Chapter Text
“I’m sorry,” Wanda says, and her neighbor – her nothing, she corrects herself, her enemy, a wild-haired witch that put ropes of purple light around her children’s throats – narrows her eyes.
“No you’re not,” Agnes spits in a low scrape of a voice. (Not Agnes. Another correction. What had she called herself in that musty bear trap of a basement? Agatha?) “You’re cruel.”
Is she? As Wanda takes a steady step forward, she wraps the accusation around her shoulders, trying it on for size. Fits like a glove. She is cruel. To survive in this world, she has to be. Her body’s buzzing with an absorbed magic-adrenaline cocktail; the sides of her face tingle from the press of her strange new crown.
“You have – ” Agatha trips over her words. Panicking. Wanda feels herself smile. “You have no idea what you’ve unleashed. You’re gonna need me.”
“If I do,” Wanda says, extending a sparking red hand, “I know where to find you.”
“Wait. Wait, wait, wait – ”
Oh, the panic’s delicious. Let Agatha get a taste of her own medicine, the trapped-animal terror that she’d forced Wanda to endure. Had forced her children to endure. Billy’s shouts for help are still echoing in her ears; the haunting sight of Tommy’s little hands scrabbling at the magic cord around his neck. Wanda’s no stranger to anger, but the blind, universe-ending rage she’d felt when faced with the very real threat of losing her kids…maybe that meddling agency was wise to send an army’s worth of men with guns to take her down.
Agatha throws up her inkstained palms, pleading, and Wanda hesitates: after everything she’s done, does this ancient crone deserve the mercy of forgetting? Because she will forget, if Wanda’s spell works like it should. Unlike the poor people of Westview, Agatha won’t be burdened by the aftershocks of Wanda’s pain. Once the magic’s cast, Agatha-turned-Agnes will toddle through Wanda’s coveted suburban bliss, the memories of her own despicable schemes hidden behind a sturdy red wall. Hardly a punishment. Wouldn’t it be enough to stick her in a traditional jail, a simple concrete box to keep her body in place? Does Wanda need to lock up Agatha’s mind, too?
She doesn’t have to wait long for an answer – as if eager to prove how dangerous her unshackled mind can be, Agatha uses Wanda’s moment of hesitation to clasp her blackened hands around her would-be captor’s ankles, yanking hard. Wanda lands on her back with a thump, the air punched from her lungs.
“Amateur,” Agatha snarls, scrambling to her feet. “What witch worth a sack of potatoes lets her guard down before the threat’s fully neutralized? You’re the legend that’s been foretold since time immemorial? The prophesied Destroyer of Worlds? Fucking – it’s like when they set up a toy wheel on the ship to make the kids think that they’re the ones steering. Except you’re actually steering.”
Pain throbs up Wanda’s spine. Behind her, she hears a concerned chorus of Mom? and Darling? and Wanda? Vision and the boys, plus the young woman with the eyes that’d flashed a brilliant blue when Wanda attacked her. She can’t let Agatha hurt them. The magic-adrenaline cocktail races through her veins, culminating in the half-formed spell still sizzling in her left palm.
“All that power just to use your telly set like a pacifier,” Agatha says breathlessly, her gaze fixed on the red glow in Wanda’s hand. She licks her lips, those dark fingers flexing in jerky spasms. “The Scarlet Wimp, nothing more than a glorified iPad kid.”
From the corner of her eye, Wanda can see her family beginning to move. She has maybe four seconds until Tommy decides to zip over, speeding himself straight into Agatha’s warpath. Back twingeing, face tingling, Wanda flails her hands to cast –
A teenage Agatha tied to a stake, the drumbeat of stonyfaced women chanting in Latin, fear and light and death and death and –
“Why,” Agatha mutters. The real Agatha, who’s staring at her younger self with a curled lip. Westview’s melted away; it’s just her and Wanda, stranded on the rocky floor of a cold New England forest circa sixteen-hundred-something.
To answer Agatha’s question: Wanda doesn’t know why. She must’ve cast her mindreading spell by mistake, plunging them both into the depths of Agatha’s centuries-old memory. Tugging on the reins of her recently-doubled store of magic, Wanda tries to propel them back to the surface. For a moment, she’s hopeful that it’s working; a thick scarlet-purple fog gushes over the failed execution, hiding the colonial coven from sight. But when the smoke clears –
A twentysomething Agatha cross-legged on a worn armchair, nose buried in a hefty spellbook. Agatha lazily twirling a finger; a spoon stirring itself around her cup of tea. Frogs turning into rats turning into bunnies, Agatha cackling with delight at the hard-won fruits of her months of study. The blaze of torches cutting through a starless night – villagers screaming “Burn the witch,” “Kill the beast,” “Send her back to whence she came.” A fair-haired woman pushing her way through the crowd, tears streaming down her face. “I’m sorry,” she sobs, and young-Agatha pauses at the sound, hovering in midair above a sea of pitchforks. “Oh, Agatha, forgive me – they held my feet to the fire, they said they would cut out my tongue if I spoke naught but the truth – darling, my darling – ”
Wanda can feel young-Agatha’s revulsion at the girl’s weakness. As the scene shifts in a surge of smoke, there are other girls. Other feelings. Lust, sure, but mostly boredom. A bright yellow sun rises and sets like a blinking eye, years dripping away, the women that cling to Agatha’s arm featureless and inconsequential. What matters is the knowledge, and the power, and the bloodsoaked ways that she amasses more of both.
And then.
“Enough,” current-Agatha snaps, flicking her frizzy hair as the terrain around them becomes a different moonlit forest. “There was a decent reason to wade through your reruns. What are you gonna get out of watching mine?”
She doesn’t want to watch Agatha’s reruns, but the remote’s nowhere to be found, the memory barrelling forward:
Forest strewn with bodies. Young-Agatha, giddy with stolen magic. A cloaked woman stepping from behind a tree. When she lowers her hood, Wanda feels Agatha’s breath catch. Black hair falling around wide, wicked eyes.
“You grant me little rest, Agatha Harkness,” the woman says in a voice that emanates from everywhere. Agatha shivers. “Have you no desire for sleep yourself?”
“You know what they say about idle hands,” Agatha says, tapping her fingers against her chin. “A tireless work ethic keeps a good God-fearing Salemite out of the devil’s clutches.”
