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PLAYLIST (UPDATED!)
Florence + The Machine - Hunger
The Cranberries - Linger
Billie Eillish -CHIHIRO
Billie Eilish - Birds of A Feather
Billie Eilish - everything i wanted
Frank Ocean -Pink + White
Bad Bunny ft Bomba Estero - Ojitos Lindo
Jimmy Eat World - Hear You Me
Girl in Red - We Met In October
Strawberry Guy - Mrs Magic
Steve Lacy - Bad Habit
Teddy Swims - Bad Dreams
The Marias - Run Your Mouth
Tori Amos - Cruel
Mazzy Star - Fade Into You
The Sundays -Wild Horses
Arctic Monkeys - I Wanna Be Yours
Panic! At The Disco - Lying is The Most Fun a Girl Can Have
Florence + The Machine - Howl
Fleetwood Mac - Silver Springs
Dolly Parton - Jolene
Tyler The Creator ft Daniel Caesar - St. Chroma
She Wants Revenge - Tear You apart
Sleep Token - Granite
Savior - Rise Against
My Chemical Romance - Famous Last Words
She preferred this version of her. Jaded, Cynical, Pragmatic. She had been in this version of a world for three years and every time she visited it was always like this. In the dark corner of a bar, mouth inches from hers before she realized she needed to stop, all while her eyes and body language said otherwise. The amount of self control was impressive, even for someone who was never really impressed.
Agnes, Agatha, knew she needed to stay away from Agent Vidal but couldn’t remember why. She hated how she got under her skin, how badly she wanted to crawl into her lap and forget everything while at the same wanting to leave but hoping she would follow.
She would saunter in, they would banter, she showed up with pizza and beer on her doorstep and they would do it all again tomorrow.
Agnes was stuck.
Rio was not.
Rio could drift in and out of Agnes’ life for however many times she liked and she had done so for centuries. She watched her carve her way through coven after coven after coven across the country, across the ocean and back again, remorseless, haunted but determined to put as much distance between the two of them as humanly possible.
Rio wasn’t human. The distance meant nothing.
She was next to her, her fingertips ghosting along her spine as Agatha charmed a bunch of girls in a speakeasy in Chicago, all smiles, purple crackling along her fingertips as she told them about a quiet place where the Road began. They chugged down the last of their drinks, gabbing and excited for the walk they would take with the experienced witch. Agatha made eyes at Rio as she leaned against the dark oakwood wall, a martini in her hands, toasting as she disappeared between the beaded curtains.
She would trail behind her as the girls giggled in anticipation, their voices echoing through the dense trees down down down…
Rio gazed up to the sky as the purple lit up the forest, Agatha siphoning every last ounce of the young coven with a smile, their bodies landing with sickening thuds to the forest floor. She approached as Agatha’s fingers twitched, watching Rio picking through them, tapping their shoulders and guiding them beyond. She avoided eye contact, keeping her head low and moving silently, feeling Agatha’s eyes on her back. Turn around you coward.
“Te veo.” she said over her shoulder, stepping beyond, leaving Agatha alone in the woods.
She was there when Agatha lured another bunch of mall goths, young college girls to the same forest in upstate New York, her leather boots crushing branches as they asked her a million questions. What would it be like? How many times have you gone? Would they really find what they were looking for? They were all so lost, Agatha their leader equally so and Rio patiently waiting in the treeline, her legs dangling off the branches as she winked, singing down down down.
This time, this time Rio made eye contact and Agatha sneered, snarling as she rolled her fingertips against her palms, power roiling from her body in waves. Rio nodded again. “Te veo.”
The Snap.
She was stuck in limbo, half the galaxy disappearing in an instant, a mad titan defying the order of things claiming balance, succeeding in completely upending it. Rio had never felt more lost.
Agatha stopped mid song as the women around her started to scream in panic, their hands turning to dust, disappearing before her very eyes. She staggered back, staring at her own hands, still real, still crackling with whatever power she was able to siphon before they disappeared, leaving her alone again in the woods.
She waited for Rio.
She never came.
It would be months before Agatha felt those eyes on her as she attended support groups, sussing out covens or single witches looking for their lost sisters. She felt bad at first, imagining what it would be like to be missed like that but as she siphoned the energy of the covens she cobbled together she realized that someone did miss her.
