loosely in the air until Rio continues, her hands slightly shaking, “Aren’t you going to protect your sisters in the craft?”.
Silence.
“You’re currently in danger then?” their target asks in full seriousness.
Rio frowns and swallows deeply. Danger is such a subjective term. They will be in danger when they start the summoning spell, and in the interim Rio has sprouting flowers in her lungs to worry about. Though could it ever be a true danger if she just bounces back after each coughing fit? In their current moment they’re not even acting up; the petals and thorns within are relievingly stagnant.
“I’ll take that as a no,” their target huffs after watching Rio’s shifting expression, pulling away from her grip and walking towards the door. The resounding slam feels like a wave crashing over Rio’s head.
She goes to take a deep breath and squeezes her eyes shut for a few seconds before she feels a looming presence lean by her.
“...We really need to work on your lying skills,” Agatha comments, “You didn’t even try.”
“ Not the time, Agatha,” Rio grits out. She curls her fingers inwards, leaving crescent-moon marks on her palm. The other witch only shrugs as she goes to carry on talking, “ Well, if we’re not going to dwell on the fact that you can’t hide something to save your life, then we can move onto a better plan.”
“ Which is? ” Rio asks in exasperation, ready to throw her hands up in the air.
“My plan.”
Of course it is.
“Details, Agatha… The details.”
“Well aren’t you demanding,” Agatha teases as she goes to sit atop the vanity in the room once again, “It’s simple really. Now we’ve gotten that peaceful discussion nonsense out of the way, it’s time to really put on the pressure to get what we want.”
Rio purses her lips as her shoulders tense slightly, her tone is dry as she goes to retort against the other woman's statement, “Oh pray tell, are we going to annoy her until she gives in?”.
Agatha’s smirk only grows in confidence.
Rio feels dread starting to churn in her stomach, “Is that seriously the best plan you have?”.
“Don’t knock it until you try it,” Agatha says, theatrically aghast, with one hand pressed to her heart and the other waved in the air to give off a small gust of purple magick, “After all, I regained all of this by pestering the right people.”
Rio’s brows furrow, “... Re gained?”.
“ Gained, ” Agatha is quick to correct her statement with a scoff, “ Whatever, semantics aren’t important.”
The other woman is pointedly looking away right now, going to smooth down the flyaways of her dark hair as Rio watches her with a pointed stare. One part of the green witch wants to prod and investigate, the other part of her wants to dismiss Agatha’s words. The spirit witch adjacent to her does have a habit of saying things without a filter, it could have been a genuine slip up after all.
But still that doesn’t…-
Rio takes a sharp intake of breath as she catches her train of thought. She was allowing her to slip back into old habits: to care.
It wasn’t any of her business what was going on with Agatha or her past, she just had to focus on the present and her hopefully dwindling future.
“Alright.”
Agatha seems to perk up at Rio’s voice, “Alright, what? ”.
“Alright, Agatha,” Rio sighs, “We’ll do your plan.”
That annoyingly victorious smirk reappears once again, causing Rio to look away.
“Now that’s the kind of compliance I can never get bored of,” Agatha announces with a pleased hum. Rio wants to strangle her just ever so slightly.
The spirit witch goes to stand up, looking at the dresser one last time and swiping the leather glove she had mocked earlier before moving towards the door.
“I thought you said that those gloves were tacky?” Rio murmurs, trailing Agatha’s heel. Agatha laughs a little as she meets Rio’s eyes, tucking the glove into her pocket, “They are , which is why I only took one. I hope our target has hours of fun searching this room trying to find the missing pair."
Rio doesn’t say she’s amused by Agatha’s antics, but her lips tug into a soft smile. Something she can’t quite recognise flashes in Agatha’s eyes a moment later, and the other woman is quick to turn her head to avoid being analysed.
There’s a faint click. Then a repeated rattling sound as Agatha moves the door handle with a firm pull.
“Did she really lock us in? ” Agatha exclaims with another rough push onto the handle.
(Rio hopes the venue has good insurance for doors that are about to get blown into pieces).
❀
Never let it be said that Agatha and Rio don’t put their all into something once they commit to a task.
Just like clockwork, both women never fail to appear at their target’s show times with a series of miniscule schemes to launch. None too devious to get them in trouble, but enough of a nuisance that they’d be attention grabbing.
A snapped piano string.
An expensive liquor shelf crashing down behind the bar.
Random patrons suddenly urged with the need to dance recklessly around.
A voice crack from the lead singer on the bridge of a song.
Drumsticks snapping in half as they get raised in the air.
Microphones malfunctioning.
They really went all out in the most petty ways possible… And Rio had to admit the fun of the pursuit was addicting. Though as time passed on and days bled into weeks, the fun morphed into a growing concern that everything was for naught. Their target noticed their presence, that they knew (given how they had used concealment charms to avoid being kicked out of the venue), but they also seemed just as stubborn as the pair of witches.
It was a stalemate that needed to end sooner rather than later.
(Rio’s not sure how many excuses she has left in her for when she has to choke up several bloody bouquets; she always forgets she’s technically dying until the dreadful times are upon her.
What can she say? Time with Agatha is both fast-paced and distracting, and Rio has enough bruising across her ribs to evidence that fact).
❀
Their next jinxing appearance at their target's work isn’t scheduled until Thursday night. And currently, it was Tuesday afternoon that seemed to drag on, where Agatha and Rio had no place to be, apart from with each other in some overstated library tucked away in the corner of another hidden speakeasy.
Soft, diffused light filtered through large windows with worn, heavy curtains drawn at the sides. The windows, thought slightly fogged with age, allowed just enough light to reveal dust particles dancing lazily in the air. There were no fluorescent bulbs where they were, just a golden and natural light that dimmed as the hours drew along.
In another time, Rio would have appreciated the ambience. But in the present moment, she could only grow annoyed at the environment around her, given that the text in her hands only seems to get smaller in size the more she reads in the dim light.
“Tell me why we’re here again,” Agatha’s voice echoes out from behind the bookshelf in front of her. Rio looks up from the leather-bound notebook in her hands to see the other witch unceremoniously pushing books to one side to create a gap in the shelf, revealing a little window into the aisle where Rio is standing.
“Research,” Rio replies simply.
Agatha groans a little, and scans across the books surrounding her before grabbing one, waving the cover at Rio: a documentation of colonial torture techniques.
“We’re not getting our hands dirty, Agatha. We're doing this the right way,” Rio supplies with a deadpan expression. She goes to push the books back into their original position, blocking her view of Agatha.
There's an exaggerated huff from the other side of the book shelf, quickly followed by the sound of heavy footsteps rounding the corner so Agatha's in the same aisle as Rio. “You're forgetting our hands were dirty before this. What's a little more blood?”.
A little quickly turns into a lot, which turns into pools, which turns into oceans. Magick works in accordance with the mind of the witch casting it, and any malice or vengeance will have layover effects without conscious effort.
Intentions spill into everything. It can spoil the most basic of elixirs, and Rio doesn't want to find out what happens when complex incantations are mixed with a mind set on vengeance.
“I just want to do things properly,” Rio argues, taking the book in Agatha’s hands and slotting it into a random gap in the shelf.
Agatha still doesn't seem convinced.
“Besides,” Rio bites the inside of her cheek, thinking of an incentive, “Any errors and that means that you're stuck with me for longer. ”
The witch in front of her lets out a dry laugh as their eyes exchange a silent conversation that Rio is no longer fluent in. Part of her believes they’re having a bitter argument, another part of her is recognising there’s a muted something hiding under Agatha’s eyes that unsettles Rio much more than the concept of full-on blistering hatred.
She just doesn’t understand anymore… Why can’t she understand ? Nearly two decades apart was a lot, but it couldn’t have squashed centuries of familiarity. The woman in front of her has known her for practically all her existence, and yet Rio feels as if there’s a look-a-like stranger where Agatha is standing at times.
(Part of her wonders if Agatha feels the same about her).
“ Hm, ” Agatha starts, “You know just what to say, don't you?”.
“That skill comes with my job description,” Rio answers with a shrug after a long few seconds, going to look back down at the texts she was studying. She bit her lower lip, trying to concentrate and push aside her spiralling mind as she absentmindedly murmured her next words. “Literature reviews, however, don't come naturally to either of us. So get back to work.”
A hand proceeds to cover the page Rio was focusing on. She looks up with a sigh to see Agatha's challenging expression.
“When did it become all work and no play with you?”.
There’s a hundred answers for that, and six-hundred pieces of evidence to support her claims… But, like always, Rio falls into her habit of sharing nothing substantial. “For a while now.”
“Well, if you're asking me, this whole scavenger hunt can be a lo t more bearable if you loosened up, hm?”
Rio tries to whack Agatha’s hand off of her page, intent on ignoring her. It doesn’t work, and the next thing she knows, Agatha has snatched her book away and stretched out her arm to keep it out of Rio’s reach.
Rio feels her irritation spiking from this archetypal scene, “ What are you even shooting for? For us to hold hands and sing fables until we can finally part ways?”
“Now, hon, we’ve never been that amicable with each other. Let’s be realistic,” Agatha starts, going to review the book Rio had spent the last half-hour reviewing. She flicks through pages to reveal small tabs Rio had placed on various chapter sub–headings, “I’m just saying, the personality you’ve got going on is too much Dr Jekyll and not enough Mr Hyde. It’s a bit of a downer.”
Rio’s lips curl into a tight, insincere smile. “So your current complaint is the quality of my company. I hate to break it to you Agatha, but it seems like you need the reminder that you haven’t enjoyed my presence in years.”
Agatha remains unrattled by Rio’s snark. Her fingers tap the cover of the book in her possession, and there’s an inquiring glint in her eye, like she’s just waiting for Rio to keep pushing and biting back.
“Honestly, Rio, you know I don’t need sunshine and rainbows from you. I don’t want that from you,” Agatha sighs, “Your film noir spirit and darkness is fine. More than fine. But you’re walking around as if you’ve swallowed an entire fucking storm.”
“What do you want from me then, Agatha?” Rio breathes out quickly, her tone cold.
“A truce.”
“We already have one.”
“Not that one,” Agatha says, almost coaxingly. Rio feels as if she’s being mocked. “A less practical-based truce. To not act like we’re not going to strike at each other every other second.”
“That would be playing pretend,” Rio crosses her arms.
“Not necessarily… We can get along. Sometimes a bit too well,” Agatha argues, “I’m just saying we focus on the present moment, and not…”
Something mutes within Agatha's demeanour. But Rio knew what she was going to say: To not focus on their past. Their horrifically tangled, blood-stained, passion-fuelled, hatred-sparking past.
It’s a moronic idea for Rio to agree to; the only thing that’s worse than interacting with her ex- everything is interacting with her and pretending that nothing happened. However… Rio’s thoughts trail onto the possibilities of agreeing. To act like their past isn’t weighing down on her at every moment.
Maybe… Just maybe for a little while, pretending would be enough to see her through to the finish line. The concept is almost seductive in its simplicity; the pressure of her burdens, her guilt, her anger, her love - especially her love - is exhausting.
She doesn’t want to fight anymore. Not today. Not right now. And Agatha… She makes it so easy to want this. She makes it sound so effortless that Rio indulges in the idea more than she should be allowing herself to.
Rio’s condition will surely be less violent when she’s actively not thinking about… Everything. Right? Living based on their current predicaments and easily falling into a back-and-forth rapport.
They could have a straightforward, uncomplicated partnership… And whilst Rio’s aware that there’s always a price to pay when one steps away from the truth, she can comfort her warring mind with the fact she’ll be six-feet under soon enough anyways.
Rio takes a deep breath, looking down at the ground with a slightly disbelieving expression for what she’s about to say. “Okay, Agatha,” Rio says softly, “We’ve got another truce. No magick-binding for this one though.”
Agatha lets out a pleased sound, “That’s fine by me.”
The next moment feels a bit lighter, and Rio goes to clear her throat, “Oh, and Agatha?”
“Yes?”
“Get back to work.”
There’s an amused, barking laugh that erupts from the other witch. But this time, there’s no quips about Rio being a work-a-holic or a rule-follower that follows.
Notes:
In the interim between two big assignments, I was able to sit down and finallyyyy write again!! >:D
Here's chapter 4!! I hope you guys enjoyed!! :0 thank you for reading and leaving your lovely comments in the last chapters <333 they all make me smile so much :'))
Chapter 5: heathers & hyacinths III
Summary:
“Why are you out here Agatha?” Rio breathes out, deciding to drift away from the pressing conversation matter.
There’s a moment of consideration before a reply is given. Agatha tilts her head slightly, studying her with a quiet intensity. Then, without skipping a beat, Agatha answers, her voice as smooth as ever.
“You weren’t in there,” Agatha begins, her voice smooth as silk, without the slightest hint of hesitation.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Plants go into dormancy at a certain temperature.
It was a plain fact that had no room for subjectivity, and if Rio really tried, she could convince herself that sitting in a neglected courtyard in the middle of a frigid spring rainstorm was enough to soothe the aching fire tucked underneath her ribcage.
Four days had passed since her and Agatha’s truce, and to say that the consequences of their agreement on Rio’s condition were anything but stable was an understatement.
There were moments of safety, where not even a petal curled within her lungs. It was as if the fire inside her had been momentarily appeased, lying dormant, just as the plants do at the first hint of frost. It wasn’t peace, not really, but a quiet lull; the kind of stillness that made Rio think she could finally catch her breath.
But that never lasted.
The very next moment after she had let her guard down, Rio would feel it again. The heat building beneath her ribs, the unrelenting pressure of something foreign, and unnatural, clawing its way through her chest, with the ache in her lungs becoming sharper, and desperate, like a vine curling around her heart, tightening with every breath she took.
Rio had come to understand the rhythm of these violent pulsations, the way it ebbed and flowed with her changing contexts, the change in her emotions, in the spaces between her and Agatha. But it wasn’t something she could control. Never that. By all means, Rio should have been used to it by now. The throbbing, the constant, gnawing desire.
The knowledge that this truce, this fragile peace, was slowly suffocating her… But in the most peculiar sense possible.
It was why she found herself here now, huddled in the courtyard, a lonely patch of grass between crumbling marble pillars and a darkening sky. The rain was a cold wash, the kind that should’ve made her shiver, but somehow it was the one thing that eased the burn in her chest, even if only by a fraction.
Perhaps cognitive reappraisal does work.
“The weather looks just like you.”
Perhaps not.
A petal curls into itself in her chest, accompanied by a sharp pain. Rio lets out a dejected breath, the sound of which is covered by the howling wind, before she turns her head to look at the owner of that sickeningly teasing voice.
Agatha was wrapped in thick, cozy layers, her outfit completed by a waterproof jacket. In stark contrast, Rio was in a thin, dark green slip-on, that had been soaked through to such a degree that its colour appeared almost black now.
Agatha squinted slightly, trying to shield her eyes from the rain, but it did little to hide the brilliant blue of her gaze.
“Horrid?” Rio offers the answer with a muted smile.
Agatha's lips curl into a faint, amused smirk. She rolls her eyes and steps toward Rio, her movements fluid and sure, unaffected by the soggy earth beneath her feet. There’s a momentary pause before she settles down beside Rio, lowering herself onto the wet moss and the soft cluster of green clovers.
“Changing,” Agatha states.
Rio frowns. She doesn’t like that answer. Not one bit. Though her dislike does nothing to quell Agatha’s observant nature. “That’s an awfully presumptuous thing to say,” Rio murmurs, unsure if she’s challenging Agatha or just trying to push back against the flood of thoughts rising in her mind.
“When am I anything but that?”
“True.”
The following silence between them grows heavy. The rain continues its relentless descent. Rio risks a glance to her side, only to find Agatha looking back at her already.
“I mean it though,” Agatha says, “Not that I’m objecting to you having your little picturesque brooding moment… But, you’re so much more-”
Aggravating? Humourless? Tactless?
“-withdrawn.”
Well… That wasn’t what Rio was expecting (and she’d honestly prefer a direct insult).
“I thought you would have liked me to keep my thoughts to myself,” Rio mutters, her voice rough around the edges. She looks at Agatha only for a brief moment before looking down at her soaked, trembling hands. "Given… You know. ”
The words hang there, suspended between them, as the rain continues its unrelenting descent. ‘ You know ’ is all Rio can pathetically manage to utter, because there’s no way to explain it fully. There’s too much wrapped in those two words—the mess of things they’ve left unsaid.
Agatha shifts beside her, her body a warm presence against the coolness of the earth. The two witches are closer now, their shoulders brushing. “Not nearly as much as I like understanding what’s going on. You’ve always been guarded, however…”
The words seem to die on Agatha’s lips, and there’s a melancholy attached to them despite her light, nonchalant tone. Rio closes her eyes and tilts her head back as she relishes a cold gust of wind that splatters misty raindrops across the bridge of her nose.
She knows what Agatha would have said. That Rio was always guarded, just never with her .
“Why are you out here Agatha?” Rio breathes out, deciding to drift away from the pressing conversation matter.
There’s a moment of consideration before a reply is given. Agatha tilts her head slightly, studying her with a quiet intensity. Then, without skipping a beat, Agatha answers, her voice as smooth as ever.
“You weren’t in there ,” Agatha begins, her voice smooth as silk, without the slightest hint of hesitation. She gestures lazily to the left, toward the pathway that leads back to their temporary lodgings. The rented room in the speakeasy. A cramped, cluttered space where books on ancient magicks and half-unfinished scrolls of arcane knowledge lay scattered across every surface.
“ And ,” the other woman continues with a little drawl, “There was a… Gift left for us.”
Rio blinked, “A gift?”.
The corners of Agatha's lips curve upward slightly, her expression shifting into something that might have been misinterpreted as playful were it not for the deliberate coolness in her demeanour. She reaches into the deep pocket of her coat, fingers brushing over something unseen for a moment before she pulls out a small notecard, crinkling it between her fingers like it was something casually discarded but now important. The paper looks plain, almost too simple for whatever it is that Agatha seems to find so noteworthy about it.
Rio reaches out, hands hesitating just a moment before she takes it, almost as though the note itself could somehow bite her.
The writing is scrawled hastily but legible enough, with a sharp, angular slant to the letters. It’s almost as if the ink itself carries the weight of urgency, a sensation that Rio feels tickling the back of her neck. The note’s contents are short, no pleasantries, no formalities, only cold, precise details: a time, a place, a date.