“Of course,” the woman says, gliding closer. Her lovely face ripples, the right side becoming a bare skull. “You obviously have no interest in the devil’s clutches.”
Wanda glances at real-Agatha; in the whirlwind week that they’ve known each other, she’s never seen her faux-neighbor’s elastic face look so blank. Her eyelids waver, her lips parted. After loud, funny Agnes collapsed into an evil monologuing hag, Wanda had thought she’d seen Agatha for what she truly is; now, she isn’t so certain. Maybe the big bad villain posturing was just her latest wardrobe change.
The multicolored smoke ushers in another shift –
The black-haired, skull-faced woman arriving at the door of Agatha’s cottage with her arms full of roses. She sprouts more flowers from her hands, weaving them into Agatha’s hair. “If I were to recite sonnets about your beauty, pretty witch,” the woman says, running a pointed nail behind Agatha’s ear, “would I just be echoing your morning speech to your own reflection?”
“Perhaps,” Agatha says, touching the flower at her temple. From god knows what, her hands are stained a sticky red. “Recite them anyway.”
In a dizzying burst, the women laugh together, fight together, fight each other, fuck each other, burn down that cute cottage in a lash of green-purple energy, build another one from scratch. “I love you,” the skull woman hisses, lobbing lightning bolts of green magic toward Agatha’s face. (Wanda wonders why Agatha dodges the attacks instead of sopping them up.) “Do you have any idea what that means? Throughout the whole of existence, I’ve never – I’m not supposed to be able to – ”
“How tragic,” Agatha says, grinning as she singes the lace of the woman’s green dress with a whistling purple bullet. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, my dear, but you couldn’t have picked a harder romance to be your first.”
But Wanda doesn’t think that’s entirely true. The supernatural being, whatever she is, clearly loves Agatha like lungs love air. A helpless, inevitable love. She brings Agatha flowers, teaches her magic, kisses her cuts closed. There’s a thrum of violence beneath the relationship, no doubt about that, but when Agatha’s in need? Her woman-shaped god doesn’t think twice.
For example:
“You’ve got an admirer,” Agatha’s lover murmurs as the two of them stroll arm-in-arm through a packed marketplace. Swiveling her head, Agatha follows the crook of the woman’s finger – a baby peeks over his mother’s shoulder, staring at Agatha with huge blue eyes.
“Wanda,” real-Agatha says quietly. “I need you to stop.”
“I’m trying,” Wanda says through gritted teeth, giving the reins another hearty tug. She’s not used to the weight of two witches’ magic; it sits heavy in her chest, messing with her center of gravity.
Agatha makes an exaggerated face, sending the baby into happy burbling laughter. She laughs, too, touching the brooch around her throat.
“Those eyes,” her lover says, nuzzling against Agatha’s shoulder. “He could be yours.”
Agatha stiffens. “Hilarious.”
“Not my intent. I leave the comedy in your capable hands.” The woman gives Agatha’s shoulder a bite. “He could be yours. Would you like him to be?”
“Advocating child theft, are we?” Agatha’s hand tenses around her brooch. “You wish me to perpetrate the notion of our kind as babystealing ghouls?”
“I wish nothing of the sort.” The woman’s dry, confident tone is tinged with nerves. “I thought you might prefer a babe of your own. Blue eyes. Black hair.”
“Wanda,” real-Agatha croaks. Her panic no longer fills Wanda with any kind of satisfaction. “Please.”
Squeezing her eyes shut, she tries, she tries –
“Do you mean – ?” young-Agatha breathes. “I thought – you said – ”
“I know what I’ve said.” Every word, saturated with that helpless love. The woman tilts Agatha’s chin up with a finger. “What can I say? You’ve given me your appetite for the impossible.”
With a cry that rips fissures of pain up the inside of her throat, Wanda manages to wrap her arms around the magic. The memories form and dissolve in a fury, sandcastles lapped away by wave after red-purple wave. She sees Agatha pregnant, Agatha kissing her lover’s forehead, Agatha screaming in her lover’s face. Agatha alone. For months, Agatha alone. Agatha in the woods, groaning from the start of her contractions, a lemon wedge held fast between her teeth.
“You’re not this cruel, kiddo,” real-Agatha says. Despite the black tear tracks carrying her makeup toward her chin, there’s a fresh fire under her voice. “You’re just a newbie. Get it together.”
“I don’t know how to – ”
“How’d you get that tight little body of yours? Pilates? Same principle. It’s all about focusing on your core.” Agatha places her hands on her stomach, modeling a deep, controlled breath. (Behind her, her younger self also has her hands on her stomach.) “Find it. Guide it.”
Shakily, Wanda mirrors Agatha’s breathing. In, hold, out. Shoulders down; jaw relaxed.
Wiping her nose on an oil-spill-colored sleeve, Agatha nods. “Good. Steer the ship, cap’n.”
As pregnant-Agatha begins gaping in horror at something in the distance – No, she mumbles with a jerk of her head, No, no, no – the smoke piles in, obscuring everything. When it piles back out, they’re in a sun-drenched field, a small boy skipping by Agatha’s side. Even without the blue eyes and black hair that the skeletal witch predicted, he’s still the spitting image of both of his mothers.
So the child lived, Wanda thinks with relief. She looks at real-Agatha, expecting some amount of joy at the sight of her son. Agatha’s eyes are tightly shut, one clawed hand pinching the bridge of her nose. Right: regardless of the contents, good or bad, these memories aren’t Wanda’s to see. Concentrating on the stable cycle of her oxygen flow, she does her best to hurry them along.
Agatha’s son twisting his hands to imitate hers, producing a sparkler’s worth of purple magic; Agatha’s son leading a stubborn goat, giggling; Agatha’s son singing for an enraptured crowd; Agatha’s son singing through a persistent cough. Agatha’s son coughing himself awake, coughing himself to sleep. Agatha’s son sleeping. Motionless. Pale. Agatha shaking his shoulder. Agatha shaking it again.
To Wanda’s right, real-Agatha whimpers into her hands.
“I’m sorry,” Wanda whispers, hot tears pricking her eyes. (This time, she really means it.) “Don’t – don’t look. I’ll get us out. I’ll – ”
Agatha kneeling by a hideously small grave, her voice wavering through her son’s trademark melody. Other women picking up the song. Dozens of women, hundreds of them, carrying the tune through centuries of hope and slaughter. Following Agatha into the woods. Body after body after body hitting the ground, drained dry. The pilfered magic is a temporary fix, a fuzzy blanket of power, but the euphoria never lasts. When Agatha dug her son’s grave, she dug a matching hole in her heart; nothing will ever fill it.
