Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Your body looming like a spectre
Hungry as a scythe
If you come reaping,
 I'll come running
I still know what you like
But just like they say
That you can never go home
I could not love you the same way
Two days in a row

-Lucy Dacus, Talk

Agatha Harkness had been dead for seven months.

In theory, a mere breath of time for a centuries-old witch. In practice, a grueling undertaking for a woman much accustomed to being alive.

She hovered in the living room of her Westview home, fingers twitching restlessly at her side in the glow of the lamplight. The kid, for all his newfound heroism, still needed things like sleep and alone time , so she had taken to haunting the place when left to her own devices. At first, it had been figuring out how to focus her energy long enough to shift a vase or get the kitchen faucet to drip. The effort would leave her drained, more a flickering specter than a full ghost. Agatha, predictably, found this infuriating.

Another in a long line of refusals to submit to the natural order– Agatha was not going to spend her time as a ghost being reduced to an echo of the woman she once was. No, Agatha was determined to be something markedly worse.

So she hovered, taking one single deep, unnecessary breath before jolting into action. The kitchen cabinets sprang open and the dishware flew out, shattering against the walls in a deafening crash. A fire roared to life in the hearth and the lamp flickered violently. Now, the real test– Agatha moved again, willing a book into her hand allowing a small, triumphant smirk when she held it firmly.

For months, she had watched in disgust as the novel slipped through her palm and thudded gracelessly to the floor. Last– and best– of all, she lifted the book higher and threw it forcefully into the fire, watching the pages shrivel and burn.

It was her greatest delight, knowing she had been able to achieve a fully corporeal form in less than a year. Despite the mildly dulled sensations and the general oddness of lacking a heartbeat, it soothed something animalistic inside of the witch to feel again. To know that she was still real after all that had happened. Though she could only manage it for a few hours at a time, it was still something.

Her second greatest delight was the idea of revenge– taking action on the deep, ever-simmering rage ignited by her death and the person she’d always known would have a hand in it. Rio, who had loved her and then left her broken and alone. Rio, who had let her rot in that spell for three full years before deigning to show up, only to continue toying with her. Rio, who had been so desperate to kiss her back that she didn’t notice Agatha siphoning her power until it was too late. She wanted to remind the cosmic entity that she would never be free of her. Not really.

Poetically, in the midst of reveling in her success, Agatha felt the same tug she had been ignoring for months. The soul tie that they shared was one thing– the remnant of a ceremony performed out of love hundreds of years ago– but this was something newer. What they do not tell you about being a ghost is that the call of Death becomes unavoidable, ringing out like a gunshot in a still forest when she is near.

It pulsed through her like her missing heartbeat, alerting her to Death’s pull. This time, Agatha did not fight against its magnetism. She went where she was called.

Rio had come to reap. The soul was that of a man, sprawled along a dirty blanket against the guardrail in the grass ahead of his car. The overlook was otherwise empty, the hour too late for even the lovers that drove up for forbidden trysts. Death looked at the marks lining his arms, the needle gripped in his clammy hand and the glaze over his unseeing eyes. She pursed her lips.

There was a time before she had known such a thing as the empathy that she felt. A time before she’d had a face with lips to purse. Rio pulled her hands from her cloak to reach for the pulsing soul, gathering it neatly in her arms and sending it off through the fluttering curtain of this reality’s fabric, visible only to her.

She spared a glance to what had been his final view. The hundreds of twinkling lights of a city greeted her, nestled in a valley between rolling hills. Somewhere American, maybe. The sort of detail she no longer felt safe keeping track of, lest she accidentally notice her proximity to the other end of the tether. Death could feel the hum of so many lives vibrating up through her bare feet and into her teeth, and readied herself to leave.

The change was subtle and overwhelming at once, the smell of jasmine and honeysuckle cloying in the back of Death’s throat and stopping her in her tracks. She sucked in a shuddering breath. Agatha had practiced this, too. Appearing at a moment’s notice without warning or sound. A perk of being something in between.

She perched on the hood of the dead man’s car as if she had been there all evening. Her dress bunched up around her knees where they were bent, exposing the milky skin of her calves, nearly translucent in the moonlight. Agatha tucked a lock of white hair behind her ear, feeling as the night breeze brushed the ends against her back. It could have been lovely, if not for everything.

“Ghosts usually keep their distance. It’s part of their whole ‘evading Death’ bit,” Rio said at last, still not turning back to look at her. Her words were flat, but Agatha caught the hint of hopefulness in Rio’s voice, clear to her ears despite the being’s attempt to mask it. Her lips curled upward at the chink in her armor.