Tomorrow afternoon specifically.
Though, what sends a shiver down Rio’s spine is the lingering impression of magick that clings to the paper. It's a subtle but potent protection magick. The kind that wraps itself around the written word, guarding it from being destroyed (evidenced as much with how the ink fails to blot out as raindrops splatter onto the attempt at cursive).
“This is…” Rio begins, her voice deep with uncertainty as she takes in the weight of what this means.
“Mhm,” Agatha responds.
“And we…” Rio trails off, unsure how to continue.
“Mhm.” Agatha repeats, her tone a touch smug.
This piece of paper… This small note was everything . It was the culmination of everything they’d worked for over the past month, a tangible confirmation that their efforts, their late nights pouring over ancient texts, their hours spent provoking and pursuing, had not been in vain.
A silent exchange passed between the two witches, a look that held more weight than any words could. Their eyes met, and in that fleeting moment, everything was understood. They both knew exactly who they would be meeting.
Rio went to clear her throat, handing back the note to Agatha carefully, “You should get some sleep. It appears that we have a big day tomorrow.”
“What about you?”.
Rio frowned. What about her?
“You need to sleep too, Rio,” Agatha states. Rio goes to open her mouth in protest, and Agatha scoffs and puts her hand up, stopping the protests that were about to tumble out of the green witch’s mouth.
Rio lets out a sigh as she runs her hand through her hair, “Soon.” Though she doesn’t believe her own words, and given the way Agatha’s shoulders tense slightly, neither does she.
The next thing she knows, she senses the weight of Agatha’s coat drop over her shoulders. Rio’s not sure what’s more appealing: the warmth or the fact it smells of her.
She instead focuses on what a peculiar gesture this was - Agatha wouldn’t do something as mundanely kind as this to her. Not anymore. It didn’t make sense.
“I know nature doesn’t affect you the same as… Others . But you’re still shivering. Even if you hadn’t noticed,” Agatha states. Rio looks down to realise the other witch is right.
“...And the left side of the bed is yours when you stop being so fucking stubborn.”
Rio can only look at her in disbelief, even when Agatha turns around and walks away. She gives herself a moment to breathe and consider the growing mystery between them.
Because now, the burn of her condition only restarts once Agatha is away from her instead of when she’s close (and Rio would be lying if she said that didn’t alarm her to a significant degree).
The petals inside her chest unfurl once again, stretching slowly, as if it were reaching for Agatha’s presence. That burning, silent longing that had never quite gone away grew stronger. Rio was no longer sure if the ache was caused by her actual present emotions, or by the relentless force of her long-buried lovesickness.
But either way, the bloom of death was inevitable.
❀
They don’t talk about their time in the courtyard the morning after.
Rio would like to believe that it's due to the pressing matters of their work that require their full attention, but deep down, she knows that it’s because the interaction was too much for either of them.
It was too soft; so unlike them in every aspect that it was laughable to even consider it truly real. The tiredness from their current ventures had obviously made them forget in the moment about how they should be with each other.
(And with that idea firmly buried in her mind, the stinging between her ribs starts again like clockwork).
❀
The address on the note had led her and Agatha to a cemetery of all places.
The grounds were immaculately kept, with well-maintained headstones scattered across the lush green expanse, each plaque etched with the names and dates of lives long past.
All lives that a part of Rio’s soul had greeted once.
The air had the coolness of early evening, but the heat of the day still clung to the stone pathways. It was the kind of place where time seemed to pause, each weathered marker a whisper from the past. The only sound was the soft rustling of leaves in the wind, and even that felt like it was holding its breath.
Rio glanced over at Agatha, who was walking slightly ahead, her boots barely making a sound against the gravel. Agatha had always had a way of moving through spaces like they belonged to her. Like the earth itself would yield to her every step.
The heavy footsteps of the other woman only stopped once they rounded a sharp bend behind a cluster of sycamore trees, with its twisted branches drooping down under the weight of gravity.
A handful of strides in front of them was the familiar, red-streaked hair of their target, bowed down as if in conversation to the grave adjacent to her.
Rio took a sharp intake of air, readying her mind for the conversation to come. Though her little mindfulness practice was cut short by the faint crackle of Agatha’s magick demanding her attention.
The fucking audacity…
In no way would they get this close to their target and subsequent goal again if they slipped up once. Rio won’t have that. So, with her actions reflecting her immediate thoughts, Rio does the first thing that comes.
With a sharp, almost involuntary motion, Rio reached out, her fingers closing around Agatha’s wrist before the surge of magick could fully manifest. The skin beneath her fingertips was warm, familiar, but the tension in Agatha’s frame sent a jolt through Rio’s chest. Agatha froze, her body stiffening like she’d just been struck by lightning, but Rio didn’t let go. Instead, she held on, her grip firm, even as a silent challenge passed between them.
Her heart pounded in her chest, but her gaze never left Agatha’s face. She could feel the pulsing of the magick beneath her touch, a wild, unruly thing that threatened to spill out if not contained. Rio’s own magick flared in response, though it was more of a silent warning than anything else. It wasn’t anger. It was controlled.
"You’re not going to lose this for us," Rio muttered under her breath, her tone slightly shaking. Agatha looks to her in exasperation but there’s something else in her gaze that Rio can’t pin down.
“No promises,” Agatha whispers back, and fortunately, Rio feels the magick threatening to erupt from Agatha’s fingertips fade away.
Though the spirit witch is never one to let Rio live in peace for too long, because as Rio’s grip on her wrist slackens, Agatha makes her move. Before she can pull back fully, Agatha slides her fingers into the space between Rio’s, taking her hand with a quiet, deliberate gentleness. The touch is unexpected, soft, but the heat of it lingers, spreading through Rio’s palm like wildfire.
Rio remains frozen as her gaze darts from their hands to Agatha, who is doing anything but looking at her. She swallows hard, struggling to maintain both her general composure and the budding ache crawling up her throat.
The instinct to pull her hand away is there, sitting in the back of her mind. But when she shifts, even with the smallest movement, Agatha’s grip tightens, and the next thing Rio knows, Agatha’s leading her forward to approach their target.
The next moments slip by Rio’s perception in snapshots as her mind goes slightly haywire. She feels oddly detached, like a spectator rather than the one in control of her own body, watching as things unfold around her in slow motion.
Their target finally turns around, and her brown eyes dart between Agatha and Rio. She gives them a firm nod as a greeting, “You’re early.”
Agatha’s lips curl into a small, dry smile, “What can I say? We’re reliable.”
Their target tucks their hands into the pockets and shakes their head in disbelief. Her lips are pressed into a thin line. “I suppose that’s a useful attribute… Given that you don’t use it to pester me anymore.”
“Are you not enjoying our little games during your performances?” Agatha hums in a fake sympathetic tone.
A scowl appears, “Not particularly.”
Rio blinks once, then again, trying to push aside the swirl of discomfort in her chest, the unexpected pressure of Agatha’s hand still lingering on hers like an unwanted weight. She forces herself to detach from the feeling, her thoughts scrambling to regain control as she attempts to salvage what’s left of this conversation. Clearing her throat, she shifts her gaze to their target, her dark eyes locking onto hers with quiet intensity.
"You called us here," Rio says, her voice steady, though a slight edge of frustration threatens to break through. "So why don’t we get to the point?"
The words hang in the air, cutting through the tension like a knife. But it looks like she’s said the right thing.
Their target takes a deep breath, and her voice softens slightly, “You guys want something from me.”
Both Agatha and Rio nod slowly.
“But… I’m not willing to help you,” their target says plainly, with one look behind her, “At least, not unless I get something in return.”
Rio can sense Agatha getting ready to quip back as if the thought was generated within her own mind. But Rio isn’t about to let that happen. She knows the risks of the thin line they’re walking here. She goes to squeeze Agatha’s hand, and somehow, that action is enough to check the spirit witch back into proper behaviour.
Huh.
No. That doesn’t mean anything. Agatha’s reaction is just a reflex from a habit that should have been disposed of years and years ago.
“What do you want from us?” Rio asks, her voice not giving away how keenly she wants the answer.
Their target falters for the briefest of moments. It’s a small thing, barely noticeable, but Rio catches it; the almost imperceptible hesitation before the woman straightens herself, a flicker of something unspoken flashing across her features. Her eyes flick to the side, then back to Rio, as if weighing her words carefully.
The target takes a step to the side, hands still buried deep in her pockets, but now there’s a subtle shift in her stance. She gestures to the numerous plaques on the headstones, and Rio takes a moment to squint her eyes to examine what point the witch in front of them was trying to make.
And soon enough, she spots it; dates going back to all periods in time, with one commonality - their last name.
Wu.
"My family line is cursed," their target states, the words heavy with a weight that pulls at the air around them. "At least, that’s what my mother always said," she hesitates then, before a faint and bitter smile curls onto her lips. "I never listened back then."
The admission hangs in the air like a confession.
“You want us to… What? Break this curse for you?” Agatha prompts.
The target’s eyes flicker again, just for a moment, and Rio can see the strain beneath the surface. It’s as if she’s trying to decide just how much to reveal, whether or not she can trust them with this information.
“Not exactly… It was always debated on what this curse actually was. Intergenerational blood poisoning, a luck-weeping incantation gone too far, the aftereffects of broken vows,” the woman says, “I didn’t plan to investigate, at least not until the symptoms started… Revealing themselves to me.”
She looks at Agatha and Rio then, gaging their reactions.
"Then what do you want us to do?" Rio asks, her voice barely above a whisper, but containing every ounce of understanding she can muster. She’s escorted enough souls to know the tone necessary to communicate in tense situations.
The woman doesn’t answer immediately, her gaze distant, as if staring into some unseen abyss. And then, finally, she turns back to them, her face a mask of resolve. “I need to find a way to talk to my ancestors. To finally get the answers I need.”
Rio bites her tongue hard . She knows exactly the kind of incantation that’s being hinted at, and she doesn’t like it one bit; to drag souls from their resting place in whatever great beyond Rio has kissed them goodbye to, only to place them in temporarily incorporeal form.
It’s a violation. It isn’t just. It’s-
She feels the familiar heat of frustration and anger coil in her chest, but then, something smooth and grounding brushes against her. Agatha’s thumb, warm and steady, begins tracing slow, rhythmic circles on the back of her hand. It’s the kind of touch that calms the storm inside, that steadies the rushing torrent of emotions and thoughts threatening to overwhelm her.
It’s both parts comforting and infuriating, because Agatha knows exactly what she’s doing.
Rio looks to the spirit witch with an outraged expression. Though that doesn’t last long, given how Rio has to conceal the alarm that quickly washes over her mind a second later.
A familiar, painful sensation spreads across her chest. It starts small, a subtle constriction, but it grows quickly, the burn seeping into the back of her throat, as though something is pushing its way out from deep inside her.
She has to tear her gaze away from Agatha, her eyes instinctively dropping to the ground, unable to meet the spirit witch’s steady gaze. The pressure builds in her throat, sharp and raw, like the sting of a thousand unspoken words trying to force their way through. It’s as though something is clawing inside her, trying to break free, pushing up from her chest to spill out of her mouth.
Her breath catches in her throat, and she presses her fingers to her lips, as though trying to stifle the inevitable. Her skin burns where she touches, the heat of it almost unbearable, but the sensation doesn’t come from the outside. It’s inside—inside her lungs, her chest, where it feels like the air itself is turning against her.
Not now. Not here.
The feeling intensifies, relentless. Rio feels the rush of blood flood her mouth, and she’s not sure whether it’s from her own doing or the involuntary upwash of flora threatening to spill out.
Rio forces herself to speak to their target, her voice rough as it cuts through the air. “You have to understand what you’re asking,” she manages, though it feels as though the words are scraping against the inside of her throat, as if she’s saying them through the very thing trying to choke her.
None the wiser to the abomination against the sacred balance that is her request, their target only gives a firm confirmation. “It’s one demanding incantation in trade for another. An equal transaction.”
To mother earth and everything above , Rio wants to go to the nearest sycamore and slam her head against the rough bark out of frustration.
(She doesn’t though).
“Sounds fair to me,” Agatha’s voice sounds out beside her clearly. She then goes to lower her voice, so only Rio could make out her words, “Especially given how everything will revert back to order some time after the incantation.”
Reverting to order.
It’s a nice thought. It’s the perfect justification for taking what isn’t theirs and playing with forces they should be letting rest.
She tries to breathe, but her chest feels too tight. The burn in her throat intensifies, as though she’s being forced to swallow something bitter, something poisonous.
It’s wrong. It’s so incredibly wrong… And yet , here she stands, considering crossing the line that goes against every duty she was sworn to once again.
There’s a clarity, a sort of coldness that blankets Rio. A reminder of the real reason why she’s standing here, willing to cross that line again; not for this blood-born witch opposite her, not for Agatha, but for her .
To finally be free of life and all its lovelorn burdens; she has chosen her duty over her happiness again and again in her existence… So, she’ll let a temporary disruption in the sacred order plague her dreams in trade for a greater prize. Just this once.
Rio’s gaze flickers toward the target again, her eyes cold and sharp. Her pulse is racing in her ears, the sound of her own heart thumping in her chest like an urgent countdown. Every part of her nature is screaming to walk away, but she can’t.
She’s already in too deep.
Forcing her hand out of Agatha’s hold, she concedes. “Alright,” Rio whispers.
Rio feels the weight of Agatha’s attention pressing down on her, but she refuses to meet it, keeping her focus firmly elsewhere. She hears a frustrated exhale from the other woman.
Their target’s eyes flicker with a glimmer of something that might be satisfaction.
“Given the gravity of our agreement,” Agatha begins, her voice calm yet sharp, as a flicker of magick dances in the air, preparing a low-level binding spell to solidify their deal, “Shouldn’t we get to know your name now?”.
The woman hesitates for a moment, her eyes narrowing as if deliberating whether to reveal the detail. Finally, she straightens her posture.
“It’s Alice.”
Notes:
I'd first like to start off by acknowledging the change in chapter numbers. Know that I am both lying to you all and myself, and the number will likely change once again (you're gonna be stuck with me for longer than expected, my apologies).
Secondly.... I have to give a little shout out to the guest commenter last chapter that caught the irregularity of Rio's condition (and how I had to scramble to give a good reason behind it as I hadn't written the dilemma of Rio's situation in the very next chapter and didn't want to spoil)... Trust that there is a reason behind why these symptoms wax and wane ;)
Thirdly... I made them hold hands :) (this isn't really a big point, but I'm being gay and screamed whilst writing the moment)
Thanks for reading!!!!! I hope you guys enjoyed - and I wonder if any of you pieced together that the target was Alice in the prior chapters?? 👁️👁️
Chapter 6: heathers & hyacinths IV
Summary:
Rio failed to stifle a small sound of amusement, “As if anything macabre has ever deterred you.”
“You’d know all about that. Wouldn’t you?” Agatha snorted, “No matter. You still followed my commands. Like a lamb.”
Chapter Text
Alice opens the door to a penthouse that had littered clues of a past opulence, behind layers of dust and white, cotton tarpaulin.
The air inside had the smell of age and neglect, and the fogged over floor-to-ceiling windows let in thick streams of sunlight that highlighted numerous dust particles floating throughout empty space.
It was a depressing sight to say the least, but Rio had seen worse. The decay of luxury was nothing new to her. In her line of work, she’d wandered through mansions left to rot, their former beauty masked beneath grime and disrepair.
This place, though, had a different feel. Like something more personal had been abandoned here, something more than just material wealth. The empty space held an uncomfortable stillness, as if it were waiting, holding its breath.
Rio stepped cautiously into the room, the soft crunch of dust beneath her boots the only sound to disturb the silence. Her eyes flicked upwards as she noted a large, ornate chandelier hung crookedly with a few crystals broken.
Silk curtains, once a deep shade of crimson, now hung in tatters, their fabric frayed and torn. A marble fireplace, tarnished by years of neglect, stood cold and empty, devoid of the warmth it surely once exuded. The place seemed like a fading memory, clinging to its former grandeur even as time had washed it away.
“ ...Que hogareño,” Rio remarks to herself under her breath.
Not even a second passes before she hears an amused bark of laughter. She doesn’t need to turn to know it was Agatha.
So much for Rio being able to be her quietly judgemental self in peace.
There is a dissatisfied sigh from Alice a moment later, seemingly already tired of the other two witches' presence despite their limited interactions. “This was my mothers old place.”
Rio watched from the corner of her eye as Agatha drifted deeper into the room, trailing a slow finger along the nearest surface. She lifted her hand, peering at her fingertip as if inspecting for dust, then threw a glance over her shoulder, lips curling into a mock pout.
“Let me guess, not a lot of family dinners?”
“The opposite, actually.” Alice frowned. “She—… We used to live here before we started moving for tours when I was a toddler. We never stayed for long after that, but most of our family’s prized possessions remained.”
Rio absorbed the other woman’s words, her gaze sweeping the room once more. The space was truly a discordant patchwork of eras with heirlooms nestled among trinkets of lesser significance. It was as if time itself had unraveled across the shelves.
“And I’m assuming that fact is related to the-” Monstrosity. Abomination. Crime. “- incantation you want us to carry out?” Rio infers.
Alice lets out a noise of approval. “We need to find multiple objects that had a significant meaning to my past relatives for the second phase of the spell.”
“And how are we supposed to help with that?” Agatha interjects, pointing between herself and Rio. “We weren’t exactly shortlisted for your family reunions.”
“You were able to find me through my magick trace, yes?”
“Right.”
“The entirety of my family line are protection witches,” Alice clarifies, “There’s a long history of us helping others as a result. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that any object with a trace of protection magick still lingering on it after all these years would have meant something to someone .”
That charitable family spirit would have been much appreciated if it had manifested in the youngest witch in this room , Rio remarks to herself silently with a bitter side eye.
“Well, a deal is a deal ,” Rio says, clasping her hands together, flashing a theatrical smile that showed off her sharp canines. Alice frowned a little, looking away, slightly unnerved by Rio’s expression.
Agatha quirks a brow, clearly amused by Rio’s sudden, obviously faked, enthusiasm. “Look at you, all business,” she drawls, taking a slow step back toward the center of the room. “And here I thought you’d drag your feet about rummaging through this place.”