“That right there was a self-trained witch setting out on her own,” real-Agatha says, dragging her hands down her face. “Bagged herself a non-human hubby, but it didn’t last. Spun up a kid from duct tape and a dream, but she couldn’t – ” She takes a shuddering breath – “Couldn’t keep that Tamagotchi from going game-over. Sound familiar?”
Slowly, the world reassembles itself into Westview’s battle-torn town square. Exhausted, Wanda stumbles forward. Agatha catches her by the forearms, sharp nails puncturing Wanda’s skin.
“Your boytoy’s dead, Wanda,” Agatha says fervently. “Your parents, your brother – and those brats of yours, they’re not gonna be far behind. Once Westview gets to be an offleash dog, no more red dome, your creations are gonna go bye-bye. Think of the grief. What did you call it? Ah – the wave. Washing over you, knocking you down.”
Wanda’s head is swimming with three hundred years of desiccated corpses. “How many people have you killed?”
“Fewer than you will, left to your own devices.” Agatha’s grip tightens. Her nails draw blood. “My past is your future, angelcakes. Give it a go all by your lonesome and your grief-wave is gonna drown continents. Chaos magic in the hands of a mourning boy mom…you might as well saddle the bull with a bazooka before turning it loose in the china shop.”
“Mom!” Billy’s standing in the middle of the road, pointing frantically at where Wanda and Agatha have just reappeared. “There she is, dad! She’s okay!”
“Stay where you are, boys,” Wanda shouts, magic pooling in her hands.
“I’m right,” Agatha says. Her slimy smile doesn’t come close to reaching her eyes. “You know I’m right.”
Blinking rapidly, Wanda struggles to imagine her life post-Westview. The harsh return to a loveless reality, universally treated like the monster that she is. Cold-sweat nightmares about Vision’s caved-in head; a permanent bitter taste in her mouth from the knowledge that she’d saved a bunch of strangers over her own children. Is it so far-fetched to think that she could turn out like Agatha? Mowing down innocent people in the name of her lost life?
“There’s still time for some rewrites,” Agatha says gently, but it’s an Agnes sort of gentleness. Camera-ready. Strategic. “Let me help you. You saw my resume – three centuries of relevant experience. If my references weren’t all six feet under, they’d be singin’ my praises. Harmonizing on them, even.”
“Step back,” yells the woman with the blue-flashing eyes. She’s flanked by the remaining stragglers wearing S.W.O.R.D uniforms; from around the perimeter of the town square, guns are raised in Agatha’s direction. Vision’s hands glow white, the twins assuming their newly-learned fighting stance.
Her bones aching with thirty years of nonstop threats, Wanda encases herself and her adversary in an egg of red energy. From outside, she can still hear muffled shouting. Wanda? What’s she doing to you, Wanda?
“Nifty,” Agatha says, admiring the makeshift shield. “Whaddaya say we blow this popsicle stand? The Amalfi Coast is gorgeous this time of year. Or Mykonos.” She tilts her head, analyzing Wanda’s vacant expression. “Listen – if a backwater Baltic state is more your speed, that’s a-okay with me. I can teach from anywhere. Beggars can’t be choosers.”
“We’re not leaving,” Wanda says.
Agatha’s fingers restart their nervous spidery dance. “Come again?”
“You’ll be happy,” Wanda says in a rush, her eyes burning red. She wonders if the tears leaking down her cheeks are red, too. “I promise. I can give you – do you want a…companion? That witch you were with? I saw what she looks like, I could – ”
Belatedly obeying the flashing-eyed woman’s command, Agatha takes a clumsy step backward. Her shoulders knock into the curved side of the cramped forcefield.
“Maybe you are that cruel,” she says faintly, touching the brooch embedded in her collar. “Damn. Color me impressed.”
Don’t worry, mom! Billy’s voice shouts from just outside the forcefield. Behind her eyelids, all Wanda can see is Agatha weeping at her son’s graveside. We’re gonna save you!
“Sooner or later, Westview Fortress is gonna fall,” Agatha says, breathing very quickly. “My money’s on sooner. National attention’s already piqued. They’ll tap every Super-John and Jane in the multiverse to bring this sucker down.”
Wanda swirls her hands. Her crown hums with power, emitting a crackling light. “Guess it’s a good thing that I’m the prophesied Destroyer of Worlds.”
“Your first round of civilian torture was an oopsie-daisy,” Agatha says, desperately banging her elbow against the forcefield. There’s a shower of fizzling red embers, but the wall doesn’t give. “It happens. Ya live, ya learn. A second round, on the other hand – ”
“You want to talk torture?” Wanda booms. Her voice, thickly-accented, shakes the ground; Agatha slides down the side of the forcefield, cringing. “How about your past? My future? You’re right, you know. Whatever I do next, it’ll mean hurting people. Getting hurt myself. That’s the script we were dealt, people like us. But here…” Flexing her wrists, Wanda tilts her face skyward, laughing joylessly. “Here, we get to do some rewrites.”
Whatever Agatha opens her mouth to do, scheme or plead or scream, the sound’s swallowed by the seismic blast screeching out from the tip of Wanda’s crown – a flood of all-consuming red, slicking over Westview’s storefronts and lampposts like a coat of paint. The S.W.O.R.D. agents are sent flying past the town line; so are their tanks, the flashing-eyed woman, anything and everything that won’t fit neatly into a thirty-minute multi-cam comedy.
When the world finally falls quiet, the spluttering magic dome darkening Westview’s skies is thick enough to block out the sun. The only source of light is Wanda herself; her crown radiates a brilliant crimson beam, illuminating the town’s sole inhabitants. Her family, her pesky neighbor. The only cast of characters she needs.
“Say,” Agnes says cheerfully, looking up from examining her stain-free hands. Her crazy hair’s been tamed into a messy bun, the layered dress replaced with a purple turtleneck and jeans. “That’s some kinda getup you’re wearin’. Did I leave the oven on or is that just you, hot stuff?”