“Ghosts usually aren’t your wife.” Rio winced. Good. This, Agatha could do. This was a game she could win. “Or is that presumptuous of me? Who knows how many women you’ve played house with and left so desperate to avoid you that they end up like this.” Agatha pretended to ponder it, like it was a deep philosophical undertaking. Like she didn’t know the answer. She pressed on.

“Of course, if you were hoping not to see me, maybe you should have let me live instead of throwing a fit to get your way. But that’s never really been your thing, has it?”

Rio finally turned to look at her, and Agatha immediately wished she hadn’t. Her hood hung loose over her dark hair, casting her in deep shadows beneath the yellow street light that flickered nearby. Her skin was paler than usual, her dark eyes hollow in a way Agatha had never seen before. Her hair lacked its usual shine, hanging dull and limp around her face. Were she human, Agatha would wonder if she was sick. As it was, she pointedly refused to read into it.

“Why are you here, Agatha?” Rio asked tiredly, refusing to rise to the bait. Something about it only made Agatha angrier. She came here to fight, not to engage in whatever twisted pity party she’d walked into. Floated into. The witch pushed off of the car and strode towards Rio, stopping only a pace away.

“To remind you that no matter how much you throw your godly might around, there is no rewriting history,” Agatha snarled. Rio took her in with a quiet mix of confusion and hurt, though she gave no verbal response. Agatha felt like her entire body was on fire, and it was the closest to feeling alive that she had come in this new form. She leaned into the sensation.

“The fake cop bullshit. Your little power play on The Road. The fucking flowers, Rio. You don’t get to pretend that everything that came before didn’t happen! You want to pretend you’re some sad human in mourning for her lovely little wife, with nothing but sunshine and rainbows between them. Well, guess what? You don’t get to erase me. You don’t get to turn me into something I never was. I am still here, and I am every bit the monster you wanted dead and then some.”

Agatha reached out to stab a finger into Death’s chest. She wanted to take the knife and twist it, to make sure Rio never got to romanticize the fake version of Agatha she’d built an altar to. More than anything, she wanted Rio to stop looking at her like she loved her, like they hadn’t spent Agatha’s entire wretched life ruining each other over and over again. She’d make her remember every hurt like a finger jabbing a bruise, make Rio see her for the monster that she was. But when her nail met flesh, Rio’s eyes opened wide, a mangled breath catching in her chest. 

Rio lifted her hand and circled her fingers around Agatha’s outstretched wrist, hesitant at first and then with a firm grip when she realized the skin beneath her palm was solid. Colder than living Agatha had been, but real nonetheless. Rio looked into Agatha’s eyes searchingly, like she could sift through her thoughts to find a semblance of understanding. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, and for a moment it struck Agatha as exceedingly funny– Rio had learned to breathe because Agatha had to. Now, she was the only one of them that did. Rio’s face shifted to something akin to reverence, and she refused to release her grip despite Agatha’s squirming.

“You are my wife, Agatha. There has not been a moment I have not seen you for what you are and loved you entirely. I will mourn your life until every star in every galaxy has gone dark. Until even I am no more than dust.”

The words landed like blows. Like a brand. Here was the raw, unpleasant truth of their dance: Rio loved Agatha, and she would spend the rest of time letting Agatha tear her apart if it meant having those hands on her body again. Agatha loved and hated Rio in equal measure, and the sword she made of her pain had always been double-edged. 

Agatha felt her resolve begin to crumble, but the heat under her skin remained. She made a final desperate grasp at control. She reached with her free hand and tugged Death’s hood from her head, exposing her fully to the light and leaving her painfully human looking. Painfully beautiful, even in her diminished state. It made everything worse.

“I learned how to become corporeal.”

“I see that. It’s an exceptionally impressive feat for a…for ghosts.”

“I did it so that I could wound you.” 

The smile that Rio gave her was soft and sad, completely disarming in a way Agatha had not expected. She lifted the hand not holding Agatha’s wrist and ran her fingers over the witch’s temple before dragging them down and through her hair, a flicker of something heated passing behind her eyes.

“My love,” Death sighed, almost dreamlike. “You have always known how to wound me.” 

The honesty of the admission cracked something inside of Agatha. She could not bear to hear more– afraid of revealing her own fragility– and instead did the only thing she knew would work. Agatha surged forward and slotted her lips against Rio’s, delighting in the breath that stuttered out against her cheek.

Rio’s fingers tightened in her hair immediately, dragging her impossibly closer. It was as though the kiss that had ended her life had never truly ended and they were merely picking up where they left off– teeth and tongues and harsh breaths in between. 

Rio finally dropped her wrist in favor of a bruising grip on her hip, taking advantage of Agatha’s responding gasp and plunging her tongue into the witch’s mouth.