Rio shrugs, not bothering to mask her impatience as she plays with a lock of her dark hair. “The sooner we get this over with, the sooner I can stop breathing in whatever decade-old dust is floating around in here,” she mumbles to the blue-eyed witch.
( And also the sooner she can stop breathing in general, but that’s more of a personal, over group, incentive.)
Alice moves closer to one of the hallways, waving her hand through cobwebs, content to ignore Rio and Agatha’s rapport. “I’ll take the old bedrooms in the far-right hallway, can I trust you both not to burn the place down?”.
“ No promises!” Agatha calls out to Alice’s retreating figure a few moments later.
❀
They spend more time bickering about what room they should search first than Rio would like to admit, but eventually , her and Agatha agree.
The door to the music room creaked open, revealing a space left untouched for years. A grand piano sat in the center, its surface worn and scratched. The wood, once polished, was now dull and faded. Some of the keys were chipped, others entirely missing, but it still held a certain weight, as if it had once been a vessel of something important. Beside it, sheet music lay scattered on the floor, some of it torn, the rest yellowed and brittle with age.
In the corners, forgotten instruments gathered dust—an old cello slouched against the wall, its strings slack and its body marred. A violin hung by a single hook on the wall, the varnish cracked and chipped.
Rio took a deep breath, stepping into the room and circling the grand piano with silent steps. Reaching forward, she pressed down on one of the keys, making the instrument let out a sound so dry and broken it was as if the piano itself had coughed up a long-forgotten note.
“I hate to say it,” Agatha starts, leaning against the doorframe still as she watches Rio slowly inspect the room, “But I don’t think music is your calling.”
“We both know I found my purpose when I was eight,” Rio shook her head in slight amusement, “I’m not too disheartened by the fact I won’t be playing La Campanella for a live audience.”
Agatha doesn’t say anything in response to her words, and the only outward sign that she even registered them came from her lips slightly thinning. She’s displeased about something . But when is Agatha not? Rio brushes it off.
“Besides, I think I’ll let this piano rest,” Rio carries on, “It has enough character to last lifetimes.”
“Too bad it’s not the kind of character that can carry a tune,” Agatha throws out quickly, and Rio can’t help but roll her eyes.
“Do you ever take a day off?”
“We both know the answer to that,” Agatha replied, clicking her tongue on the roof of her mouth, “How would I keep up with my stellar reputation otherwise?”
“I’m happy to ruin that reputation of yours if you don’t start searching with me,” Rio mutters.
Agatha only hums in amusement.
Rio moved methodically, her fingers trailing over the dust-covered keys of the grand piano, scanning for anything out of place. Agatha worked with less care, yanking open drawers in the music stand and rifling through brittle sheets of composition paper. She overturned a stack of faded, signed programs, their edges curled with time, letting out a small hum of indignation at finding nothing useful so far.
Nearing the window of the room, Rio examined the violin case resting on a low shelf, its leather worn and cracking. She reached in, fingers brushing against the velvet lining as she checked the seams of the small inside pockets. Nothing.
“I don’t think even an air-purifying spell could save this place,” Agatha says, coughing a little from the cloud of dust that floats up as she opens the lid of the piano. She’s quick to slam the lid down and walk away.
Rio pointedly ignores her as she moves to another corner of the room, crouching down to inspect the rusted lock on a music cabinet. The metal is rough beneath her fingers, corroded from years of neglect, but stubbornly intact.
She rattles it once, then twice, before huffing in frustration. “I think I’ve got something.”
Behind her, Agatha makes a small noise of acknowledgement as she rifles through a stack of old composition books on a nearby shelf, occasionally pausing to flick some dust off of a cover or skim a page.
“ Any day now ,” Agatha drawls, taking notice of Rio’s pursuit but not making a move to aid her.
Rio frowns as she turns back. She reaches forward once again, pinching two thinner sections of the lock and roughly tugging to try work at any weaker points. Still nothing.
Taking a deep breath, Rio closes her eyes as she tries to focus in on a potential energy pulsating and festering. A singular natural spark and she could take hold of it and manipulate it to her liking - her powers may be weaker than what they once were, but she could at least do this so long as she’s just given an inch to work with.
And yet… There was still nothing.
“You could help , you know,” Rio reminds.
“I could ,” Agatha agrees, not looking up from an old notebook that had found its way into her hands. “But I think I like watching you struggle.”
Rio mutters under her breath. The lock still doesn’t budge after another futile attempt, but before Rio could open her mouth to ask if Agatha could find a key on one of the shelves she was near, a sharp bolt of purple light blasts a contained, miniature explosion of the lock she had been touching not a moment ago.
The magick fizzles and spats out in a violent fit before the lock appears to creak and splinter before finally giving way.
So much for taking the passive route.
“ Dare I remind you that we weren’t supposed to burn the place down?” Rio breathed out.
“Do you see any fire?” Agatha asks with a sweeping, over-dramatic motion of her arms. How typical. “Anyways, there’s no harm in shortcuts. I know you’re a stickler for the rules, but never to this extent. Don’t tell me you’ve gone soft and actually care about wrecking some old grandma's cabinet?”
Rio chooses to respond first by flipping Agatha off in an unceremonious manner.
“You’ve gotten careless… Moreso,” Rio comments, the squeak of the cabinet hinges preceding her careful actions as she flicks through the content of the cabinet, “I don’t care for these antiques. No one does. But we can’t risk destroying finite incantation materials.”
“Please,” Agatha scoffed, moving forward to crouch close by as the music cabinets contents began to be rummaged through. She’s close enough that Rio can feel her body heat. “I’m better than that.”
She hates it.
(She loves it).
“History would prove you a liar,” Rio murmurs, giving Agatha a side-eye as the other woman started searching through the cabinet as well, causing the shoulders to bump. The room seemed warmer. The air felt thicker.
“And you would be referring to…?” Agatha drew on, unwilling to let up.
Rio snorted. “The fact that I have to clarify which of many occasions you’ve acted too recklessly speaks volumes.”
Agatha’s lips twitched, “Am I going to be lectured now?”
Rio huffed, shaking their head as she reached deeper into the cabinet. “What would the point even be? You never listen.”
Before another retort could be thrown back, Rio’s fingertips ended up brushing against something solid — something smooth and cool, tucked into the very back of the cabinet… And not a moment later, Agatha’s hand collided with hers, making contact with the same object.
A sharp jolt ran through Rio’s fingers at the sudden contact.
Both women pulled away after a few seconds, the warmth of the brief touch lingering longer than it should have.
But that didn't matter. Not right now. Really .
What was of much higher importance was the thrum of something beneath the cool wood they had brushes against.
Agatha’s fingers curled around it first, drawing it carefully from the depths of the cabinet. The dim light caught on its surface as she lifted it into view; an old child’s violin bow, its horsehair still taut despite its aged appearance, the wood still smooth and polished.
Rio’s gaze flickered over it, a frown tugging at her lips. The weight of it in Agatha’s hands looked heavier than it should have been. On the right side of the violin-bow there appears to be a small engraving: ‘Dearest Lorna, best of luck with your first lessons.’
The carvings sing with a gentle luck charm, interwoven with a smattering of protection runes.
They’d found their first spell component. Though the gravity of the moment was quickly dimmed down by Agatha’s next remark.
“What child plays so poorly that they need a sigiled violin bow?”
❀
The next room they found themselves in was what seemed to be a personal study, complete with a small fireplace nestled against the far wall. The air was still, thick with the weight of undisturbed time. Dust clung to the bookshelves lining the walls, their spines faded and worn.
A heavy desk sat beneath the window, its surface cluttered with scattered papers, an inkwell crusted over with age, and a chair slightly pulled out, as if someone had left in haste - though, given the dust-patterns across its cushions, whoever sat in that chair never returned.
“I’m not sure whether to be relieved or not that there aren’t multiple pet pictures up on the walls,” Agatha states unprompted.
Rio’s head snaps toward her, confusion flickering in her eyes. “ What…? ”
“It’s a gaudy and hideous thing to do, yes ,” Agatha rolls her eyes, “But given how people are concerningly dependent on their furry little creatures, it would mean that they’d be inclined to cast a protection spell on a picture.”
She has a good point there.
The rubber sole of her shoe squeaks softly as she moves to the farthest corner of the room, idly spinning a dusty globe. She trails her fingers over the faded names, reading them as they pass under her touch. "Still an avid animal hater, then?"
"I don’t hate them," Agatha scoffs. "I just think they’re more trouble than they’re worth."
Rio hums, the corner of her mouth twitching. "Sounds familiar."
Agatha exhales sharply, unimpressed. "At least I don’t shed."
"Debatable," Rio mutters, flicking her fingers toward the slightly dishevelled waves of Agatha’s brown hair. There’s a scoff from the other witch, and in the corner of her eye Rio can see Agatha reaching for the golden locket strung round her neck, something which she had started to notice the other woman was never without since their untimely reunion.
How peculiar.
There’s a gentle pause between the two - the conversation lulling to a conclusion in a way that was too natural to mean anything good in Rio’s mind. She goes to clear her throat, she needs the conversation back before her thoughts start to get the better of her once again, “Where do you think we should start looking?”
“...You’re asking for my input?” Agatha frowns. Rio only shrugs, and Agatha looks at her sceptically for a moment.
A few seconds tick by before Rio dares glance in the other woman's direction once again. Agatha is still looking at her.
“Why is that so hard to believe, Agatha?”
“Hm,” Agatha tilts her head a little. “I thought you’d still be feeling a little raw, perhaps bitter, after the whole graveyard-deal-debacle.” She goes to put her hands in her pockets, rolling her shoulders a little with the action, “Not to mention that the whole setting was quite a downer, a simple meeting around a dining table would have been sufficient. No need for the macabre flare to sour our moods further.”
Rio failed to stifle a small sound of amusement, “As if anything macabre has ever deterred you.”
“You’d know all about that. Wouldn’t you? ” Agatha snorted, “No matter. You still followed my commands. Like a lamb.”
“ Your commands-” Rio starts with a sharp glare, though her next words about Agatha’s little thumb-tricks die on her tongue with what she sees next.
Ah.
Her eyes flit down to Agatha’s lips, stretched into a little smirk. As if anticipating something. As if she were anticipating her reaction. Rio gets it now. Agatha is once again dangling a conversational spark in front of her that could unravel into something explosive. Something dangerous.
She refuses to bite. Not again. Never again.
“We’re getting sidetracked. The suggestion, Agatha?” Rio states with a faked tone of disinterest. She knows the other woman like the back of her own hand, and she knows there's nothing that gets to her more than disinterest.
(Sue her for wanting her own little acts of revenge, pathetic as they may be.)
“ The suggestion ?” Agatha echoes, her voice not quite there. She’s back to the unabashed staring once again. Rio is a little unnerved with how strikingly blue her ex-wife’s eyes are. Were they always like that or are they that distinctive when she’s trying to peer into her soul, or lack thereof?
She goes to spin the globe once again. “ Yes , the suggestion. Your suggestion of what we should do next.”
What follows is only silence for a long while, and the small constriction of something at the base of Rio’s lungs.
❀
They leave the office eventually, deeming it a dead end before settling into a delicate rhythm with one another - bouncing from one room to another. Doors swing open and close in their wake, the creak of hinges and the soft shuffle of papers the only sounds that accompany them.
One reaches for a document just as the other places it down, the exchange smooth and natural.
One goes to check under a carpet, the other is already at the opposite end helping lift it up.
One carefully opens a trophy cabinet with the other already reaching forward to graze their fingertips against the gold-plated metal, seeking that distinctive buzz of protection magick.
A nod. A turn of a page. Another step in their silent dance.
And somewhere, and somehow , in the hunt for spell components Rio feels her unease grow and fester in the bottom of her stomach… And it’s not the halls of a once loved home, the fading light from the day ending, or even the irking deal she had sigiled herself to that's got her in such a state.
It’s Agatha.
‘Do you remember when we took a trip up to Sweden? Of course you do, what am I thinking? Anyways, this painting looks like the view we had from our cabin.’
‘Ah, I told you we’d find a pet picture eventually. This one looks uncannily like your old familiar, hm? The little fucker bit me, still haven’t forgiven him for that by the way, but even I can admit he was cute… Still way too much of a hassle to have kept him for as long as we did though.’
‘How much TLC do you think this place would need before someone could live in it again? I haven’t taken on a project this big in… Well, ever. Stuff like that is what magick is for.’
‘This wardrobe is so outdated, and out of all the things a person could put a protection enchantment on, why did it have to be such an ugly jacket? I feel like I should burn it to restore peace to the world, it’s my moral duty– hey, don’t look at me like that, I won’t actually do it. We both know I don’t care about morals.’
Rio never says anything in response to Agatha’s probes, and she’s not sure she could even if she wanted to. Her tiredness stretches to a bone-deep sensation, and only ever seems to expand with every comment the other witch makes.
Does she have an off switch? No. Rio would have known about it by now if she did - three centuries of marriage tends to give you quite the insight into a person's general workings after all. But still, she’s tempted to try to find the impossible the more Agatha carries on talking.
(She can tell Agatha is getting more and more antsy over her impervious silence.)
“No one would notice if I swiped some of these old journals, right?” Agatha starts once again after they exited another room, “I’m curious to know what Alicia’s great-great-great grandmother was thinking about. Perhaps we can find out the secret to the whole ‘thou family shall be cursed for millenias’ schtick if we read far enough.”
Rio only shakes her head, not bothering to correct Agatha on Alice’s name. It wouldn’t matter, anyway—Agatha would just wave a dismissive hand and carry on with her usual flair for embellishment. Rio had learned to pick her battles. This was not one of them.
Agatha’s voice continues to fill the narrow hallway they’re walking, steady and sure, words flowing without hesitation. It’s the last section that they need to check before calling it quits on the search and meeting up with Alice once again, found spell components in hand.
“I mean, it’s unlikely, but worth a shot. And hey, at least we’d find some fun stories in the meantime,” Agatha reasons as she rounds a corner, “Old families like this always have drama. I bet there’s a love affair, a betrayal, maybe even a secret twin locked in an attic. That would be exciting, wouldn’t it?"
Rio only hums in acknowledgment as she follows a step behind. But then—Agatha stops. Her voice cuts off mid-sentence, abrupt in a way that isn’t like her, and there’s a sharp sound of the bottom of a shoe skidding against the wooden flooring of the hallway.
Rio nearly stumbles over her own feet as she tries not to bump into the brunette, brows furrowing. “ Agatha- ” she starts, startled enough to actually say something. And then she sees it.
Agatha stands frozen in the doorway of a room they haven’t checked yet, her hand braced lightly against the frame.
Faded purple wallpaper clings to the walls, its once-vibrant colours now muted by time and neglect. The remnants of childish decor—a few chipped wooden animals, a broken rocking horse, and an old crib with rusted bars—are scattered about the room, their edges softened by the passage of years. The floorboards creak underfoot, warped from moisture and years of disuse, the remnants of a once-welcoming space now frozen in time.
The furniture, though still intact, shows signs of wear—scratches from small hands, stains on the fabric, and an unsettling stillness that fills every corner. A mobile hangs from the ceiling, its stars and moons completely still, casting long shadows across the room. In the farthest corner, a small, forgotten toy lies on the floor, half-buried under a pile of dust.
Rio’s breath feels too loud in the silence, and for a long moment, she stands there, caught in the weight of the room’s history. She’s never truly believed in fate. But somehow she feels as if the very concept is laughing in her face at this very moment.
Rio, wide-eyed, turns her head to look at Agatha cautiously, and for the first time in a while, the other woman isn’t already looking at her - only straight ahead.
Notes:
~~~~Little outtakes~~~
Agatha & Rio: Trying to get through life.
Abandoned nursery: I’m about to ruin these witches' entire careers.
Agatha: *has a desperate need to get to the bottom of why Rio is acting weird af*
Also Agatha: *starts yapping to provoke Rio into spilling her secrets instead of actually ASKING*
Meanwhile, Rio: *straight up cold-shouldering her wife*________
.......so its been a while since I've updated... sorry about that-- life has been amazing, but also crazy busy (I keep being given responsibilities??? who allowed this to happen??? Oh, well. I survived A1 exams and my internship applications - I can get back into a regular writing schedule now >:)).
I missed writing sm but I'm a little rusty so pls forgive me if its not all that good. I thought this chapter would be a nice easy one because.. *flips to my plot outlines* we have a lot of arguing, realisations, and miscommunications (these two are terrible at communicating and i aim to make their dynamic incredibly messy, much to my beta readers detriment) coming our way.
(I'm also evilly giggling over the kiss and the reveal slowly approaching in the second act, given that the heathers & hyacinths act is reaching its end >:)))) )thanks for reading!! <3 i hope you guys enjoyed :)))
Chapter 7: heathers & hyacinths V
Summary:
“I hope he inherits your eyes.”
“Oh? You believe if we’re eventually blessed with a little one it’ll be a he?”
“When we get blessed with one,” Agatha corrected before speaking on, placing a gentle hand across Rio’s lower stomach, “It’ll be a he. I’m sure of it. It’s a future mother’s intuition.”
“And what a mother you will be,” Rio had whispered as she took Agatha’s hand in hers.
Notes:
After a 2 month hiatus after being thrown into the trenches.... the bitch is back.
have some (fairly) happy flashbacks in this chapter - happy pride month <333
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Rio is unable to take a life.
At least, causally , that is.
She was chosen for her role at a fragile age, a time when her soul was still whole, unblemished by the weight of reality, untouched by the cruelty woven into existence. She had never known the sensation of life slipping between her fingers, the brittle snap of bone, or the warmth of something irreversibly fading — until it was both too late and too soon.
But that doesn’t mean she hasn’t wanted to. There have been moments — too many to count — when the urge has coiled itself around her fingers, a restless energy demanding release. A violent twitch, an impulse to act, to do something. Anything.
Vivid green magick buzzing between the patterns on her fingertips. Bleeding over the ridges; the power she was born with, restricted by her primordial oaths.
Rio doesn’t know if it is a mercy or a curse that she could never be permitted to follow through with her impulses. That something in her always catches, always pulls her back from the edge before she can reach out and take . Before she had a chance to think about violating the natural order of all life itself; before she could make real the phantom weight that so often pressed against her palms.