Once it was over, the balance returned, Agatha had gone to ground leaving Rio to wade through bodies, trying to find her.
By the time Agatha ended up in Westview, Rio had given up and decided she didn’t want to chase someone who obviously was taunting her. Agatha left bodies behind, sure, but they weren’t truly hers to take, they just couldn’t be left behind. She was cleaning up after a temper tantrum prone woman who was still under protection, even if she didn’t want to be. It disturbed everything.
She watched Agatha, Agnes, fascinated by how much distance she had managed to create between them. Even as she built a sanctuary in her basement, free from Wanda’s power, still powerless to be free. She watched her sleep, soundlessly slipping beneath the bed sheets, sitting up and listening to her breathe. She knew Agatha was awake, she felt her heart skip. Rio closed her eyes as Agatha reached back, finding her fingers, interlacing them, holding her tight.
Centuries between them and the simple act still managed to tug at the black thing Rio called a heart.
Westview had been the epicenter of the biggest shift in cosmic and mystic forces, bringing her to the great state of New Jersey in a gray suit and slacks, listening to agents chattering, panic stations built around the massive bubble that formed around the area, trying to solve the mystery of the town that didn’t exist.
She watched them flicker through eras and moments in time before she saw Agatha meticulously pulling Wanda Maximoff apart piece by piece. They were at war over The Darkhold, the thing causing Rio immense displeasure. It was unnatural. Mortals defying her.
As she watched Wanda struggling under the rubble she brought upon herself, Rio hated to admit how much she adored Agatha at this and any moment. The power coiled around her, her chin held high and smug expression as she continued to pry apart the defenses Wanda built to protect her own psyche. She hated that she could be so in love with her, so devoted that she gave time she should not have and accepted a lifetime of hate in exchange for seeing her, accepting the bodies she left behind the way a lover would accept flowers.
She watched in fascination as Agatha’s true intentions with the Darkhold appeared. She was continuing to push against her, the thing she had dreaded doing, the thing that separated them yet kept them incredibly close. She absently touched her chest, fingers grazing along where her heart would be, could be, beating black, missing the way it felt to feel hers. A tear in her heart.
They both wanted dominion and as Wanda closed the final hex over Westview, robbing Agatha of centuries of power and memories, Rio Vidal’s eyes followed a ball of light arcing across the sky piercing the hex wall. She sighed, rubbing her palms together as she walked through the debris. Agatha sat on the ground in the remains of Westview, the real Westview following Wanda as she disappeared. Agatha hadn’t registered anything beyond watching Wanda leave. Rio held the veil back for someone who wept as he passed through, staring at Agatha who still hadn’t even glanced in her direction. Rio tried not to take it personally, after all, she just lost everything that mattered most to her, why would she stop for Death when she kindly stopped for her. And always would.
Until she looked up.
Their eyes met.
Her eyes were wet with tears that she tried to blink back, a single one streaking her cheek and Rio, cold pragmatic eternally distant from this place felt a pang of guilt. She was supposed to go, leave and never look back but she was stuck still, a deer in the crosshairs. Rio squared her shoulders and stepped behind the last agent, eyes squeezed shut. As far as she could tell, she couldn’t cry,but she felt it in her heart.
She didn’t remember but she knew.
Rio contemplated the dark implications of Agatha and now Wanda’s goal with the Darkhold. Abominations on this earthly plane because they could not accept that she was the last stop on their adventure, they couldn’t comprehend that she was their greatest one yet.
Agatha did.
That’s why she kept running and why Rio stayed close behind.
The loop Agatha had been stuck in was perfect, no notes. Agatha was trapped, an aggressive shark now stuck in a fishbowl. Even with her power gone, it was sheer force of defiant will keeping her going. Rio didn’t understand the woo woo magic, only that there was enough belief to make it real. She was promised. Magic was not.
As she settled into the creaky thing that passed for an office chair, Rio had to suppress a smile. When she looked at Agatha, Agnes, she felt more than just lifetimes of screaming matches, bodies, blood and tears. She saw the same woman who was in a village, casting simple spells, surviving while her mother was merciless and cruel. She kept her distance, performing her duty around the villages that dotted the early settler colonies. She communed with the Others, careful to avoid sharing too much about herself despite all of them serving the same purpose. She liked a little mystery.