“I daresay it’s her,” Vision says, adjusting the collar of his heart-patterned sweater vest as he strides to Wanda’s side. His smile is as wide as Agnes’s, exacerbating the fine lines of his human face. “Your mastery of pickup lines is encyclopedic, Agnes. It’s an admirable skill, to be sure. Might I request that you use it on someone who’s not my wife?”
“Oh, you know I’m harmless, big guy,” Agnes says, punching playfully at Vision’s arm. A laugh track plays from nowhere, garbled and slow. “But maybe use a pickup line of your own once in a while, hm? Get outta your PJs, plan a date night somewhere shmancy. A wedding ring doesn’t mean you can’t keep your lady wined and dined!”
“Did somebody say ‘dine’?” Tommy says, exaggeratedly patting his stomach. Another swell of warped audience laughter. “I’m starving.”
Billy tugs on one end of Wanda’s cape. “Can Agnes stay for dinner, mom?”
“Can she, please?” Tommy echoes, tugging on the other end.
“Boys, boys,” Wanda soothes, ruffling their hair. “You know that Agnes has a family of her own.”
A flicker of shock passes over Agnes’s face. Hissing in pain, her eyes pulse red; the smile returns. (Wanda's learned her lesson: when it comes to the ex-sorceress next door, both body and mind absolutely need to be locked up.)
“She could bring them over, couldn’t she?” Billy says. “We’ll make it a party!”
“I suppose she could, yes.” Kissing Billy’s head, Wanda turns to her neighbor. “Remind me, Agnes – what’s your son’s name?”
The corners of Agnes’s mouth twitch. Hand shaking, her thumb strokes the three figures of her brooch.
“Nicky, dear,” she says, overbright eyes crinkled by her permanent smile. “His name is Nicky.”
Rio’s finishing up aiding an elderly woman over the cosmic bridge when the scent slaps her across the face.
“Everything alright, missy?” the woman asks, adjusting the spectacles that she no longer needs. “You’re lookin’ a tad peakish.”
“All good, Ethel,” Rio says, biting the inside of her fleshy cheek. If it weren’t for her multi-billion year streak of mid-reaping professionalism, she’d ditch her body without a second thought – the plain-skeleton look is much more aerodynamic. “So you just gotta walk through that mist and you’ll be set to start your next chapter. Think you’ve got these last few steps on your own?”
“Hold your horses,” Ethel says with a laugh, leaning heavily against Rio’s arm. “I’m not as nimble as I used to be.”
As Rio’s already explained three separate times, dear old Ethel’s no longer bound by the limitations of her ninety-four-year-old form. She could cartwheel over to the other side if it struck her fancy. Sighing, Rio pats her hand, swallowing the saliva triggered by that unmistakable scent.
It’s Agatha. Her essence, the trackable smell of her soul. After a hundred miserable years of its total absence, Rio can sense her again: rich and heady, dangerously oversweet. Agatha’s existence, fittingly, smells like life flirting with death. Ripening fruit and rotting flowers. Rio breathes in, savoring the way her lungs burn.
During the fleeting pocket of their eighteenth-century happiness, Rio had found any excuse to press her nose against the tender skin between Agatha’s shoulder and throat. Some people crave the smell of baked bread or cut grass, Agatha would tease, tangling a hand in Rio’s hair. You crave – what? Not my soap, not my shampoo, but my very being?
I crave everything about you, Rio would say back. Partly because it was true; partly because simple, non-jokey sincerity was an easy way to make Agatha blush. My body’s senses exist to experience you. Smell you, see you, touch you – Rio snaked her hands under Agatha’s frock, tracing down the soft skin of her stomach – Hear you – She wiggled her fingers in the hollows of Agatha’s hips, eliciting a squeal of witchy laughter – Taste you. Dragging her tongue up the side of Agatha’s neck, Rio melted that laugh into a moan. I pity the mortals who think they’ve found comparable joy in baked bread. What a waste of a nose.
They say romance is dead, Agatha said, tilting back into Rio’s touch. And it appears they’re correct. Must you sense me from anywhere, though? Can’t you turn it off when we’re apart? I hate to think that I’m distracting you from your work.
You hate to think that you can’t hide from me, Rio corrected, pulling Agatha closer. Agatha grumbled something under her breath, irritatedly tossing her hair. Apologies, darling. You’ve spilled your blood before a shark. Until your last breath, I’ve no choice but to follow that trail wherever it goes.
Or so she’d thought. Rio’s still not sure how Agatha got her grubby paws on the Darkhold, but whatever she did to beg, borrow or (most likely) steal, the plot worked: her lifeforce vanished from Rio’s radar. Poof. Gone. For ten hungry decades, Rio’s prowled the Earth, searching for a speck of blood in the water. Reaping Agatha’s prey is the closest she’s been able to get – dehydrated corpses and their accompanying confused-as-fuck souls, babbling diatribes against the charismatic woman that had tricked them to death.
“Right, but where did she go?” Rio routinely tries to ask them, tamping down her frustration as her clients wail over their destroyed bodies. “North, east, west?”
They never know. Some remember nothing but the flare of their own magic being pulled from their hands; others recall Agatha’s maniacal grin in their final moments, a jarring change from the person they’d briefly considered a friend. (If not more. The first time a victim of the Ballad started telling Rio how she’d been viciously, methodically seduced by those blue eyes and nimble fingers, Rio hadn’t been able to stop herself from blurting out “Hell is real and you’re going there, by the way.”)
But, at long last, her days of interrogating deceased idiots might finally be drawing to an end. The veil’s been lifted – Rio’s radar lights up, clear as day. …New Jersey? When picking her hidey hole, was Agatha’s top priority making sure she didn’t have to pump her own gas?
“You’ve got some pep in your step!” Ethel says, watching Rio anxiously shuffle from side to side. “What’s got a young thing like you so jazzed? Don’t tell me – date night with your beau?”
“Yep,” Rio says, deciding to let the ‘young thing’ comment slide. Explaining her whole ancient as the universe deal would just give Agatha a cushion of time to re-cloak herself. “First one in a while, too. Wish me luck.”
After hastily tying up her deathly duties, Rio takes off toward the Garden State, fantasizing about the sound that Agatha will make when the knife splits her skin. Halfway between a gasp and a growl, she figures. That’s how it usually starts when they spar; ever a creature of pride, Agatha’s loath to admit the limitations of her mortal body. She’ll take the first few blows like a champ, tossing out her purple sparkles as if the two of them are evenly matched.