Perhaps this is one of the many reasons why she loved Agatha.
( Loves Agatha).
Violent impulses wane and mellow out, not with age, but with experience. And Rio’s experience with Agatha? Well. It’s a juxtaposition of heavenly serenity and enduring restlessness.
Their match was highly unlikely, and in all honesty, completely improbable to ever occur if Agatha hadn’t taken the reins many centuries ago. It was fragile to start off with: encounters that started off in surprise had shifted to having an element of hidden planning behind them. And Rio found herself completely unraveling for her violet-edged witch.
What began as intrigue — Rio, curious and hesitant, Agatha, amused and assessing — matured into a tangled devotion neither would dare label out loud. Naming it would make it real. Naming it would make it fragile.
And yet, there it was: quiet mornings that started with shared dandelion tea and ended with charged silences; battles fought side by side not for the thrill, but because leaving the other unguarded had become unthinkable. Agatha, once a tempest, found herself learning the rhythms of a woman who she would learn that wielded silence like a weapon and care like a trap. And Rio, who had long believed herself beyond want, watched in disbelief as her carefully arranged solitude became cluttered with Agatha’s laughter, her rage, her presence.
By the time either of them acknowledged what they’d become, it wasn’t a matter of falling — it was a matter of being .
And neither of them had the language for it.
Nights were never still. They were heat and breath and soft curses muffled against skin, the kind of intimacy that demanded nothing but took everything.
And Rio had never been so grateful for this woman — a true force of nature — to be her undoing; to be the reason she lingered awkwardly by the door frame before being invited in, to be the reason she routinely raced back to one place on the entire available globe after reaping another soul, to be the reason to start reaching for more in life.
❀
(If Rio could go back to warn her past-self of the consequences of her gluttony, she would like to believe she would.
To be able to save her and Agatha the pain of reaching too far. For flying too close to the sun in ignorance of the fact that they could ever be burnt.
Though in reality, she could never do so, even if given the chance. All because knowing that her overzealousness for more would lead to a collection of the most fragile, and the most dear years of her and Agatha’s entire existence).
❀
They wanted him.
They wanted their baby boy so much.
Though, prior to the months of conversation, months of research, and months of delicate preparations, Rio never in a million years imagined herself as a mother. But the moment Agatha had whispered those sacred string of words to her in their cottage back in Salem when the idea was first settling between the pair, she allowed herself to dream.
“There’s no shame in wanting this,” Agatha had murmured to her, glancing over to her wife who had been meticulously translating an aged text on sigils meant for risky deals with one’s own spirit, “Desire is just as natural as breathing, my love. And you’d never deny yourself the simplest of life’s demands, hm?”
“Your analogy would work better if I were in possession of an ability to pass on, beloved,” Rio had jested then, placing the text down to face Agatha properly. “The worst that would happen to me would be reawakening after a period of undying rest. I’d be out for a few hours at most.”
Agatha had only rolled her eyes, putting an end to her wife’s remarks. Silence enveloped the pair once again in the quiet of midnight, at least that was until she had spoken again, “I hope he inherits your eyes.”
“Oh? You believe if we’re eventually blessed with a little one it’ll be a he?”
“ When we get blessed with one,” Agatha corrected before speaking on, placing a gentle hand across Rio’s lower stomach, “It’ll be a he. I’m sure of it. It’s a future mother’s intuition.”
“And what a mother you will be,” Rio had whispered as she took Agatha’s hand in hers.
It was absurd, what they were attempting. Even by their standards. Steeped in ancient rites and forbidden magicks, this was delicate work — threading new life through old blood, coaxing existence where none should take root; but with longing, as both the witches were prone to do, there would eventually be the tentative step towards.
Agatha had prepared the nursery with soft shades of purple and silver stars hand painted across the ceiling, Rio had coaxed the sturdiest red pines she had sprouted to bend and snap at her will until a finely-crafted cradle would be able to be pushed into the transforming room by theirs.
And of course, besides the mundane nesting traditions the two had found themselves throwing their all into, there was one glaring elephant in the room that needed to be addressed: Rio’s job.
Her appointed role had always demanded periods of travel, of absence. A necessary burden. But when the idea of a child — a life created out of their love — began to take root, that demand turned sour in her mouth. And after long nights of conversation, of what-ifs and hesitant hope, it had become clear: it was no longer just undesirable.
It was unacceptable.
Rio had been the final choice to carry.
Her green witch heritage gave her enhanced regenerative abilities, an immune system stronger than most, and a body resilient beyond reason. And of course, she was, in the truest sense, incapable of dying.
By all means, she could provide an optimal safe haven for life to grow.
But only if she was able to offset the demands of her job, which had led her to numerous nights of research and tentative conversations until the next step was decided.
A circle was drawn in ash, painstakingly precise, each rune carved with the tip of a blade and smeared with blood still warm on her fingers. Candles flickered at the perimeter, their flames shivering despite the still air. Rio knelt in the center, spine straight, breath steady, heart already beginning to splinter under the weight of what she was about to do.
She pressed her palms together, then apart — slowly, deliberately — as if pulling open a seam that had been stitched into her chest. Power pulsed in the silence. A faint shimmer traced along her skin, the glow of it gathering in her sternum like heat behind glass.
Latin incantations tumbled from her lips, and soon enough, her soul broke expeditiously, without a sound.
She remained still, surrounded by the scattered fragments of herself. Each fragment now a capable entity — an extension of herself capable of carrying out her job, nothing more and nothing less: acolytes .
She was breathing, yes, but no longer whole.
Though Rio couldn’t quite bring herself to truly care, as once her vision clears after the ritual ended, all she could see was Agatha in front of her, her breath held in anticipation.
A small, confirmatory nod given was all that was needed before her wife sighed in relief, reaching out to breach the ritual’s perimeter to press her lips against Rio’s.
From that point onwards, there was no obstacle to achieve their greatest desire yet.
❀
Agatha always would have laughed gleefully at the fact that their son was a prodigy.
She’d say it was potential that flowed in his veins; that despite the fact neither she nor Rio wished for anything but his health and happiness, Nicholas Harkness-Vidal always went above and beyond.
Rio knew this truth all too well — ever since their son began shifting inside her, stubbornly active two weeks before he was even expected to make his presence known. From that moment on, he hadn’t slowed down for a second.
Her ribs bore the brunt of his restless energy for the entirety of her pregnancy, as if he were convinced that his tiny legs were built to be battering rams; each kick felt like a declaration of intent. Bold, unrelenting, and impossible to ignore. And that intensity didn’t stop there. When Nicholas finally decided to make his grand entrance into the world — three weeks ahead of schedule, no less — it was with all the urgency and drama she had come to expect from him.
He was Agatha’s son, through and through. And if the attitude of their newborn wasn’t enough of an indicator, then the unruly brunette curls that sat atop his head was enough evidence.
Though for the rest of him? Agatha had gotten her wish that Nicholas had inherited Rio’s eyes and much more.
His skin is tanned, their smiles match down to the last detail, and when they finally get past the teething stage, he has that distinctive little gap between his two front teeth that Agatha can’t help but fawn over.
The milestones keep getting checked off the list, and their little light of their lives grows and flourishes unapologetically.
He’s perfect .
He’s theirs.
❀
Nicky’s magic presents itself when he’s three years old.
Most that are blessed with magick don’t even get to taste the first sparks of their power until they are six. At a minimum .
(They had doted over the idea of his first presentation, as mothers tend to do, with a sincere excitement and unserious competition.
Rio had been betting on Nicky to take on Agatha’s powers — their very own little siphon who they’d raise to nurture his gift over living in fear of it.
In contrast, Agatha had been firm in her beliefs that Nicky would wield green magick. That one day his little toddling steps would become more stable — though with just as much, if not more, energy than he possessed now — as he followed Rio across the meadow in front of their home, daisies blooming at his heels).
Rio is the first to notice something is amiss.
Her and Agatha are out on the porch as the sun sets, a mug of tea shared between them as they look over the flower beds they had spent the day fixing up with Nicky.
Agatha is in the middle of talking about her most recent novel she had been reading, a moment so perfectly mundane that had gone bitter the moment a sinking pang shot through Rio’s heart. She doesn’t have to say anything. Her little startled breath and widened eyes is enough to communicate something is wrong.
That she’s sensed a soul demanding her attention that is too close to home. A soul that is in their home.
Agatha drops the mug in her palms once she takes in her wife's sudden shift in mood, letting ceramic crack on birch planks as she races inside, Rio at her heels. They sprint upstairs, calling Nicky’s name, only to find his bedroom where he had been placed down for bedtime to be empty.
The door handle, at a height he couldn’t even reach yet, crackled with lilac power, the metal warped and nearly torn from the wood. The door had swung open on its own, hinges strained and scorched.
This magick was new and explosive.
Uncontrolled.
The air shimmered faintly with its trace, and the two were quick to follow the trail with a growing dread as they rushed down to the end of the hallway, finding their locked study. Its door was splintered with that same sickly lilac light, its edges lined with the same energy scorched into Nicky’s bedroom door.
Inside, the air hung heavy.
Dust hung unnaturally still. Books lay scattered across the floor, once pristine pages curled and yellowing as if aged by decades in minutes. In the center of the room, an artifact — once sealed beneath layers of wards and hidden behind glass — hovered inches above the floor, humming with dark intent.
And beneath it, was Nicky.
Their little boy.
Powerless.
The artifact fed, threads of shadow coiled like roots around his small frame, drawing light from his body in trembling pulses. His skin was pale, the rise and fall of his chest shallow. The glow of the artifact flickered with each breath he gave, his very own magick absorbing the malicious energy into the very core of his being.
There was a scream, Rio couldn’t tell who it was from.
Rio dropped to her knees beside Nicky’s frail form, supporting his weight as he sagged against her. She cradled him close, hands pressed gently to his chest, green magick blooming beneath her palms in a desperate attempt to slow the steady drain of his life force.
The energy pulsed weakly, slipping through her fingers.
Beside her, Agatha moved with frantic precision, casting hex after hex, each one sharper than the las t — trying to sever the tether between Nicky’s magick and the artifact's gluttonous presence. The room buzzed with layered spells, chaos barely held back by urgency and fear.
And still, the artifact pulsed. Still, Nicky was fading fast.
Slumped in her arms, Nicky stirred with the last bout of energy he had left.
His darling eyes fluttered open — just barely — and found Rio’s. For a heartbeat, there was recognition. Then came the softest sound, a fragile whisper edged with fear. “Momma—…”
And then, nothing.
His eyes slipped shut. His body went still.
The artifact dropped with a dull thud, its lilac glow snuffed out like a breath in the dark. Silence followed, sudden and brutal.
Agatha turned.
And froze.
Rio knelt in the center of it all, cradling their son’s lifeless body against her chest, her magic still flickering weakly beneath her hands, refusing to fade completely. Nicky didn’t stir. His curls clung damply to his forehead, his small limbs limp, unmoving.
Agatha shook her head. Once, then again. Her hands trembled. She staggered forward, knees buckling beside them, eyes wild. Her hands brushed the strands of their son's hair and she cups his pallid cheeks.
“No, no — ” Agatha gasped as one of her hands covered her mouth, “I want more time — I want more time— ”
Her eyes flicker up to Rio’s frozen expression. The reality is dawning in, and for the first time in their shared existence, Rio sees fear in Agatha’s eyes directed towards her.
“Don’t do this,” Agatha’s voice cracked.
“He’s ours . Do you hear me, Rio? ” Her breath is ragged and frantic, “We love him. He’s supposed to be with us . We’re his mothers .”
Rio looked up, eyes rimmed red, mouth parted in a breathless protest. “Agatha, I—”
“You love him, don’t you?!”
“ Of course I love him, Agatha!” The words tore out of her, raw.
“Then don’t you even think of taking him!”
Rio flinched. Her grip on Nicky tightened, but her gaze drifted — upward, outward. Something had shifted in the room.
“Agatha…” her voice rasped, soft with grief. “He’s already scared.”
The air bent around her senses.
A tug — not physical, but deep and aching. Like a thread straining from the center of her being. Nicky’s soul; bright, new, and terrified — screamed louder than anything she’d ever heard in life or death.
It called for her, pleaded, lashed against the thin wall between realms, not understanding where he was or why it hurt. He was looking for comfort. For guidance. For his mothers.
“Do this and I’ll hate you forever ,” Agatha had all but snarled, keeping their son's limp body tucked close. As if he was capable of breaking any further.
Rio has a decision to make: to choose the fleeting time with Agatha and wait for one of her acolytes to reap their son's soul… Or, to reap Nicholas now with his spirit safely tucked in her arms until she had to pass him off to the veil at the end of the mortal realm.
…The former was never truly an option. Not for her.
The last thing she heard before her actions would splinter their family for good was an ear-shattering, heart-splitting scream.
“RIO!”
❀
That scream is the haunting reminder what staves off her fatigue, no matter how heavy it becomes.
And when she does sleep, that scream is what haunts her guilt-ridden nightmares.
The memory of that scream is what snaps Rio back to her bitter present.
❀
Memories are fickle in relation to the real thing, and Rio knew- knows that she hadn’t taken a step in Nicholas’ room in years; she should know this room was nothing but an impersonal relation to her, belonging to an infant which she had never met.
That doesn’t stop the sting from appearing though.
(It doesn’t stop the flashes of memories of a sweet grin, a nose and jawline identical to her own, and shorter, but familiar brown curls).
“Rio.” Agatha’s voice is sharp, cutting through the murky maze of Rio’s own mind which she finds herself getting stuck in more often as the days go by. She looks up to find that she’s moved, no longer frozen in the hallway, but instead standing in the center of the room.
There’s a soft, well-loved material she feels in her palm. It takes a hesitant turn of her hand for her to reveal it’s a baby blanket.
“I—...” Rio rasps out. Her head hurts. “I don’t— I didn’t — ”
“...I know,” Agatha cuts her off with furrowed brows and a small nod. Rio can’t tell if there’s concern or
Rio doubts she does know, though. She didn't even know what she was going to say.
Agatha steps lightly over the edge of the circle, careful not to smudge the ash. Her gaze scans the room, pausing only when it lands on a small, dust-covered shape in the corner. She crosses the floor and crouches, lifting the old bunny-teddy in both hands like it might fall apart under its own history.
She brushes off its matted ear with her thumb, the stitched-on eyes dull but unblinking.
“He had one just like this,” Agatha whispered so quietly Rio nearly didn’t pick up on her words. She stood back to her full height before carrying on talking, “Do you remember?”
Of course Rio did. Nicky took that teddy everywhere with him.
“Señor Scratchy,” Rio acknowledged with a watery smile.
Silence pulsed again, thick and aching. Not the kind that soothed, but the kind that threatened to split the room apart if anyone breathed too sharply. Rio didn’t need to ask what was running through Agatha’s mind — she could feel it. The heaviness. The brittleness. One wrong word would fracture whatever fragile peace sat between them, if it could even be called that.
Agatha’s voice broke through it, barely above a whisper. “He had a good heart, didn’t he?”
“He did,” Rio said softly. “A wonderful heart.”
Agatha’s gaze dropped to the bunny teddy in her hands, threadbare from love. But after a moment, Rio realized she wasn’t really looking at the toy anymore. Her eyes, those clear, storm-bright hues, were on her.
Unreadable. Unblinking.
And they tugged at something deep in Rio’s chest. An action that was completely unwelcome.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Rio asked, though she already feared the answer.
Agatha broke eye contact like it hurt.
“Because all I see,” she said, voice rough with restraint, “when I let myself properly look at you, all I see is him. ” Her hands clenched around the stuffed rabbit. “And how you took him away from me.”
Rio’s breath caught. She shut her eyes against the words, but they settled anyway. Sharp, guilt-laced, final.
“I’m—”
“ Don’t .” Agatha snapped, warning Rio to steer clear of any offered apologies. The teddy dropped to the floor with a muffled thud. Her voice cracked softer the second time. “Don’t…”
The silence that followed was longer now. Uncomfortable. Intimate. Rio swallowed hard. “What do you want from me, Agatha?”
Agatha blinked slowly, something breaking just behind her eyes. “Too much.”
Another silence bloomed.
“I want to know what’s going on with you.”
Nothing.
“I know you’re keeping something from me.”
That gets a reaction out of her. Rio’s eyes widen comically as she opens her mouth to reply, but she can’t find the words. She has nothing left to give.
Agatha’s eyes burned with a mix of frustration and sorrow, her voice low but cutting through the thick air like a blade.
“Don’t even try to deny it.”
Agatha took a step closer, each word deliberate, heavy with the weight of years and unspoken pain. “This entire time since we’ve been reunited... you’ve been nothing but a ghost. I hardly recognise you . It’s as if who I knew my wife to be has been emptied out of a vessel and stitched back together wrong.”
Her gaze locked onto Rio’s, fierce and unyielding.
“In fact—” She paused, voice dropping to a whisper that trembled with aching truth. “ This is the first time I can even discern that it’s you who I’m talking to.”
Rio felt the breath leave her body, her hands trembling uncontrollably. All she wanted was to wrap herself in something solid, something safe, and be left to rot.
But she couldn’t. So instead, she lifted her chin, eyes sharp and cold, she needed to drive Agatha away. “You’re not my wife anymore, Agatha. Why should I answer you?”
Now it’s Agatha’s turn to react. To seem truly taken aback. Then she marched forward, closing the distance between them with a fierce intent. Her fingers gripped Rio’s chin roughly, forcing her gaze onto her.
“ Excuse me? !”
Rio tried to pull away, spurred on by the sharp scent of Agatha’s perfume. Agatha’s hand shot out, grabbing her wrist with iron resolve. “ No . You don’t get to fucking walk away. Not again.”
Rio’s voice snapped back, laced with bitterness. “That’s rich , coming from you.”
“ Oh , well forgive me for needing to be alone after you ripped him away from my arms.”
“You think I wanted to take Nicky away? To lead his soul past the veil-”
“Take his name out of your mouth,” Agatha hissed. “You don’t get to talk to me about him after you severed his spirit from his body and left me in our home with his corpse .”
“He had to be led sooner rather than later, Agatha!”
“Who says so?!”
