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It goes like this.
Agatha lures. Agatha kills. Agatha fucks.
Rio gets jealous. Rio gets turned on. Rio gets fucked.
There’s always a fresh corpse within blasting distance. There’s always a fresh soul, newly passed through those great yew doors. There’s always a tree.
Rio isn’t too sure about the certainty of the tree. But historically, and she knows mortals are creatures of habit – and Agatha is a mortal, even if she doesn’t act like such, and by extension, a creature of habit. So it stands that there will always be a tree.
Which is great.
Because Rio is so sick of hulking concrete buildings and industrial smog.
Anyway, so. Agatha is currently at step one. And Rio is at step one, too.
Three days ago, Agatha had been doing something so innocuous as singing a song right where the witches of this coven liked to gather ingredients when a young, blonde witch approached her. Some words were exchanged, a deal was agreed and hands shook, sworn upon the Divine Mother – the beauty of it is that Agatha never actually really swears on the Divine Mother, she just makes others think she did.
Three days later, Agatha now leads the blonde and three other, equally young, equally hungry, equally foolish witches deep into the woods. So deep, in fact, that they’ve crossed the boundary drawn by their coven, where their song will only be heard by cedar and pine and maple. And a couple of birds, if they were brave enough to hang around Agatha.
And Rio, of course.
She lingers in the shadows, following them from downwind where Agatha won’t smell her. She times her footsteps so they are hidden beneath the crunch of four others, not that she needs to. Agatha is the only one who walks just as silently.
Rio is certain that Agatha knows she’s lingering around. But the skulking and the chase and the hunt are all part of their game now.
After… what happened, Agatha stopped her schemes. For all of five years. Which, considerably, was a time that was as long as it was short. Then, five years later, Rio turned up in some familiar woods and found a familiar witch standing over some familiar corpse. She appeared too instantly, and Agatha ran off like a startled deer. It took some practice, a little trial and error, some bits of temperation here and there, before Rio found the method of Agatha’s madness.
When she got it right the first time, pouncing on her wife from behind and wrestling her to the ground, Agatha had cackled. Then they had made lov– had sex. Then Agatha, teeth bloody and nails caked with dirt, patted Rio’s head and snarled good dog. And Rio understood.
So here they are, Rio hunting her like some entity, and Agatha leading her feast right into Rio’s arms.
On the way to step two, Agatha teases and taunts. Only the strongest-willed witches can open the door to the Road, let alone make it to the end, she says. The weak wouldn’t even be able to sing the notes right. The weak stand around her. The weak sing, and the birds fly away.
Agatha jeers, bullies, pouts.
Step two–
A myriad of colors burst forth, aimed right for Agatha. She merely takes it, forced a step backward from the sheer force of the blast. It’s not enough, it’s never enough. The witches may hunger for power, but theirs is nothing compared to the gaping maw that exists within Agatha and Agatha alone that allows her to suck them clean dry.
Rio can feel that surge of heat and want through her body, curling like vines around her thighs and fingers.
Agatha cocks her head, face pulled into some exaggeration of pity. “So weak,” she laments, “I barely feel anything.”
There’s a second wave of angry cries. Through the bushes and the trees, Agatha finds Rio’s eyes, peering like an eagle watching mice scuttle across the forest floor.
Rio senses it like the flash of a lighthouse in a pitch-black ocean when Agatha throws her hands out. That familiar purple taint curls outward, pulsing and feasting and taking. Agatha cackles, screams, and laughs louder than the roar of the steam train.
The bodies thud to the ground one by one, and the souls are ferried off quickly, almost dismissively, not that Rio particularly cares. They hurt– tried to hurt her wife. They can find their own way and soothe their own fears.
Power crackles around Agatha like lightning. Rio is certain that those industrial men and scientists would seek to contain her if they could see Agatha Harkness in all her primeval glory. The same way they seek to contain nature.
It is fruitless, of course.
Not even Death could tame her.
Not that Rio tried particularly hard.
Agatha leans back against a tree, lips parting with a glorious, long sigh. It’s soft, almost a moan, almost dismissible as just the howl of wind, but Rio’s ears are tuned specifically to Agatha.
She always gets like this after a steal, all wild hair and flushed skin, smiling that wicked smile with bright eyes. Rio thinks she’s absolutely radiant, brilliant like the moon and blazing like the sun. It is an absolute honor.
Rio takes two steps forward, her bare feet breaking twigs and fallen leaves for Agatha to hear.
“Why, my dear, whatever are you doing alone in these dark woods at this time of night?” Agatha spins around. The shock on her face could put the best thespians to shame. It is only the coy smile that comes after that tells Rio this is all but a game.
“Alone?” Rio taunts, another heavy-footed step forward. “I am not alone, I have you, Miss Harkness.”
