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Wanda is back.
Somehow, by extension, that means Agatha is back, too. When confronted about it, the Scarlet Witch only shrugs.
“We need you,” she says, both apprehensive and honest. “And - I don’t know. I felt my sons, and I needed to be with them, so I brought myself back. You were near them, so I must have pulled you along. Does it matter?”
“I have a feeling your ex is not gonna be too happy about this, huh,” Billy points out from where he’s perched on the kitchen island. He’s eating peanut butter from the jar and eyeing Wanda with the fascination of a stranger. And the Maximoff family drama continues, Agatha thinks.
She’s only mildly annoyed, truth be told.
“Text your brother, Teen. And get the fuck off my counter.”
“Uh, we broke in. This isn’t even your house?”
Wanda’s eyes - those damn brilliant pools of blue-green - widen even more. “You broke in ?” She asks, and shoots Agatha a sharp look.
“That really should be the least of your worries,” Agatha says, and then there’s a knock on the door. Everyone freezes, and Wanda frowns.
I can’t read their thoughts.
Billy swallows. I bet it’s Rio.
Since when does she knock, Agatha scoffs at him in her head.
A second later, the door explodes.
“Told you!” Billy yells, while his mother jumps to shield him.
“Who’s Rio?!”
“Her ex!”
Agatha growls. “Seriously, Teen, that’s the information you wanna focus on?”
A dark chuckle reaches them from the shattered doorway. Well, Agath thinks. If I had a nickel.
“Can’t blame him, you know. Being your ex sure feels like a full-time job sometimes.”
She scowls. “We had a deal. ”
“Yeah, it’s off now that you’re back, thanks to your best friend.”
“ Ex -best friend,” Agatha corrects her just as Wanda says “I’m sorry, and who are you ?”
Dark eyes twinkle with unrestrained mirth. “Seems like we’re both the chasers here, Scarlet Witch .” Rio cocks her head to the right, looking like a very dangerous puppy. “Her love language is rejection.”
Agatha rolls her eyes. “That doesn’t make any sense,” she says, and blasts Rio through the wall.
“Agatha,” her ex growls as she gets up from under the debris. “Can you just fucking pause for a–”
Wanda, she thinks. Wherever you were before, get us there now.
Thankfully, the urgency of her thoughts stops Wanda from questioning anyone further. Her gaze flashes red, and with a flick of her fingers, they are no longer here.
//
Wanda, because she’s Wanda, has also successfully managed to locate and pull Tommy in with them. “Where are we?” He immediately asks, and Agatha lets out a long sigh.
“Again, with all the questions. It’s genetic at this point, I swear. But, to answer it,” she walks around and spreads her arms - fuck if it doesn’t feel good after months of noncorporeal existence. The joints ache, and the thrum of her heart is barely familiar and uncomfortable. She feels alive . “We’re in your mother’s pocket dimension in-between the planes. A place outside of space and time. Somewhere even Death can’t follow.”
(She doesn’t miss the uncomfortable glance between the Maximoff twins at her use of the word mother .)
Billy clears his throat. “How can you be sure Rio won’t find us here?”
“You tell me,” she shrugs. “Consider this your magic exam.”
“Oh. Well - oh! She hasn’t passed on since she was able to resurrect, but she wasn’t a ghost this entire time, so she was somewhere else .” He looks around the old cabin they’ve found themselves in. Outside, vast fields surround them, and nothing else. “And since Rio never showed up here to collect Wanda - it means she can’t.” At Wanda’s downright pitiful crestfallen look, he winces. “I mean - to collect mom .”
“Ten points to Gryffindor,” Agatha deadpans.
The Scarlet Witch shakes her head. “Rio is Death,” she states more than asks, which helps exactly no one. “Your ex is Death. Who, ironically, wants you dead. Wait - does she want you dead because you’ve done something to piss her off, or because she wants to be with you forever? How does that work? Although, knowing you, it’s probably the first one.”
“ Ouch. Need I remind you that you resurrected me?”
“It’s because of me.”
Agatha sighs. “Teen–”
“They made a deal,” Billy powers through, as if she never spoke. “One of us had to die so the other could live. And Agatha–”
“Took a calculated risk that paid off handsomely,” she interjects sharply. “But now, thanks to Mommy Maximoff, we’re back at square one.”
She, of course, has hoped that she’d be able to change the subject with her pivot, but those were low hopes to begin with since she was dealing with the most melodramatic bunch out there. Wanda’s eyes are glassy with tears and she’s already whispering a you died saving him? and Billy’s lip is trembling while his brother stands behind them, silent and solemn.
So she sighs. “What can I say? I’m a good babysitter,” and oh that is precisely the wrong thing to say because she’s now got an emotional Scarlet Witch wrapped around her.
“ Thank you, ” Wanda whispers, urgent and hot. “Thank you for taking care of them.”
And try as she might, Agatha can’t bring herself to shake the woman off.
//
Time moves differently here. It both flows, and doesn’t. Agatha doesn’t concern herself with technicalities. She’s got a lot on her plate as it is.