Agatha sucked the muscle greedily, sliding her hands from where they had landed on either side of Rio’s face down over her strong shoulders and biceps, suddenly desperate to feel as much as she could. They were both here, and real, and tangible. A voice in her mind tried to point out the inherent romance of the two of them, hundreds of years apart, painstakingly creating a physical form for the sole purpose of touching the other. Agatha beat said voice back down with a baseball bat. 

She took Rio’s bottom lip between her teeth and pulled sharply, every dopamine receptor in her brain lighting up at the moan it produced. Agatha squeezed her thighs together, trembling under the magnitude of the heat gathering low in her belly.

Distantly, she registered Rio walking them back away from the guard rail and toward the car, fully lost to sensation until the backs of her knees hit cool metal. She wobbled a moment, trying to stay upright, but realized she was fighting a losing battle when Rio pressed a palm to her chest and pushed.

Agatha grunted when her back hit the surface. The downside of spending time in a pseudo-body once more was the return of physical discomfort. It seemed like Rio knew this, though, and was finding particular joy in utilizing it.

“You could stand to be a little gentler, you know,” Agatha grumbled, propping herself up on her elbows and leveling Rio with a glare. Rio merely offered an achingly familiar lopsided grin, her lips kiss-swollen, before stepping between Agatha’s parted legs and skimming a feather light touch against the insides of her calves.

“No, I don’t think I could. I think I’m doing exactly what you want,” Rio stated, matter of fact, just as her light touch turned into nails raking their way up Agatha’s thighs. Agatha unsuccessfully stifled a moan at the heady mix of pleasure and pain, her eyes fluttering with the effort of staying open. She opened her mouth to fire off a snarky retort, but Rio was faster. 

She pushed Agatha’s skirts the rest of the way up to her hips in one fell swoop. Licking her lips, Rio glanced between Agatha’s face and the glistening apex of her parted thighs. “No underwear?”

Agatha’s face broke into a predatory grin. “Didn’t come as part of the ghost uniform, I fear.”

Something unreadable flickered briefly behind Rio’s eyes before she surged forward, kissing Agatha with a renewed vigor. She gripped Agatha’s jaw between her thumb and forefinger, tilting her face to the side to lave the column of her throat with her tongue. Agatha’s moan vibrated the skin beneath her mouth, and Rio bit down in response.

She repeated the process on the other side of Agatha’s neck, drinking in each sound she made like a dying woman. Rio used her strength to push them both further up onto the hood, Agatha’s head now resting on the windshield, and swung one of her legs over to straddle Agatha’s thigh. At the sensation of Rio’s obvious arousal against her bare skin, Agatha hissed, burying her fingers in Rio’s hair and tugging sharply to urge her downward. 

Rio merely huffed a laugh against the bruise she was leaving on her clavicle, pulling her face up until they were eye level once more. Agatha’s cockiness was dwindling, replaced by the inferno of need laying waste to her faculties.

“Words,” Rio hummed, still smiling.

“Rio,” she obeyed, exhaling against her lover’s parted lips. “Touch me.”

Rio kissed her once, soft and sweet in an echo of the tenderness that once was. She pulled back again, sliding a warm palm down the bodice of Agatha’s dress before stopping on the bare skin of her hip, thumb resting inches from where she truly wanted her.

The whine Agatha let out at the denial was undignified even to her own ears, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. Had it not been so long since they’d last done this, maybe she’d draw it out more, feigning nonchalance until neither of them could stand it anymore. As it was, Agatha knew exactly what Rio was waiting for and swallowed her pride long enough to give it to her.

“Rio,” Agatha tried again. “Please.”

The smirk Rio gave her was nothing short of devilish, but Agatha could not have given less of a fuck as those agile fingers finally slid home, running through the ample wetness that had gathered in the creases of her thighs and along her folds. Agatha’s stomach clenched, and she watched in quiet awe as Rio brought her dripping fingers back to her lips and sucked at them eagerly, the pair of them releasing twin moans.

“You taste the same,” Rio said with an air of pleasant shock as she smacked her lips, like they were discussing a restaurant changing management and not Agatha’s post-death pussy. She leaned in closer, brushing her lips along the shell of Agatha’s ear and returning her fingers to their ministrations. “Now that you’re a ghost, though, does that make all of this ectoplasm?”

Agatha released something between a cackle and a cry as Rio slid two of those fingers into her, curling just right. Her back arched off of the hood and her crystal blue eyes rolled to the back of her head.

This was the part that was easy and safe. The part where they could be silly and soft and pretend that they were Rio and Agatha, killing and dancing and fucking their way through the whole godforsaken world. They could shed the callused skins of Rio and Agatha, ever-throbbing open wound in the shape of a family that they never got to be.