Agatha reaches out first, licking her lips as her greedy fingers curl around a lock of Rio’s hair. She hadn’t bothered to put her hair up, not where the rules of society couldn’t reach her. Or either of them.
Agatha sighs, an expression upon her face like this is all so boring. “Did you like your gifts?”
“You know I can’t care less about them,” Rio whines. She wants to get closer, wants Agatha to touch her, instead of her hair. She wants Agatha. But Rio knows, from experience, if nothing else, that Agatha in this state is extremely volatile. They did things her way, or not at all.
And Agatha, in all her generosity, tucks that coil of hair, cold fingers brushing against the shell of her ear. Those same fingers sink into her hair. And like the rush of spring, Agatha steps into Rio’s space, her other arm looped around her waist as she bestows a kiss. Rio all but melts into Agatha’s arms.
“This gift, I like,” Rio moans into Agatha’s mouth. Her hands roam down the wool of Agatha’s blazer, then find themselves fiddling with the buttons of her waistcoat. “You look very handsome,” She mutters when Agatha pulls back slightly to breathe.
“Of course,” Agatha preens, “I’m not just a simple thief.”
Rio hums in acknowledgement, “You’re more than that–”
“I didn’t come here for flattery,” Agatha pulls away sharply. The absence hits Rio harder than a slap. She is about to whine and beg for forgiveness when Agatha starts stripping. She slips off her coat, unbuttons her waistcoat, and loosens her breeches.
Not that Rio is complaining at all. Oh, she is doing the opposite. She wets her lips, flexing and keeping her fingers to herself with considerable restraint as Agatha undoes the top few buttons of her shirt.
“Let me touch,” Rio demands. She loves the way she sounds, desperate and growling. Humans are apex predators, after all, and nature is such an intimate topic for Rio. She pushes a step forward, kicking leaves all over Agatha’s polished oxfords.
Agatha’s lip curls, eyes raking down Rio, assessing her need.
She nods.
Rio goes straight for her neck, wraps a long hand around the back of it to bring her in for a kiss that is more of a bite. Or perhaps some attempt at consuming the woman before her. Or letting herself be consumed.
There is no time wasted on teasing. Predators do not tease; they go in for the kill. Rio shoves her hands down Agatha’s pants to find her wet and wanting.
“All that talk and you’re practically begging for me.” Rio purrs.
Agatha’s reply is a long, drawn-out moan as Rio swipes two fingers through Agatha’s heat, ending with a cruel flick to her clit. Slowly, panting as if the breath had been knocked out of her, Agatha says, “If you’re not here to please me, then what do I need you for?”
Rio slows, frowns, because, well, they’re in love, that’s the point. That’s what Agatha needs Rio for. Right?
Agatha’s eyes are closed. Rio can see her pupils moving, the slight flutter of movement beneath her eyelids. She wants to see– she wants–
“Open your eyes, Agatha,” Rio pleads, yearns, “Agatha– Agatha.”
Agatha sighs. Softly once, then heavily, a rough exhale like this is all a chore to her. When Agatha does grant her request, Rio is met with scathing vitriol. It burns and chills at once, turning her eyes to a sheet of glacial ice yet akin to copper fire.
“I hate you.” Agatha snarls, putting every ounce of cruelty in her body behind it.
It isn’t enough.
Rio can hear what she doesn’t say.
“No, you don’t,” Rio says, forgiving Agatha already for telling such a lie.
It is the wrong thing to say. Or the right thing, depending on how you look at it. To Rio, everything about Agatha is right. Especially so when she curls her fingers around Rio’s neck.
Rio sighs. Oh, how she loves her wife.
Agatha drives her feet into the ground and shoves. Rio moans as her back hits the soil, the weight of Agatha like a blanket above her. And louder still, when Agatha digs the pads of her fingertips into the softness below her jaw, her palm pressing hard against her windpipe.
It is bruising and brutal, and Agatha has never put her hands on Rio like this before.
“Don’t tell me what I feel, Lady Death,” Agatha growls harsh enough to make a hungry lioness cower.
“You’re grieving, my love.” Rio gasps because she knows she knows she knows. And she feels. If Agatha would just get that, then perhaps they could grieve together instead of alone.
It is so painful to grieve alone.
“Shut up.” Agatha orders. Then she presses her lips to Rio’s and bites until there’s blood.
Rio can feel the beginnings of unconsciousness, that buzzing in her ear and the hazy quality of her vision. This body is human, after all, and she doubts Agatha actually wants to kill her.
“I hate you so much,” Agatha says coldly as her hands pull away. “I wish I’d never met you.”
Rio stares at Agatha, wide-eyed and startled. “No.” She says, petulant like a little child.
