Chapter Text
She steps into her realm and quickly schools her features into a neutral expression.
The little girl holding her hand looks up at her and Rio nods. The girl walks forward, every step more confident that the one before. Rio watches her walk to the edge of a large lake and sit at the edge. She looks at peace. That's enough for now.
Nicky comes bounding up towards her then, a wide smile lighting up his face. He looks just like Agatha, like she remembers Agatha in their happiest days.
“Mama!” He exclaims, wrapping his arms around her middle. She kneels in front of him, ruffling his hair.
She waits patiently for him to share what’s on his mind, savoring his presence, the warmth still clinging to his touch.
When he steps aside, he offers his hand, and Rio takes it, letting him lead her wherever he wishes. This realm is as much his as hers.
They walk aimlessly for a while, Nicky paces when he's thinking, just like his mom. He greets the dead as they walk by, and they obediently bow their heads. Rio would laugh if she wasn't Death, at how effortlessly Nicky has made this place his home.
She looks around and takes in the souls of the dead as they wander. Their eyes fall on her and Nicky, and they halt to watch them pass. The dead have always done this. On the rare occasions she walked the realm, they would stop and stare. But it feels different with Nicky by her side.
“Do you think Mom will join us soon?” he asks. His question is simple, but it awakens an ache in her, one only Agatha can cause.
Nicky has asked this before, ever since she explained to him who she was, what she did, and how they were connected. He’s bright, so much like Agatha in that, but Rio fears the day he’ll understand what his mother’s delayed absence truly means. She isn’t sure she can bear seeing her own pain reflected in his eyes.
Lately, Nicky's longing has made Rio's pain sharper. Agatha's rejection of Nicky cuts deeper than her rejection of Rio. How could Agatha choose someone else over their son, a boy so full of warmth and love?
She chose that Maximoff kid over Nicky, with his warm hands, and her smile. The boy who still hums their song whenever his mind wanders. Nicky is so much like Agatha that Rio can never escape her, because she would never escape their son.
She remembers her brothers marveling when they learned of him, awed that Death could create life, however fleeting. Nicky was born to die, but Rio doesn’t think Agatha ever understood what that meant.
“I don't know, mijo,” she says honestly. Nicky appreciates honesty.
He stops walking to look at her, and Rio instinctively looks around for danger. But there's no danger here, she reminds herself.
“I wish she would come. I miss her, mamá”
Rio’s black heart clenches. Using her knife, she cuts a portal to her palace and tugs Nicky through.
She’s rarely here, being Death is too demanding, but she built the palace in a stroke of inspiration sometime after meeting Agatha. Now it's a mausoleum for their love. Sometimes, she brings Nicky here to tell him stories.
Today, she leads him to the garden. They pass through trees and walls covered in greenery until they reach a tree arching with pink flowers. She sits beneath it, and Nicky settles beside her, looking up expectantly. He knows she brought him here for a reason, and, like his mother, patience isn’t his nature.
“I've seen her,” she says, searching his face. “She's just as strong and you remember her. Just as stubborn”
“Is that why she won't come?” He asks.
Rio swallows. She’s had difficult conversations before, but those were Death speaking to reluctant souls. This is her, Rio, talking to her son, her most precious creation.
“Sometimes, Nicholas, people need more time, and we should—” The words stick. Agatha isn’t her heart, but she’s deeply ingrained in it. She was the spark that ignited Rio long ago, making a cosmic being live, not just exist. “When you love someone, you accept them as they are. One day, she’ll come around.”
Nicky nods unconvinced.
“Tell me about your day,” she asks, changing the subject. His face lights up.
“I made new friends,” he says, sitting up excitedly. “They’re so cool, Mama. Alice has these tattoos she says are for protection, but I told her that’s silly because she doesn’t need protection here. Can I get tattoos?”
Rio laughs Sometimes she imagines what her life would be like if she wasn't who she is, if she and Agatha were normal people living normal boring lives, if Nicky was alive, going to school like any regular kid.
This feels like a conversation from that fantasy. She can almost see it, a house in the suburbs, driving Nicky to after school activities and coming home to Agatha every night.
“I think I can allow that,” she says with a smile.
Nicky begins brainstorming, resting his head on her chest as he talks nonstop. A goat, birds, trees, and then flowers—purple flowers. Something blue, like Agatha’s eyes.
“Do you miss her?” he asks. He tilts his head up the way he always does when he asks something important, as if reading her eyes for the truth.
“I have you,” she answers truthfully. “You're a lot like her.”
Nicky nods, “Everyone says I look like you.”
“Who's everyone?” She asks, amused.
“Y'know, everyone. My new friends, Alice and Lilia. Lilia’s a bit scary, but I think she likes me. She said I must be Nicky because I look like you.”
Of course Lilia would say that.
“You should make more friends your age,” she offers softly. “The little girl–”
“She sad,” Nicky cuts her off, his expression turning serious, “She misses her family. It makes me sad too.”
Rio hums, opening her mouth to speak, but the tug of duty interrupts her thought. Nicky leaps to his feet and runs towards the patch of garden where she grows her flowers.
She follows a step behind, curious. He kneels among the flowers, searching carefully. Finally, he picks one, plucking it with a deliberate gentleness, and turns to her, holding it out for her to take.
He felt it too.
Rio takes the flower and kisses his forehead. “I’ll come back soon, my boy.”
She opens a portal into earth and catches Nicky glancing past her.
“Mama, do you think I could pass on this Samhain?”
Rio pauses, thinking of Agatha, living the life of her choice, rejecting their love, their son. She thinks of Nicky, running free under the moonlight on earth, and Agatha seeing him.
Would it be enough to push her?
Or, would it hurt Nicky more?
“I will think about it,” she says, begging to turn.
When she looks back one final time, Nicky is smiling, his smile a mirror of the woman she loves.
You never needed to be a ghost to haunt me, she had told Agatha. This is why.
Nicholas will always be the first ghost of Agatha. The most precious pain Death has ever loved.