Rio pressed into her at a steady and maddening pace, using her other arm to hold her torso above Agatha as she made a rather vicious mess of her throat and the exposed skin of her chest with her teeth. Agatha writhed beneath her, meeting every thrust with a roll of her hips. Her pale face was a portrait of pleasure– brows drawn, lashes fluttering rapidly against blushing cheeks, spit-slick lips parted in ecstasy.

Agatha dug her nails into Rio’s shoulders for purchase, letting herself sink entirely into the carnal pleasure of it all. The sounds of their coupling were wet and obscene in the calm night air, and it only served to drive her closer to insanity.

“More, baby– fuck, please,” Agatha gasped out between thrusts, no longer caring if she begged. Rio’s irises were almost entirely swallowed by her lust-blown pupils, and she complied without hesitation. On the next press of her fingers she had added a third, and on the next after that she swiped her thumb messily against Agatha’s clit.

Agatha bit her lip to minimize the full body scream that tore from her throat, but Rio was having none of it. She leaned back to sit fully on Agatha’s thigh and used the hand that had been supporting her weight to pull Agatha’s bottom lip free.

“Let me hear you, pretty girl,” she cooed, punctuating her words with a particularly targeted curl of her fingers and a firm swirl of her thumb over Agatha’s clit.

The witch’s back curved off the hood like she’d been struck by lightning, a wail passing through her lips. Rio remained steadfast, and Agatha found herself on the precipice of her pleasure after only a few short minutes. Agatha unhooked one hand from Rio’s shoulder to grip the nape of her neck, yanking her back down until their foreheads were touching.

They weren’t kissing so much as passing hot breaths back and forth. Agatha whimpered and panted into Rio’s mouth, not capable of anything more as Death pressed her lips to the corner of her mouth and whispered filthy praise into her ear. Agatha screwed her eyes shut as she felt the wave begin to crest.

“‘m gonna –” was all she managed to say before her orgasm overtook her, stars bursting to life and collapsing behind her eyes, electricity shooting down to her fingertips and toes. It felt like finally coming home to her body, in a way. It was the last puzzle piece snapping perfectly into place; she hadn’t known how to exist in a form that Rio hadn’t touched.

Coming back to herself, she could feel the warm press of Rio’s lips all over her face– eyebrow, temple, nose, jaw. She could also feel the steady roll of Rio’s hips against the muscle of her thigh, the woman no longer capable of waiting.

As if possessed, Agatha tore Rio’s cloak off of her shoulders and threw the offending garment to the ground, pleased to find her wife bare underneath. Agatha lifted and tensed her thigh, gripping Rio’s hips to encourage her movements. The motion pulled a groan from Rio’s lips and she bared down harder.

“No underwear?” She repeated Rio’s question back to her tauntingly, regaining some of her snark in her post-orgasm clarity. Rio’s lips twitched up momentarily but her face was quick to return to concentration, one hand clutching Agatha’s waist and the other squeezing her own breast. She rolled a stiff nipple between two fingers, her voice coming out high and reedy.

“Magicked– fuck – magicked them away, like, fifteen minutes ago. Figured th-they’d get in the way.”

Agatha chuckled, watching Rio fight to keep control over herself. The witch’s thigh was slick from knee to hip with the evidence of her lover’s arousal, and she watched the last bit of her restraint snap as Agatha brought her thumb to Rio’s clit, foregoing any build up and rubbing in fast, tight circles.

Rio’s mouth fell open in a perfect O, a broken whine leaving her lips. Agatha wove the fingers of her free hand through Rio’s on her waist, pulling it further until Rio’s body was splayed out in the air inches above her own. Never ceasing the attention to her clit, Agatha leaned forward and captured Rio’s untouched nipple between her teeth, sucking as much of her lover’s breast in her mouth as would fit before flicking her tongue over the hardened bud.

The noise Rio made was akin to a sob. Agatha felt as she dripped down her thigh, dragging herself over the muscle. Having her like this, even at their most violent, always left Agatha feeling dizzy. Death brought to ruin by her hands (her tongue, her thigh, her strap)-- an unstoppable force of nature that would yield for no one but Agatha Harkness.

“You’re so beautiful like this, baby,” Agatha murmured as she moved to suck a bruise into the tender flesh. Rio whimpered, her movements growing sloppy and her breathing ragged. “All wet and needy for me. So fucking pretty.” Agatha punctuated her words with a sharp bite to the side of Rio’s breast, triumphant when those hazel eyes flew open to meet her own. She made her killing blow.

“Look at me when I make you cum, Rio.”

