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Chapter Text

Agatha Harkness had gone through many a name in her long life. That was simply the nature of life as a long-lived witch living amongst mortals. Though in Agatha’s case it was more often a case of tolerating the mortals while she fleeced its hidden magical populace for all the sweet magic they were worth. 

To that end, Jennifer Barkley was just another, the latest in a long line, and one that had started by accident more than anything. It had been meant to be a temporary alias for a one-time power grab, as usual, but when she’d ended up taking over the political consultant position of the witch she’d dusted, it turned out to be a lot more interesting than she’d thought. Being the puppet master to foolish politicians was fun and lucrative. 

It was less fun when it took her to places like this dirt town though. Pawnee, Montana was as middle of nowhere America as you could get. It was the type of place she tried to avoid as much as possible, and not just because it was boring. In her experience, small towns had long memories and long histories against her kind (witch, queer, fabulous, etc., etc.), making it harder to stay anonymous enough to pull her usual tricks. 

Still, she figured Pawnee, Alabama was probably safe enough for a one-time visit as Jennifer Barkley. The money offered was tempting enough for her to risk it anyway. It wasn’t as though she truly needed it, not when she had more than enough magic to make up for it, but it was still a nice bonus. 

Leslie Knope was not a witch—Agatha had checked that immediately—but she seemed to hold a strange power all the same. It was enough to make this campaign as Jennifer Barkley just marginally more interesting at least.  

The building for the Parks and Recreation Department was definitely not. But Agatha wasn’t planning on staying long. She made a beeline for where she knew the blonde’s office was, and barked immediately at the intern on the desk outside it. 

“Is Knope in her—” 

Agatha trailed off mid-sentence, too stunned to do more than stare at the all too familiar form of her ex-wife. 

Rio? 

With a flash of paranoia, she immediately reached for the well of dark magic inside her, only to confirm what she already knew. The Darkhold’s power was still thrumming beneath her veins, and her black tipped fingers, hidden by a glamour, were proof of that—it should be just as effective as ever in keeping her from Death’s eyes. 

…so what was happening here? 

Frowning, she stepped closer to Death’s doppelganger. The cracks were immediate and obvious. Namely the fact that as she did so, there was no spark of vindication or mischief in those hazel eyes, none of the emotion Agatha was expecting. 

In fact, there was no recognition at all. There was only a blank stare filled with boredom. 

Now that Agatha was closer, she could also see that there were some differences after all. She was significantly younger than the ageless form Rio usually took up, and there were certain small details of her face that weren’t entirely identical to the one burned in her memory. 

Still, the uncanny resemblance had her instinctively asking, “Who are you?” 

“Uh, April Ludgate.” The voice was different too, higher-pitched, definitely younger than she remembered, but still familiar enough it made her bones ache and her fists clench. 

Unintimidated by Agatha’s sudden presence, April shifted into an equally familiar narrow-eyed stare—one she recognized all too well from the mirror, which was unfortunately making her put the puzzle pieces together in a way she wanted to pretend didn’t fit at all—as she returned the question, “Who are you?”

“You don’t know who I am?” Agatha frowned, knowing it was a lost cause but needing to ask anyway. Maybe Rio was just fucking with her. Death did have a strange sense of humor, after all. 

There was a long moment of silence as April stared at her. Then, eyes finally ringing with recognition, she said, “Oh, you’re the lady who called Leslie a dog murderer on TV!” 

It was Agatha’s turn to stare in silence. 

The words were so outside her expectations, she was sure she must’ve heard wrong, until her memory started to catch up to her shock. 

Right. She suddenly remembered. The campaign. Her actions as Jennifer Barkley felt so long ago after this unexpected encounter she’d completely forgotten that that was her only supposed identity in this godforsaken dirt town, and the only one this stranger wearing her ex-wife’s face would know. 

“Yup, that’s me.” Agatha confirmed, putting on a practiced smile that felt especially false at the moment. “You a fan, hun?” 

April frowned. “You do know Leslie’s my boss, right? I mean, that was pretty funny and I don’t really care, but Leslie…”

Even though Leslie Knope was the entire reason Jennifer Barkley had entered this godforsaken building in the first place, Agatha really didn’t give a single fuck about her right now. Not when there was this mystery wrapped inside an enigma trapped within a riddle in front of her. 