This Agatha, Agnes to everyone under the hex, was mean, the anger placed everywhere and nowhere at once. Tampered energy, banging away at a glass case they both knew would shatter if only she could focus. Wanda Maximoff, a version of her anyway, was no longer on the chessboard. Rio hadn’t swept it clean so she was somewhere, she didn’t much care to find her either.
That was someone else’s department
Rio blinked back into reality, a version of it, while Agnes, rambled on about a body, about a case something else that didn’t mean anything to her. She seemed older, worn down, as though this life was the one she had been born into, not forced into by an even older magic. She was a prisoner, the key was dangling from her fingers, she just wasn’t ready to let her out.
She wanted to provoke her. Wake her up. Shake the dust from her shoulders, play again. Something. Every time she came to the front door, cradling a box of pizza with a couple of beers, she stopped short. The disheveled detective of death prone Westview stood in the doorway, always surprised to see her, wearing thrashed sweatpants and an oversized shirt, wordlessly stepping back and allowing her inside. Rio understood why people would leave everything behind to follow someone to the ends of the earth.
She had been doing it for centuries.
It was always simple, kindness, meeting in the middle. Rio was a little disappointed that Agatha as Agnes, couldn’t remember her but having her here, in her arms on the couch in an old creaky house felt more like home than anywhere else. Agatha didn’t hate her here and that was enough. She closed her eyes and listened to that thunderous heart, remembering when Agatha knew her and how perfect it had been once.
Rio slipped through the shadows, watching the young witch as she worked, as she endured her mother’s criticism and vitriol, as she sat alone in the dark, her fingertips crackled with purple magic. Rio had never seen something like that before and she found herself deeply fascinated by the way she rolled the magic across her palms, sparkling and alive. She heard her mother bellowing something from the other side of the cottage. Rio suddenly wished she could strike her down. However, there are rules. She saw the woman who blushed when Rio said hello along a riverbank one morning, the cool air bringing pink to Agatha’s cheeks.
She was going to die soon and Rio wanted to meet her, just, not like that.
They met by the river every day, Rio waiting by the water’s edge with a small flower rolling delicately between her fingers. “My lady.” she said, standing up and holding it out to her, a small token of gratitude for stopping by.
She listened, a love besotted fool, as Agatha described hexes and old books she wasn’t supposed to read and wondered about the rest of the world. “There has to be magic everywhere.” There is. I’m looking at it. Rio played with the ends of her hair, fingertips brushing along the base of her neck, easing Agatha against her chest. She focused on Agatha’s heartbeat, as it was a marvelous thing, deep resounding sound thunderous and full of warning. Rio would lay so still she would let the sound wash over her and for a moment, she was human too, their hearts humming together.
She knew her coven had planned to burn her at the stake. She heard their poorly concealed contempt as they carefully laid out their plan, details of the crimes committed read the rest of the coven. They came to an easy agreement, a satisfied nod from one of the elders towards her mother.
Rio was careful to stick to the shadows seeing the hearth roaring inside, Agatha hunched over something while her mother was in the next room the same feeling burning through her, fiercely protective of her. She would visit the home next door, the woman with a terrible cough decided she’d had enough coughing.
Rio stood in the village square, unnoticed as always, twirling a small flower between tapered fingers as the house erupted in terrified shrieks; the neighbor had been found. Agatha, along with her mother, raced to the house but were shooed away; no one wanted the witches by their doorstep. Her mother, yanking her by the cloak back towards their home, cursing and shoving her inside. Lost, Agatha looked around in despair as their eyes met.
That’s when Rio knew.
The life she’d taken was the Agatha Harkness'. Evanora and the rest of the coven using their influence and exploiting the explosive anger within the village, she succeeded in making Agatha a scapegoat and now, her love was going to burn at the stake.