Ever a good listener, Rio came with a cry, clamping Agatha’s leg tight between her own. Agatha moved her hands back to Rio’s hips to help her ride it out until she shuddered to a stop, collapsing onto Agatha’s chest.

The soft puffs of her breath hit the hollow of Agatha’s throat, the two of them pressed together from shoulder to knee. She brushed her fingers in soothing patterns along Rio’s back, enjoying the blanket of silence that settled around them. In these few minutes of limbo, they could be any two lovers, any two women sharing a sense of post-coital calm. They did not have to be something so jagged.

Rio’s breathing gradually slowed, and Agatha could feel the creeping charge of something, the prying fingers of her anger and despair pressing forcefully back into her thoughts. She closed her eyes against the leaden weight of reality slithering back through her veins.

“You could come home, you know. You could be angry with me there.” Rio’s voice came out small and muffled against the skin of her throat, like she could feel Agatha’s oncoming rejection before she ever opened her mouth. She made the offer like it was not her greatest desire. Like it was something casual and not all-consuming for her.

Home, as Rio referred to it, meant the realm that lies Beyond. The place where souls get ferried through, where Rio is made to reign above all from Death’s throne and instead chooses to keep a small, warm cottage that feels awfully reminiscent of 1700's Americana. Just as they had left it, only with room for one more.

Agatha looked out at the city lights twinkling far beneath them and thought of the people in their homes kissing one another goodnight and tossing in their sleep and watching late night television. She let Rio’s words settle into that place inside of her where she kept the things that weren’t safe to touch– the things that could break her. In the cicada song of the night, she let herself indulge in the bittersweet pain of imagining it anyway--

Rocking on the front porch, grimoire in hand, watching as Rio squats in the dirt and points out the different flowers to their son. Nicky, forever six years old and beautiful, laughs as his mother puts on a silly voice and pretends to be a sunflower. Their son, receiving two kisses goodnight, tucked safely into his very own bed before Rio closes his door and pulls Agatha into their bedroom. Their movements are practiced and easy after so much time spent in this domestic bliss. 

Agatha felt like her throat was closing. Stinging tears blurred the edges of her vision, but she wrestled them back. It was everything they were meant to have had. It was everything that had been torn from her.

I don’t know that home is something that can exist for me anymore in any of the ways that matter. You took our son away from me and I don’t know if I can forgive you. I’m scared that my rage has made a beast of me and I let it.You’re offering to give him back to me and I’m too afraid of myself to say yes. I could not endure losing our family again. The words fought to leave her lips, begging for release. Agatha swallowed them down, realizing she’d let the silence stretch for too long.

“So that’s your play, then? Seduce me and hope you’re a good enough lay for me to give up all of this new power? You’re going to have to work harder than that, sweetheart,” she drawled instead, slamming the practiced facade of indifference down between them like a brick wall. She felt Rio stiffen before loosing a quiet, resigned sigh. 

Rio rose, crawling backwards off of the hood to coolly retrieve her cloak from the ground and draw the hood once more without a word.

She stared down at Agatha, weighted and lingering, like maybe she was going to put her fist through said brick wall and make them talk about it. Maybe she would point out that it was Agatha who’d shown up here, who had thrown herself at Rio, who had become something tangible and immediately sought Rio’s hands.

Instead, her silent gaze pinned Agatha to the spot. The witch’s messy white hair framed her head like a halo against the windshield of the blue sedan, her dress still rucked unceremoniously around her hips, her skin littered with bruises. Looking into Rio’s dark eyes was like catching a jarring glimpse of a better, long-past version of herself. Even so, Agatha refused to be the first to break the stare. After a moment her form flickered, briefly unveiling her ghostly translucence before she became solid once more.

At the motion Rio nodded once, as if to steady herself.

“Te veo, Agatha,” she said. Death’s voice carried on the wind long after she was gone.

Chapter Text

Death has existed since the moment the first star bloomed to life in the unending dark of space. Wandering, collecting, impassively ushering the creatures of this mortal plane on to the next.

Rio Vidal has existed since 1732, when she finally decided to let a veneer of muscle and veins and skin melt over her bony visage so that she might catch a closer glimpse of the enigmatic violet pulse that had left her so many to reap.

After so much time in this body, she can no longer untangle the two. She is Death and she is Rio. A god and a bride. An unavoidable end and a casualty of the grief that it brings.

Watching eons of mourners had not prepared her for the agony. For the feeling of watching Agatha wake with the cold body of their son in her arms. For the moment she felt Agatha’s heart stop and could do nothing but watch her ascent, helpless as those warm fingertips pulled away from her face and turned ashen in the night air.

Rio had not thought anything could have been worse than grieving Nicky’s death. She was wrong.