She wasn’t even really listening to April, as just vaguely hearing that familiar cadence was enough to make her want to strangle something—and she did not want that to be her potential daughter. 

Instead, she tried to reach out with her other senses. On the surface, April didn’t seem to have any magic. But Agatha was much more attuned to the subtle rhythms of magic than most witches, and she could tell that appearances were deceiving in this case. 

Reaching beneath the surface, she could sense the untapped magical potential, hidden beneath a fairly powerful barrier, and what little she could sense of that magic—and really, of the barrier too—was all too familiar once again. 

“I need to go.” Agatha blurted out, already turning around. “I’ll be back, April Ludgate!” 

Forgetting entirely about any meeting with Leslie Knope, Agatha quickly marched right back out the building. She had more important things on her mind now. 

Like a meeting with Death. 

Chapter Text

See, the thing was, even with the Darkhold, it wasn’t as though Agatha had never actually seen Death again. All the Darkhold really did was make sure Death couldn’t specifically seek her out. 

It was sort of impossible to entirely avoid that particular cosmic entity when you essentially made a living as a serial killer, after all. 

Anytime Agatha happened to sap the powers from too big a coven, or if she just happened to cause enough death as a secondary consequence of her actions, Death was summoned regardless. Sometimes, Agatha ran before she could arrive. But more often than not, well, old habits died hard. 

Fighting and fucking had always been at the core of their relationship with each other, and that hadn’t really changed even after it officially (or not so officially, really) ended. 

Still, things had changed, since Nicky. Whatever part of her that he and Rio had softened had hardened with his death. When the high of the fight and lust of their couplings faded, all that was ever left was the bitterness of an empty space where her son should’ve been. 

So she left too. Every time, she kept running away from Death as if she could deny its cosmic effects that way. 

-

The last time Agatha crossed paths with Rio was some twenty-ish years ago, by her rough count. Years tended to blur when you were as long-lived as she was. But every encounter with Death was an undeniably memorable one. 

That time, it had been a particularly plentiful gift of bodies for Death. Agatha had essentially crossed cons with a witch leading a rather sizable cult—full of useless mortals without magic, so they hadn’t held much interest for her, but it had meant that they were all too willing to throw their lives away for their leader. 

Like ants, they swarmed her only to be swatted away. Even after Agatha had sapped the witch of her magic and her life, they were all loyally brainwashed enough to try to muster their forces to enact revenge on her. 

Having learned from her past mistakes (looking at you, Salem Seven), Agatha had promptly used their own leader’s magic to take them out, before using their collective sacrifice for a handy power boost spell in the process. The covenless witch was flexible when it came to her magical sources of power. It never paid to be a picky eater when it came to magic, after all. 

In any case, by the time Rio had arrived to a rather bloody and magically enhanced Agatha, which, for Death herself, was the equivalent of catnip, they’d more or less gotten to the fucking part of their dysfunctional relationship pretty swiftly during this encounter. 

In hindsight, Agatha supposed it had been one of their more charged encounters, both in terms of magic and emotion. Enough to maybe accidentally power a baby-making spell, apparently. Somehow. It didn’t make much sense to her, knowing what she knew of Death, but that was exactly why she needed to talk to Rio. 

-

There were ways to summon Death without actual death involved, of course. Covenless she may be, but powerless she most certainly was not. 

For a spirit witch of her capabilities, it wasn’t all that much work to do a ritual summoning. Not least because she already had basically all the ingredients on hand with her.

(Agatha was just being a good planner, okay? It wasn’t as though she wanted to ever see Rio again if she had a choice, but it was always good to have the choice there, if she did. It was just sensible!)

Luck was on her side too, because it was thankfully a full moon only a day after she walked into that stupid building and had her world turned upside down. 

Despite her impatience making the time feel like forever, in truly no time at all, she was in the middle of the woods at midnight on a full moon doing a ritual to finally summon Death. 

-

Because Rio Vidal was a fucking drama queen, she could not appear without making a grand entrance. The already dark sky darkened even more dramatically with fog, highlighting the sudden lightning storm that appeared. Amidst the roaring thunder, an all too familiar cackling soon crescendoed. 

