Chapter Text
She told herself she would never actually go in the New York Sanctum again, after that last time, but the problem with telling herself that is knowing that, well. As long as she literally had an apartment right next door. Inevitably.
But honestly, she had a rent controlled apartment in New York City. Sure, sure, she could use magic to override her landlord’s mind and make it completely free (and, sure, she might have already done that once or twice over the past few decades, when whoever inherited the building tried to fuck around with her (How can you be the same resident from over a century ago? That’s not possible! – Dear, you live on a planet of superheroes that gets visited by aliens, and you think you have some normal human being just hanging out in this apartment? That you can boss around? This is why New York gets attacked by every new wannabe villain; it’s not the Worf Effect or a symbol or anything – it’s entitled landlords not remembering that people with powers exist and can punch the ever-loving shit out of them when they get pissed off. Almost as bad as working in customer service. Yeesh)) – but what would be the fun in that? She’s not Wanda, after all. She doesn’t need everything to go her way all of the time.
Admittedly, Wanda is the reason she’s here in the first place. Something about America and Wendy being part of this new Baby Vengeance team or something like that (she knows the real name, but she enjoys seeing the frustration in Wanda’s expression when she refuses to use the right term, loves seeing her pinch the bridge of her nose, delights when, eventually, Wanda says, “I’m not even going to correct you anymore, Agatha; I know you’re doing this on purpose” and still sighing with exasperation anyway); something about how they’ve been gone for far too long this time. That thin tremor under her voice that suggests just how worried she’s trying not to be.
For a witch able to control the very fabric of reality in this universe, Wanda has gotten surprisingly good at not sticking her nose into everybody else’s business.
Why would she need to do that when she has Agatha to do it for her?
(In most cases, Agnes would be better, but they can’t get Agnes without having America open a portal to that universe she and Ash are shacking up in, so she’s the next best thing. Besides. She has centuries of being the New York Sanctum’s nosy neighbor. It’s just a shame that Cian is no longer here to see it.)
Agatha mutters a spell just under her breath, one hand flicking through a sequence of specific gestures, and reaches her mind into the sanctum. Someone with an unguarded mind doesn’t need this high of a spell to be simply touched, but the sanctum itself provides an impressive barrier to anyone who doesn’t have the right password. Fortunately for her, the new master hadn’t changed it when he arrived. Honestly, he probably doesn’t even know how, isn’t even aware of the threads of witchcraft woven into the sorcery that protects his “domain”.
All her spells, so even if he did try to change things, it wouldn’t really work. He’d need another witch to help him.
Of course, he could always ask Wanda, but the poor dear doesn’t have the level of sophisticated knowledge to craft a spell as intricate as this one. Power, sure. But it’s always the knowledge that will get in her way. She’d teach her, if Wanda asked, but she’s never felt the need.
Or maybe it’s just her.
That’s fine. She won’t take it personally.
(Wanda did learn that nifty spell Agatha used to create a sound barrier around the room they share whenever she visits. That had been a nice surprise.)
Agatha sighs loudly as she strides into the sanctum, one arm crossed against her chest, the elbow of the other in her hand, pointer finger pulling on her lower lip. “Oh, Stephen, dear?” she calls, hearing her voice echo most pleasantly around the hollow room. “You have a visitor who does not like to be kept waiting.”
And yet – despite the fact that she knows he is here – she’d reached out and touched his mind so softly that he probably never felt her presence – there’s a long wait before anything happens at all.
One should never leave a bored Agatha Harkness waiting.
Stephen isn’t even the one who goes to see her. For all his posturing, he isn’t the Sorcerer Supreme, and yet he keeps his broken fingers in whatever intricate work he is doing and sends his Supreme to go speak with her. Wong strides down the only remotely impressive staircase (it’s impressive if you’ve never traveled the world, and it’s impressive because when Cian brought her here to build the sanctum with them, she’d want a staircase such as this, and they hadn’t denied it to her, so Agatha is certain that if anyone is allowed to make fun of the staircase, it’s her) and stops before he reaches the last step. “What did you do?”
“I got bored.”
Agatha stands on the edge of the last step and smiles down at the tidal pool she’s crafted along the open floor. She kneels down as a bright orange koi fish draws near to her, brushes a finger along its spine, and then holds out some fish food for him to nibble on. “Beautiful creatures, aren’t they?”
When Wong doesn’t say anything, Agatha straightens. “Don’t worry. You can still walk on them. See, look—” She makes to step into the pond, and Wong grabs her arm. It’s a nice gesture, one she’s certain Strange wouldn’t have made at all, but unnecessary. She shakes his hand off and sets her foot down; the pool ripples as it would as if she stepped into it, and yet her foot doesn’t sink beneath the waves. “Magic.”
“Agatha—”
“It will be fun, don’t you think, hon?” Agatha asks, turning to him with a soft smile. “For Strange to stumble around before realizing he can’t get wet?” It is only then that she moves up the last two stairs to him and touches his face gently with one hand. “Good to see you, Wong, but my fight is not with you.”
“We just cleaned the place.” Wong gives her a firm look. “Don’t be the reason we have to do it again.”
Agatha snorts. “You’re the Sorcerer Supreme, Wong. You should never have to clean up after anyone.” She reaches over to pat his shoulder before passing him by.
“The Ancient One did,” Wong says, just as she passes.
