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Some time in the 1500s, somewhere in the European continent, the insides of a villa lie still. Lifeless corpses litter its floors, cold to the touch, a stark difference from the fever that took them.
In a room near the commons, a little girl stays put in her bed, under a fraying blanket, a damp rag resting on her forehead. The body of her mother is sprawled beside her, hand still clasping her daughter’s. There are tear tracks by the child’s eyes, dried by the ghostly air of the soon-to-be abandoned villa. Her skin is pale and her gaze is unfocused.
A hooded figure approaches the scene, dressed in funeral garb. The girl makes no sound, no movement, no reaction. But her body betrays her, for the air in her lungs is breathed out, and the figure catches onto the trick: She’s alive.
The little girl’s eyes snap to the figure, confused at the hesitation. Her eyebrows knit together as if to ask, What about me?
“Child,” Rio says, voice firm and unfeeling. “If you wish to die, you are going to have to do it yourself.”
The girl processes the fact, putting her focus back on the ceiling. A journey of anger and fear and grief crash over her like high tide.
Then, she bursts into tears.
Rio jumps. She doesn’t need to breathe, but it’s times like these when she feels the urge to sigh, to mumble under her breath an exasperated, Oh, this again.
The girl seems surprised too, like she didn’t realize she still had it in her to cry. She wipes her eyes, furiously, almost enough to bruise. She’s gasping for air and clutching her chest, saying, “I tried to warn them. I saw that you were coming. In the tea leaves! In the sky! I knew, I knew, I knew.” She hits her head with each repetition. “But they did not care. They did not do anything. They merely waited to leave me!” Her breath hitches, emotions hitting a crescendo. She falls back to her wailing.
Rio puts a hand to her ear now, blocking out the noise. This is the most tedious part of the job. The most repetitive. The mourning, the passion, it’s all too… alive for her.
There are statues erected in her name, religious texts written to describe her. You’d think, with all that, they’d handle death with a little more grace.
She starts to walk to the door. The room is small. She doesn’t have to walk that far. The girl’s sobs echo, bouncing off the thin walls. Wracked, broken, and unfortunately all too alive. None of Rio’s business.
But then—
It stops.
Like the snap of a finger. The air changes, dust dances right instead of left. It becomes eerily silent.
Rio turns, slowly. She watches as this child gets possessed with the strength to sit up, who moves as if her limbs are shorter than she expected. Disoriented, the girl presses her fingertips to her cheek, straightens—confused by their wetness, like she forgot she was crying. She surveys her surroundings, the cracked window, the dirty rags, her torn morning dress. Her eyes settle onto Rio, boring into her, stare aged by centuries, uncanny in the face of someone so young. The morning glow makes her brown hair glow gray.
She says, “Ah. I forgot we already met.”
Rio finds herself stepping back, knife already in hand.
“The fever,” the child mutters, voice tinged with distant sadness, like it's a feeling she’s held on for long. She holds her chin in contemplation. The pages turn in her head, a puzzle with missing pieces. “So, you two haven’t met yet.”
Rio narrows her eyes. “Haven’t met who?”
A ghost of a smile coasts the child’s lips. “Your scar.”
#
A few decades later, on a small islet by the edge of the Atlantic, a cadaver washes up to shore. A sailor caught by madness, hearing the song of sirens. Death does not come to collect him, not like she did that coven. Instead, death bubbles up from inside. The last of the sailor’s life rattles through his teeth. It’s a song caught by the wind, carried out by the sea, for another madman to hear.
For a while, that’s what Rio did. After the child— the divination witch— told her about her future, she kept her distance. She relegates to collecting from the inside, carving the bodies from bone to skin.
An armor.
A weakness.
#
“Can you start collecting again?” She feels Entropy say, through the core of her being. “You know that witch was just scaring you.”
If she had eyes right now, she would roll them. Of course Entropy would say that, the lazy fuck.
“I can hear you.”
Rio doesn’t care.
She won’t be the first to admit that she’s staying away mostly out of stubbornness now. Death has no future, nothing for the divination witch to predict. And she has no real body, no air in her lungs nor blood in her heart.
“So, what are you afraid of?” The voice comes from the inky black darkness. “Scars are meant for the living.”
