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The first time I saw that woman in front of me, I knew she would be the cause of my most painful tears, water drops that would burn my skin as my voice would scratch my throat so I could scream it all away. I knew all of that would happen, but… I saw her eyes look at me with those sparkling brightness so, how could I not risk feeling all that for a single minute with her?
Sixteen ninety-three wasn’t the first time I’ve met Agatha. It was around when Jesus didn’t even exist for us humans to date years based on him.
She had a simple dress on, worn out by the time. Messy hair and a basket full of apples, a little kid following her around and a smile that took me out of my thoughts. The woman looked at me, a simple girl covered in dirt, and instead of turning around, she smiled. “Poor woman, don’t you have a place to clean yourself?” She asked. I was too dumbfounded to direct her any word at all. She didn’t mind. Instead, she offered her hand, asking me to follow her. And just like a little lamb, I did.
The woman gave me food, prepared me a bath and observed in curiosity my every move as she talked about her life. The woman named Agatha had a son named Nicholas — the boy following her earlier that day — and at one point in her life she had a man she never loved, but thankfully (her words, not mine) he was gone.
Then she listened to my life. A miserable life without family, friends or a lover. Just a wanderer walking around with no place to call it a home.
Until she asked me to stay. “If you’d like, I would love to have your company,” she said. And how could I say no to such a loveable woman who opened her house and treated me so kindly? And not to fool myself, I’d love to stay and watch those ocean eyes as many times as I could.
And so, the days passed until those days became weeks, and those weeks became months.
“Guess what I found,” I came back home with a bottle of wine that I may or may not have stolen from the market at the village near our home.
“You stole it, didn’t you?” Agatha said, though with a smile on her face as she sat on the ground, patting the place near her so I could join her. “Not that I would mind, I’d kill for one of those.”
“If killing would put that smile on your face, I’d kill thousands for you, m’lady,” I said, joining her on the ground. Agatha laughed, not too loud so Nick wouldn’t wake up. Perhaps she thought I was kidding, though I would. I’d kill the entire universe if it meant I could see her happy.
We started drinking straight from the bottle until our vision started to blurry and our speeches were senseless. Meanwhile, I started to build the courage to tell her everything I wanted to from the very first time I saw her.
“Agatha,” I closed my eyes, prepared to be expelled from her house.
“What is it, Rio?”
“I… I see your eyes and I get lost in myself, Agatha. I see your hair and I just want to spend the whole day smelling that sweet scent of yours. And your voice, Agatha… I- I’m sorry I’m just trying to find the right words, or any word at all to describe what I feel when I hear your voice,” I started, still with my eyes closed. I couldn’t bear to look at her and see the look of disapproval, but I had to say it. “Your voice makes my heart race, makes me feel like it had never even beat before you. It makes me want to giggle and beg for you to never stop talking. What I’m trying to say is… I don’t know if that is called love, because I’ve never loved before, but if it is…”
I heard nothing. Complete silence.
Until I opened my eyes and saw her smiling at me with a tear falling down her face. The next thing I saw was her reaching for my mouth, and by that I was really certain my heart only began beating because of her.
It didn’t last long, though.
A week had passed and when I came back from hunting I saw little Nicky screaming desperately.
Agatha was on the ground, lifeless.
And I woke up.
In a different city, with different clothes and different people.
I searched for Agatha for days, every second of those days wishing I was just having a terrible dream.
I travelled cities, asking people for directions to the village that nobody knew about. Until I met an old man who told me that the village had been gone for decades. He left there and years after it got destroyed and never rebuilt. Then, I asked him if he knew a woman named Agatha. “That name is familiar, but I left too young to remember anyone named Agatha, my dear.”
So just like that, my heart stopped beating again.
My sweet Agatha was really gone.
That is, until one day I saw her picking up a fight from behind a tavern.
I was so happy seeing her again I almost didn’t even notice her being hurt by the woman twice her size. So what if she was hurt, she was alive!
Coming back to reality, I ran towards her, grabbing a piece of wood from the ground to scare off the other woman. It actually worked (I was even smaller than Agatha, but I managed to make myself bigger). “Agatha,” I said, helping her get up from the muddy ground.
“Yes,” she said, frowning her eyebrows. “Do I know you?”
“Agatha, it’s me..”
Agatha kept looking at me, waiting for an actual answer for her question.
“Rio,” I tried, again.
“Well,” she started beating the mud out of her dress. “Thank you, Rio.”
I stood there, watching the love of my life not even knowing who I was.
“Can you believe it? A woman can’t even drink three bottles of beer without having one coin to pay for them and they just beat you out of there.”
I couldn’t help but smile at her antics. She really was the love of my life.
“They must be crazy to let you go like that,” I said, not even caring to measure my words to the woman who had no memory of me.
But that must’ve done something on her mind. Agatha stopped her actions and looked at me. Properly looked at me, for the first time that night. “Who did you say you were?” She asked, her blue eyes darkened by the dim light, though the same curiosity in her voice as always.
“I’m Rio,” I said, extending my hand in greeting. She didn’t reach for it.
“My hands are dirty, Rio,” Agatha said.
“I don’t mind,” I kept my hands towards her until she finally greeted me back.
You didn’t mind inviting me covered in dirt to your house, how could I mind a simple handshake?
“How do you know my name, Rio?”
“Let’s just say it was destiny,” I said. She would put me as insane if I was to tell her where I knew her name from. “Do you have a place to stay, Agatha?
“I don’t, actually,” she said, looking around for nothing specific. “My ship is docked here for tonight and I’ve never been in here, so… I planned to spend the night in this hell-hole of a tavern.”