For a moment, Agatha pauses. “They aren’t here anymore,” she says, finally, “and I told them to stop doing that a long time ago.” She gives Wong’s shoulder another pat. “Quit letting Strange walk all over you, hon. You are the Sorcerer Supreme. Not him. He’s just a grunt, and you—” She cuts herself off with a deep sigh. “Never mind. He’s in that brooding room again, isn’t he? Doing the deep magical angsty brooding?” Turns just enough to waggle her fingers. “Being all Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way?”
Wong chuckles. “He’s not that bad.”
“He probably hasn’t even read that fic.”
“I haven’t.” Wong shoots her a look as she continues to climb the stairs. “You haven’t.”
“Don’t have to read something I had a hand in writing,” Agatha calls back in a singsong voice from the top of the stairs. She waves a hand dismissively, takes the first immediate right, and heads off for the room she always finds Strange in. When he doesn’t, you know, come storming down the staircase as soon as she arrives just to try and shoo her out the front door. (Which never works, by the way, although he just keeps trying.)
“Agatha,” Strange begins in his grumbling, annoyed bass of a voice as soon as she cracks the door open, “I do not have time for your pestering—”
“Oh, I’m not here for pestering, Stevie boy—” Agatha leaves the door cracked open, even as the sorcerer’s feeble attempts at magic crackle around her. “—and honestly, you should keep to your sorcery shtick. The magic you’re running in here is bad code.” She tucks one pinky into it, straightens some of the fraying edges, and plops down cross-legged on the ground across from him. “I’m here on business.”
Strange doesn’t even look up from the orb he’s pondering. “I don’t remember having any business with you.”
Agatha’s grin turns wolfish. “I didn’t say it was my business, hon.”
“And don’t call me Stevie boy.”
“Stevie Wonder, then.” Agatha’s grin grows as Strange’s discomfort does, and she leans forward. “I’m here on behalf of my god-daughter and my apprentice—”
“Your what?” Stephen’s head snaps up, and the orb in front of him sparks dangerously orange. His eyes widen. “Shit—” His gaze returns to the orb. “This really isn’t the best time—”
Agatha ignores him. “See, that’s the thing, hon. It’s been more than enough time since Wendy and America should come back to visit—”
One of Stephen’s eyebrows raises. “Since when has Wendy become your god-daughter—”
“Wendy is my apprentice, and America is—”
“When did you even meet her parents?”
“You know, in another universe, the Chavez family and I are quite close.” Agatha begins to examine the orb curiously. “You’re doing that wrong. You want to—”
Stephen grits his teeth together. “I know what I’m doing Agatha—”
Again, Agatha ignores him. “You want to do this—” She draws a complicated sorcerer’s diagram on the ground beneath the orb, and it glows a golden orange – lighter than the blazing fire red orange of that contained in the orb – before snapping once. Then the diagram disappears, as does the angry spiking glow within the orb. “Told you.”
“I wanted that—” Stephen swallows down his frustration and glares at her with ice blue eyes. On a weaker person, that might have meant something, but Agatha’s seen worse. Dealt with worse. She’s not intimidated by this egotistic asshat. He brushes his hands along his hoodie and then sticks them into the front pocket. “What. do. you. want?” he asks, each word a sentence on its own, emphasized by his continuing frustration with her.
Agatha holds up one finger. “America.” She flicks up a second. “Wendy.” She smiles in a way that is much more baring her teeth than smiling. “Where are they?”
“On a mission—”
“Where—”
“I can’t just take you—”
“You normally send them out of this room, don’t you, wonder boy?” Agatha asks. She breathes in the dust of magical after-effects, runs the taste of crusty old sorcery along her tongue, grimaces because Strange’s attempts are nowhere near as tasty as Cian’s had been, and then lets out a breath. “I can follow them just fine.” She stands and gives him a wink. “Thanks for the—”
“Wait—”
Strange grabs Agatha’s wrist just as she snaps her fingers, just as she follows the traces of a teleportation spell that reeked of decomposed age, cementing it around the moment that America and Wendy disappeared, and when her cloud of violently violet smoke surrounds her, it surrounds him, too. The cape around his neck tries desperately to keep him from leaving – almost hard enough to keep her there, too, except that Agatha’s magic is older and sterner and more cantankerous than Stephen’s attempts at sorcery are, and when she digs in her metaphorical heels a little harder, the cape loses its grip, and they fly away.
When the smoke clears, Agatha finds herself in a not unfamiliar place.
One she should not have been able to get to simply by using magic.
Her eyes narrow as she turns to Stephen. “You sent them back to Neverland. Using sorcery.” She glares at him. “How? And more importantly, why?”
Stephen straightens himself, and as he does, his cloak fixes itself about his neck more properly. He pulls a sparkling blue stone out of his hoodie pocket and dangles it on a thick, dark steel chain. “This was supposed to be destroyed. And yet, I have one. Why do you think that—”
“The universe naturally wants to reconstruct those atoms into a complete whole again, and—” Agatha cuts herself off and pinches the bridge of her nose. “That would take thousands of years. Tens of thousands of years. How did you get a Space Stone, hon?”
Stephen sighs. “It’s a long story.”
Agatha gestures to the world around them and then crosses her arms. “I think we’ve got all the time in the universe, wonder boy. Get to talking.”