Slowly, working her knife like a sculptor’s chisel, Rio will coax out other sounds. Louder and higher. A long, sustained whine once the tears start flowing. (At the thought, Rio’s mouth fills with saliva again.) When the pain becomes unbearable – and it will become unbearable, that stubborn endurance eroding away – Agatha will switch tactics, expertly sweet-talking Lady Death into submission. Before Rio can detect the threads of silk, she’ll be trussed up in the spiderweb’s center. The game will end like it always does: both of them losers, both of them winners. Whatever Agatha wants, she’ll get.
Which is exactly how Rio landed herself in exile, isn’t it? Giving Agatha what she wants.
But there’ll be time to lick those wounds after Agatha’s safely apprehended. Her head teeming with thoughts of stabbing hoes and squishing spiders, Rio pops into being just outside the suburb that’s redolent with Agatha’s scent. Can’t say it looks like a suburb, though. More like an active war zone, military personnel milling about a series of army-branded tents. Looming above them, choking out the sun, sits a gigantic dome of solid red light.
“How’re we looking?” Rio asks the nearest soldier, donning a smart black pantsuit and a shiny badge.
The soldier pauses in smacking his gum, giving Rio a suspicious once-over. “Sorry, you’re – ?”
“Agent Vidal,” Rio says, giving him a firm handshake. “FBI. The head honchos decided to send over some fresh muscle. Didn’t seem to think you guys had the situation under control.” She cranes her neck up at the dome. “Can’t imagine why.”
“We’re making progress,” the soldier says defensively, spitting his gum into the grass. “I assume you’ve been briefed?”
“Only on the basics,” Rio says, pulling a manila file folder from nowhere. “The perp’s a real piece of work, isn’t she?”
The soldier sighs. “I’ll say. She’s got a civilian in there, too. Some unlucky housewife.”
Of course. Rio presses her tongue against her cheek, nodding sagely at her empty folder. “Rough. So what’s the progress?”
“See for yourself,” the soldier says, leading Rio closer to the dome.
Clustered by the dome’s base, a group of supers (capes, masks, the typical overdramatic accoutrements) hold out their hands in what looks like a communal prayer. Patches of rainbow static appear and disappear on the dome’s side, making the forcefield look like a faulty TV.
“They’re tryna disrupt it,” the soldier says. “Or something. Beats me how any of this fancy hero shit works. You remember when we only had to deal with regular bad guys?”
“Sure do,” Rio says, wistfully reminiscing about the time before a laundry list of so-called Avengers started treating the sacred path between life and death like a revolving door. “What do we know about this broad, anyway? She got a rap sheet?”
“About a mile long, yeah.” The soldier leads her into one of the tents; against one fabric wall, a massive corkboard features a tangle of red string connecting Post-It notes, memos, and photos. “Weird stuff. Get this – the eggheads over at INSCOM think she’s a witch. Like, Wizard of Oz style. Isn’t that nuts?”
“Nuts,” Rio echoes, crumpling the edge of her folder.
At a glance, the corkboard boasts a surprising amount of intel. One slip of paper mentions mind control; another contains a crude drawing of gnarled hands twisted mid-spell. It’s not like Agatha to be this sloppy, Rio thinks with disappointment. What gives? Old age finally catching up with her?
When the picture catches her eye, Rio feels her obsidian heart convulse. “That’s our evil hag, huh?” she says, plucking Agatha’s portrait from the top of the board. Seeing her dressed in modern clothes is a bit jarring. (Not totally modern, actually. The sweater-collared shirt combo over a high-waisted skirt is more of a seventies look.)
“Her?” the soldier says, squinting at the picture. “No, that’s not the witch. That’s the housewife.”
In the shiny door of her spotless oven, Agnes’s reflection wrings together a pair of soot-black hands.
Isn’t that funny? Agnes thinks it’s funny! Laughter bubbles up from her stomach; at some point on the trek up her trachea, the sound breaks into a sob. Silly, silly. She laughs again. This time, it comes out like a song. The same song she finds herself singing in the shower or hunched over the delicate green things that dot her garden. Down, down –
Something hot and wet touches her pinkie finger. Her bunny rabbit’s little pink tongue, licking at the black stuff coating her hands. Laughing and crying and singing, Agnes scoops him into her lap, nuzzling her cheek against his fur. The air smells like fire. From the living room, the grandfather clock chimes in a new hour.
Why is Agnes sitting on the kitchen floor? What’s the strange black substance that’s smeared all over her hands? Wanda would know. Wanda knows everything, that whip-smart gingersnap. Sometimes, Agnes calls her up for the doofiest reasons. Why can’t she seem to find that old library book of hers? Why can’t she remember how she met her wife? Why is she hungry, so hungry, a gnawing howl of a feeling that food doesn’t lessen in the slightest?
And Wanda – kind, helpful Wanda – always has the answers. The library book was overdue, she reminds Agnes; Wanda’s the one borrowing it now. Persistent hunger can be a symptom of withdrawal, and Agnes did recently stop taking a notoriously-addictive medication. As for her wife…
Agnes shakes her head, pulling her phone from her pocket. No need to harp on the past, is there? Not when she’s got the gift of today to worry about. There’s a reason they call it the present!
(Plus – whenever Agnes thinks too much about an unexplainable question, her head just splits with pain. For all the business she’s given them lately, the fine folks who manufacture Advil oughta send her a fruit basket.)
“Hi, Agnes,” Wanda says after the first ring. “What’s up?”
“Hey, sugarplum!” Agnes says, playing with her bunny’s ears as she sizes up her oven-door reflection. “It’s the darndest thing – I’m sitting on my keester in the middle of my kitchen, and Lord help me if I’ve got the faintest idea why. If that’s not enough of a puzzler, my hands look like I’ve been picking up shifts in a coal mine. Can you imagine? Down into the Earth I go! Down, down, down the – ”
“You were baking,” Wanda says an inch from Agnes’s face. Agnes drops the phone, her heart palpitating. Had Wanda been here the whole time? “Looks like the time got away from you.”
“Looks like it did,” Agnes says, smacking the side of her head. She’s not sure how she could’ve missed it before: a sheet pan on the stove, covered in the disintegrated remains of a horrifically-burnt tray of cookies. “Scatterbrained much?”
