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When you draw the 3 of Swords, there is something you have no choice but to face: hard-won knowledge, irreversible realizations, the thing you can't unknow. It might be the recognition that the relationship is over. On the other hand, it actually might be the recognition that the relationship is the only one, and you are prepared to forsake all others.
Rio knows enough about what happened to Agatha. She doesn’t condone it or anything, but that is because it’s really not Rio’s place to condone anything. The way she sees it, she minds her own business and other people mind theirs, of course until it’s time for her to step in and at that point, well, it’s not really other people’s business anymore, is it?
When one has been around as long as she has, they learn not to concern themselves with the affairs of others. And in Rio’s case, sometimes they go all the way ‘round the bend and take things in stride with a nice dose of nihilism.
So yes, Agatha is absolutely in a prison of her own making. No one is arguing that she brought this upon herself. Except for perhaps Agatha (who would recognize it deep down but would huff and posture to shirk the blame). But she deserves to be freed anyway.
Absolutely no one deserves to be left alone, or in a prison of their own mind.
And that’s how she finds herself going to Westview, to find the most important person in the known and unknown realms to her, and to lead her back to consciousness.
The trouble with that of course is that one cannot be led out of a mind prison. They can be guided but ultimately must leave by themself.
And Agatha is so good at following directions.
Rio settles in for the long haul. She will not leave until she absolutely has to, and if she has to, then she’ll just come back.
She’s not letting Agatha stay here alone. She owes Agatha at least that. Well, she owes her everything, really, but that’s a price Rio will never be able to pay.
But this? She can do this.
What attracts Rio to Agatha first is what attracts most attention to Agatha: her power.
There’s just so much of it, and the way that Agatha handles it, with this combination of laser focus and something just south of arrogance, invites so much more.
And so Rio studies her.
It’s not hard for Rio to do. There are plenty of ways for Death to be made manifest in the realms ( so many ways ), but at the end of the day, her job gets pretty repetitive. So while it can be a little emotionally exhausting to watch people react to losing their loved ones, mostly Rio is just bored. She takes to studying different people, different living things. Everything is finite, and so everyone is a hypothesis.
It becomes difficult for her to see Agatha through such a simplistic lens though. Agatha just has so many interesting qualities. Her voracious appetite for learning is almost completely self-honed, because she’d been several steps ahead of those who were meant to guide her. Her mind was a very dangerous instrument, but she approached her craft with extreme discipline, honing everything through what seemed to be an internalized desire for excellence.
After a while, Rio realizes that that desire for excellence springs out of a desire for control, and that is something that she can get behind. Rio understands the fear and disgust that others have for her because she is something that people cannot control. If anything, she’s a reminder of all of the things in the universe that they can’t control. She breaks illusions, and that tends to piss people off. So she does her job and keeps to herself. It’s not that big of a deal. There’s plenty going on to keep her occupied.
It’s not like she’s never felt lonely, or looked at other living creatures and wished that she could have the bonds that they did. It’s just that, with Agatha, she finds herself more aware of that feeling, like it’s growing within her. Because Agatha, like Rio, knows what it’s like to be rejected and alone. She knows what it’s like to be angry at the way that things are, that the hand one is dealt plays out so much worse than it should.
She did not know what it was like to yearn in this way, though, not until she met Agatha.
She doesn’t tell Agatha who she really is, not at first. That’s a surefire way to lose people before the fun even starts, and in Agatha’s case, Agatha would understand if she lied, because Agatha is a liar herself. But Agatha is also incredibly intelligent – that’s one of the reasons that Rio likes her, though she would never tell her so directly.
Agatha figures out who she is, and Agatha does not move away.
Rio’s still not sure of the initial reason – if Agatha was truly so prideful to think that she could love Death and walk away without complete and devastating loss, if Agatha was struck dumb and naive for the first time in her life by someone who truly equalled her – or at least made her feel that way.
The point is that the way that they started doesn’t matter, because what they became speaks to so much more than that. They’d run toward each other in a realm of reasons not to, had found each other in the middle of barrenness and loneliness.
No one knows Rio better than Agatha. No one has touched her so deeply, completely, or reverently, and no one has ever hated with with the same vitriol.
When people look for love, they tend to look for something without limits, without selfishness. And while that concept is near impossible to grasp, the important thing is that people continue and commit to working towards that concept for as long as they are together.
The problem with Rio is that there is a limit to her love for Agatha, because Death comes at the end of all love, renders all of it imperfect. Death kills even the most highly lauded relationships.
That’s what Rio is, an ending. And she’d told Agatha that, that nothing would ever grow with her. That they would start and end in the ground, a seed that would never grow.
“I start and end in the ground anyway,” Agatha had said. She shrugs. “We do have incredibly long lifespans and anti-aging technology can work wonders these days.”
Rio had thrown a pillow at her.
Before the fall, Rio had lain with Agatha (as she often did), naked and spent (as Agatha often made her), her smooth skin blemished with magical accidents and just plain age. Rio was fascinated by every dark spot, every cratered valley in her lover’s skin. They were all things which made Agatha what she was, and Rio loved them.
And had Agatha chattered away (as she often did).
“If you stopped being emo for one goddamn minute,” Agatha told her, “you would realize that your existence is the entire reason any of us being here is worth it.” Rio raised an eyebrow. “Like yes, you’re a pain in the ass, and yes, I like everyone else will be trying to outrun you as long as possible–”
“Yeah, you’re doing a terrible job of that.”
Agatha lay a finger across Rio’s lips, and Rio extended her tongue to caress the pad of Agatha’s finger. Agatha’s eyes darkened, and Rio, who minutes ago would have sworn that her body could not possibly have taken any more of Agatha’s rough and relentless brand of intimacy, found her body waking up to crave once again. “ I’m saying that if you didn’t exist, none of these commitments and bonds would mean anything. If there’s no limit to the time you have together, then how actually precious is the time that we spend together at all? Like, argue with me about that. Tell me that none of that is true.”
Rio had regarded Agatha for a moment, allowing the silence to announce her victory. And then she’d pushed Agatha down into bed, and kissed and touched her breathless.
Her words would never leave Rio, would remain devastatingly present as Rio found herself having to take away the thing that Agatha loved the most, an unforgivable offense.
When Agatha thoroughly loathes Rio again, Rio knows that her job is done and that Agatha’s memory has been more or less restored (with mileage varying, because Agatha manages to get herself into twisted situations that Rio genuinely has never seen before, which is saying a lot because Rio is like, you know, who she is ). She returns to her daily grind and practices alternating between breathing through and completely ignoring the pit that Agatha had left in Rio's being.
It’s always there, of course, the longing for her, just prevalent now because she’d just seen her.
(She’s so beautiful.)
She can feel the summoning several minutes before it takes hold, and her lips turn up at the corners, because while she is not sure where she is being summoned to, she had had a pretty good idea about where Agatha was going to go when they’d parted ways.
Agatha had always had a penchant for the impossible, no matter the cost. It’s one of the reasons that Rio loved her.
Loves her.
Will love her.
Rio realizes suddenly that she needs to put some ibuprofen in her pocket. She just gets a handful of the pills into her pocket when the spell takes hold, and she grins in the middle of the familiar, unpleasantly prickling sensation. The risk of danger to her is real, just like it would be for any mortal who travels to the Road. The Road does not discriminate, and it is equally cruel and rewarding to all.
But fuck if Agatha has never been able to show Rio a good time.