Nicky, the beautiful boy who was never meant to live, had at least come home to her. Had slowly but surely accepted his new home, filling the cottage Rio had made for them with laughter and love and song. Agatha– lover, tormentor, bride, bane– had not. In an act of spite that she should have anticipated, the witch instead let her soul become the festering, rotting, haunting thing that Rio hated most: a ghost.

It had shattered her, at first. The refusal to see them through, just this one last time. To know that in the face of Death– bearing Rio’s crooked smile, her wide brown eyes– Agatha had turned away.

Seven months later, when Agatha had sought her out on an overlook, Rio had known. That Agatha’s fear was still greater than her hope, that Rio had been wrong to think that the two of them could ever fully disengage. 

Death is Rio Vidal. Rio Vidal loves Agatha Harkness. Agatha Harkness has never made it long before dancing with Death.

So, she is waiting. Reaping and working and telling Nicky new stories, and waiting. A soul calls out, and she follows.

It is a woman, this time. Blonde and lithe, perhaps middle aged, drowned to death after falling asleep in her hotel bathtub. 

Rio takes her soul and draws the shower curtain, wiping the back of her hand along her brow in the steam of the room. She disappears and rematerializes just outside the bathroom, wedged between a rumpled queen sized bed and a cheap, sparse desk. Maybe the woman had been here for work, or maybe for travel. Rio neither knows nor cares, though she lets herself acknowledge the unfortunate luck of being found in a hotel bathroom in the late afternoon. Or whenever they finally come looking.

Rio gives the dingy, impersonal room a once over. There is something to be said, maybe, about the impermanence of such a space– the sort of inherently transient quality. Rio is not the one to say it, of course. Humans have their poets for such things. Still.

When the overbearing haze of jasmine and honeysuckle hits her, Rio does not stagger, nor does she acknowledge the painful thump of the black heart caged in her chest. She merely waits.

Agatha’s appearance is once again silent. One moment Rio stands in an empty room, the next Agatha is leaning against the thick, dusty curtain that frames the window. In place of what Rio remembers her referring to as her “ghost uniform” sits Agnes’ floral robe, tied loose and falling away on one side. She must be showing off this newly attained feat.

She is almost fully corporeal, but something about it still rings false, like the powers that be will not let the truth of Agatha’s undead state be erased. A shaft of sunlight breaks through the tilted blinds and pierces clean through what would be the meat of Agatha’s shoulder, pooling on the floor at her feet. Rio finds it both nauseating and beautiful.

There is something subdued about Agatha, evident in the way that she rests with her arms crossed instead of utilizing the silence to get the first word. Something biting perhaps, waiting on the tip of her tongue since their last encounter. 

Gratefully, Rio uses the momentary calm to collect herself. Because in all of her waiting to see Agatha again, she had not anticipated this . This sudden, choking knowledge that she may finally have hit the point where she cannot take it anymore. Cannot live in the gaps between Agatha’s reluctant affections.

It sets off a primal sort of fear in the back of her skull. Unwilling to live out this realization now, Rio pushes forward with their script.

“Why are you here, Agatha?” She asks. Agatha, to her surprise, opens her mouth only to close it again, her brow furrowing in frustration.

She’s about to ask again when Agatha huffs out, clearly agitated, “because I’ve missed you.” The candidness of her confession throws everything off balance. The world is tilting, the furniture sliding off of the walls, Rio fighting silently not to fall headlong into the chasm in her heart where the words land. Agatha rushes to correct the misstep.

“Do you know how much time I have to spend with a moody gay teenager? It’s like I’m a permanent babysitter. I needed to see another adult or I was going to kill him.” Rio exhales shakily through her nose, unsure if she can continue playing their game without her facade cracking entirely. She tries anyway.

“You could leave him at any time, you know. Go haunt some other poor human, or travel the world, or die like you’re supposed to.” She’s proud of how even and disinterested her voice stays.

Agatha’s only acknowledgement is a roll of her eyes as she crosses the gap between the window and the bed and flops down dramatically, bouncing against the stiff mattress. Rio swallows thickly as the move exposes a sliver of her skin from her throat to her thigh, revealing a hint of purple lace at her hips. Of course, Agatha notices.

“Another thing about being a ghost? It’s virtually impossible to get any action. I can hardly stay corporeal for the time it takes to find somebody decent to fuck. You flicker a little bit one time and people go running for the hills! It’s exhausting.”

Agatha gesticulates into the air with her hands while she’s talking, looking up at the ceiling instead of at Rio. 

Rio, who is ill at the thought of anybody else even trying to put their hands on Agatha. Rio, who is pushing back the voice in her head that is growing louder and louder as it screams stop doing this! Don’t give in again! Just leave! Rio, who is too preoccupied with the glimpse of purple lace to listen.