“ I do! ” Rio shouts, as her lungs begin to ache, “he was scared , and the longer I waited, the higher the likelihood he would be lost to the world instead of being able to pass peacefully. If I kept waiting, one of my acolytes would have done the job for me in order to take him to—...”
The pause is sudden and unnatural. Because once again, Rio is faced with the biting truth that for all her power, she is not privy to some facts of existence, just like any mortal.
“Where is he, Rio?” Agatha’s eyes seem to burn into her with the intensity of her gaze. Her voice is deceptively soft.
Rio doesn’t answer, and that only seems to spur the other witch on, “You’re Death , aren’t you?!”
She forces her eyes shut before nodding. The action is muted, as if any stronger confirmation of her role would lead to utter catastrophe.
(Though, Rio is no fool. She knows that the disaster that is her relation to Agatha is unrelenting and in no need for additional prompts to be set in motion).
“ So — ” Agatha spat out, “ — Where is he? Shouldn’t you know this? ”
Rio grimaces, the points of her nails digging into the meat of her palm, “ I don’t know, Agatha... ” She takes a stuttering breath, her head aches and her heart thrums with an unwanted beat, “I don’t know where our boy is.”
Tentatively, she allows herself to open her eyes.
Agatha is standing in front of her, frozen, and for once in her life, she’s completely without words. The information seems to wash over her in waves as the no longer hidden fury, bottomless grief, and sickened-horror flashes in her expression.
Hit me. Scream at me. Unbuild my entire being once again. Rio thinks (and almost wishes for).
But, Agatha doesn’t do that.
Her hauntingly vivid eyes are downcast in an attempt to withhold the wet sheen of tears that had rapidly appeared. She turns away from Rio and roughly combs her hand through the unruly hair at the top of her head, looking up as her shoulders tense.
There’s a sharp exhale and a broken sound that was quickly cut off before it could come to fruition.
“I’ll let you cover this room. You have a history of taking things away from infants, after all.”
Rio’s next word is warbled as guilt and horror twists itself in her gut. Her existence is tinged with the taste of iron.
“ Agatha — ”
The other witch's voice is detached. Tired. “I’ll see you later. There are more rooms that need to be covered. Don’t follow me.”
The tension snapped like a brittle thread. Agatha’s next movements were sharp, decisive—too fast to catch, too raw to stop. The door handle didn’t even click shut properly. It slammed, violently, echoing through the room.
Before the sound faded, Rio was already on her knees, heart hammering, breath ragged. Every instinct screamed to close the distance, to hold onto what was left before the fragile silence shattered for good. But she couldn’t move.
A surge of thrashing pain rocks itself back and forth from the base of her ribs, as if her now isolated state was enough of a cue for the chaos brewing beneath to break free.
She had forgotten in their delicate moments that her affliction was constant . That in her distracted mind swarming with memories of Agatha and Nicholas, she wasn’t able to pay any mind to the havoc being reaped inside her until too late.
The build up is faster than the last few times her situation had escalated, and Rio barely has enough of her working mind left to force her own hand to roughly clasp over her mouth to muffle the noise.
With every breath, something shifts inside her with an unnatural snap against the inside of her thorax.
A sharp hacking sound escapes her lips, but it’s not the kind of action that clears anything. Rio’s throat constricts, as if something is crawling up from within, scratching against her insides. Her body recoils, her hands clutching her chest, eyes wide in panic. She tries to breathe, tries to calm herself, but the air feels thicker now, as if it's made of something far denser than oxygen.
Her mind spirals with memories of the past.
( His sweet smile; this time round, Rio see’s him during his first ever snowfall. The memory is burnt into the back of her eyelids so vividly that she could never forget — not that she would ever dream of doing so. The snowflakes are tickling his nose and the wind is whipping at his hair, though Rio’s own scarf which she had engulfed him in before they went outside protects him from the bitter chill of winter.
He looks to her then, eyes bright and fascinated, and Rio is so full of love that she could simply burst with it.
Though this oasis of her mind doesn’t last; his copper eyes no longer look at her, but through her. Warmth, light, and everything that is whole vanishes before she can even blink.
Then, there is Her delighted laugh; it’s hollow in this flashback, even somewhat distorted. Unlike what it was then and much like the one forced one she gave out after they lost him .
Her hallucinatory presence beside Rio feels wrong. Yet, Rio can’t help but try to grab at it anyway in order to try to bury the sensation in the back of her mind — because at the end of the day, past her denial and much to her detriment, Rio will take whatever she can have of Agatha).
Rio presses harder against her chest with her fist, as though she could force whatever it is back down. But then she feels it — a sharp tug in her throat, and the unmistakable weight of her undoing — soft, delicate, and damning. Her mouth opens in a silent scream, her body wracked with the kind of choking garble that comes from something born of longing and helplessness.
The first petal slips free, falling like a drop of water onto her palm.
Then another petal, and another.
A blooming pain spreads as more petals unfurl, falling from her mouth in a steady, relentless stream of blood, vines, and dirt. She gasps, but it only makes it worse — the petals are thick now, swirling with each breath she takes, a storm of fragile blossoms and sharp thorns shreds in her lungs.
Her hands clutch at the ground beneath her as petals scatter around her, the choking feeling intensifying. Her body trembles, caught in the agonising karma of her actions.
Her limbs tremble with the weight of it, and still, it doesn’t stop. It’s unrelenting, even when her vision becomes spotty and her mind turns hazier by the second. She can’t make out where in the nursery she is now, or whether she still is in the nursery.
It’s all too disorienting. It’s all too blisteringly real.
Rio doesn’t get to hear the ugly, snapping sound of her matter ripping itself apart. She does, however, get to feel the way her innards splatter against hardwood, making way for a grotesque bouquet to come forth from her brittle bone and soft flesh.
It hurts.
That’s the simplest way to describe it.
It hurts. It hurts. God, it hurts .
And for all that she is worth and for all that she has ever experienced, Rio feels like she’s six years old and quivering in fear of the unknown all over again before she blacks out completely.
❀
When she eventually comes back to consciousness with a startled jump — her heart stubbornly restarting once again with a rageful diligence — the first thing Rio spots is a wave of iron-crusted red across the old crib mattress and a sea of globe flowers taking root in the aged threading of the fabric.
She looks down, and observes a rusted, congealed mess that had pooled by her knees. The metallic stench is so strong that it makes Rio’s eyes water.
And what is floating on and soaking in her own blood? Layers and layers of flowers and thorns that are reminiscent of a field in spring.
Her top is completely torn and stained beyond repair, and once her copper eyes flicker down to her chest, she spots the scar that confirms her suspicions of what has happened.
The others are silver in colour and horizontal, slim and clean cut. This one is harsher in its presence.
It’s garish, and puckered, and a soft pink. Spanning vertically from the midpoint of her collarbones down to her navel. She feels the world around her shudder as she lets it settle into her being, refraining from tracing the ridged edges.
(She’d made that mistake once. Never again. All of them burn with a quiet ache at all times, but the new marks always flare up with a vengeance if bothered).
Rio knows the cycle was always due to repeat. She was just shocked that her most recent round of love-sick induced agony had erupted and finished so much more violently and swiftly than the others.
But, hey, at least she can breathe clearly again. For now.
Notes:
*taps mic* ....sorry for disappearing again guys- fingers crossed there's at least, like, 2 readers who missed this story because i am SEEING THIS THROUGH NO MATTER WHAT (I have a mostly free summer, I'm unstoppable now that spring semester is over).
I hope that if anyone reads chapter 7 that you enjoyed it <33 sorry that its a bit cluttered, i wrote it mostly in one sitting in some sort of haze whilst being on call watching Jennifer's Body
Come bully me on twitter or tumblr/yap with me for the future updates? @majorlysapphic
Chapter 8: heathers & hyacinths VI
Summary:
“I can tell when a nebbiolo has been fermenting for a decade or several. You can taste the age,” Rio started, slowly playing with the cuticles of her fingers as she turned her head.
There’s a tired sigh. “Where is this going, Rio?”
Agatha’s eyes are fixed forward with her grip on the steering wheel leaving her knuckles white. Rio ignores her ex-wife’s question in favour of carrying on with her opener, “The thing is, Agatha, the same principle applies to magick.”
Notes:
it's good to be back :') i missed this fic so much, like SO *SO* much
also, hot tip: turns out, the easiest way to get out of a writing slump is to get your girl to withhold selfies until you finally finish the chapter. the power of lesbianism overcame my stubborn little brain
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Humans have a history of persistence in their behaviour,
Across centuries and civilizations, they have clung to their desires and obsessions, whether out of desperate need, misguided loyalty, or the kind of reckless curiosity that has set entire lives ablaze.
And that same persistence lingers quietly beneath the surface of her ex wife’s demeanor like a stubborn burr.
Rio does not need to turn around to know that Agatha is watching her.
The stare is unmistakable — cold, precise, and relentless — pinned on her shoulders when Agatha thinks she isn’t paying attention. The reality of it all feels like the brush of a winter air against warm skin; all too noticeable and something one must endure until you get used to the chill. Though, with the brief summer that was Agatha’s attention, Rio doubts she's faring well.
“—And we’re sure that we’re prepared for the summoning?” Alice asks, who oddly enough has become the most talkative of the trio. She was standing beside the tombstone of one of her older ancestors — the ritual called for proximity to those who had passed, and what better location was there than the very same graveyard where the trio had struck their little deal?
It’s been just over six days since all three of them had rummaged around that goddamned abandoned home like a set of desperate raccoons.
(It’s been six days of Agatha not directly talking to Rio as well).
“Well I’m insulted that you’re so doubtful of mine and my wife’s abilities,” Agatha huffed, sharp and quick, like she’d been waiting for an excuse to say it. “ Yes . We’re prepared.”
…It’s also been six days of that .
Being laid claim to like that was a fresh kind of humiliation, especially given that Agatha had no right to use the title and Rio was the last person who deserved to bear it.
‘My Wife.’
It landed like a barbed hook every time, dragging up things Rio would rather keep buried.
As if being reminded of Nicholas’ absence wasn’t already an open wound, Agatha seemed to have decided that this was the most efficient form of unusual punishment: dangling the memory of what they once were, forcing Rio to carry it without ever letting it slow their progress; a cruelty that didn’t interfere with their shared objectives, which made it all the more deliberate.
Her breathing was clear, for now. The last flare of lovesickness had burned itself out days ago, offering a temporary reprieve from her usual symptoms. But she could already feel it creeping back in, buds quietly rooting themselves in the hollow spaces of her lungs, weeks earlier than she’d anticipated. The sensation was faint but insistent.
Still, the state of her lungs was almost irrelevant compared to the heavy cloud forming in her mind. Every attempt to focus only made the haze thicker, until the effort itself felt pointless.
And yet, she couldn’t stop turning everything over in her mind, as if clarity might hurt less than the confusion currently gnawing at her.
Far off in the background, Agatha and Alice were at it again. Not talking. Bickering. Their voices rose and fell in sharp bursts, each exchange like flint striking steel, threatening to catch fire at any moment.
Rio shook her head, tuning them out in favour of her current fixation.
A single forget-me-not had forced its way through the cracked earth beside a shallow grave, stubborn and small against the weathered stone it leaned toward. The headstone itself was so eroded by time and neglect that its name might as well have been erased from existence. Only a time traveler could have identified who was buried beneath it.
Rio crouched near it, her gaze locked on the delicate bloom.
She’d been fixated on it ever since she’d finished her pitiful share of the preparations for the ritual they were about to perform. After all, being born a green witch came with its advantages: her role had been as simple as etching runes into the dirt and inscribing a few lines of Latin. A modest task compared to whatever Agatha and Alice were wrangling over now with their own powers.
But Rio’s part wasn't over. No t in the slightest.
When the ritual was to begin in earnest, she would need to provide a steady, unbroken stream of magick to keep everything from collapsing. So, as a precaution — and to keep her mind off the sound of Agatha’s voice — Rio had chosen a delicate test subject.
She tilted her head, watching the tiny plant intently.
The forget-me-not trembled faintly as her energy brushed against it, the petals quivering like it sensed her attention. She wasn’t trying to harm it, not exactly. She just needed to gauge how much control she had over her reserves; whether her focus was as precise as it needed to be, or whether she’d end up burning through herself too quickly when it mattered.
Taking one deep inhale, Rio’s fingertips ghosted the air above the soft petals.
The magick flows like a steady wound; a direct pulse that causes the sage stems' outer layer to brighten. Its position — slightly drooping and leaning to its side — seemed to crack under the new pressure, causing awkward twists and angles to grace the flower until it was perfectly straight.
The bristles of the anther only appeared to multiply in volume, the concentration of pollen thickening as the yellow center became brighter.
And, as Rio’s palm hovered just above tiny blue petals, her magick rooted itself even deeper. Tendrils of energy swirled around the body of the plant and pulsed out into its extremities; each powdery blue petal became glossy and almost appeared as a hardened chip of stained glass as the sun reflected off of it.
Rio hummed, satisfied with her first half of her experiment as the strong fragrance of the forget-me-not drifted up.
The next phase? To subject it to decay.
She sent down a sharp pulse of power, a jagged strike meant to tear through petals and stem alike. But the forget-me-not did not waver. Instead, it shimmered, a radiant shield blossoming from within its core, absorbing the assault as though it were nothing more than a breeze.
And despite the second… third… fourth attempt to break down the forget-me-not her magick had nurtured, it refused to budge. As if it had freely taken her magick but now refused to return it.
Or, even more unbelievably, as if Rio’s own being was refusing to break down — only provide.
(Which may be incredibly beneficial for the summoning incantation Rio was soon to participate in, but incredibly concerning given that her body once again has decided to take the lead on her capabilities whilst leaving Rio unassuming).
…What was going on?
She raised her palm to make another attempt, only to be halted by a shout.
“—io… Rio! ”
The voice snaps her out of her train of thought, and she glances over to the source. Alice is standing, her arms carrying the objects all three of them had pilfered from the old penthouse. It's almost comical.
For the briefest moment, her eyes dart to the left of Alice.
Frosty blue eyes. Crossed arms. One brow raised in expectation — all that is lacking now is one hand thrust forward with a ‘come hither' motion.
Rio looks down to the forget-me-not one last time — stronger than it had been when she first encountered it, with no fault found on the surface — before looking back and standing up to meet the pair.
Theoretically, her role in their ritual should remain unaffected.
For what comes after though? Rio swallows sharply, feeling a shiver of dread shoot down her spine.
❀
Rituals surrounding those who have passed are a tricky business with even trickier success rates.
The spirits of the dead do not always rest easy, and when disturbed — whether by insurmountable grief, guilt, but most commonly magick — they seldom return in favourable moods.
Summoning a spirit requires more than a name and a circle of salt.
It demands memory, intention, and something deeply personal — hence the trio’s excursion to a dusty, long-disregarded penthouse several days ago — because the dead, for all their silence, listen more closely to love and loss than to incantations alone .
At the heart of the graveyard counting generations of Alice’s ancestors, the sigils were drawn and connected on freshly disturbed dirt. Each ended in a precise triangle, inked in newly-sprouted clovers and aged iron filings.
Alice stood at the longest peak, the apex of the formation; the point meant for a direct blood-link to the spirits who would soon be dragged back onto mortal planes. She took a steadying breath, her boots sinking just slightly into the softened ground as she stepped forward, placing the last of the familial objects into the circle’s center with shaking hands.
Alice drew back, brushing black-and-ruby strands of spiky hair from her face.
Hands began to trace the air; fluid, deliberate, well-practiced. A single circular motion, wide and sweeping, and then another in reverse. And as she splayed her arms outward, palms to the earth, there was a beat—
A soundless pulse.
A thrum of energy. Of protection magick.
Rio took a deep breath, her cue had just arrived.
The witch’s fingers curled inward, hovering just above the earth as she crouched down. She drew in a breath — not just air, but natural energy bolstered by Alice’s contribution. The kind of energy that lived in roots and sap, in old seeds buried beneath tombstones, in the ancient pact between death and life.
(A pact which should remain unwavering.
A pact that should never be breached.
Yet here Rio was, sullying this distinct line — driven by selfish desires for a permanent relief — quietly assuring herself that a surface-level scrape on a balance she was forever in servitude to would be worth it so long as everything reverts to status-quo by the end of the day.
…She wonders if a past version of her could see her now, would they look away in disgust or agree that it was time for present-Rio — with her many failings — to pass down the torch no matter what).
The lines and tidy symbols she had engraved into the ground shuddered.
Then, the earth bloomed .
Grass split and parted as life surged upward — wildflowers in every shade of blood and bone, curling ferns, star-shaped blossoms that burst upwards. Some flowers opened immediately, wide-petaled and glowing faintly in the night. Others pulsed slowly, like they breathed with the rhythm of the spell.
Not a moment later, a jolt of violet was struck.
(Agatha’s magick had always been an unruly creature, but so long as she wasn’t directly struck, it wouldn’t be out for blood).
Purple and green pulsed together and amplified the incantations power. All their preparations for the summoning swelled like a tide about to break, and it was both Agatha and Rio’s job to keep everything on its precipice without letting even a drop of power spill over.
At least not until Alice finished calling upon her ancestors and getting the answers she required.
Rio could hear Alice’s voice mumbling, stammering, repeating Latin through rough, uneven breaths. The words came faster now, fraying at the edges with effort.
She paid it no mind, opting to squeeze her eyes shut and focus on her job.
Drawing in a slow breath, she let it fill her belly, not her chest — anchoring herself in the rhythm of air and earth. As she exhaled, she let the tension bleed from her shoulders, pulling the threads of green magick through her spine, down into her heels.
Power moved in tandem with breath. And with every exhale, Rio could just about sense Agatha’s own magick stabilising and morphing what she was giving out later down the line — like unseen hands guiding the threads she wove, shaping raw energy into intricate form in a strange redirection. Not controlled, but instead a curated actualisation.
The ritual space around the three stirred.
A low vibration began to hum through the soles of her boots. Not just noise, but movement. The flowers around the sigils quivered, bending slightly inward, as if bowing. Somewhere nearby, a breeze kicked up as a shock-wave sprung from all directions.
This was it. They had succeeded.
And the threshold between mortal and beyond had been delicately pried open for exploitation.
❀
Time moved at a sluggish pace.