#
In 1691, somewhere in Salem, Massachusetts, a witch sits in a dewy forest, far from her coven, farther from her mother. She observes her hand, the lines between the joints, the capillaries drawn faintly below the skin. She squints, trying to see the flow of magic between her fingertips. It’s imperceptible, too faint to be deemed a threat.
On her lap, a book she’s not meant to have, with the page corners frayed from her enthusiasm. Underlined with a scratchy lead pencil is the phrase Magic is life! It’s a corny sentence at the start of a chapter about energy levels, more a vague, placating introduction than anything concrete. But the witch knows better. This book would not be kept safeguarded for something so rudimentary.
She snakes her other hand around the wrist of a dying protector witch. She doesn’t know much about this person, and doesn't really care enough to learn. All she remembers is that she attacked her, angry enough to kill.
It is early spring. A rebirth of sorts. This will be her first body. It will not be the last.
The magic from the protector refuses to rattle through her teeth, instead finding passage through the witch’s hold. The siphoning swallows her inside out, from bone to skin. It’s almost disgusting. The protector tries to breathe, hatred spills from her voice, but she is unable to curse the name Agatha.
Agatha hears the attempt, though. She sticks her tongue out to be annoying, then turns back to her hand.
The wisps of magic are getting stronger now, more vibrant through the gaps of her fingertips. At first it bears the color of her coven, an innocuous baby blue, but it darkens, slowly, as red spills in and makes purple. Agatha hums at the transformation, captivated. Her heart beats a little faster. The wounds on her arms and her shoulders don’t feel as painful anymore, the memory of her mother’s digging nails fading into obscurity. She hums a relieved tune. The melody thrums in her veins. Blood. Power. Life.
A twig cracks. Its sound echoes.
#
Rio is back on mortal soil, despite her paranoia, despite her stubbornness. She’s in Salem, dressed in funeral garb of centuries past. She finds herself in a forest, early enough for morning fog, obscuring her from the notice of a witch by a clearing. The witch holds the wrist of a soon-to-be corpse, rotting her from the inside. It’s efficient and clean and almost an art. The siphoning is like water dripping out from cupped hands, turning pigment into paint. She—the victim called her Agatha— looks at the body with no mourning, no grief. Uncaring.
Wait—not uncaring. There’s something there, hidden beneath the veneer of impassivity, excitement. A hunger, a lust.
Rio breathes in a shaky breath. The tree bark almost splinters into her palm with the way she’s gripping it. Her eyes can’t rip away from the scene, electricity in her pulse. There’s a beauty to it, a journey in the transfer. She steps closer.
A twig. An echo.
Agatha’s gaze snaps at her, eyes that of a gazelle. Cornered prey.
She takes off.
Rio follows.
For what reason is left unquestioned. She trails like a child playing tag. The wind seems to push her forward. The leaves crinkle, dead beneath her feet. Sensations engulfing, it’s as if her skin is brand new.
Agatha ducks and scampers, clearly used to being chased around. Curiosity gnaws at Rio. She gets so caught up in the chase that she loses track, stops in a clearing, and Agatha’s nowhere to be found.
Something hooks by Rio’s ankle and pulls.
Rio falls down on the dirt with an unceremonious thud. The wind knocked out her lungs. Crows caw and fly away. It takes a moment to get her bearings— The trees tower over her vision like a vignette. They pierce the view of the sky, now blue after the sunrise. More importantly, Agatha is crawling on top of her, practically straddling her hips. She holds Rio’s wrists in place with her hands. For a witch, she’s very physical.
“Who are you?” Agatha asks, voice rough. When she receives no answer, she grabs the knife clipped on Rio’s belt with one hand (fingertips graze the sliver of skin) and places the sharp tip right at where a heart would be.
But Rio can’t really focus. A hammering thump thump thump beats in her chest. Now that they’re closer, she takes it all in. Agatha’s eyes glint, sapphires against the sunlight. Rio stares at the curve of her jaw, the slope of her nose, the pink of her lips. Sharp cheekbones and dark eyebrows. She wears a muddied, well loved black dress and a coat that avoids being tattered through hastily sewn in patches. Her hair seems like it’s braided on her own, a single, repeating pattern that falls just below her shoulders. There are strands that peek out and cover her face.
Rio reaches up and tucks it behind her ear. Agatha doesn’t pull back.
“What?” Rio sighs out. “No magic?”