“Are you trying to ask me for something, Agatha? Or are you here to vent about the choice that you made?” Rio watches the slight frown that forms on Agatha’s face at her words. The witch tilts her head so that their eyes connect.

“I already told you why I’m here.”

“You showed up in a dead woman’s hotel room, practically naked, because you missed me?” Rio pushes. Agatha gets that look again, that sort of quiet nervousness she had when she arrived. She knots her fingers together over her stomach.

“Yes.”

Rio takes less than a second to think it over.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

Rio nods, already crossing over to the bed and gently prying Agatha’s fingers apart before leaning over and pressing her lips to Agatha’s. She has made her choice; she will do this, one last time, and then she will tell Agatha the heavy truth that has settled in her chest.

That she cannot live in this limbo anymore. That there will be no more trysts on cars or in hotel rooms or in the forest or anywhere, no more grasping at love only for it to slip through her fingers like water. That until Agatha is ready to pass over, Rio is saying goodbye.

She presses it all down and swipes her tongue over Agatha’s bottom lip, swallowing the gasp that it pulls from the witch and working the knot of her robe loose. In seconds, Agatha is freed of the garment, left on the starched white linen in nothing but the purple thong Rio had noticed earlier.

Not giving Agatha a moment to catch her breath, Rio pulls away from her mouth, nipping at her earlobe before pressing hot, open mouthed kisses across her jaw and down her throat. The skin beneath her lips is cool– no heart beneath to pump blood through nonexistent veins– only this shell of a body pretending to be her wife.

Agatha pants, burying her fingers into Rio’s hair and pulling as Death’s tongue laves over a nipple. Rio draws out a cry when she tugs the pink bud between her teeth, the sting of Agatha’s grip at the back of her skull oozing pleasure down her spine.

Rio alternates breasts with her mouth and her hands, working Agatha up until she is writhing against the mattress. When Agatha whimpers something that sounds like her name, Rio pulls away, bringing their faces together once more to kiss her softly.

It is not what Agatha has come here for, Rio knows. She wants bruises left by lips and hands, claw marks in places where Rio has lost her restraint. Rio can’t give this to her. Not if this is the last time.

So Rio kisses her gently, like the first breath of spring after a harsh winter. She kisses her like Agatha is young again, and when she sees Rio through the trees her only possible response is to fling her arms open and come running.

Maybe Agatha is going to say something about the tears she can feel against her own cheeks or maybe she is going to snap at Rio for having the audacity to be so soft. Either way, Rio never lets her finish the thought.

Death lifts herself up and slides gracefully to kneel on the floor, pulling Agatha’s hips to the edge of the bed. Agatha props herself up on her elbows and looks down with wild eyes and pink cheeks. Her chest is usually heaving by now, breathless with want, Rio notes. No real lungs lie beneath Agatha’s skin, though, to perform the act. 

She adds it to the long list of differences between the living Agatha and this magic-forged casing. No one will ever be Agatha Harkness again. Not even her own ghost.

Incapable of ruminating on the line of thought for a minute more, Rio tugs the now-soaked thong down Agatha’s legs and tosses it to the floor, picking up one of her thighs and placing it over her shoulder.

She’s pink and puffy and glistening, her body putting her desperation on full display in a way she never would with words. Rio flicks her eyes up to meet Agatha’s before leaning in slightly, stopping a mere inch away before blowing a cool stream of air directly onto her center.

Agatha keens and arches off the bed, pushing her hips down, seeking Rio’s mouth. Rio offers her that crooked smirk, snaking her arm up and around the leg on her shoulder to press Agatha’s hips firmly against the bed, trapping her.

She waits until Agatha opens her mouth to speak again before pressing forward and parting her with her tongue, moaning at both the taste and the sounds coming from the woman above her.

Rio gathers the wetness pooled at Agatha’s entrance on her tongue and drags it up until she reaches her clit, pressing more firmly with her arm to tamp down Agatha’s responding thrashing. She offers only small, infuriating kitten licks around the bundle of nerves, keeping her touch away from where Agatha really wants her, until an exhale of “ please ” reaches her ears.

As if the word is some hair trigger release, Rio begins to devour her in earnest, dipping down to circle Agatha’s entrance with her tongue before returning to draw her clit between her lips, sucking lightly. She plays Agatha’s body like the instrument that it is, an artist and her muse in complete synchronicity.

Rio is the model of devotion, giving this final performance everything she has. She runs her tongue over Agatha’s clit, spelling out all of the words that she cannot say. Sonnets and love letters and eulogies. I miss you. I love you. I’m so sorry. Goodbye.