Alice’s voice was distant in Rio’s ringing ears, but it was unmistakingly tinged with awe and spilling out in a rapid series of questions and follow-ups. Meanwhile, there was a self-satisfied chuckle that could only belong to the Siphon not too far away from her, seemingly amused with the youngest witch’s curiosity.
Rio, however, was feeling much less than pride and enthusiasm as the minutes crept by.
Her stomach gave a sharp lurch, and goosebumps covered her skin in a quick trail. She squeezed her eyes shut even tighter — as if not allowing herself to see the spirits they had summoned could resolve all her issues.
With a delicate equilibrium threatening to spin off-center, a wave of constant nausea began blooming low in her gut. It was a gripping sensation as if her stomach was trying to wrench itself loose from her body.
Pointed nails dug into her palms in an attempt to ground herself. She forced another breath — this one raw, shuddering — and gritted out a prayer in her head. Though it went unanswered.
Tendrils of black attempted to creep through her being. The insipid omnipotent potential of death poking out of her and swelling as if it had a right to overtake the green magick Rio had been born to wield.
Palms shook as Rio forced more energy out, giving out stuttered exhales as she consciously pushed back one of her magick’s in favour of the other.
She planted her feet harder into the ground, refusing to falter, and forced more energy out. With a ragged grunt, Rio consciously drove the green forward, shoving the darker power back, denying it space in the extremities of her body.
It resisted, coiled around her ribs. Forcing its presence out in jagged strikes that couldn’t be ignored.
She bit down on the inside of her cheek, flesh stinging with the power.
Alice was still talking.
Still asking questions.
By the Goddess, how long was this going to take?
Then, a faint ripple graced the edge of her senses.
Gentle and full of reprieve.
It crept in slowly, almost shy at first, curling between the threads of her green magic. Violet light bled into the edges of darkened vision, so subtle she thought she was imagining it until its presence steadied her breath. It wove around her power with patient precision, balancing where she wavered, shoring up the cracks she had not patched.
Her surprise nearly made her falter, but the violet did not push. It never drew from her energy stores, merely surrounded and guided, its quiet strength a steady counterpoint to the chaos. It twined with the green in brilliant spirals, enfolding her in a web of will — shoving back the invasive dark, denying it dominion.
It was simply Agatha .
Rio finally allowed her eyes to flutter open and instead of taking in the scene of temporarily freed spirits facing Alice and discussing in hushed, serious tones, her gaze found her siphon.
Agatha’s eyes were already on her, unblinking, steady. Around her irises, vibrant magic swirled, leaving a faint ring of violet light. The current between them thrummed, alive and sure, threading through Rio’s own magick with unwavering precision.
She let herself lean into it.
At first, it was just a loosening of her grip on the flow, a tentative easing of the tension in her shoulders. Then it spread, like warmth seeping into chilled limbs, and the strain in her muscles began to ebb away. The relentless push of her own will softened, yielding ground to the steady pull of Agatha’s control.
The green currents that had been thrashing and twisting to stay above water smoothed out, slipping effortlessly into the patterns Agatha wove. Every movement of the violet threads was deliberate, and Rio felt herself adjusting to their cadence, turns and arcs she would never have shaped herself. It was almost disorienting, the way her power seemed to want to follow, falling into step as though it had been waiting for this guidance all along.
She exhaled slowly, the air leaving her lungs in a long, quiet sigh, and let Agatha carry the flow forward. Together, their magic poured into the summoning circle in precise waves, each one settling into place with meticulous intent.
Rio drew in a deeper breath, letting the hum of the joined power fill her senses.
That was when she noticed it: Agatha’s magick did not feel as it once had. It was as fresh as a lamb in spring, though with a certain edge. Sharper. More compressed, as though it had been honed too many times on something unyielding. Her gaze lifted instinctively, and Agatha’s eyes were already on her. For a fleeting second, Rio caught the jolt of panic flashing there, raw and unguarded, before it was buried beneath composure.
Without a word, Agatha raised her arms, sleeves falling back from her wrists, and thrust them outward. The summoning circle shuddered, the flow of magic snapping apart as if a cord had been cut.
The ritual severed in its entirety.
❀
The next events all blur into one, but it all begins with Alice and Agatha clashing the moment the summoning is abruptly cut short by the siphon.
(“What the hell was that?!”
“Calm yourself blood-witch, you got to commune with gram-grams, no?”
“It was nowhere near enough—”
“—save it! You weren’t the one doing the heavy lifting for such an incantation. We did our job and more. Honestly, consider yourself spoiled at this point. Be a doll and over that handy-dandy protection ward now.”)
The borders of ritual are broken, and all that has bloomed shrivels and recedes under the earth.
Agatha is a flurry of sharp movements as the scroll for an aegis arcanum — begrudging courtesy of Alice — is shoved into her arms after several more minutes of arguing.
Meanwhile, Rio’s face remained unimpressed. Of the three of them, she was the only one still actively working, her magick seeping into the surroundings in deliberate threads. Each strand sought out the faintest weaknesses left behind by their summoning incantation, tightening seams and sealing edges until every rift was perfectly patched in a race against how long.
Her gaze didn’t lift, her focus anchored on the unseen repairs — because someone had to make sure this mess stayed contained, and it wasn’t going to be either of the two squabbling women to the side.
( “Come on. We have business to get to, and this graveyard is beginning to give me vertigo.”
…
“Rio. Time to go.” )
The other witch is stubborn in her pursuit, barely allowing Rio a moment to lower her palms after she finishes her checks before grabbing her wrist and dragging her away, barely sparing Alice a glance over her shoulder.
Rio wasn’t entirely sure what Agatha had a tighter grip on: the satchel now holding three invaluable components for their shared mission, or her wrist. The thought of saying something crossed her mind, but one look at Agatha’s expression stopped it cold.
There was a rawness there, a tension in her posture like a cornered animal deciding whether to bite or bolt.
They reached the rental car, acquired earlier with a discreet dose of magick-based persuasion at the graveyard’s entrance. Rio moved to slide into the passenger seat — driving had never been one of her strengths — but her attention snagged on a subtle motion.
Agatha had slipped the golden compass from the satchel and held it low, murmuring to it under her breath as she rounded the front of the car. And once she settled into the drivers seat and set their belongings down, Rio could make out how the needle of the magick guide spun wildly, then steadied, pointing away from what must be Alice’s direction before fixing on a new unseen target entirely.
❀
They had been on the road for an hour in uncomfortable silence before Rio let out any of her thoughts, having utilised the time to gather herself and calm her racing mind.
"You figured it out yourself," Rio said eventually. Her tone was neutral, but her eyes were fixed on the golden point of the magick guide as it floated steadily above the dashboard — attributable to the simple levitation charm casted after Agatha quickly grew agitated over having to reach over and check. The artefact pulsed softly, its light a steady rhythm in the darkened car. "Our next mark."
Agatha only gives a sharp noise of acknowledgement as her hands firm on the wheel. Her blue gaze flicked to the center console, to the narrow scroll that Rio had been carrying since before they'd crossed paths again.
In their current moment, the invaluable piece of parchment was half-buried beneath a cracked sunglasses case and an empty plastic water bottle; it wasn’t exactly the stellar treatment their sisters of the craft would bestow onto the spell-component guide, but neither she nor Agatha were traditional women.
As long as the scroll was secure and within the duo’s possession, that was the only thing that mattered.
Rio’s hand drifted to it. She untied the faded ribbon and let the parchment unroll slowly in her hands. The ink was dark, the symbols as clear as they had been the first time she found them in a dead woman's private library.
She did not need to reread its passages. She had already etched them into memory, carved their cadence into the space behind her eyes. But she read them anyway, out of habit, or maybe reverence.
Her lips moved silently at first. Then quietly aloud. “ Ad unum finem realitas tendit; via bifurcata aut myops servat aut perdit. Laterna in divina manu tremit. ”
The riddle tasted heavier spoken aloud, like it carried more weight than the ink on the scroll could ever hold. Rio’s frown deepened as she stared at the letters, though she wasn’t really seeing them anymore.
Two paths. Salvation or ruin. But for whom? Was it referring to blindness of the eyes, or of intent? Who, out of all beings big and small in the universe, would be able to grace Agatha and her onto a successful path?
Her thumb brushed the edge of the parchment, as though pressure alone might coax a clearer answer, “Care to share with the class what revelation the second riddle led you to?”
There’s a small pause as Agatha goes to change lanes, the smooth roll of the car a juxtaposition to the whipping wind of the night coming through from the broken window.
The other witch tapped two fingers against the steering wheel, a muted, restless rhythm. Her gaze stayed fixed on the road, but Rio could feel the thoughts turning over in her head, the careful measuring of what to keep and what to give away.
She hummed in a noncommittal manner, the sound barely audible over the engine, and kept driving. The silence stretched, broken only by the occasional shift of the gearstick or the scrape of her boot easing off the pedal. At one point, Agatha’s jaw flexed, as if she might speak, but she swallowed whatever words had come to her and pressed harder on the accelerator instead.
Seemingly content to carry on with the cold shoulder.
“Agatha,” Rio said softly. It was a genuine, pleading tone she hadn’t used with the other woman in years, if her memory served her right. “Tell me. Please .”
Agatha’s eyes flicked toward her for the briefest moment before returning to the road. The passing scenery blurred past the windows.
Finally, she spoke.
“If we’re chasing after a pane sworn to lead us to whatever we desire, a prophet’s blessing would be the bare minimum required.”
It makes so much sense that Rio has the impulse to bury her face in her hands; always the type to over-analyse details instead of taking a step back and looking at the whole picture.
Rio gave a nod of acknowledgement, the tension in her shoulders refusing to ease. Silence seeped back in, thick and uncomfortable, wrapping itself around them like damp cloth.
Her thoughts churned, going right back to that earlier moment in the day.
She debated letting it go — pretending the end of the summoning ritual had been nothing worth mentioning — but the memory was too sharp, too fresh. Her tongue felt heavy before she finally forced the words out.
“…So are we going to talk about it?”
“Oh, you’re in the mood to talk now? ” Agatha’s tone was flat, almost bored, but the tightness around her mouth betrayed the barb.
“Agatha.”
The other woman said nothing. The road ahead seemed to stretch endlessly, the muted thrum of the tires the only reply.
“Your magick—”
“—Saved you from unleashing a torrent of that darker magick of yours into the summoning circle.” Agatha’s voice cut cleanly through, laced with impatience. She even managed an eye roll without taking her gaze off the road. “You’re welcome.”
The silence that followed was even heavier than before, pressing down on Rio’s chest. She bit her lip hard, the familiar coppery tang of blood teasing the edge of her tongue. Finally, she decided to just bite the bullet.
“I can tell when a nebbiolo has been fermenting for a decade or several. You can taste the age,” Rio started, slowly playing with the cuticles of her fingers as she turned her head.
There’s a tired sigh. “Where is this going, Rio?”
Agatha’s eyes are fixed forward with her grip on the steering wheel leaving her knuckles white. Rio ignores her ex-wife’s question in favour of carrying on with her opener, “The thing is , Agatha, the same principle applies to magick.”
The sudden slam of the brakes cut through the air like a physical blow. Rio’s seatbelt locked hard across her chest, the scars beneath her paper-thin cotton shirt flaring with a raw ache. The gasp that tore from her throat was short, ragged — however, mistakeable f or shock.
( Goddess forbid Rio finally addresses things directly with Agatha. It’s not like the witch has been asking for it since they reunited or anything.)
“What are you trying to say here?” The question is sharp — a refined edge that had been deceptively wrapped with satin.
Rio stilled, a faint hitch in her movements as her chest throbbed beneath her shirt, each breath pulling cool air that only seemed to feed the ache. Her tongue traced the inside of her cheek as she measured her words, though she already knew she was digging yet another emotional grave.
“...Does a con-woman ever stop being a con-woman?”
The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was a taut string, stretched thin between them.
It wasn’t a secret that Agatha had gained her notoriety and power through conflict. Siphoning was a rare art form, and anyone gifted with it ought to make their mark on the magick community — and Agatha, ever the attentive student, had sunk her teeth into every opportunity after slipping free from the grasps of her childhood coven.
(It didn’t take much strain to find openings for further… study when witches tended to flock toward the other woman’s purple-wrapped pull).
…Though, there was a time when even the most violent hands mellowed out with a genuine cause.
(Fingers interlocked under the stars with aimless conversation.
A knot tightened and a ring slipped on during a handfasting.
Centuries of worldly pursuits and a shared bed.
Supportive forehead kisses during prenatal scans.
Not a single opportunity to read a bed time story missed—
…
Rio should stop whilst she’s ahead; it’s best not to dig into the memories.)
Though that time had long passed, and it doesn’t take a prophet to say that both of them would spiral and fall back into some of their old habits; Rio is completely certain Agatha is no fool to this knowledge, either.
“Not if they’re any good,” Agatha commented finally, her voice carrying the kind of certainty that made Rio’s stomach turn.
Rio refocused on her hands, fastening the ribbon around the scroll with more force than was strictly necessary. The fabric dug into her fingers as she tightened the knot and set the scroll back into the exact spot she had plucked it from, a neat little gesture of control in a conversation that was already slipping.
“I don’t think you’re truly looking to destroy the Pane of Arbitrium like you told me,” Rio said, her voice deliberately steady, each word placed with care like setting down glass.
“ Oh? ” Agatha’s reply was cold, almost amused, though there was a challenge buried in it — a dare for Rio to say more, to cross a line she could never uncross.
And Rio, true to form and true to the habits she had sworn she would bury, bit down on the bait.
“I…. I think you’re trying to morph your magick—” she said, the words tumbling out faster now, losing polish in favour of force. “—To find something out there that will let it fester into something darker. Something richer .”
She could hear her own voice rising, her breath quicken, feel her pulse picking up, but she didn’t stop.
“Attempting to— fuck , I don’t even know anymore. But your magick, it’s different. You’ve changed it.”
She shifted in her seat, turning fully to face Agatha as though proximity might force some honesty out of her. “—And there’s no way you’re doing all this just to destroy a priceless magick pane. That’s not who you are, and we both know it.”
She watched Agatha closely now, searching her face for even the slightest crack — a twitch of the mouth, a flicker of guilt, a spark of vindication. Anything.
There was a pause.
Not the kind loaded with tension, but something stranger — quieter.
And for a moment, Rio almost missed it. Agatha’s eyes, usually so guarded and glinting with simmering anger, softened with an ache .
(Just barely and only for a brief window of time. Like a thought passed through her that she hadn’t meant to let show).
“You really think you have everything laid out in front of you? Huh?”
A humourless laugh pushed past the witch’s lips, more breath than sound. “That whatever narrative you’ve built in your head is set in stone?”
The words are gentle, yet wielded like a weapon. Agatha didn’t wait for an answer. Her gaze drifted momentarily to the guide still hovering in its position above the dashboard, its golden light flickering faintly against the windshield. The golden point steadfast and stable since the car stopped.
She looks back to the other witch with an almost bitter expression.
Rio feels Agatha’s breath against her lips, coming out in forced, slow exhales as if their conversation had taken everything out of her.
It hits her so clearly then that she’s tired. And so is the woman in front of her.
“Do you actually remember anything, or are you working off mishappened memories?” The question is a peculiar mix of mocking and soft from Agatha’s lips; a feather-light tone that packs a horrid punch.
Rio’s jaw tightens.
Agatha has been such a prevalent grace upon her entire existence that to know Rio truly, one would have to know Agatha. The audacity to ask whether Rio is acting out of the influence of tinted glasses is nothing short of offensive.
As if she could ever truly forget their most endeared moments.
As if she could truly forget their explosive catastrophes.
(As if she could ever truly forget Agatha .)
It all causes a rancorous contraction onto her heart. Onto her lungs. “... I could ask you the same thing.” Rio finally rasps out.
There’s no response. The stillness stretches on with no sign of ending.
Rio looks away, a million questions sitting stale on her tongue.
What happened to you?
What happened to us?
…What happened to me?
What aren’t you telling me?
Do anger and regret cause your ankles to drag like they do mine?
…Then, rather reluctantly.
Does my secrecy bother you as much as yours bothers me?
She let out a harsh breath through her nose, squeezing her eyes shut as her head tilted back against her seat's headrest. “....You know what, forget it. Just keep driving, Agatha.”
The ignition of the car sparks back to life.
❀
The next several hours pass beneath a heavy, deliberate silence.
Neither of them speaks, and neither expects the other to. Their mutual silent treatment has settled into something solid, almost structural, as if the car itself is being held together by their refusal to break it.
Outside, the world feels just as barren. The motorway stretches endlessly in both directions, an unbroken ribbon of asphalt cutting through fields of nothing. The few lights they pass — lonely gas stations, dim security lamps flickering above closed shops, the rare glow of a farmhouse window — flare briefly in the distance before fading back into the dark.
The magick guide’s golden point hovers unwaveringly above the dashboard, a quiet presence pulsing with faint, rhythmic light. It does not waver, does not falter, and so neither do they.
Eventually, the compass shifts. Its glow bends slightly to the left, and Agatha follows its lead without a word. The motorway begins to thin, unraveling into narrower roads, each turn a little sharper, a little rougher under the tires. The scenery changes, too, though slowly: the emptiness giving way to skeletal trees, sagging fences, and eventually overgrown wheat fields.
There’s a brief, almost imperceptible sense of relief when the final intersection finally appears — a lonely crossroad marked by a crooked metal sign.
‘THIS WAY TO EASTVIEW!’
Beneath the bold lettering, smaller print announces simply: ‘Sixteen Kilometres Ahead.’
The car slows as they pass it.
Not by much, but enough for Rio to notice the shift.
Out of the corner of her eye, she catches Agatha’s hands tightening on the steering wheel until her knuckles turn ghostly-white. A vein stands out sharply along her neck as her jaw locks, though she doesn’t say a word. She just follows the guide’s subtle pull onto a narrower road, allowing it to lead them deeper in.
(The compass, unconcerned with the current mental state of the pair following its every suggestion, continues to glow and guide).
And, so, they keep driving until the morning sun begins to tease the sky as tires slow in order to, eventually, park in the offside of a road belonging to middle-class suburbia.
Notes:
heyyyyyy, so. i'm a massive liar about the next expected update apparently and went into a writing slump-- IM SO SORRY!!!!