“I have a place nearby,” I said, hoping she would accept my offer. “It’s nothing much, but way better than sleeping in a tavern.”
Agatha smiled for the first time that day, and I felt my heart once again.
“Who’s crazy enough to invite a stranger into their home?” Agatha asked, smiling heartily at Rio.
You are.
“I am.”
In the end, Agatha did agree on coming home to me.
Back home I prepared her a bath and a decent meal, this time with no wine or beer, just water to go along. I could swear Agatha had the same scent as she did back… back then. Was it another life? Was that past life just a dream? Why did I remember everything as if her death happened weeks ago, while Agatha remembers nothing at all?
“You’re quiet,” Agatha said.
Back to reality, I noticed she had finished her meal, but kept sitting in front of me, studying and getting absorbed in my thoughts. I looked back at her, and all the pain of losing her had hit me for the first time. She was there, in front of me, alive. She was there, but what if she wasn’t? What if I was just losing my sanity, not knowing which Agatha was real and which was not?
“Are you real?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Agatha asked back, her sweet smile planted on her lips as she looked at me.
I opened my mouth, but nothing left, just words that got stuck in my head.
I fear I’ve lost myself in what’s real and what’s not. I fear you’re real while the first time I’ve met you were not, but I also fear the first Agatha was real while you’re not. And if both are real, I fear losing you again.
“I, uh- So, you’re a pirate?”
“Yeah, why? Don’t I speak like a pirate?” Agatha asked, already knowing the answer. She looked the least pirate someone could look like.
We spent an entire night talking — later, drinking and talking — about Agatha’s (new) life and her love for piracy, and it felt, for the first time in so many days, that I had my Agatha back. The funny, grumpy and sweet Agatha that I had the pleasure of meeting.
By sunrise, Agatha said she had to leave. Her ship would be leaving in a few hours, so she had to come back and help them. But, before she could leave, she looked at me one more time. “Do you wanna come with me?”
“Become a pirate?”
“Yes.”
I laughed. The first Agatha was terrified of a simple lake. This Agatha loved the sea so much it was part of her. “Wait for me? I have to pack a few clothes.”
“Of course, Rio.” Agatha smiled at me one more time before mentioning her head towards the outside of the house. “I’ll be out here waiting.”
I packed as fast as I could, not even stopping to think about the nonsense of me becoming a pirate.
I think I could handle it, right? I love the ocean, perhaps not enough to spend days at the open sea… but I loved Agatha enough. I loved her more than enough to spend an entire life without touching a single palm of earth. I loved her enough to become part of the sea, if she wanted me to.
But before I could even build a new life with her, I found her bleeding just outside the house.
Three empty bottles of beers was the message.
But the love of my life, dead once again in front of me… What was the message?
The third time, I had given up.
At that point, I was lost in my mind. Of what was real or was not.
Was Agatha ever real?
What had I done that was so bad that the universe was punishing me for giving this unreal woman that I loved so much and would always lose so fast?
Or even worse. If she indeed was real, why did the universe decide to kill her? If I had done wrong, shouldn’t I be the punished one? The first Agatha left a kid alone in the world, the second Agatha lost her love, the ocean, because I entered her life. So couldn’t the universe punish me without having to use Agatha’s life as a funny prank?
But I didn’t learn it.
Agatha taught me to be stubborn.
The third time I had met her, she was a medieval queen.
So gracefully walking around the streets of the town, not a single worry in her eyes. Her people loved her. Her guards loved her. There was no soul near her who would’ve wanted her killed. So I, who became her maid, had finally let my guards down. She loved me and I could finally love her without fearing her death.
“Have you chosen a name already, m’lady?” I asked, gently caressing my lover’s pregnant belly.
“Nicholas,” Agatha said, her serene eyes looking back at me with such warmth I still couldn't believe it was real.
Nicky.
Before I could say anything, her water broke. I rushed her towards the bed as I would scream to the guards to bring her the midwife. “It’s alright, my love. Keep breathing, for little Nicky.”
Though Nicholas was in a hurry, and he didn’t want to wait for the midwife to arrive, it was in my hands.
And you’ve guessed it right.
My love died in my hands.
The fourth, fifth, and sixth times had the same fate.
And the following many countless times as well.
I still wouldn’t learn from my mistakes, would I?
Until one day, at a museum, I saw many portraits of myself on those walls.
Every life I had with Agatha was there, in front of me, like physical memories I had in my mind.
“They look like you,” I heard her from next to me.
There was no universe where I wouldn’t recognize my favorite sound.
“I’m Agatha,” the woman greeted her, but I had no courage to touch her one more time.
“Did you paint those?” I asked, seeing the signature in the paintings.
“Yes,” she said, trying not to look shaken by the ignored handshake. “I, uh- I’ve been having these dreams, with you or… someone exactly like you…”
I was speechless.
“Here, this is my favourite.”
She pointed towards the painting of two women sitting on the ground, a bottle of wine shared between both. The woman represented by Agatha had her hands on the other woman’s hair. They looked happy, something I couldn’t be with her for an eternity, like we would always promise each other.
“Every dream I have I end up dying, and I wake up thinking about the pain the other woman must’ve felt… even though they’re just dreams,” Agatha explained. “I’ve never felt that much love until that woman started loving me, but everytime I try to stay alive for her…I wake up in pain, feeling like those deaths were real.”
There. Right there.
I’ve finally learned it.
Sometimes loving someone is having to let them go, you know?
And I know she might not be as happy without me as she was when we were together, but… at least she will not have to suffer another death, right?
“Thank you, Agatha…”
Then I left the museum.
I left her so she could finally live.