Wanda tears a length of paper towel from the roll on Agnes’s countertop, wetting it under the sink. “I don’t know, Agnes,” she teases, gently wiping the cookie ash from Agnes’s hands. “I’m starting to feel like I’ve got this fundraiser in the bag.”
The fundraiser. Per usual, all it takes is a few words of Wanda’s wisdom to put Agnes’s head on straight. Tomorrow morning, the fine folks down at Westview Elementary are holding a bake sale to drum up some money for the Children’s Choir. About dang time, too. Those outdated uniforms look like they’ve been in use since approximately 1750.
Balling the dirtied paper towel in her fist, Wanda cocks her head at the counter. “Especially if you’re using…” Her brow knits together. “Did you get those from your garden?”
“Hm?” Standing, Agnes glances over at the posy of flowers piled by the toaster. “Oh, those? Sure did!”
Wanda eyes fall to the crispy stems scattered around the sheet pan. “And you were going to bake them into…?”
“Save the lecture, please n’ thanks,” Agnes says, raising her palms in mock surrender. “I know it’s a big swing, feeding kids a floral treat. Most eight-year-olds’ palates start and end with tater tots and chicken nuggies, God love ‘em. But it’s a killer recipe! You wanna take a taste? Lemme whip up a non-burnt batch, it won’t take me too long to – ”
“Agnes, this is nightshade,” Wanda says, holding the flowers up to the light. “This is poisonous.”
Agnes laughs, planting her hands on her hips. “You’re pullin’ my leg. Poisonous?”
“What are you trying to do?” Wanda says sharply, taking a step forward. Her boots click crisply against the tile.
“I’m trying to share an O’Connor family recipe with my very best friend,” Agnes says, fighting the strange urge to cower by the trash can. (In any case, the thought’s a moot point; her legs feel like lead.) “Is that such a crime? Should I mosey on down to the police precinct and turn myself in?”
“You were going to give these to my children,” Wanda says softly.
Her hand twitches, a red light spluttering to life between her knuckles. Talk, says a voice in the recesses of Agnes’s head. Talk your way out.
“Now, I don’t want to seem like a stickler for the rules,” Agnes says, fumbling for the pale pink sheet of paper that had come in the mail the day before. “But it says here – dietary restrictions: no tree nuts. That’s it. If you’d put no homegrown goodies from Auntie Agnes’ garden, I might’ve stuck to your classic choco chip.”
“Agnes – ”
“And not to go all kids these days,” Agnes barrels on, watching the red light quiver. “But…kids these days! The allergies! What’s up with that? I’ve been making this recipe since before you were a glimmer in your mama’s eye, sweetiepie, and I’ve never had any complaints. In fact, it’s a favorite with the missus. She can’t get enough. Of the cookies, I mean! Don’t you let your mind go rolling in the gutter.”
Her laugh comes out in a high, nervous peal; the bunny darts out of the room.
“You’ll see when she gets back,” Agnes says, her eyes drifting from Wanda’s hand to the window above the sink. “We’ll have a good chuckle, the three of us. As soon as she…”
Agnes stands staring out a different window, rapping her fingers impatiently against the sill. Hadn’t the woman said that she’d return by the morning? Well, the morning’s come and gone; the sun’s already inching into early afternoon. Smoothing her hands over her linen skirt, Agnes huffs loudly. Her bunny darts out of the room. How long must she spend frittering away her precious time until –
There. The sky pulses green. Combing her fingers through her hair, Agnes grabs the basket that she’d risen at dawn to prepare, hurrying over to her cottage’s front door. When a knock shakes the frame, she counts to five before turning the handle. Mustn’t seem too eager.
“I trust you haven’t eaten,” Agnes says with practiced indifference, thrusting the basket into her visitor’s hands.
The woman smirks. “No. It’s not an activity I indulge in outside of your company.” As she lifts the flap of the gingham cloth laid over the basket’s top, her tongue passes over her lips. “You’ve made my favorite.”
“My garden’s been plentiful,” Agnes says, shrugging one shoulder. “Although I cannot attest to the quality. Such are the perils of working with ingredients I’d be foolish to consume myself.”
“That which is poison to your peers is, to me, sweet ambrosia,” the woman muses. She touches her thumb to Agnes’s bottom lip; drags it down her chin, tracing the muscles of her throat. Agnes swallows hard. “There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, is there not?”
“She liked to eat poison cookies?” Wanda mutters, her brow-furrow deepening.
Agnes blinks. Her kitchen rematerializes around her, the hallucination (memory?) fading from view. “What was – I don’t – ”
“Please don’t cry,” Wanda says quickly, offering her another sheet of paper towel. “I’m sorry about that. Today’s been – weird. I think they’re doing some construction just outside of town.”
Dabbing the paper towel at her eyes, Agnes nods. She’s got no clue what Wanda’s explanation means, but she likes how confident her pal sounded while saying it!
“Don’t count me outta the fundraising race just yet,” Agnes says, plastering on her brightest smile. “I’ll bake something those kids’ll go gaga for, sure as sugar. You know I won’t admit defeat without a down-and-dirty fight.”
“Yes, I do know that.” Wanda leans against the counter, working her jaw. “Do you think your wife will come back soon?”
“Not likely, sad to say. Her work keeps her mighty busy.”
“Are you sure? Because if you wanted her to come back – ”
“No.”
The bark of a syllable comes out harsher than Agnes means it to. She clears her throat, blowing her nose into the damp paper towel. While it’s considerate of Wanda to continually ask about the whereabouts of her spouse, Agnes is growing weary of giving the same boring answer in response.
But she’ll give it again, if she must. “My girl’s quite the world traveler,” she says, tossing the paper towel in the trash. “It’s what she’s good at. It’s what she loves. Who am I to drag her home just because I miss cuddling my little spoon on chilly winter nights? Besides, a teensy bit of time apart never hurt a healthy marriage. Let her roam. We’ll be here when she’s ready to settle down.”
“That’s good of you,” Wanda says, rubbing at the bags under her eyes. The poor dear. Those boys of hers must be running her ragged. “But you’ll let me know if you change your mind, right?”
“Okie dokie, artichokie,” Agnes chirps, raising two perky thumbs up.