The glare that Agatha directs at her is scathing and demeaning, as if she is a petulant child. Rio knows, all too well, where she learned it from. Agatha has a way of mimicking her wretched mother when it serves her.
“I do.” Agatha asserts.
The only reason Rio knows she’s lying is that she’s still here. That they’re both still here, standing so close to each other that they can hear each other’s breath.
“Why?”
It is the wrong thing to ask. This time, Rio knows it’s wrong.
“Why?” Agatha asks back. Her fingers twitch, then Rio feels the sharp sting of a blow across her cheek.
Rio blinks her vision back to the sight of Agatha, angry and blazing above her. Her knees drive into the soil below Rio, pinning her to the ground like a bug to be examined.
“You took him.” Agatha snarls, so harsh that anybody might’ve thought she were a rabid animal. “You took my son from me, even after I begged you not to. And you ask me why?”
Rio frowns. Her head buzzes, ears ringing from everything. The words twist and distort and surely… surely Agatha didn’t blame her?
“I–what?”
Agatha leans forward, teeth bared. She’s practically foaming at the mouth. “You took him from me, Rio Vidal,” She says, steadily and deathly soft, “You won’t have me too.”
“I had no choice, Agatha–”
Agatha scoffs like she doesn’t believe her. Because she doesn’t believe her. That look of contempt on her lover’s face, so righteous that Rio knows for certain that Agatha has convinced herself of a falsehood. Rio can barely tell if Agatha herself knows it’s a falsehood. “You’re lucky I let you come crawling back.”
Rio frowns even harder, if possible. “Agatha—“
“Shut up and do your job, Lady Death,” Agatha spits. She covers Rio’s mouth with her palm. It tastes like dirt and sweat and witchcraft.
I didn’t take him, Rio wants to say. He came to me. I had no choice.
But Agatha is riding her thigh with one palm over her mouth, and the other at Rio’s breast. The look on her face, twisted with grief and anger and pleasure and pain and a larger spectrum of human emotion than Rio thought possible, tells Rio that she should do as Agatha asks.
So instead of clawing her chest open and pulling out her heart of obsidian from her chest of vines and showing Agatha that canyon that had marred her untouchable being, Rio shoves her fingers down Agatha’s pants and into wet heat.
Agatha moans into the night. Her tongue darts out to wet her lips, too beautiful and too threatening for the likes of mankind and daylight.
Rio crooks her fingers, barely does anything as Agatha simply takes and takes. Magic churns beneath her skin, perhaps remnants from her victims settling in in their new host, perhaps Agatha herself unable to hold herself in.
Rio contents herself with the lie that it’s Agatha’s witchery seeking her out. After all, they had cut their palms and bound their blood together.
Magic has a way of finding home.
As Agatha rides herself to completion, Rio wonders if Agatha were this vicious with her other companions. She bears no illusion that Agatha lets her bed grow cold when they are apart. But did she wrap her fingers around other women’s throats, or did she smile and flatter them until they caved? Does she take, or does she simply give and give and give?
Perhaps this is a facade as well, a different side of the same mask that Agatha wears for the world. Rio wants to ask. She has so many questions she wants to ask.
Instead, she presses her thumb into Agatha’s clit, relishing that desperate moan that falls from her lover’s lips. And fault her for it – Rio loves Agatha. With her whole heart, or whatever is left of it.
Agatha keens, bows over Rio’s body as she comes. Her fingers dig into the swell of Rio’s breast, sharp enough to draw blood, and Rio lets herself bleed. Agatha straightens, chest heaving, with her face tilted up. The canopy is too dense for the moon to shine through, but Rio believes it’s better that way.
The Divine Mother has no part in this.
Rio curls her fingers forward, relishing an unrestrained whimper from Agatha. There is silence after. Just their breath in the wind and Death watching her witch. Rio’s free hand twitches, curled into a fist at her side. Then, Rio reaches up–
Agatha wrenches back like her hand had been caught in a flame. She closes her eyes, sighs, and then stumbles to her feet. She wipes her lips with the back of her hand.
It lasts a second. Barely a second, Rio thinks, but just long enough. Agatha looks at her like something forgone, like perhaps her heart has cracked too. Like, for just barely a second, Agatha loves Rio too. Still.
And then it is over, and she straightens. Agatha casts a small spell, and Rio watches her clothes right themselves, each layer of cloth straightened and buttoned until no one but them could know that anything more than a walk had happened in these woods.
“I’m sure you can sort yourself, Lady Death,” Agatha gestures vaguely in her direction. She doesn’t even deign to look at Rio, still splayed across the forest floor and pleading with everything but words.
She doesn’t even say goodbye or look back or… anything, as she walks away.
And Rio lies on the forest floor until she’s certain she’s decomposed.
It goes like this.
Agatha disappears.
And Rio can never reach her until it is too late and the bodies are cold.