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Immortality might have sucked, but being dead sucked even more.
Especially when you never ended up in your lover's dominion.
Death either changed nothing or everything, but for most of the time, death just felt like… a lack of friction.
Quite unlike her encounters with Death before…
She was tired of being stuck somewhere in between, being unable to feel the wind but see its effects, watching other children grow up but doomed to still mourn hers, and most punishingly, watching the other witches thrive whilst she was doomed to be magic-less, the absence of the satisfying thrum of purple at her fingertips like a phantom limb.
All she could do was roam the world, never tired, never hungry, never thirsty.
At least she could have some purpose.
And that’s how she ended up hovering on the corner of Elm Street, watching as the lights slowly dimmed across the suburban houses, the moon slowly becoming brighter with every dimmed light.
It was a Tuesday, or maybe a Thursday. With no sleep, her ghostly essence didn’t really process time the same way she used to, even when she was an immortal.
“Focus, Agatha,” she muttered to herself, frustrated when she realised that this time, her speaking didn’t cause the flower in her hand to shift slightly. Not too long ago, she’d been delighted when she realised her speaking ‘aloud’ had caused the leaves on the bush she was situated behind to move, as though she was once again on the same plane as the Earth she was destined to haunt.
Maybe next time.
She snapped back to focus, drifting from house to house, focusing on the sole thing that kept her from delving into insanity – finding a boy.
A vessel.
Someone whose thread of fate was fraying to the point of snapping, someone whose soul would die, but whose body would be perfect for him.
And after everything, he deserved perfection.
Maybe that was why she was stuck here, after all.
She thought diminishing into a ghost due to deeds unfinished was something only mere mortals succumbed to, but it turns out it was an affliction that could target anyone, even a witch who is – was, she had to remind herself – so powerful.
She drifted through a house with a “For Sale” sign, bricks and cement an even easier boundary to pass than before.
She was ready to move away from this town, finding no prospective vessels - the boy she had felt before now no longer perfect for her purpose - when she froze, feeling the changed air.
It wasn’t a temperature drop, no, but rather a shift of pressure. She could have sworn the formerly familiar smell of damp soil, peppered with crushed flower petals and old, almost dead, roots, hit her with a gust of wind that somehow pushed her aside.
She turned around, watching the shadows plaster together a familiar figure, a shape that Agatha knew better than the back of her hand.
Death.
Rio.
My love.
What was supposed to be her future, but now was just a painful reminder.
She only came for what was imminently hers.
Was it her time finally?
Was Death going to show mercy?
Death stepped out of the shadows, wearing not the green that adorned her during the walk down the Witches' road, nor the robes that adorned her at their final confrontation, no, but a simple dark dress, her hair loose, her feet bare against the ground that was darkening beneath her.
She looked nothing like the terrifying figure that she portrayed last.
In fact, she looked almost normal.
Almost human.
Something neither she nor her ever was or ever could be.
Rio looked straight at her, and Agatha realised she needn’t act surprised – Death was special that way, she defied and broke all the normal rules of engagement.
“You’re lingering,” Agatha heard Rio’s voice crystal clear, even though her mouth never moved.
“Lingering is for losers. I’m working,” she threw back, “you’re the one who’s lingering. Don’t you have a soul to claim?”
Rio smirked, that familiar, sharp edge to the corners of her lips that used to make Agatha’s heart hammer appearing.
It was arguable if she even had a heart before, but right now, she was sure she didn’t – the only thing there was just a phantom lurch, as if for a split second, she had turned into a human, a human with a heart.
“Working,” Rio drawled, “and no. At least not yet. I have some time. Seems like you have plenty of it. You know you can just let go.”
“I have a task,” Agatha snapped, crossing her arms, “I need a vessel for him. But you know that already, don’t you?”
“I do,” Rio had paused just a foot away from Agatha, the smell of petrichor and decay intoxicating.
“You’re trying to cheat, aren’t you, love?”
“I’m not cheating you. The boy I find will be dying anyway. Call it… recycling.”
Rio chuckled, “Recycling. Is that what you call it?”
Rio reached out, and Agatha expected nothing different than for her hand to pass straight through her. She braced herself for the further reminder that she wasn’t ‘real’ anymore, that the world was no longer hers to manipulate.
But instead of the disappointment she expected to flood her system, she felt… warmth.
Rio’s fingers – solid, present – curled around her upper arm.
Agatha gasped, looking down at the point of content, trying to memorise the feeling of being here.
“You…” Agatha breathed, “You can touch me.”
“I am Death, Agatha,” Rio whispered, as if that answered her questions.
The touch grounded Agatha in a way she hadn’t felt since she walked the road, and for a moment, she was no longer just a ghost with a single goal, destined to roam alone for time unknown.
No.
She was… loved.
Could Death even feel… love?
“Why… why are you here?” Agatha asked, “To take me? To stop me?”
“Neither. As I said, I’m here collecting,” she said, tilting her head towards the single house with a light still shining dimly.
“But I felt you, Agatha. You’re… loud. Even when you’re a ghost, destined to not be bound by the physical laws, nor contained by magical law, you’re so… loud.”
Rio leaned closer, her breath ghosting over Agatha’s lips.
“You should go, Agatha. Go do what you need to do. But remember, everyone eventually comes back to me.”
“Is that supposed to be comforting?”
“It's supposed to be whatever you think it is. But if you want comfort from Death…” Rio began, turning the ghost of her breath over Agatha’s lips into a fully-fledged kiss.
It was overwhelming, flooding Agatha’s senses, filling her hollow self with a sudden, violent rush of… life.
Ironic that it was Death who made her feel alive… whole… complete.
For a second, she wasn’t a ghost.
She was Agatha Harkness, she was alive, and she was living in a future she envisioned, if even for a moment.
For when her eyes snapped open, the street was empty again, nothing but the moon casting its rays straight through her.
No Death. No scent of petrichor. No warmth.
She reached her fingers up to her lips, trying to work out if what happened was real, or if she was spiralling into insanity, doomed to forget her goal… her purpose.
“Cruel,” she whispered out to the street, no answer to her description.
She turned back towards the houses, floating away.
She had to find a boy. And after that?
Well, Death was waiting.
And Agatha had a few things to say and do to her.