She lived. She died. She ghosted about and flipped her villain status to that of a tentative antihero. She lives again.
It’s a lot to take in, and Agatha knows she’s never been great at processing feelings. Funny how many things you admit to yourself once you’re dead.
But I’m not dead anymore.
“Hey.” The reason for her second shot at life hovers nearby, looking ridiculously unsure of herself. Agatha doesn’t even try to hold back a scoff. A being of all this immense power, her ass.
She knows, of course, the underlying truth of it all. Wanda isn’t the walking contradiction people see; doing terrible things for love and out of love, drowning in emotions while suppressing them simply means she’s so perfectly human. So is Agatha. Wanda’s just the one who embraces her humanity with the whole of her dumb bleeding heart. Agatha runs and runs and runs.
Used to run, anyway.
You taught me pain, Rio’s low, soft voice from her memories says. You taught me love.
Agatha grits her teeth. “Hey, superstar, ” she drawls, rising to her feet and turning to face her - who? Friend, enemy, frenemy, a colleague in motherly grief? She shakes her head. Wanda’s open, tentatively hopeful expression triggers the deep-seated need to make it hurt . “You sure kept busy while I was trapped in yet another one of your mental prisons. The things you’re capable of, darling! A lifetime ago I would’ve killed for the power you've wielded so beautifully. ”
Wanda’s face falls just a little, but she quite impressively composes herself in a blink. “A lifetime ago you did try to kill me,” she says, her tone dry. “And I’m not proud of the things I’ve done.”
“I say you should be,” Agatha shrugs. “You bested them. All of them. Without breaking a sweat . Not one Sorcerer Supreme across the worlds could hold a candle to you. If it weren’t for your stubborn morality, you would’ve won, Wanda, because the only one who can stop you is you . No one else. The way to the top is… a technicality.”
Wanda stares at her for a long minute before her face splits in an easy grin. “Mentorship suits you,” she comments, and Agatha lets out a mocking gasp.
“What? No debate about being good or evil?”
The younger woman’s grin doesn’t fade. “You learn a thing or two after semi-dying. I’m sure you know how it is.”
Agatha groans. “It’s not fun playing with you anymore. You’re cool now.”
“I thought I was always cool. I was in the Avengers, you know.”
“Sweetheart, you created a whole different reality just to play a suburban mom,” she says, and Wanda snorts out a laugh.
“Point taken. Anyway. The boys are asking about you, and we do need to come up with some sort of a plan. We can’t just hide here forever.”
Agatha can think of an argument or two in favor of eternal hiding, but for the first time in who knows how long she holds back.
//
It all boils down to love , in the end. So all-encompassing and yet so obvious it’s boring. Agatha cracks the code somewhere in the minutes or eons it takes Rio to finally show up.
“You don’t look as surprised to see me as I’d hoped,” Death says as she joins to sit next to her on a cliff. Agatha doesn’t look her way. Not yet.
“Wanda told me a curious thing,” she says, closing her eyes as she enjoys the breeze from the ocean below on her face. Above them, a whale floats through the sky and disappears into the pink clouds. “When she felt her boys, she only had one thought: they needed a mother to love them.”
Even without looking, she knows Rio is smiling, and there’s no bite to it. “And so she pulled you both in.” Because that love is between the four of you, terribly interwoven, she doesn’t say, but Agatha feels it all the same.
Love is the bridge. Love is the key and the door, the fourth and fifth and all the higher dimensions. Love is the ultimate law of physics, encompassing all realities.
Like she’s said. So obvious it’s boring.
She knows the answer already, but still she says it. “Was my love not enough for him to stay?”
“ Don’t ,” Rio barks. “You know as well as I do that Wanda just had the means for it. Love and the natural order of thighs go hand in hand.” Their eyes finally meet. “Grief is love, too, Agatha.”
The words just stumble from her. “I didn’t want to see you because I couldn't ,” she whispers. Rio nods.
“I know.”
“You look like him,” Agatha continues quietly, and it’s broken. “He looked like you .” She remembers what it was like to get through the day, every day , with a war of emotions raging inside. Dread and love and longing and fear all rolled into one.
“It’s my job . I had to–”
“No, you didn’t !”
Time stands perfectly silent and still.
“No, you didn’t,” Agatha repeats, calmer. She’s looking over the ocean again. Next to her, Rio’s presence is quiet and guilty. “You had to take him. But you didn’t have to give him to me. Not when you knew how it would end.”
“Agatha.” Suddenly, Rio sounds exhausted . “I knew how it’d end, but I didn’t know it could begin. ”
She lets out a mirthless laugh. “Oh. So you didn’t know you could knock me up? A cycle of life begins at birth, Green Witch. So I call bullshit.”
“Death can’t have children. It goes against—”
“Natural order of all things, blah blah blah, yes, trust me, I learned that the hardest fucking way imaginable,” Agatha spits. She’s still angry. She’s not sure she’ll ever stop being at least a little angry, at least a little bitter. Or maybe she might. She can’t say anything. To any rule, there’s always an exception.