Agatha tenses beneath her, like she’s becoming suspicious of Rio’s ministrations. Unable to answer for her crimes, Rio brings her free hand up and teases two fingers beneath her chin, coating them in Agatha’s wetness before pushing in.

Agatha makes a choked breathless sort of sound, dropping from her elbows and falling back against the mattress as she tightens around Rio's fingers, drawing her in further. As Agatha’s moans pitch higher and higher Rio redoubles her efforts, pumping and curling her fingers in time with the precise motions of her tongue.

Agatha comes with a silent scream and the world narrows down to Agatha’s thighs around her head, the clench of her cunt trapping Rio’s fingers, the blood rushing in her ears. Rio lightens her touch but does not stop, carrying steadily on until she draws out a second orgasm and then a third.

When she finally pulls away, Agatha is twitching from overstimulation, one arm slung over her eyes. Rio gingerly removes her leg from her shoulder, moving to draw back onto her heels. Agatha’s free arm reaches out, searching. Beckoning.

Slowly, hesitantly, Rio offers her hand. Agatha has no such reservations and is quick to pull at Rio until she joins the witch on the bed, lying so that there is a safe gap of a few inches between them. Again, having none of this, Agatha rolls to her side, pressing herself along the lines of Rio’s body and resting her head just over Death’s heart.

The orange rays of the setting sun bathe the room in a warm glow, and in the quiet Rio thinks of the dead woman in the bathtub waiting to be found. She knows she has to say something soon if she has any chance of saying it at all, and that it will be easier if she puts physical distance between them first.

Rio readies herself to rise, but as if sensing her impending departure, Agatha secures a fistful of Rio’s cloak and grips tightly, rooting her to the spot.

She can feel more than see as Agatha once again opens and closes her mouth soundlessly, as though the words are jumbled together in her throat and she can’t figure out which should come out first. Rio waits while she works it out. Maybe her words will be cruel enough to lighten the ache of saying goodbye. A small mercy.

“I can’t be who I was before again. I can’t be that woman for you.” Her words come as such a shock to Rio that she finds she can only answer simply. Honestly.

“I know.”

“I don’t know that I could…that we could be the same.” Happy , she doesn’t have to say. Unshakable.

“I am not asking you to forget.”

Agatha pauses, and for a moment Rio thinks maybe that was all she had to say, but then Agatha’s fingers in her cloak tremble lightly when she speaks again.

“Is he happy? Does he know what– who you are?” Rio sucks in a breath through her teeth. They have never talked about it– what has happened to Nicky since his death. They have only talked about him within the confines of their tragedy.

So Rio tells her. About Nicky’s life Beyond. About Nicky running in the woods and Nicky learning to swim in the river and Nicky asking for a different bedtime story every night because his mother’s infinite wealth of knowledge pleases him to no end.

How sometimes the stories are about Agatha, and for those he likes to listen curled up on Rio’s lap, clutching tightly to her shirt and hanging onto every word. How every time he learns something new or finds something he likes, his first thought is that “we’ll have to tell mommy about it when she gets here.”

Rio registers Agatha’s silence and stillness and her words peter out, unsure. She looks down to see that Agatha’s eyes are closed and her brow furrowed, like she's trying to keep her entire face from collapsing in on itself. She must have gone too far.

“If I am what's keeping you from going to him now, I can find somewhere else to go, Agatha. Do not let avoiding me win out over being with our son. I’m sure there are things to attend to in the throne room after so many centuries away,” she rushes out. After a beat of hesitation, she adds, “I would still need to see him, though. I can’t let Nicky think I’ve abandoned him.”

When finally Agatha opens her eyes again and tilts her face up, she is wearing an expression that Rio has not seen in over three hundred years. It looks like vulnerability. It looks like forgiveness. It looks like love.

Rio’s breath catches in her throat, and faintly she registers that she’s shaking.

“Ask me again,” Agatha says, voice low but sure. Rio feels her heart seize in her chest.

“Agatha–” her voice trembles under the crushing weight of her hope– “come home.”

Agatha pulls them both to sit before she settles in Rio’s lap, kissing her soundly. It is the opposite of the kiss that they shared at her death. It is a tender promise to try again, to find out if they can forgive one another. If they can find a way back to their love.

Agatha Harkness, covenless witch-killer, is not siphoning now. She is giving, sending her power out through her lips and her palms, radiating a new kind of warmth into Rio. Her form shimmers as she presses closer to Rio, relinquishing her soul.

When the pressure is gone, Rio is left cradling the violet pulse that she had first donned a face and a name for.

With tears in her eyes, Death rises to slash a clean line into the fabric of reality and steps through.

A child rushes to greet both of his mothers.