Good news though! With my last absence, I was suffering in the trenches of exam season and spring sem, however, with this one I was actually enjoying life to it's fullest (I SAW SABRINA AND CLAIRO AT HYDE PARK IM STILL GEEKING OUT OVER IT ASKADNKLSADJSA) :'))Now, with the 'hello again' typed out, its time to cover the story so far..
—
Firstly, If anyone noticed any issues/things that didn't make sense in the scenes where they were on the road, don't come at me-- I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DRIVE :'o
Second! This is the end of the heathers & hyacinths arc, meaning that the majority of the hints and foreshadowing has been put into place for whats to come (yes >:), every single flower mentioned has had a subtle meaning to the plot). Which also, yes, means that we are finally out of the most angsty pit of the story. Pat yourself on the back for sticking through it!
Third, full credit to 'yeahitshowed' on ao3 for the idea that anything disturbing the balance has physical ramifications on Rio's being (check out their 'post-canon ghoulinverse' series, it's an amazing read!!)
Fourth (and most importantly), if the unreliable narrator tag isn't blaringly obvious now then i don't know what to say. You may be wanting to hit both Agatha and Rio with a frying pan out of frustration and/or confusion? Good! Me too :)) that means im doing my job right and we can start unthreading what on earth is going, starting with the next chapter!
(Agatha: my wife.
Rio: WHAT DOES THAT MEANNNN???? WHAT IS SHE SCHEMING???)^(give the girl some leeway though, she is still very much depressed and suicidal - reasoning is running after her but she's faster)
—
I must confess I have a Medieval AU for this ship in the works which is a lot more fluffy and smutty as sometimes writing so much angst is draining, but I promise this fic remains my favourite child and is my priority!!
A serious thankyou to the readers that keep coming back despite my blips in an updating schedule, reading your comments and even having a handful of you reach out to yap has been a solid way to keep motivation! <3
Chapter 9: Foxgloves & Poppies I
Summary:
The second card followed, revealing a cloaked figure with tools of power before them, its symbolism soured by the reversal. “Present. The Magician, reversed. Illusions… Being out of touch with true power.” Her tone lingered for a beat longer, as though savouring the implications, “How fitting. You both match.”
Well. This reading was not tilting toward their favour. In fact, it seemed determined to unravel in the most spectacularly disastrous fashion possible.
(Rio briefly wondered if she had enough time to dash outside and scream a good, cursed wail of frustration into the streets of Eastview).
Then… last card fell with more gravity. A skeletal rider, pale horse beneath him, held the banner of transition aloft. “As for your future… The Death Arcana. The end of a cycle. New beginnings.”
Notes:
two of my fav fics updated today so thank them for the boost of energy for me to get out the final 4.5k words for this chapter out! :)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Eastview is made of the typical cut-and-paste imagery you’d find advertising ‘The American Dream’ - albeit, a little more rundown than what would be casted out into the pictures.
Typical boxy houses lined either side of the street with neat white picket fences sprawled around their perimeters. The air smelled faintly of cut grass and asphalt warming under the early sun. Somewhere down the block, a sprinkler ticked in slow, uneven bursts in an attempt to make a series of sad-looking peonies stay alive.
Dotted around the area, a handful of small businesses line the street, each with its own quirks and character.
On one side sits a second hand bookstore, its front window crowded with old hardcovers and yellowing paperbacks. A hand-painted sign advertises a ‘Trade Two, Take One!’ deal, while a chalkboard propped against the doorframe lists upcoming poetry readings and youth-engagement events, the chalk letters half-smudged from a passers-by knuckle grazing the lettered surface. Inside, the shelves are close and crooked, but the air is rich with the smell of paper and ink, and the quiet hum of an old ceiling fan turns overhead.
A few doors down, a thrift shop glimmers with mismatched brass lamps and odd furniture pressed up against the glass. Old vinyl records lean precariously against the window display, while a mannequin in a faded viridian prom gown stands watch on the sidewalk with one arm missing.
At the far end of the street, a self-proclaimed family-owned coffeehouse serves as the heart of the little strip. Through its wide windows, rows of golden pastries and loaves of ‘specialty’ banana bread line the counter, while the hiss of the espresso machine fills the air. The smell of roasted beans and warm sugar drifts outside, curling into the street and mingling with the chatter of early-rising customers perched at small tables.
When they had parked, Agatha had wasted no time bolting from the car. She stretched briefly, muttered something about needing a caffeine fix, then disappeared inside at a near break-neck pace. The bell above the café door gave a quick, cheerful jingle as she entered, the sound immediately swallowed by the clatter of cups and saucers within.
Rio had only to wait for Agatha’s mood to be artificially elevated by caffeine, and then — presumably — they would embark on yet another wild goose chase.
By all means, everything ought to have been smooth sailing.
…Apart from the fact that Rio had been locked in combat with a parking-ticket machine for the past ten minutes.
She could see Agatha through the café’s wide glass panes, lingering far too long in front of the menu board with the same glaring intensity she reserved for riddles and runes. And with no sign of the other woman stopping anytime soon, Rio takes a deep breath as she goes to wage war on the machine once again.
The blasted contraption wheezed and shuddered like a dying beast every time she pressed a button. Coins had to be fed into the slot twice before it would acknowledge them, and its digital screen blinked with a stubborn haze of static that made each step a gamble. Rio jabbed at the keys with growing irritation, half expecting sparks to fly, until at last the machine clunked.
Only to not cough up a ticket.
Rio took a deep breath and brushed her hands against the sides of her jeans as if to rid herself of the irritation produced from the tedious encounter, when Agatha appeared at her side, two steaming takeaway cups in hand. The scent of burnt espresso drifted up between them, warm but acrid, and Agatha passed one across with a pointed look that required no words.
Rio stared down at the cup passed to her — slightly surprised she was given anything at all — and the wafting smell of coffee gave way for the generous scent of hazelnut syrup mixed into the drink; she had started her unhealthy penchant for sugary syrups in her coffee a few years ago, and quite frankly wrinkled her nose at the taste of plain—
wait.
(Why would Agatha...?—)
Her wide eyes met Agatha’s, only to be greeted with an eye roll — uncomfortable after the brief moment of connection.
“We’ll spend the rest of the day stuck here if you keep up with this,” Agatha had stated bluntly.
“Goddess forbid I try to do things properly for once…” Rio mumbled in reply, still partially star-struck.
(Agatha knew.
She knew…
How does she know?)
As she spoke, Agatha flicked her wrist toward their car despite the fact the keys were safely in her pocket. The lock unlatched with a click that was far too neat to be mechanical, the doors swinging open as though in obedience. She slipped inside for a moment, already plucking the compass from its resting place, her fingers curling possessively around it.
(How? How? How?—)
“Truly,” the other woman drawled with a vicious glint in her eyes, “Especially given how simple charms can go a long way. I get your magick is on the fritz, but if it can’t cooperate with you for something so small, I worry for the fate of our goals. Honestly, I may have had better luck pairing with a newly-presented witch still clutching onto their first spell book.”
Okay. Ouch.
Rio had expected Agatha to bring up her magick’s lack of… presence or restraint since they started their drive. However, given their last handful of interactions, she wasn’t expecting such a casually dismissive manner.
(—Could it be a coincidence?
It had to be, surely? She was always one to overthink.)
With a sharp gesture, Agatha traced a sigil in the air; magick shimmered faintly, settling around the vehicle like an invisible sheath. The concealment charm crackled briefly against their surroundings, and Agatha flexed her hand as though she were testing the wards.
Satisfied, she let her magick fizzle back into dormancy before going to murmur a quick succession of Latin phonetics into the golden object in her hand. The compass pulsed once in reply, a flicker that left no trace, and only then did she allow herself the satisfaction of looking just a little bit calmer, cradling both the artifact and her coffee as though neither were of any great consequence.
“Well,” Agatha let out a sharp exhale. There’s a brief moment where she checks over her shoulder, avoiding Rio’s eyes before marching onwards. “We don’t have time to waste. Come on.”
❀
Whatever ancient magick that sourced their compass seemed to have a peculiar wish to provide not just direction, but an experience.
The last time, it had drawn them to a hidden bar and stage, tucked away behind narrow alleys and darkened doors. The place had thrived on secrecy, a den of velvet curtains and whispered introductions. Its very concealment had bestowed a kind of selective prestige.
What have they been led to now however? The compass had chosen the complete opposite.
Their steps carried them to a storefront pressed close to one of the busiest walkways in town — though given how the number of people they passed since arriving in Eastview was so few, Rio deemed that title as something entirely embellished, even if true.
There were no gleaming marble thresholds, no polished brass fittings, no locked doors that demanded whispered passwords or charms of persuasion before opening. Instead, the building presented itself plainly, a little tired at the edges. The paint was chipped, the windowpanes smudged, and the doorway firmly shut with a chalkboard standing to its left, where a looping, weathered script announced offered session types alongside their rates.
(‘Well-loved’ would be the descriptor she would award for this place.
‘Run-down’ would be the startling accurate read Agatha would quietly scoff out immediately after Rio had murmured her view).
A broad wooden sign stretched across the full width of the shopfront, the paint faded but still bold enough to make promises. The words a spoiler for who they were soon to encounter:
‘Madame Calderu’s Psychic Readings.’
It was an odd place to find such a service.
The town itself seemed stripped bare of anything remotely arcane, its streets worn down to practicality and its buildings carrying nothing more mystical than peeling paint and old brick. Beyond its borders there lay no hint of sacred groves, hidden wells, or even the faintest stir of naturally occurring magick.
The air here felt still, drained of the subtle hum Rio had come to associate with places where power lingered. Even the horizon seemed indifferent, the landscape so ordinary that the very existence of a prophet’s den tucked into its heart struck her as almost obscene, like stumbling across a candle flame burning stubbornly in the middle of a rainstorm.
Though, the most peculiar thing was not the fact they had been led to this run-down sham of a business in a drive-past town. It was the fact that Agatha was still looking around like a cornered animal and failing entirely to be subtle about it.
“Is something wrong with the compass?” Rio frowned with a serious look in her eyes.
Suspicious blue eyes locked onto hers. “What?”
“Is something wrong with the compass?” Rio repeated, a little slower and softer as she pointed to the golden object Agatha had clutched in her palm — held with such a force that one would think there was an immediate threat of it being swiped from them with no remorse.
“Of course there isn’t,” Agatha answered with a pinched look on her face, “I would have said something otherwise.”
“Then why are you..” Rio gestured to the entirety of Agatha’s tight posture, “Like this exactly?”
“And what exactly is this?” Agatha arched a brow, the burn of her blue-hued eyes flashing like a warning flare.
“Being so strung up you’re about two seconds from snapping the supposedly irreplaceable artifact in your hands?” Rio shot back, her gaze flicking pointedly toward the compass.
Logically, she knew the thing was all but indestructible — warded, reinforced, and steeped in ground-breaking levels of power. It would take more than Agatha’s boiling temper to undo it. Still, Rio wasn’t about to let the other woman’s white-knuckled grip go without comment.
Agatha scoffed, the sound as sharp as flint striking stone. “Please. I’m merely annoyed that the compass didn’t lead us somewhere a touch more…” she looked around with a large frown, “established.”
Rio tilted her head. “Like?”
Agatha gave a half-shrug, her lips curling into something between disdain and longing. “Rome, I suppose? I could suffer through tracking down and bartering with a half-mad prophet if it meant I could drown my sorrows at a respectable vineyard afterward.”
“Rome…?” Rio’s brow furrowed. “Like Rome, Italy?”
Agatha turned her head just enough to deliver the look—the one that always landed like a blade between Rio’s ribs. “No, Rio. Rome, Iowa.” She cleared her throat, deliberately, then swept her gaze over their surroundings with a too-careful eye, the corners of her mouth twitching as though daring Rio to push her further. “Of-fucking-course I mean Italy. I’m not an animal.”
(Rio’s immediate reply sat heavy on her tongue. Unused.
Lovely vineyards aside, Rio could have listed countless reasons why traveling to Italy for only one of their three spell components would have been nothing short of agonizing.
Chief among them was the fact that it would force the pair to spend even more time together, and between Rio’s unfortunate tendency to cough up enough flowers to supply every florist in the surrounding states, and Agatha’s prevailing hot-and-cold temperament about anything to do with her ex-wife… the entire endeavor would promise disaster from the very start.
But, hey, when has agitation ever listened to reason?
Rio’s only overthinking. Again. And Agatha has never shied away from saying what comes to her mind.)
“Well?” Agatha asked, her brows furrowed, clearly unappreciative of Rio’s sullen silence. When all she received in return was a blank, unyielding stare, she exhaled sharply, the sound edged with impatience.
Without another word, she strode forward, her boots striking the step with clipped finality as she pushed into the building. With one fluid motion, she slipped their magical artifact into the inner pocket sewn into the silk lining of her long, deep-blue coat.
The bell chimed behind them with a clinking note of finality, and the room ahead revealed itself in a wash of warm sunlight muddled with gaudy, artificial glows.
Fake crystal balls shimmered from cluttered shelves, their insides lit with tiny, shifting sparks of enchantments so cheap and shallow that Rio doubted they had ever carried a spell — and given that there was finite perimeter of the light after an inspective stare, her vote to its cause had shifted from cheap magick to a LED light.
The glow-strung ceiling draped strands of amber and violet bulbs in swooping arcs. A wall-sized tapestry hung behind the desk, stitched with a scene of moons and black cats, the fabric sagging slightly in its middle. Even the faintest breeze stirred the dried herbs dangling from the rafters, but their fragrance was muted, as though the bundles had long since lost their potency.
Rio took it all in with a raised brow, thinking the entire set-up was the sort of spectacle that might dazzle a non-magick customer into believing they’d stumbled into a chamber of talents and spectacles. To her, it looked more like the showroom of a traveling fair, wrapped up and contained inside four mismatched walls.
She stepped forward, hand reaching out toward the little bell at the centre of the unattended desk — a tiny, tiny thing, that looked as if it would be more at home on the counter of a roadside motel rather than in a supposed sanctuary of the arcane. But before her finger could strike it, Agatha’s hand darted out, barring her path with a sharpness that made Rio freeze mid-motion.
Rio barely had time to throw her companion a sidelong glance, the kind that would normally carry all her criticism and curiosity without a single word, before Agatha’s magick stirred.
The air around them thinned, tinted in a faint wash of lilac, a smog so light that Rio might have dismissed it as a trick of her own eyes. It clung for only two heartbeats before vanishing, leaving the room unchanged and Rio’s skin untouched. No surge of energy. No strange weight in her chest. No shift in the scenery.
“I…” Rio blinked, unsettled and unable to provide words that captured her mind, currently turning circles as she tried to pin down what the spell had been.
For all her scrutiny, she could not trace a purpose to it; protection spells would leave a buzzing sensation across one’s heart, illusions spells sometimes felt as if a new layer had been applied atop skin, and calming incantations left their mark on one’s mind.
This spell however? It was unlike anything Rio knew to be in Agatha’s repertoire — soft, delicate, and most importantly: completely untraceable after the initial casting.
The warning sirens blared in her head all while Agatha’s posture had softened — the rigid, bristling tension that had coiled around her companion’s shoulders smoothed away, replaced with a casual, sharp-edged impatience far more familiar.
Without explanation, Agatha leaned forward and rapped two fingers down on the bell — once, twice, three times in swift succession — her gesture clipped and decisive. Rio, still half-stalled in her bewilderment, could only watch, the echo of that strange violet shimmer lingering in her thoughts.
“You’d expect swifter service with a grand total of zero other customers around.”
Rio only gave a small nod, her attention caught by a pixie figurine perched on the desk. Its features were far too human for comfort. Real pixies had wild, feral eyes and sharp little teeth to match, and anyone who had seen one up close knew better than to carve them into something so docile — if she had the ability to scar a few decades ago she would still be sporting a set of deep bite markings from the creatures after a beltane-celebration-gone-wrong.
(Little bastards, honestly.
Though don’t let that remark get back to them. They’re vicious in pay-back games).
“Why, I never thought I’d see the day,” an unfamiliar voice drawled from the side of the room. Both women’s heads snapped toward the sound. “Agatha Harkness and her rumoured, trailing paramour.. in my very own store.”
There’s a new addition to the room: an older woman with wisps of dark and light greys sprawling out from her head, aged lines on her face to tell tales of a life well-lived, and a collection of tapestry-like fabrics expertly stitched together to form a cardigan that hung from her shoulders.
“Paramour?” Rio echoed, disbelief sharpening the word. At the same moment, Agatha split into a grin, all teeth and mischief. “Charmed.”
Rio pushed the slightly demeaning assigned-companion status aside, refusing to give it oxygen, and instead shot a glare at Agatha. Her voice came out as a low, unimpressed hiss. “She knows you…? You could have mentioned the familiarity when we were outside, Agatha.”
“Last time I checked, what witch doesn’t know who I am?” Agatha drawled a millisecond after Rio finished speaking, her tone dripping with self-assurance.
The prophet stepped forward, her presence filling the space as naturally as breath. Her smile was measured.
“You’d be surprised what is whispered in the witching community,” she continued, her tone carrying the lilt of someone privy to secrets. “One hears of a remerged Harkness slipping in and out of hidden corners, dragging along some quiet little shadow of a witch, moving from one magick speakeasy to the next.”
(Damn.
Gossipers really spared no mercy on their views of Rio then).
Agatha gave a half-hearted shrug as she brushed part of her hair over her shoulder. Her hands stilled for a moment, pressing in at a certain point of her jacket — where their compass lays.
“If I had known we were being watched so closely, I would have paid more attention to my outfits.” Her tone is blasé atop her meaningless words.
A dry laugh escapes the prophet. “It’s a good thing they were. Otherwise I would have ousted you both from my store by now.”
“Oh?”
“You both have been…” The woman paused as she gestured with her hands, trying to find the words. “gallivanting off on quests, yes? I hear you’ve started the habit of fair trades.”
Agatha looked almost affronted by the chosen verb, her expression tightening in quiet offense. Rio took that as her cue to step in. “We have,” she said evenly.
“Mhm.” A pleased smile curved across Lilia’s lips. “Surprising to hear, given a certain reputation… but reassuring nonetheless. I don’t take kindly to the business of back-stabbers.”