Agatha raises her eyebrows just a little bit. There’s a simmering hatred for witchcraft that permeates through the streets of Salem. A normal person would panic at this accusation. But not Agatha. Her lips curl into a smirk, barely concealed. This isn’t someone who likes to hide.
She puts down the knife and chants an incantation. Her hands gesture with practiced movements, a composer of an orchestra.
Rio feels purple tendrils of magic wrap around her wrists, pulling her arms above her head. Strong— stronger than she expected. She laughs, a little hysterical, “You’re beautiful.”
Agatha blinks, blindsided only for a moment. “Flattery won’t get you anywhere.”
That’s a lie. She likes this control, Rio notices. She’s pleased at how easily she’s defeated Rio. It’s taking all in her not to cackle in celebration.
But Rio wants to see that arrogance, so she tests her bonds. It’s nothing she can’t handle, but she struggles anyway, a moan escaping her lips, relishing at the way it turns Agatha’s face beet red. Rio sags, exaggerated, defeated. “You got me,” she sighs. “My name is Rio.”
“What are you planning, Rio?” Her name sounds like it was made for her lips.
“I’m just here to do my job, Agatha.” And her name tastes like honey. She wants to say it all the time. Agatha. Agatha. Agatha.
“And what is that?”
Rio takes a long look at Agatha’s face, as a comfort, like a drop of cold water in the desert. Then, she glances over at her side, towards the protector.
Agatha follows her gaze. “Oh,” She says flatly. “You’re here for her.” She says it like she’s offended, as if she didn’t bolt at the first sight of Rio. “What are you gonna do? She’s dead, you know?”
“I saw.”
Agatha narrows her eyes. “Are you here to turn me over to her coven?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Then what are you—“ Agatha pauses, then shakes her head. “I can’t have any witnesses. I can’t. I’m gonna have to kill you.”
Rio nods. “Seems reasonable.” She wishes she could do that.
“What? You don’t care?”
Rio shrugs.
Agatha scans her face for the punchline. Nothing stirs around them for miles. It’s as if the world stopped for this moment. Then, click! A realization.
“You’re Death.”
“Well, yes. But I’m also Rio.”
“And you’re not here for me?”
Rio shifts beneath her, feeling the heat from Agatha’s thighs and her breaths (peppermint scented!) hitting her face. “No, you are still very much alive.”
“So… this…” Agatha gestures to the cuffs. Her sentence remains unfinished, as if speaking it into existence will make it false. Rio watches her thought process through her face. I did that? I can do that? It’s disbelief. It’s triumph. It’s warm and it’s good until logic creeps in. Is that even possible? Doubt settles over her. It looks the most natural, underneath the confidence, a chastising voice in the back of her head. She frowns at Rio.
“You’re just humoring me.” She says and peels herself off their position.
It’s as if Agatha’s body was natural to her, Rio suppresses a shiver as she’s left alone. She scrambles to her feet, watching Agatha walk away. “Wait!” She calls out.
The cuffs break in Rio’s ferver, and it happens as Agatha turns around. Anger splits her face into two. “Oh, you asshole!”
“Come on, Agatha.” Rio says, catching up.
“You think you’re so funny. Oh, Agatha Harkness can finally use magic! Fucking hilarious!” Defensiveness coats her words. This is a sentiment that’s haunted her life, reinforced by bullies and repeated by herself.
“I’m harder to take down than you think.” Rio says it to cheer her up, but it’s truer than either of them realize.
“Then what was all that?”
“I don’t know.” Rio admits. “I think I wanted to go down.”
Agatha stops, sizes her up with narrow eyes. Rio realizes she’s not lying. Everything about this witch, her power, her beauty, her approach in death— Rio remembers the gaunt look of the corpse, hollowed out of energy. She remembers the way life traveled, taken with ease. A fever cannot do that. The sea cannot try. For once, death was beautiful.
It makes her want to get on her knees.
She takes Agatha’s hand, examines the palm, mesmerized. There’s a small, crescent shaped nick by her wrist. A fingernail pressed down to cut, a hold tight enough to hurt.
Agatha’s voice is barely above a whisper when she says, “You’re serious.” A pause. “Is it because of the body?”
Rio presses her lips to wound, relishes the taste of skin. It disappears without a scar. She looks back at Agatha. “Perhaps. Are you looking for more power?”
There’s a steely resolve between Agatha’s eyes. “Always.”