As much as she hates dishonesty in any of its icky forms, her thumbs-up are, regrettably, just for show. Wanda’s optimism is a breath of fresh air, but changing her mind…it’s simply not an option, Agnes reminds herself. Not if she wants to keep her family safe.
Once Rio stops cackling, she manages to compose her face enough to ask: what’s the ginger witch’s endgame here? Why take a random civilian hostage? (Especially a civilian that’s such a raging bitch?)
Although visibly confused by Rio’s vitriol toward a kidnapping victim she’s presumably never met, the soldier fills her in. Wheeling in a TV, he presses play on a clip montage of off-brand sitcoms. A dash of Bewitched, a sprinkle of Modern Family. The common thread holding the multidecade mishmash together? Their ginger witch, repeatedly stepping into the starring role.
As Rio listens to tales of a dead-but-not-dead android man and a pair of superspawn gestated in the span of about thirty minutes, the pieces start to click together. This chick rolls with the Avengers crowd, Rio recalls. Unusually powerful, even from a young age. When Rio reaped the other Maximoff twin, the speedster, he’d fretted for hours over how his sister would fare without him. External threats weren’t the issue, he’d explained with his bleached head in his hands; in any fight, Wanda’s borderline-scary abilities always guaranteed she came out on top. Controlling those borderline-scary abilities on her own, though…
“We’re not sure where she came from,” the soldier says, gesturing to a black-and-white Agatha mugging for the camera in a full face of fifties makeup. “Agnes O’Connor. There’s no trace of her in Westview’s municipal records. Maybe she’d just moved in when the Hex hit? Talk about shitty timing.”
Seems like perfect timing, in Rio’s opinion. A potent energy source, naive and pretty, flailing around in a playground of extravagant costumes. No wonder Agatha crashed the party.
“So what’s a single gal like you doing rattling around this big house?” says the onscreen Agatha, baring her teeth like a lipsticked wolf.
“Oh, no, I’m not single,” the Maximoff girl says, smiling pleasantly.
Agatha’s eyes drop to the girl’s hands. “Oh? I don’t see a ring.”
“Whoa,” the soldier gasps as Rio’s knife stabs a sparking hole through the TV’s center. “Agent – what’re you – ”
“There was a bug,” Rio says, wiping her knife on her sleeve. “I got it.”
Excusing herself to make a critically important FBI phone call, Rio slinks to the edge of the red dome. The superpeople, noting the glint of her badge, give her a nod. She nods back, cupping a phone to her ear.
“Circle back,” she says authoritatively, racking her brain for contemporary business words. “Touchpoint. Briefcase.”
When the caped crusaders take a break from zapping, Rio briskly pushes herself through the dense magic barrier. The tang of it, charred and smokey, is unmistakable. Where’d little miss Maximoff pick up such an impressive stash of Chaos magic?
Emerging on the other side, Rio digs her fingers into her temples, suppressing a forming headache. Across the multiverse, expired souls call for her guidance. It feels like running a preschool, sometimes; take your eye off the ball for one second and the clients find a way to start eating paste. One time, when Rio shirked an afternoon’s duties to doze luxuriously in Agatha’s bed, a dead guy found a way to wander into the dimension where all the trees have arms instead of branches. Rio’s never had to answer so many manic questions while escorting someone into the afterlife.
Soon, though, her job’s no-days-off policy might finally be coming to an end. In recent years, Rio’s taken on a sort of apprentice – a dead Asgardian, hilariously known to her underlings as the Goddess of Death. After begrudgingly giving up that ridiculous title, Hela’s turned out to be pretty chill. Unlike the countless other vanquished deities that have asked Rio to offer them an internship, this one’s actually spent a couple millennia working in the right field: lording over the dead of the Nine Realms, confined to the depths of Niflheim by her piece of shit dad. Rio respects a woman who knows how to make lemonade out of some sour-ass lemons. (She also respects a woman who knows how to rock a good smokey eye.)
On her first few ride-along reapings, Hela’s done decently well. She’s great at scaring the assholes; she’s…getting better at not scaring the not-assholes. As long as Rio doesn’t let her reap any lesbians, a population easily distracted by a six-foot goddess clad in skintight leather, their arrangement seems like a nice solution to Lady Death’s unmanageable workload. Who knows? With a few more smooth test runs under Hela’s belt, Rio might feel comfortable enough to dip into her fourteen billion years of unused PTO.
A nice thought for another day. For now, Rio’s never felt more clocked in. Sliding her sunglasses over her eyes, she steps out into the picture of cozy suburbia – gazebos, mom-and-pop shops, lush green parks.
All of them empty.
Interesting. Rio chews on the stick of gum she’d stolen from the soldier’s back pocket, meandering through the ghost town’s center. Birds chirp overhead. No – not birds. Bird. The sound of a single mourning dove calling for its mate, again and again and again. Trees rustle in the breeze; there’s no breeze. Shhhh, the trees say, the sound playing on a tightly-repeated circuit. Underscoring the layers of odd, prerecorded noise is an upbeat jumble of piano and drums. It’s like the first scene of a sitcom, Rio thinks as she rounds a corner of the abandoned sidewalk. Like she’s about to set out on a wacky, feel-good adventure.
“Whoa, Nelly!” says a voice startlingly close to Rio’s ear, her nose filling with fruit and flowers just before –
Thunk. Rio walks straight into a woolly blur of a woman, ricocheting off of her soft sweater and matching earmuffs. A Tupperware of cookies clatters to the ground, the contents spilling out.
“Where’s the fire, honeybun?” the woman says in Agatha’s voice, fluttering Agatha’s eyes, touching Rio’s arm with – she’s touching her, the warmth of her hand, the scratch of her nails – “Do I need to pester city hall to get one of those bad boys made up for pedestrians?”
Rio follows the hook of Agatha’s thumb: Drive Like Your Kids Live Here, reads a bright yellow sign on the other side of the road. Below the words, a spiky female silhouette (is it wearing a crown?) wraps its arms protectively around two small children.
“Or you could pester ‘em,” Agatha says, her cheeks flushing pink as she takes in Rio’s uniform. “Officer.”
Rio had prepped herself for a blast to the chest, a flurry of fists, an eardrum-bursting screaming match – routine stuff, in other words. That’s how their last encounter had gone, after all; Rio whipping up a windstorm, Agatha shrieking that she’d find shelter from this wretched hunt, goddamn you. If it’s my last act before the worms take me, I’ll be free.