“So you know what you want from us then?” Agatha whistled low, seemingly wanting to push along their objective as efficiently as possible now that they knew that their ‘whole deal’ had been the water-cooler talk of surrounding witch-kin.
The unfamiliar witch pulled her cardigan tighter around her frame, the wool sagging at the elbows from years of wear. Her gaze lingered on them both – first on Agatha’s cutting stare, then on Rio’s quieter study. When she finally spoke, her voice was steady but shaded with caution.
“One could say that.”
A silence then fell, quick and heavy, filling the little shop as though the shelves themselves were listening.
Agatha lifted one hand, making a small, impatient flourish with her fingers; an unspoken demand for the woman to get to her point. The prophet only offered a faint, amused curl of the lips, as if she were entertained by their discomfort. That was enough to unravel the last of Agatha’s restraint. She straightened, shoulders squaring, and cleared her throat with pointed sharpness. “Well? What boon do you want us to grant you?”
The stranger chuckled as they looked down to the floor before back to the pair of women. “That will come in due time. I first need an assurance of your two’s… services.”
Rio let out a small sigh and nodded. Here they go again. “A binding agreement then?”
The stranger snorted, “Nothing as juvenile as that. No.”
Agatha threw her hands up in the air, “What is it then?” her voice insistent.
The older witch began to move, her steps unhurried as she walked deeper into the shop, her hand lifting in a languid gesture for them to follow. “If you seek a prophet for advice,” she said, her voice carrying easily through the cramped space, “then expect the prophet to seek guidance from the fates before entering anything.”
She beckoned once more, and Rio trailed after. That is until on her second step, she faltered. The words caught on her tongue before tumbling out in a stutter.
“Your name?”
The woman paused mid-stride. She glanced back over her shoulder, brushing a loose grey curl behind her ear with deliberate care. “Hm?”
Rio tried again, her tone softer but steady. “We… forgot to ask for your name. I doubt the ‘Madame’ painted across the sign outside really counts.” She shrugged, her gaze flicking to the pictures hung on the walls, as though they might excuse her oversight.
The prophet’s pale chestnut eyes fixed on her, weighing, appraising, before she gave the smallest of nods.
“Lilia.”
❀
They’re led away from the front shop space into a side room that could only be described as a glorified laundry closet.
White tiles patterned with faded red florals stretched across the floor, their glaze dulled with age and hairline cracks webbing out from the corners. The walls were narrow, boxed-in, as though the space had once been meant for storage rather than ritual. A single bulb dangled from the ceiling on a fraying cord, its glow softened by a beaded shade that cast a scatter of warped shadows over every surface.
A small round table dominated the cramped centre of the room, draped in a cloth that had once possibly been a rich plum but now looked tired and sun-bleached, its fringe unravelling at the edges. A deck of cards rested neatly in the middle, half-wrapped in silk, their backs patterned with moons and stars that shimmered faintly in the weak light.
(Tarot.
Rio recognised it within an instant, as would any other practicing witch within their own craft).
Around them, the faint scent of incense clung to the air, though it was stale, as if the last stick had burned out days ago and left only its ghost behind.
Three chairs had been pulled close to the table, mismatched in height and design: one with a cracked vinyl seat, the other two being creaking wooden dining chairs that looked stolen from someone’s grandmother’s kitchen. A narrow shelf along the wall held trinkets meant to impress: a cloudy crystal sphere, a chipped ceramic cat painted with vacant eyes, bundles of herbs so brittle they looked as if they would shed flakes at the slightest breeze.
“Take a seat,” Lilia instructed as she adjusted the dangling earrings swaying against her jaw. The tinted zirconia caught the weak lamplight, fracturing it into pale fragments that flickered across her neck like fleeting sparks.
Agatha and Rio moved to obey, chairs scraping against the tiled floor. Rio settled with deliberate care, her gaze catching the not-so-subtle roll of Agatha’s eyes as the other woman sank into her seat with all the excitement of someone being forced to endure a high-school band performance.
Lilia lowered herself onto the chair opposite them, her movements deliberate, as if the simple act of sitting were part of a ritual. She pulled in the deck of cards, the fabric had once been a vibrant green but now bore the muted wear of years, its edges frayed and its sheen long since dulled. She untied the knot, smoothing the cloth across her lap.
The cards themselves looked well-used. Their gilded edges had worn down to a tarnished bronze, and the painted backs — once crisp with intricate stars, moons and curling vines — had softened under the press of seasoned hands. With an almost ceremonial air, Lilia lifted the deck and began to shuffle. The sound was a soft whisper of paper sliding against paper, punctuated by the occasional snap when the cards fell back into place.
Rio watched closely, caught between scepticism and curiosity.
Agatha, meanwhile, leaned back with her arms crossed, her expression one of guarded disinterest, though her eyes flicked to the cards more often than her posture suggested.
After several long moments, Lilia stilled the deck.
She held it lightly in both palms, then set it back down on the far-right of the table. Without speaking, she placed a slight pressure on the top of the deck before she moved her hand in a controlled arch across the table, spreading them evenly.
Only then did Lilia look up, her gaze sharp and knowing. “Past, present, future,” she said. Her hand hovered briefly above the cards before drawing back. “Now… who shall go first?”
Agatha did not answer aloud. Instead, she unfolded her arms, lifted one hand, and made a languid gesture toward Rio. The faintest glimmer of amusement tugged at her mouth, though her eyes gave nothing away.
Lilia nodded and looked at Rio expectantly.
Rio blinked once, then twice, before swallowing hard. Her dark eyes swept over the cards laid out before her. Three choices to make, drawn from seventy-eight possibilities. She knew well enough that many witches were tentative in their views of arcana and prophetic visions. Some — Agatha chief among them — dismissed it outright as little more than pseudo-magick.
Rio herself was less inclined to scoff.
She had been privy to wonders both inexplicable and wild, fragments of the natural and spirit world that defied reason. If such marvels existed, why not give this practice a proper chance, even if she had never dabbled in this particular branch of witchcraft herself?
She shut her eyes, drawing a slow breath as she attempted to centre her magic. Deepest within her core of her very being, it thrashed and entwined within itself — streaks of abused green and decades-neglected ebony bursting with waves that barely settled upon her determined insistence.
When she opened her eyes again, the lamplight gleamed faintly against the backs of the cards. With measured care, she stretched out her hand and reached forward and paused, waiting for instinct to take over.
She carried on staring, brows furrowed, as her gut feeling tugged at her focus. She allowed her hand to drift to the left and land on one card. With her index finger pressed down on the worn-down edge, she went to pull the card toward herself—
A startled gasp erupted into the small room, the older woman in front of them seemed to freeze up entirely. Her hand on her heart and eyes bulging as her voice wavered, “Goddess— what happened to you?!”
Rio’s hand snapped back as though the cards themselves had burned her.
She turned on instinct, eyes darting first to Agatha, who sat with her brows arched high, trying to take in the sudden outburst with a mixture of surprise, amusement, and calculation. When Rio looked back, Lilia was staring blankly ahead, her expression emptied of reaction, as though the words had struck some place far beyond the room.
“Uh…” She started, voice unsteady and low, “I’m picking out the cards?”
Only then did Lilia seem to return to the present, her focus snapping back to the two women seated in her shop. The faint haze in her eyes cleared, replaced once more with that sharp, cutting awareness. She frowned, tilting her head as though they were the ones behaving strangely.
“Well, yes...” she said at last, slightly confused by Rio's statement. “That’s what we are here for. Don’t tell me you’ve never participated in a three-card spread before?”
Rio opened her mouth to respond, but nothing emerged. Her lips parted uselessly as the gears in her mind turned, searching for a reply that simply refused to come.
(The gears in her head turned.
A prophet. Lilia was a prophet.
A type of witch who slipped in and out of different points within a timeline, sunken in one moment and surfacing in another without warning. The realisation made Rio’s stomach knot. It meant two things at once: first, that she now sincerely wished she had never put even the faintest faith in this particular practice of magick; and second, that she was suddenly, profoundly grateful for her ex-wife’s enduring scepticism of it.
Because by all means, Lilia might have glimpsed something — someone — that had triggered her outburst. But Rio wasn’t here to delude herself.
Even she knew that such visions required some tether, some echo to strike against — it was an applicable rule to all magick in existence: a cue must be present. And between herself and Agatha, there was only one candidate burdened with a petal-purged horror festering in her lungs, an inevitable bloom of gore waiting for the wrong moment to mature.
It was only a matter of time before she was outed, not as the victim of some cruel fate, but as a trickster desperately clawing to stop a clock that reset itself again and again.
And by the Goddess, Rio had seen Agatha’s wrath, and she would sooner be long-gone, buried deep beneath Mother Earth’s soil, than subject herself to it again.
Which meant… she needed to do anything, and everything within her power to remain physically separate from Agatha, because if there is one thing she knew about the other witch, it was this: Agatha loathed to be used or made a fool of.
It was only a temporary change of course.
They still had one more spell component to acquire after this, and it would only be a matter of time before Rio’s secret was exposed by the third witch in the room. A prospect she was far from thrilled to share with anyone).
Rio swallowed harshly as she felt a bead of sweat roll down the back of her neck. Her wrist shook slightly.
“Right…” she whispered softly as she forced herself to select three cards.
One a tad off-the-centre with a crack along its edge. The second a few cards-distance away from the first, its condition brittle and aged. The third in the opposite direction, a pristine card that looks as if it had just been taken out of the box.
Rio set the three in the proper order in front of her, and looked to the older woman across from her with an expectancy.
Lilia’s eyes softened. She regarded Rio for a long moment, then allowed a warm, almost maternal smile to curve across her lips. Without a word, she shifted her attention to Agatha and made a small, graceful gesture with one hand, inviting her to do the same.
Agatha arched a brow, then flicked her eyes toward Rio. Her lips formed a silent word — ‘sham’ — before she leaned forward. Where Rio’s movements had been careful, deliberate, Agatha’s were brisk and dismissive. She plucked one card from the exact middle of the spread, then, with the same careless precision, drew the final two from either end.
The three cards landed in a sharp, swift line before her, almost as though she wanted the act over with before it could be taken seriously.
Lilia let the moment settle for a minute, her hands hovering lightly above the two spreads. Then, she turned to Rio’s cards first.
“Past,” she said, her fingers brushing the edge before she flipped it.
A sombre figure stared up from the illustration, cloaked and bowed, cups spilled into the earth at their feet. “Five of Cups. Loss, grief… regrets.” Her voice carried a softness to it, though her eyes flicked toward Rio with unsettling sharpness, as if searching for the confirmation of old wounds.
And Rio? She stayed stone-faced.
She had many regrets cross-hatched on the beating muscle beneath her ribs, none of which she was inclined to give away. The guilt is hers and hers alone to stir over until her end; the kind that keep her up at night despite the fact she doesn’t adhere to typical circadian rhythms — the kind of schedule that allowed for the phantom sensation of red dripping from her ledgers to bring her mind into a misted over wasteland.
The next card followed. The painted image of a man sneaking away with stolen swords gleamed faintly in the lamplight. “Present… Seven of Swords. Deception. Schemes. Trickery.” The corners of Lilia’s mouth twitched into a suspicious frown. “Not all things are as they seem, are they?”
Her heart sped up a little. Not this again. Nope. No. Absolutely not. She cleared her throat, “We stay honourable to our agreements once struck.”
“So you say…” Lilia replied, her voice sceptical.
Finally, Lilia placed her fingers to the last card and revealed a radiant wreath encircling a dancing figure. The card seemed to glow brighter than the others, its sense of triumph defying the gloom. “The future. The World. Completion. Fulfilment. A cycle is closing at last.”
(And just like that, Rio’s world buzzed with ringing ears and rising hopes.
Could it truly be that easy? Her confirmation plain as day: an agreeable successor to pass down the torch of her role to; a destination of light after trudging through a dark tunnel for so long; to finally know solitude with her bones and consciousness under the mantle of the earth.
She bit her lip to withhold the hopeful smile, and this time round, her blood tasted almost sweet on her tongue. If anything could be taken as a sign for her to carry on her clandestine mission, surely it would be this).
Lilia let the weight of the words hang in the air before turning her gaze to Agatha’s spread. Without waiting for a nod, she flipped the first card.
“Past,” A figure tumbled toward the edge of a cliff, the illustration stark in its inversion. “The Fool, reversed. Recklessness. Carelessness. Dominion being manipulated.”
(Rio didn’t dare glance at Agatha for her reaction.
The faint, heady buzz she had been clinging to plummeted, replaced by the weight of familiar guilt crashing over her with the force of a cliff collapsing onto a brittle chalk shore).
The second card followed, revealing a cloaked figure with tools of power before them, its symbolism soured by the reversal. “Present. The Magician, reversed. Illusions… Being out of touch with true power.” Her tone lingered for a beat longer, as though savouring the implications, “How fitting. You both match.”
Well. This reading was not tilting toward their favour. In fact, it seemed determined to unravel in the most spectacularly disastrous fashion possible.
(Rio briefly wondered if she had enough time to dash outside and scream a good, cursed wail of frustration into the streets of Eastview).
Then… last card fell with more gravity. A skeletal rider, pale horse beneath him, held the banner of transition aloft. “As for your future… The Death Arcana. The end of a cycle. New beginnings.”
If she had been overly-invested on the revealed spread of cards, Rio might have missed it — the faint, dry chuckle that escaped from Agatha, low and unmistakably amused.
Lilia’s hand withdrew at last, leaving both spreads open on the table. “There you both are,” she murmured, eyes glinting as they moved from one woman to the other. “Past, present, future. The fates laid bare.”
Rio shifted, glancing to her side just in time to catch Agatha leaning back in her chair, all ease and arrogance. She laced her fingers behind her head, the very picture of careless composure. “So then,” Agatha drawled, her voice carrying an edge of amusement, “what’s the verdict on a little business partnership?”
For a moment, Lilia only stared back at her, expression blank and far-off. Then, with practiced care, she began gathering the cards, stacking them neatly before wrapping them back into the faded silk cloth. “Wait at the front of the store,” she said at last, her tone steady and commanding. Though her lack of faith in the pair before her was evident. “I need to consult my guides for a final perspective.”
❀
The wait dragged on at the pace of molasses, every tick of silence stretching until Rio found herself glancing, again and again, at the tightly shut door where Lilia was busy conducting God-knows-what in the other room.
“Hacks,” Agatha scoffed at last, breaking the stillness. “All of them. Hell, she didn't even conduct a proper spread of three. What was that supposed to be?”
They had been left lingering in the front of the shop, standing just far enough apart to make the distance awkward. No matter how they shifted, leaning against a counter or adjusting their stance, it always seemed to end in angles too sharp, limbs too long, as though the space itself rejected their presence.
“Nothing close to traditional,” Rio replied quietly. She had never heard of a witch conducting a spread of three for two people in the same shuffle. Was that even allowed? Not that anyone would come knocking to enforce tarot protocol, but the very idea of breaking such ingrained patterns made her skin itch.
“Honestly, everything was so generalisable that a college kid on the train to their lectures could have done it for a friend. I would insist that this kind of pseudo magick was exactly what opened the door for Spirit Halloween to make such a mockery of our kind—”
(‘I know you would’ Rio’s mind automatically replies. She remembers. She never forgot).
“—and for both our pulls to match one another? What are the chances? I would bet money on the fact she’s skewed everything to her tastes… or that she ran out of imagination by the time she took my turn and parroted your results right back.”
Agatha cast Rio a sidelong glance, the weight of her doubt in tarot plain as day.
Her disdain for Lilia’s supposed powers — and for divination witches of any calibre, really — bled through in every line of her mocking expression. “I mean, The Death Tarot? A little on the nose, don’t you think?” she let out a laugh, “And don’t get me started on our present readings… Should I be preparing for you to betray me, hon?” The question is blunt, and entirely amused. Though Agatha looks concerningly manic in her eyes.
Rio forced her shoulders to loosen, prying her hands from their white-knuckled grip on the chair’s arms. A short, incredulous smile tugged at her lips, though it faltered almost as soon as it formed. When she finally spoke, her voice was low, roughened at the edges — the centre of her lungs pinched.
“..No, Never.”
Notes:
wowzers-- I know NOTHING about tarot (apart from when my friend did a reading for me on the train to our chemistry A-level lab four years ago-- dear god that makes me feel old) so the research for this made me go slightly insane... WHY DOES EVERY WEBSITE HAVE A DIFFERENT DEFINITION FOR TAROT??? (okay that's a slight exaggeration but still...)
hope you guys enjoyed the first chapter of the second arc!! this one is going to be very enlightening for BOTH our gals... :)
also im taking votes:
1. who thinks rio will be successful in (physically) slipping away from agatha in this arc?
2. who thinks that rio accurately analysed their tarot readings?final note: I don't really listen to Taylor Swift much anymore, but listening to Red (original song, not TV) really was able to get me channelling Rio's mind for this arc... god i love writing her crashing out over everything, she is NOT getting a break from me
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HumbleHubris on Chapter 1 Thu 31 Oct 2024 09:37PM UTC
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kindledumpsterfire1320 on Chapter 1 Mon 25 Nov 2024 05:09AM UTC
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MajorlySapphic on Chapter 1 Tue 26 Nov 2024 12:07AM UTC
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Valnora on Chapter 1 Mon 23 Dec 2024 11:57AM UTC
Last Edited Tue 24 Dec 2024 01:07PM UTC
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xagathaxriox on Chapter 1 Sat 25 Jan 2025 08:05AM UTC
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NerdyHeart on Chapter 1 Sat 01 Mar 2025 01:25PM UTC
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Farah on Chapter 1 Mon 02 Jun 2025 03:24AM UTC
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beasluthor on Chapter 1 Mon 09 Jun 2025 08:33AM UTC
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Faxes on Chapter 2 Thu 31 Oct 2024 08:06PM UTC
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MajorlySapphic on Chapter 2 Sat 02 Nov 2024 02:15PM UTC
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galadrielxsauron on Chapter 2 Thu 31 Oct 2024 08:30PM UTC
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Rando (Guest) on Chapter 2 Sat 02 Nov 2024 09:09PM UTC
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MajorlySapphic on Chapter 2 Mon 04 Nov 2024 07:04PM UTC
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