Rio swallows. “It doesn’t mean,” she says, quietly, “that I didn’t love him.”
“Of course it doesn’t.” Agatha can’t help but roll her eyes at the universe and its sick sense of humor. “Of course you loved him, you dumbass, because if you didn’t love us, none of it would’ve happened.”
Love is the key and the door. That’s the thing, isn’t it?
“And if I didn’t love you back,” she whispers, “you’d never get through the blanket of Wanda’s chaos magic.”
The confession hangs between them, heavy and final. Once again it’s silent and perfectly still.
Rio’s the first to break it. “You’re so painful ,” she states. “You say all I did was take, but - for centuries, all you gave me is pain . And I’m not supposed to feel pain. I’m not supposed to feel , Agatha. But now I do. In every weeping mother, I see you. In every child that passes, I see our boy.”
She takes a shuddering breath, and Agatha curls her hands into fists so she doesn’t do something idiotic like wipe away the tears rolling down Rio’s cheeks.
“I can’t do this anymore.” There’s something so final about the way Rio says it. “I’m no longer suited for this.”
Her own past words wash over her. ‘Stop pursuing me. I don’t want to see your face.’
Agatha swallows the hurt down and attempts a smirk. “Then I suppose this is our last bargain. Take me for good and leave it all behind. Erase us as you will.”
“God, you don’t get it, do you? I’m not talking about us . I’m talking about me !” Seemingly fed up with her, Rio springs to her feet. “I can’t do my job anymore, Agatha. I lost the only two people in the whole eternity that I’ve ever loved, and I lost them because of who I am .”
Rio’s voice trembles. She’s raw with a vulnerability Agatha’s only ever heard centuries ago; when they lay tangled up in each other, soft whispers exchanged at night. “I’m done. The Scarlet Witch is no longer my problem, and I'm no longer your problem. I’m retiring.”
Agatha blinks her ill-timed memories away, the words so absurd she almost laughs. “You’re… what?”
“I’m passing the mantle,” Rio says, her tone resolute now. Her hands tremble as she gestures. “Death will find a new face, a new shape. Someone who can shoulder the weight without—” she falters, inhaling sharply. “Without crumbling under it.”
The ocean below seems to still, as though even the universe itself holds its breath.
“And then what?” Agatha’s voice is quieter than she expects. “You’ll live a mortal life? You’ll find out what it means to grow old, to die like the rest of us?”
Rio turns to face her fully, her gaze steady and fierce. “Yes. That’s exactly what I’ll do.”
Agatha doesn’t have a quip for that. For once, words fail her. She looks away, back toward the endless horizon, watching the pink clouds shift and churn.
“So let me get this straight. Your answer to pain is to inflict more pain on yourself?” she asks, finally.
Her ex-everything smirks. “I had to take my own son and leave my wife behind to hate me. I doubt that the life of a mortal has anything worse in store for me. And even if it does,” she shrugs, “anything is better than this limbo between cosmic and human.”
Agatha huffs out a bitter laugh, folding her arms tight across her chest. “So, what? You’re just gonna walk away? From everything? From me?” Her voice wavers on the last word, and she hates herself for it.
Rio’s expression softens, but there’s still steel beneath it. “I’m not walking away from you,” she says. “I’m walking toward something. Toward a life I was never supposed to have.” Her voice drops, quieter now, like a secret. “Maybe that life includes you. If you’ll have me. But I won’t ask you to decide now.”
Agatha stares at her, the weight of everything they’ve been, everything they’ve lost, hanging between them. “You think you can just retire and play house?”
“I think I want to find out,” Rio replies. “And I think we’ve both earned a little peace, don’t you?”
The silence stretches again, heavy and unrelenting. Agatha watches the waves crash against the cliffs below, feels the cool wind tug at her hair. For the first time in a long time, the storm inside her begins to quiet.
“This isn’t forgiveness, Rio,” she says finally, her voice low but firm. “It’s not that simple.”
“I know,” Rio’s hand brushes against hers, a hesitant, deliberate touch. “But maybe it’s a start.”
For a long moment, they stay like that, the space between them filled with unspoken words and the hum of a universe shifting.
Finally, Agatha exhales, long and slow. “You’re going to regret it,” she says, her tone light but her eyes sharp when she finally meets Rio’s gaze.
Rio’s lips twitch into a smile, the first real one since she arrived. “Maybe. But at least I’ll have a lifetime to find out.”
She reaches out again, hesitating for only a moment before her hand rests lightly on Agatha’s. “When we leave this place,” Rio says, “we start fresh. No more bargains. No more running. We just - try.”
Agatha’s fingers curl slowly around Rio’s, the touch grounding, electric. The familiarity of fingers entwining with hers burns . Instead of pushing it away, she accepts it. “Deal.”
The pocket dimension hums around them, sensing the shift. The sky brightens as if breathing them out, and Agatha knows it’s time.
“Wanda’s going to have a field day with this,” Agatha mutters as she rises, tugging Rio along.