There’s no blast. Apart from the saccharine background music, there’s no threat to Rio’s eardrums, either. In an astonishing commitment to her current bit, Agatha stands stock-still in cozy-sweater contentment, beaming. Is she…sick? High? Her eyes are looking a little red, Rio notes as she rests her sunglasses on her head. If she’d known that a dank strain was all it took to mellow out the Witch Killer’s genocidal temperament, her plant-sprouting abilities might’ve been put to better use.
Now that Rio’s taking a closer look, Agatha’s eyes are more than a little red. Around the electric blue irises, someone else’s energy swirls like smoke. It’s behind her eyes, too; Rio can sense it, a nervous system of foreign power squatting in Agatha’s body. Puppeting her.
“Agnes,” Rio says slowly, hiding her giggle fit with a strategic cough. “You’re Agnes O’Connor, aren’t you.”
“That’s my name, don’t wear it out!” Stooping to gather her fallen cookies, Agatha’s blush deepens. “Although – I suppose if you wanted to wear it out – ”
“I’ve heard you’re a real character,” Rio says, working to hide her glee as she bends down to help. Not a bit at all, then! The spider went and got herself tangled in someone else’s web! “Is that true, Agnes? Are you the naughty neighbor ‘round these parts?”
“My, you’re fresh!” When Agatha reaches for a far-flung cookie, Rio makes sure their hands touch. “You new in town, hun? I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure.”
“Of course you have,” says the voice from the military TV. Wanda Maximoff’s voice. Abruptly, a new shadow stretches over the trail of sidewalk cookies. “Why didn’t you tell me your wife was gonna be home?”
Rio’s hand closes around a cookie, crunching it to crumbs. Thanks to the ever-changing evolution of the cosmos, there isn’t a long list of bullshit capable of throwing Lady Death for a loop. Fish deciding to start walking on land? Sure. Apes turning into weirder, less hairy apes? Why not. But Westview’s deranged captor greeting Rio as Agatha’s spouse – that’s as sudden and shocking as the Big Bang.
“We could’ve done something special,” Wanda says, smiling down at Rio. Her hands, playing with the string of a maroon hoodie, are stained black up to the wrists.
“My wife,” Agatha repeats, her grin wilting. She snatches the crushed cookie from Rio’s palm, dropping the bits into her Tupperware. “No, I don’t think so. She’s away, dear. On business.”
Wanda helps Agatha to her feet. Brushing her hands on her pants, Rio stands, too. Another curveball: the Avenger woman acting bafflingly laid back about an intruder invading her real-life mind palace.
“This is her, isn’t it?” Wanda says, sizing Rio up. “Not sure why she’s a federal agent, but…”
Agatha twirls a strand of hair around her finger, chewing her lip.
“Isn’t Tommy’s big track and field thing today?” she says, staring at her own hair. “I thought you’d be at the school by now!”
“Yeah, he just competed. First place! Coach said he’s never seen a five-millisecond mile before.” Wanda pries Agatha’s hair from her hands. Rio touches the dagger stored in her holster. “We were starting to head back when I felt a…change. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Aren’t you just a peach. I’m fine, dollface! Never been better. If my wife does decide to make a pitstop at ol’ 2804 Sherwood Drive, I’ll be sure to give you a heads – ”
The word up never makes it out of Agatha’s mouth. Her eyes flash solid red; around them, the quaint town fuzzes at the edges, cheery colors running together. When Rio blinks, the world’s reconstituted itself as a cottage.
Their cottage.
“Agnes, that’s her,” Wanda says, and it is: a Rio of centuries past, crushing dried newts with a mortar and pestle for Agatha to add to a boiling pot. The memory’s made staggeringly real; as she watches her former self methodically work the pestle, Rio’s eyes water from the pungent smell of newt guts. “See? That’s who you wanted me to fetch for you, isn’t it?”
Clutching her brooch, Agatha glances between the two Rios. “She – can’t – ”
“But she can, that’s what I’m trying to – ”
“She can’t know where I am,” she mumbles, her eyes unfocusing.
Without warning, reality snaps back to Westview. Wanda grabs Agatha’s shoulders. With every movement, Chaos magic sloughs off of her like a snake’s shed skin.
“You’re allowed to be happy here,” Wanda says firmly. “I know,” she says before Agatha can interrupt. “You don’t feel like it’s possible. I understand. There’ll always be torches and pitchforks for ladies like us, right?”
Wanda’s magic is a wily, undulating thing. Rio’s never seen anything like it – soaking into the town’s roots, coating Agatha’s brain, contorting itself into complex creations. The quote-unquote children that she’d spun up, competing in fake races and smiling for the sitcom cameras. As annoyingly powerful as the super-crowd can be, Agatha’s kidnapper clearly isn’t your run-of-the-mill hero-villain. So what is she?
“I didn’t feel like it was possible, either,” Wanda says, digging her dark fingers into Agatha’s skin. “But I made it possible.” She looks at Rio, smiling. “For both of us.”
Blood, uncomfortably hot, pounds in Rio’s ears. That’s why the Avenger woman’s being so laid back about an intruder invading her mind palace, then: she doesn’t think Rio’s an intruder at all. As far as Wanda’s concerned, Rio’s another one of her Chaos creations. Willed into existence by a puff of red magic.
Not just any old shade of red, though. Scarlet.
“Speaking of your happily ever after,” Wanda says, looking over Rio’s shoulder. “Someone’s ears must’ve been burning. How’s it going, pal? You wanna come say hi to your moms?”
The blood’s raging, now. The sound of it, a pulsing waterfall, drowns out Westview’s birds and trees and chipper theme music. Wanda’s saying words; none of them make any sense. Tearing her eyes from the redhead’s pale face – which isn’t too different from the crude portraits that’ve been scrawled in spellbooks for centuries, is it, the legendary witch foretold to be an unholy pain in her ass – Rio turns, bracing herself for more of the town’s happy-go-lucky nonsense.
Her blood runs cold. Her heart stops beating. Beneath the garish yellow Drive Like Your Kids Live Here sign, carefully looking both ways to check for passing cars, stands a living, breathing, grinning Nicky.
Tucking his hair behind his ear, Rio’s son meets her gaze; he waves, his hand lurching stiffly like a marionette; he steps out into the street.