Rio waited and watched, what could pass for a heart aching as Agatha begged to be spared. The torches touched the dried branches, flames licking away at the frayed hems of Agatha's dress, the unforgiving heat creeping along her legs, she could smell her own skin starting to burn. Rio had to wait. She had to be right about this, intervention meant an absolute defiance of the cosmos. Her jaw clenched, Agatha’s screaming cut short, her head rolled back she siphoned every ounce of power from the coven. Her mother's body landed with a satisfying thud on the wet earth. she wriggled herself free, the bonds dropping to the ashen pile at her feet. She looked up at the unblinking black of the night sky. She stood, triumphant, power crackling in the air, the husks of her coven at her feet. Rio carefully picked her way along the pyre, eyebrow arched, her bare feet making no sound as she stepped over Agatha’s mother’s body.
“Love the color.”
Agatha gasped.
“Power suits you.”
Agatha froze. Rio wasn’t in her usual farmhand clothes, ragged and lean, she wore black leather bodice of carved bone, a wicked blade at her hip, black cloak draped across her shoulders. Agatha knew what she looked like but hadn’t imagined this.
The timelines blurred, Agnes was talking about death on her couch, rambling with a beer sloshing around in a bottle. Hearing her name she flitted back assuming she registered the loop but hadn’t. Agatha was a terrible detective.
Rio could be everywhere at once, it made things interesting.
“Yes, it does.” Agatha stretched her fingers, watching the purple wrapping around them, tendrils bright against her skin. Her eyes never broke away from Rio’s intense gaze.
She saw the woman who didn’t flinch when she caught the green of her magic, the coolness of her skin, the arrogance of eternity in her eyes. “You know me.” Rio said simply, producing another small flower between her fingers, delicately extending it towards Agatha so took it with a smile.
“And you me.”
She interlaced their fingers beneath the trees in the same forest bordered by the riverbank they always met, indecently kissing, hands roaming and pulling at clothes. Rio was careful with her power, especially knowing how unpredictable Agatha's power could be but as they made a home in a cottage just a ways from the river, she forgot all about that side of their lives. She forgot about power and duty. She was with her, they were together in the woods away from everything and everyone, building life from scratch by the water where years later, she would scrape time away with her son before…
Rio watched as Agatha and Nicholas made their way across the countryside, a song that would haunt them both for as long as someone knew the melody. He had grown so quickly and Agatha, starved for power and control over something that was inevitable doted on him, fearing every moment would be the last. Rio knew it would be and as she appeared to him that night, the green light drawing him home, she stood a moment longer, extending her hand out to him crossing over. She was in the trees again, eyes closed as Agatha screamed.
“Te veo.”
Agnes was annoyed. Agent Vidal was tapping against the glass, drawing her attention from the kid who’d just broken into her house and stolen something she couldn’t remember was important to her in the first place. The muscles in her jaws flexed as she demanded to know why Rio pulled her away. Rio had honestly forgotten, struggling to not laugh in her face. She just wanted her closer, to look at her and see if the fire was back. It was a small burning thing, coiling around her heart, a hint of purple coloring the eyes she adored.
Rio never knew what chains were but she recognized them on Agatha and she had learned her lesson. They were in the morgue, Agnes, grimacing at the toe tag where the ink shifted and changed, spelling out words while Rio began to push her, chipping away at the artifice that had entombed her love for years. She knew it was time, Agatha had done too much to disturb the balance and besides, she’d done a lot of damage to Rio on a personal level. Agatha Harkness spent centuries making a fool of Death with her beauty.
Agatha was pulling, tugging, tearing away every layer that Wanda had wrapped her in, punishment for being smarter and braver than her to own her power. Banging against the tables and walls in the morgue, Rio could barely hide her excitment as watched her rebirth, the way she howled and marveled at herself in the mirror, a version of the woman she had followed forever, just as she remembered her.
Rio watched as Agatha darted around Westview, trying to figure out what happened, blanching at having been under Wanda's hex for three years and still needing her purple. She stormed back inside, finding a robe and Señor Scratchy in the basement, the walls and power scraped away, holes gouged into the wood where she'd hidden pieces of protected ephemera burned away. She kissed the top of her rabbit's head, determined to try her luck again and get her power back.
Rio hung back, wearing all black, the soft scarf pulled up over her head, the wicked blade sharp and glinting in the sunlight, centuries of anger, resentment, shame and heartache bubbling up where that black heart ached to beat again in time with hers. The Seven were already on their way; she couldn't kill her but that didn't mean no one else could.
If Agatha Harkness was going to die, it would be on her terms and Rio, as always, would be waiting for her.