An equally familiar silhouette soon appeared in the magical circle she’d drawn on the ground, and Lady Death, in full skull-face finally appeared, still cackling. 

Utterly unimpressed, Agatha merely rolled her eyes at the display. Crossing her arms, she asked flatly, “Are you done wasting time with this nonsense?”

Somehow managing to make her skull face pout, Rio complained, “You never let me have any fun! Come on, it’s been years since I last saw you—“

Already limited patience snapping, Agatha cut her off, “Yeah, about that. Anything you want to tell me?”

There was a loaded silence. It was hard to tell if Rio knew what exactly she was referring to, but it was clear that there was something.

“Rio! What the fuck?!” Agatha was about two steps away from slapping her. “Explain to me now why I just met some girl that looks exactly like you in the middle of bumfuck Pawnee, Nebraska!”

“Y-you, what—?” Watching Death stammer might’ve been a comedic and satisfying sight under other circumstances. As it stood, it only made her own life feel more like a comedy of errors, which only made her temper flare more.

“Seriously? Are you really going to pretend to have nothing to do with April Ludgate—that’s your doppleganger’s name, by the way, which I’m sure you already know.” 

“Agatha…” The green witch seemed to have regained her calm enough to say her name, if nothing else. She also abruptly shifted out of her skull look into her more human face, which only highlighted the similarity she’d seen in April yesterday. It didn’t take a genius to connect the dots, especially with the guilty way Rio was acting. 

“Tell me I’m wrong—because the way I’m putting the puzzle pieces is this… I saw a girl who looks almost exactly like you, with just enough differences that remind me of me. Oh, and coincidentally she’s just old enough to line up with the last time we ran into each other!” By the end of her tirade, Agatha was breathing hard. 

“You’re right.” Rio finally admitted, looking serious in a way she rarely did outside of her job. “April… she’s our daughter.”

Even though it was the answer she had been expecting, Agatha was still stunned to hear the words of confirmation come out of Rio’s mouth.

“She’s really our daughter?” She asked, almost disbelieving despite her own theory being confirmed. 

Rio nodded, a soft look in her eyes as she said, “She is. You and me, mixed together magically. Made from scratch, just like Nicky.” 

The mention of their child—their first child, apparently—had Agatha’s hackles raised immediately. Her anger swiftly returned. “I carried Nicky. I gave birth to him. Because you said you couldn’t.”

Before Rio could even answer the question, she continued, sneering, still with that bitter edge of grief even after all this time, “Death creating life. How is that even possible? Isn't that against your precious rules?”

“Agatha.” Rio breathed out, looking pained. “Haven't you realized by now? When I'm with you, all I do is break the rules.”

Gritting her teeth, she shot back acidly, “So what was Nicky, an exception?”

“Yes.” Rio replied bluntly, giving her a look. “I gave you time.”

“You gave me nothing!” Agatha shot back, seeing red. Time? What a fucking joke. What she got was a tiny grain of sand in a huge fucking hourglass. It was nothing. 

But before she could belabour the point, she shook her head, remembering why she was volunteering to fight with her ex-wife once again. “Fuck, that’s not the point! This is about our apparent daughter, who you never told me about!”

It was Rio’s turn to sneer. “And how was I supposed to do that, with the Darkhold on you? You think I didn’t try? You think I didn’t stalk every suspicious witch death hoping it was somehow you?”

Agatha grit her teeth, unable to deny the point. The Darkhold meant that she never had to see Rio unless it was on her terms, which was something she’d never considered the negatives of before. 

“Fine. But then why the fuck is she named April Ludgate? Why is she here, in the middle of bumblefuck, nowhere? With seemingly no fucking clue she’s the daughter of Death at all?”

Looking guilty again, Rio sighed, “That’s… a long story, Agatha. It’s complicated, to say the least.”

“I’ve got the fucking time, Rio.” Agatha sneered, not letting her off the hook. “Uncomplicate it and start talking.” 

Death didn’t need to breathe, but she took one anyway, trying to settle her sudden nerves as she wondered how to tell this story.